Audrie's Scrappy Patchwork Sewing Machine Cover Tutorial

Hi, it's Vicki--I'm excited to have Audrie from Blue is Bleu as a guest blogger here today! Here's a super cute sewing machine cover tutorial that she put together:

My sewing machine has been in dire need of a cover, and since I had so many scraps from quilting projects, I thought what better way to use them than make a scrappy patchwork cover!

What you'll need:

• Approx. 1/2 to 3/4 yard each of fabric for quilt top and back (this depends on the measurements of your sewing machine so adjust accordingly)
• Batting
• Fabric for binding
• Scraps of fabric
• Thread for sewing and quilting
• Ribbon (approx. 1.5 yards or less)
• Pins
• Scissors

Before you begin, you'll need to measure your sewing machine. Mine was 27" from the bottom of the front over to the bottom of the back, and 16.5" across.

Cut your quilt top about 1" or so larger than the measurements. Cut your batting and backing fabric slightly larger than the quilt top.

Note: You can sew the scraps on the quilt top without the backing (just the top and batting), only adding it after all the scraps are sewn. This allows all the stitches to be hidden on the back. I personally like the stitching showing so I chose to work with the backing fabric.

Pin all three layers together.

Gather your scraps of fabric. Cut them into different shapes and sizes.

Pin your first scrap on the quilt top and sew approximately 1/8" from the edge. I used my walking foot for this since there's three layers and I didn't want them to shift around.

And there you'll have your first finished scrap!

Don't worry about making a little pucker on the edge. My first scrap always seems to turn out like this, just like the first pancake.

Sew another scrap to cover the pucker... and it's all fixed!

Continue layering and sewing on your scraps...

And you'll end up with something like this.

I decided to divide the cover into two halves -- one side made with girl quilt scraps, and the other with boy quilt scraps.

After all the scraps are sewn on and you're happy with how it looks, you can quilt the cover any way you please. I chose to do a grid pattern in a dark brown thread just by quilting vertically then horizontally without drawing lines. I like how it turns out all wonky.

Then I slapped on some brown dotty binding.

As for the straps, you can use ribbon or make your own straps from any fabric you like. I chose to go the ribbon route.

 

Cut your ribbon to the desired length -- I cut mine to 12" since my machine's about 7" wide. You'll need 4 pieces of cut ribbon.

I highly recommend treating the edges of your ribbon with Fray Check just so they don't unravel and look unruly after a while. 

Measure the side of your machine and where you'll like to place the ribbon. 2" up from the bottom works for me.

Mark on the reverse of your cover where you'll like the ribbon to go.

I placed my ribbons so that the mark is in the middle of the ribbon.

Pin your ribbon to the cover, turn over and stitch as closely to the binding as possible.

Tada! One ribbon fastened. Now repeat thrice.

You'll end up with one cute little scrappy patchwork sewing machine cover! 

A big thanks to Vicki for asking me to do a guest post on her blog :)

-- Audrie

 

Hi, it's Vicki again! Thank you so much for this tutorial, Audrie! If you have a chance, please stop by Audrie's blog--she makes lots of gorgeous quilts and also blogs about funny, random things in her life. 

Favorite Fabrics 2009

True Up is having a Favorite Fabrics of 2009 giveaway event, and I wanted to share my faves from last year:

- Favorite Quilting Weight Cotton Collection
Neptune by Tula Pink


- Favorite Trend (Motifs)
deer

- Favorite Trend (Colors)
aqua


- Biggest Fabric World Story/News
Heather Ross won't be putting out any new fabric designs for a while... all her currently available fabric becomes even more desirable!

- Favorite Overall Designer
BasicGrey -- I'm a huge fan and love the grunge solids that come with each collection.

- Favorite Novelty Print
Meadowsweet Strawberry Field

- Favorite Floral Print
dressy  from the Sultry collection by BasicGrey


- Favorite Holiday Fabric or Collection
Figgy Pudding, of course!

- Favorite Juvenile Print:
Goodnight Monkey

- Favorite Reproduction Print or Collection
Hello Betty--retro colors

- Favorite Fabric Shop
Fabric.com for quick service and generous fabric cuts


I have a few of these fabrics that I will be sewing with in 2010! And others I still want to get. What fabrics did you love in '09?

Figgy Pudding Christmas Quilt

Well, here it is, my finished Christmas quilt!

I started dreaming about making this quilt sometime early in 2009 when the previews for the Figgy Pudding fabric line by Moda started showing up on online fabric shops. Sometime in June, I noticed the fabric was available to buy online, and I called my local quilt shop to ask which Christmas fabric lines they had. They did have the Figgy Pudding line so I went and bought a few fat quarters to get started with. Then I bought more of the fabric when I was on vacation in Utah. I believe I made the quilt blocks and pieced strips on the back with 17 assorted fat quarters and then I purchased additional yardage for the sashing, binding, and solid backing fabric.

The back is made up of pieced strips of my Figgy Pudding scraps, and the brown solid is a Quilter's Only fabric from JoAnn's. It is quilted with aqua colored silk/cotton thread by Mettler. Number 0905 (I had to go back to buy more thread a couple times, plus it is the same thread I used on my mendocino mermaid baby quilt. I have about 5 empty spools with 0905 on them, time to move on to another thread color!) This is the second quilt I've quilted with my new sewing machine, and I have figured out that I need to adjust my top thread tension to around 6.5 or 7 in order for the stitches to come out right.

I thought I had enough of the green damask print to bind the quilt but I ended up a little short, so I put in a few little red sections of binding.

Here's a close up of one of my favorite blocks, and the star. I love the blue Christmas tree fabric so much. And the red and white fabric, too.

This quilt is made from my Simple Squares pattern which is a free tutorial-in-progress. In the coming weeks I will be finishing up the instructions for the sashing and getting the fabric requirements for the larger quilt all figured out, so you can make your own quilts with this pattern. Stay tuned!

p.s. I posted about my quilting bee block idea over at Bee Beautiful, go check it out! :)

2010 sewing goals + a couple things I've made

Here's my January block for Block Swap 2. We don't have a group blog (yet?) but it is for Hope who blogs at Going Sew Crazy. The fabrics are mostly hers, but I added in some aqua check strings, red dots, a little bit of Neptune lime green, and one strip of Hushabye pink dragonflies. This is my first time making a string block.

I made this friendship bag as part of my prize donation for Jacquie's Joy in the New Year UFO finishing contest. I used leftover charms from my baby's latest charm pack dress to make it, but I mixed it up and used some 1.5" strips and some 2" strips. I still need to fill it with some goodies.... working on that. I finished 3 of my 6 UFOs I'd hoped to get done at the start of the contest. I'm definitely going to make another one of these. Lauren likes purses so maybe I'll modify the handles on this to make her a little toddler purse/tote.

I wanted to share some of my sewing and blogging goals for 2010...here goes!

Write in the blog about 4 times a week. This one isn't set hard and fast though, I will feel ok if I need to do it a little less and I will feel great if I do more!

Create more tutorials and patterns for you. First off, I am going to get back to my Simple Squares quilt pattern and finish up the sashing and cornerstone instructions. The baby quilt instructions will be complete after that, and then I will also be sharing the fabric requirements, the plain sashing, and star in sashing instructions to complete the throw size version of this quilt. I hope to get this all completed in January and would love to see if any of you use this pattern for your own quilts!

Finish my last 3 UFOs from the challenge. These are: my watercolor quilt aka insane quilt project, my small Recess quilt, and my red/blue scrap quilt.

Make more clothing for my kids and myself! I have so many ideas for dresses or outfits for my little girl. I have a few things I'd like to make myself. And I'm probably making spring dress shirts for the boys.

Make 2 baby quilts for new babies in the family.

Do new creative things, or old ones I haven't done in a long time. I'm thinking about making books, collaging, writing fiction....

And finally, have fun and learn new things!

What are some of your goals for 2010? Or do you skip goals and go for inclinations?
And do you say twenty-ten yet, or are you still saying two thousand ten?

2009 in review

Here's some (most?) of the things I made in 2009:

You can go to my flickr stream to see the links to all these images, if you want.
I made lots of coasters, 5 mini or smaller quilts, 3 throw-size quilts, 3 baby quilts. I quilted 2 additional quilts for my mom.

I also made lots of dishtowels, some clothes for my kids, some bags, and other things too.

I'm happy to be finished with my Christmas sewing and my final quilt of the year--I got the binding all done while watching New Year's Eve shows on TV last night. I feel like I can make whatever I want to right now, and I have several little girl clothing items that I've been dying to get started on.

I'm looking forward to a great 2010!

one last 2009 finish!

Here's what I'm working on:

(Left handers hand stitch from left to right, by the way.)
About 2/3 of the way done. Does anyone else calculate the math/percentage finished while quilting or binding? I was teaching my 4th grader how to reduce fractions while I was quilting last night and today: "Ok, figure out what 16/24 reduces down to...." A little while later "what's 20/24?"

I have 7 more blocks around the perimeter to go.

The unfinished part is not in the picture. (Like the painting stuff? My husband has been working hard painting our tall-ceilinged living room, hall, stairs, and kitchen.)

Check back tomorrow for my 2009 recap/mosaic and a little bit of plans for the new year. Hoping to slow down, at least for a while.

snow kiddos

I spent the longest time bundling up my little sweetie.

She doesn't look like she really appreciated it that much.

Here's some information about our area's 5 day storm. It was crazy, there are parts of my neighbor's lawn where the snow was blown off and you can see the grass, but it is over a foot deep next to my driveway.

The boys had a lot of fun!

Christmas gifts and Christmas kids

Here are a few more of the gifts I made for Christmas this year--lots of dishtowels (I kept one Figgy Pudding dishtowel for myself), a tote bag for my mom, a yoga mat bag for my sister.

I also gave this pear bag to my mother-in-law.

I made pajama pants for the kids to open on Christmas eve. I lost the pieces the first time I cut out Lauren's pants, and still haven't found them. The second time around, I had to cut them on the cross grain to make the pattern pieces fit. It worked out ok though. 

The kids got a good haul on Christmas morning. New jackets for the boys, along with lots of games and books and hot wheels.

Lauren got books, a bath whale, a funny looking pink thing, and some other stuff. She makes great faces.

I hope you all had a great holiday! I'm looking forward to the new year!

dear Mom,

here are the quilts I've been meaning to show you. These are ones I really think I have to make in 2010. I found these while browsing Amy's fall quilt festival. (I still haven't finished looking at all the quilts! I've got to work on that.) The first one is this amazing picnic quilt from Fancy That. Aren't those just the best colors? And I love the denim. The second one is the roundabout quilt from A Commonplace Life. I love the circles and all the bright colors. And how the circles are offset.

What do you think?

my favorite gift

(That I gave, that is.)

I finally get to post about Krista's quilt! In January this year, the Elizabeth's Fabric Focus project on Sew, Mama, Sew was a lovely quilt made from the House collection of fabrics by Annette Tatum. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to make my own interpretation for my sister-in-law Krista, who loves all things baby blue and many pink things too. Of course I had to change things up a little, and I decided to make my quilt with 10" blocks which wasn't one of the options provided in the pattern. That's ok, I can handle a little bit of quilty math now and then.

I got the fabric and worked on sets of 7 blocks at a time, taking big breaks in between. I finished it up in November after we got back for our cruise and labeled it right before wrapping and shipping our family gifts to Utah a couple weeks ago.

I was so excited about Krista opening this up, and I wish I could have been there to see her. I'm trying to decide who I should make a Christmas quilt for next year!

More pictures, better light:
I like the stained glass effect here.

I don't like how you can see my shadow through the quilt here, but wanted to show the whole quilt back:
Please notice the little pink chunk near the bottom. I really like that part.

Had some helpers for this one, and learned that the flash can be a good thing sometimes!

p.s. if you want to make this quilt with 10" finished squares, ending up with a 50"x70" quilt, you'll need 1/2 yard cuts of 10 different fabrics for the stars. I can't tell you how much white fabric I used, because I didn't really measure it or keep track. But if anyone is interested, I can figure that out and I can also figure out the cutting measurements for the star blocks.

the stockings are hung...

Natalia is hosting a Homespun Holiday Show -n- Tell over at her site, Piece N Quilt. I'm getting my entry posted at the last minute, but at least I got it done! Don't forget to head over to her site (click the image above) to see all the other entries.

I got my daughter's stocking done, it's the one on the right. The one on the left was made in 2002 for Daniel, in the same time frame that the Wreath of Doves quilt was started. I made Jacob's stocking in 2006, when he was 2.

I used the same pattern for all 3 stockings and I took photos this time, hoping to make a tutorial to share with you all. It turns out I'm running out of time and I'm thinking I will probably save it and share it for some kind of Christmas in July blog event next year... what do you think? Do you even want to think about next year's Christmas yet?

Here's a little closer view. Can you see the loopy quilting I did in the white cuff part of Lauren's stocking? I like it.

I wrapped almost all the gifts last night. Just one more. I'm going to make some recycled loopy bows today like this. Aren't they cute?

And I still have some stealth sewing to fit in....we'll see how that goes.

p.s. my husband painted the living room--I really like our new color!

Christmas quilt back

Christmas quilt back
Originally uploaded by vickivictoria

I got the back finished for my Christmas quilt. I like it and can't wait to get this quilt basted and quilted.

I finished my daughter's stocking; still deciding if I'll post the tutorial for it or not, it's getting a little late for that. Besides, we have lots of last minute things to do around here!

Hope you're having a good Monday! I'm off to help paint the living room.