Sew Inspired Blog Turns 5! -- Giveaway No. 1

Hi friends! On April 5, my blog will be having a 5th birthday! I am really excited about this and have some giveaways for a few lucky readers... make sure you stop by every day for the next 5 days, ok?

First off though I'm going to get all reminiscent... how did this thing get started? Well I had a couple of blogs before this one; one was in 2002 when we lived in Oregon for the summer for my husband's MBA internship, with the idea that family could keep track of what we were up to. And then after that I kept a personal blog for a while but I wasn't ever 100% comfortable with the idea (or the name I had chosen) and eventually I scrapped (and deleted) it.

Then I wanted to start a blog again, and decided to focus mainly on my sewing and see how it went. I just glanced through all 20 of my 2006 entries, and isn't it great that people can grow and change? My writing then reminds me of how I write in my personal journal, and I think I write differently now. I guess I had no audience at first though, and now I do, and I try to keep that in mind. I was dabbling in sewing things to sell on etsy/ebay too, which I didn't enjoy terribly much. Also, not really quilting very much.

Anyway, probably my favorite post from that first year is in April (and it doesn't have its' own permalink, how weird is that?) when I was complaining about my second child giving up naps. I'm going through that now with my third child, but she's 29 months old now and he was 21 months old when he did this. Other than that, it's pretty much the same.

So... moving on to the giveaway!
Today's giveaway is sponsored by Sew Inspired Quilts in Nauvoo, Illinois. Please visit their website and see what they have to offer! They have generously donated 2 charm packs for today's giveaway:

Modern Workshop

 and 

Sherbet Pips!

One lucky winner will receive both charm packs. To enter, all you need to do is leave one comment on this post. I'd love it if you make it a little interesting, but you can go ahead and say "pick me!" if that's all you have.

Now for the fine print:

*This giveaway will be open for 3 days. I will close comments and pick a winner on April 3 at 10:00 pm central (or I might be a little late. It won't be earlier than then).

*You must leave me a way to contact you! If you are not sure if your email address comes through with your comments (I get them emailed to me), check out this excellent explanation on the Pleasant Home blog. If you want, you can include your email address in your comment. If I draw a name that has no contact information, I will pick another winner. 

*I will contact the winner on April 3 and also post the winner here.

**Thanks again to Sew Inspired Quilts of Nauvoo!

Quilt Blocks and a Little Announcement

Here are some things I've been working on the last little while:

This is almost half of my Punctuation jelly roll, all sewn up into these super easy blocks. I like making these because there isn't a lot of thinking involved, and they are very quick to make. Especially when you cut 4 blocks at a time. I will probably finish the rest of them in the next week or so and put together the quilt top. And this will be the first time I've bought a jelly roll and used the whole thing up. So far.

I have also felt the need to make some improvised scrap blocks. I have my scraps organized by color in big ziplock bags, and I had a little baggie full of those triangles that are left over when I make quilt binding. I decided to make some stars. And one shoo-fly block.

I did something different with these--I only used scissors for any cutting that was necessary while I was making them. I have noticed a few quilts or quilt blocks made this way on flickr and have wanted to try it. These blocks aren't trimmed or squared up yet, and maybe I won't square them up, really, but I think they do have a little more organic, homemade look than blocks cut with a ruler and rotary cutter. My plan for these is to make a kind of scrappy improv quilt, maybe a row quilt. It's something I plan on taking my time with; I'm only making blocks when I want to and I have no plans for when it needs to be finished.

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And now for my little announcement... in the next few days, this little blog will be having its 5th birthday! As a thank you to my readers, I will be having 5 days of giveaways, starting this Friday, April 1. I think you will like them. I hope so! See you then!

Review: Miss Scarlet's School of Patternless Sewing

A couple weeks ago I found out I was a winner in the Goodreads giveaway for Miss Scarlet's School of Patternless Sewing, written by the Crafty Chica, Kathy Cano-Murillo. I've known about the Crafty Chica blog and products for a long time and I loved the title of this book so I was excited to read it. And I loved it!

The book centers on Scarlet Santana, who is starting a Patternless Sewing class (doesn't that sound fun?) to help pay her tuition to a prestigious fashion design program in New York City. She has some trouble along the way with work and family, and grows and changes through the story, which has a great ending. (But I want to read more about her. Will there be more?) Another character, Mary Theresa, is in the midst of a crisis in her marriage and family, and she signs up for Scarlet's class to fulfill a requirement for her marriage counseling. The sewing class is the setting for new friendships and lots of fun, too, and I really felt like I got to know the characters.

I loved the descriptions of the sewing, fashion, makeup and hair. I felt like I was able to get a clear picture of each character in my mind. Scarlet is really beautiful and people who don't know her don't see her insecurities. She has a real retro vibe and drives a cool car, too.

I got a huge kick out of the fact that blogging, the internet, video chatting, smartphones and other parts of modern life were a part of this novel. Scarlet is the author of a popular blog and has an etsy store, and they were just a natural part of the story, nothing forced or explained, which I loved.


I don't know if it was the writing or the southwest setting (Arizona in this case), but the Crafty Chica's writing reminds me of some of Barbara Kingsolver's earlier books, which are some of my all time favorites. I'm going to see if my library has Kathy Cano-Murillo's first book (Waking Up in the Land of Glitter) and read it too. She did a fabulous job with Miss Scarlet's School of Patternless Sewing and if you sew and especially if you blog about it, you should read this book!

Disclosure: I was given a free copy of the book, and not compensated for my review. Links to the book in this post are affiliate links.

9-patches from my past

Hi! Hope everybody had a great weekend! Some of the things that kept us busy over the weekend:
*Getting things ready for a kids' consignment sale (I get to go shop early, tonight!)
*A mini date with my husband (that included dropping stuff off at the sale, and dinner too.)
*Family bonding=cleaning the basement/tv room.
*Signing us up for my job chart. In just 2 days it's already made a big difference. I read about it on V and Co. a while back. Thanks, V!
*Reading a good book, one that included stuff about sewing! And blogging! I'll share more, soon!

So, since I finished up my most recent 9-patch quilt top, I've been wanting to show off some of my early quilting projects. I have been wracking my brain and can't remember exactly when I made this quilt top, but I did it on my own, with no rotary cutter and my mom's scrap stash, when I was either 14 or 16. It was after my grandma helped me make my "ugly" polyester quilt but it might have been a couple years after, not that same year. Anyway. Here it is:

I know, pretty sad, huh? I think I may have made a template out of cardboard but even then I didn't do a very good job. Oh well. So, do you think I should keep it like this for posterity, or quilt it up and let my daughter play with it? I think it would look better quilted. I do love the memories that some of these fabrics have behind them--a couple dresses mom made for me and a baby toy she also made are all represented in this little beauty. :)

Fast forward several years to when I was starting to be a real, beginning, quilter:

I've liked the 9-patch block for a long time! This is my oldest boy's baby quilt. He's almost 11 and I think I made the quilt in 2001. The pattern for this quilt is from Quilts! Quilts!! Quilts!!! : The Complete Guide to Quiltmaking (affiliate link) by McClun and Nownes, the first quilting book I bought. I quilted a star in each 9-patch:

They are a little hard to see and don't look as bad as I thought they would. They are pretty crooked and I remember being really frustrated at the time that I wasn't able to do a better job. I still feel like every single time I do free motion quilting, I get a little bit better at it, and I want to encourage anyone out there who is afraid to try free motion quilting, to just give it a shot. Make some potholders or doll quilts or just practice on muslin quilt sandwiches that you plan on throwing out later. You will get better with practice. I have a free motion quilting tutorial that I wrote up a while back that might be helpful, it might be helpful if you are new to free motion quilting. :)

101 Patchwork Projects + Quilts!!

I was so excited to get an email about 101 Patchwork Projects + Quilts this morning! If you haven't heard about it, it's a new magazine published by Interweave, the amazing folks behind lots of cool magazines including Quilting Arts and Stitch. I had been wondering what the cover would look like... isn't it pretty? You'll be able to get your own copy on newsstands in just a few weeks, or you can preorder it here. You can also get a sneak peek of the table of contents, and see photos of 2 of my 3 projects that are included in this issue! Ok I'm going to call my mom now, and tell her about this. Happy Thursday!

some quilt blocks and a quick project

Just because I had to start another project.... I got a Punctuation/American Jane jellyroll a couple weeks ago and saw a quilt made from these blocks and haven't been able to get them out of my mind. They go together so fast! I made 10 of these in less than an hour this morning. Each block is just three 2.5" squares and 2 strips that are 6.5" x 2.5". I love the tickets.

Also I did this yesterday:

These thrift store jeans were too long and too flared so I cut them off and hemmed them with ribbon. It only took about 20 minutes to sew the ribbon on. Do you want me to make a tutorial for how to do this?

I finally got some fusible stuff and eyelets/grommets so I can make the ABC book from Moda Bake Shop. I have the letters and batting cut, I'm ready to go!

Rainbow 9-Patch Quilt Top

I finished getting the last borders on this last night. I pieced that square border randomly, at least I tried to, and there were lots of little segments that I didn't really like during the making process. This picture gives me some distance though and I really like how the border looks! And the rest of it too. There is that dark section in the lower right hand corner that I don't totally love, but overall I am happy with the rainbow effect and the bright colors. The quilt is kind of wrinkly/ripply in this photo but that's just because I was hurrying to get the picture before the wind blew! It went together really straight and smooth, if I do say so myself.
 

I am going to take a break from 9-patches after this one for a while. But that doesn't stop me from thinking about the next one. Next time I am planning on doing some limited color palette but I don't know which colors, yet. Ooh, and maybe gray sashing fabric, too.

If anyone is interested in making a quilt like this, I followed the quiltalong on Amanda Jean's blog. But this quilt only has 48 blocks instead of the 70 she used.

I have a couple of 9-patch projects from my past that I'm going to show you in the next couple days. One of them is really bad... just wait and see.

Rainbow 9-Patch

I'm getting ready to finish up the top of my rainbow 9-patch quilt.

I have all the white sashing and border strips cut. I just measured and cut the horizontal sashing and am going to start pinning (not my favorite, but it helps everything go together right) and sewing right away. This is the part that kind of takes a long time. Then I need to determine if I have enough 2.5" squares for the border, and if not, I'll need to pick some out of the leftover pile from the last quilt.

I think for this one, I will do an allover quilting pattern with white thread. I am going to do a new design though. I'll have to spend some time doodling and see what I come up with.

No Prints Allowed/Jane Stickle 9-Patch

Last night was the big reveal of our guild's No Prints Allowed quilt challenge. Back in December we were given charm packs of Robert Kaufman's Kona solids. The challenge was to make a quilt using at least a little bit of every color and not adding any print fabric.

Here's what I made:

I had been thinking about making my own version of the Jane Stickle quilt for a while... I decided this challenge would be a good time to try some of the blocks. I made 16 blocks from the pattern book, all 9-patch variations. One of them had a little bit of hand sewing (top right block), all the rest were sewn by machine.

Here's the back:

I thought about hand quilting it at first; I have done that on a lot of the smaller quilts I've made, but in the end I decided that would be crazy and take too long this time. I had fun with the machine quilting and am really happy with how the quilt turned out!

Here's a closeup of the quilting, with a quarter to show the scale (sometimes it is hard to tell from a photo how big these kinds of things are):

I strip pieced those tiny aqua 9-patches! I strip pieced several of the blocks actually. Anina's That Quilt blog is a great resource for the Jane Stickle quilt; she has posted directions for making each and every block on the blog and I am grateful for the time and effort she has put into it!

Here are some other blog posts about last night's meeting:

Deb Rowden's report on our guild, I think it was her first time coming.
Carla talks about her quilt and has pictures of several quilts from last night.
Nikki's entry was an art bag to hold big art projects made by her kids.
Jenifer's quilt "Don't Lead Where I Won't Follow"

The quilts were all so beautiful! Thanks again to Robert Kaufman for the gift of the charm packs!

A skirt I made and some other stuff

So I made this skirt for my girl; it's the On the Border skirt from Little Girls, Big Style: Sew a Boutique Wardrobe from 4 Easy Patterns (affiliate link). It's really cute and it was easy too. A couple of things--it's very wide and a tad shorter than I like on her. I had a mistake while cutting so the lower tier is basically the width of my fabric, and I made the yoke pieces about 1.5" narrower than the pattern recommended as well. I am probably making it again--well, the apron skirt version first--and I will keep the width the same and make the lower panel an inch longer. Oh yeah, also wanted to mention I gathered the lower panel and the ruffle at the same time. It worked ok but probably wouldn't be a good idea on heavier fabrics.

I need to get or make leggings for her to wear under it for now, and then maybe bike shorts or something like that for summer. 

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In other news... who knows about Pinterest? It was really confusing to me at first, but I figured it out. It's basically an online bulletin board for keeping track of cool things in various categories. I'm going to use it to keep track of all the quilts I want to make, all the cool shoes and bags, and probably other stuff too. After I signed up, I had to wait a few days for an invite, just so you know. You can follow my boards here, ok?

Other than that, I hope you're having a good Monday and I gotta go get the boys from school! We started watching The Fellowship of the Ring as a family last night and I think we're going to watch the rest of it tonight. 

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

I was helping out at my boys' school this morning and got to take a peek at the Seuss Cafe. This thing sounded cute when I first read the information sheet my 5th grader brought home. But it was even better than I expected--totally stinking adorable, and fun, and just so sweet to see in person.

This is the entry arch, photo taken from the inside. (It's really small.) They had the main library lights off and this sheer fabric hung from the ceiling around a center "cafe" area. Twinkle lights and bobbly Seuss-like things were hanging down too. Tables were set up with tablecloths, centerpieces, and menus. 

The fifth graders wore white shirts and dark pants and were given Dr. Seuss hats and bow ties to wear when they worked their shifts at the Cafe. They presented the kids with the menu and while the kids who were being read to picked out their choice of story, the 5th grader went and got them a cookie. Then the 5th grader got the book and read out loud. All the kindergarten through 4th grade students got to participate in this over 4 days this week.

This is my 5th grader reading Arnie, the Doughnut to a first-grader.

I love that my kids' school encourages reading the way they do (we keep track of minutes read, and they can read anything they want, for a fun yearly challenge) and that this event was part of their commitment to making reading fun!

What I'm working on this week

I'm so glad it's March! This has been a challenging winter with more snow than usual and lots of kid illnesses as well. I really need spring to come soon; I'm glad it's sunny and warming up a bit today!

I've been working on a couple projects, one with a deadline:

This is for the KCMQG "no prints allowed" challenge--it needs to be finished next week!
Here's another peek at what I'm doing:

(These are some of the sewable scraps and will be part of the back.) I'll reveal the whole quilt after our meeting next week (crossing my fingers that I get it done, I'm afraid I'm hand quilting again!)

I've also been working on this blouse for my girl:

I need to get buttons and ribbon for the front still but decided to get started. The bottom ruffle is ready to attach, and the gathering stitches are sewn in the sleeves too. It was a bit tedious marking and making all the pintucks, so I stopped after finishing them on the back. They aren't pressed yet because I want to remove the water soluble marker first.

My computer speakers bit the dust so I was listening to Pandora on my phone while I sewed. :) Makes it a little more fun, I think.

And these books came in the mail today:

I've looked through them both and there are some great projects in them. I am looking forward to making the little knotted jumper top or dress and probably a skirt from Little Girls, Big Style. Also I think I'm finally going to dive into shirring; I've only tried it a couple times before. I have a huge cone of elastic thread and I love the shirred look on some of the blouses in this book. And Amy's done a great job with Modern Basics; maybe I'll use one of her patterns for my sister's new baby who's arriving at the end of summer.  

How about you? What are you working on? Are there any signs of spring where you are yet?

Neptune Pillows

I started making the blocks for these pillows sometime last year, and then they got set aside and eventually added to the list of UFOs I hoped to finish. I was glad that Sew, Mama, Sew hosted a pillow contest this month because it gave me the little push I needed to get them done!

Here's the aqua pillow:

and the midnight one:

I got the idea for this type of quilt block from this Moda Bake Shop recipe.

The backs of the pillows are made from ivory (I know that's not the official color name though) quilter's only cotton from JoAnn's and have pieced strips using the same fabric (and a few leftover blocks) as the pillow fronts (Moda's Neptune, isn't it pretty?) I lined the pillow backs with muslin but they aren't quilted.

It's been a while since Amy's hosted a Sew and Tell Friday and I'm excited to link up with her! Go see what everyone else has been making!

trapped under sleeping toddler

Waiting for my little one to feel better. I'm afraid I'm going to have to skip dinner-making again. I think I'm past frustration now, just resigned to wait this stupid virus out. (We are on day 5 of her feeling crummy.)

I got these jeans (in the picture) at the thrift store and they are a little too flared and a little too long. I think I'll look for some cute brocade-type ribbon and make them into capris with ribbon at the hem.

I quilted my pillow fronts this morning (also in the picture, see them?) while L worked on a pedialyte popsicle in the high chair. I did a squared off meander and question my use of navy thread on the darker one. But I'm not changing it. I'm excited to finish them, soon.

making pillows

I started these a long time ago...

this is not weird in the top right corner even though it looks like it in the pic.

it's really straight in the top right corner, just not pressed super flat or something

And decided to work on them some more today. It wasn't what I was "supposed" to be working on, but I had fun and I like what I ended up with.

A couple weeks ago I found and bought pillow inserts at Target, 2-packs for $3.48. They are 18" pillows and I had to change my plan from what it was however many months ago.

I realized one of the reasons I had put this on hold was that someone suggested I put solid color strips between the rows. I hadn't planned on that and for some reason I never bought the fabric to do that. I found that there were enough solid-ish fabrics in the honey bun to separate the rows and give the eye a calm place to rest.

All the blocks were done (and partly sewn into rows) for the light pillow; I put it together and then also made the dark one today too. I need batting before I can proceed :) so I will probably put these aside for a few days or maybe I'll go get batting tomorrow. Anybody have any suggestions for the quilting?


Also. It was over 70 degrees here today. My girl wanted to go out on the deck and see the neighbor's dogs and it was warm. Where 16 days ago it was under more than a foot of snow. Spring makes me happy. (It's going to snow again next week.) The snow pile that was nearly 8 feet tall in front of our house will probably be all the way gone tomorrow, yay!

I mopped the kitchen floor today, too. And dealt with my girl feeling crummy off and on throughout the day. What is up with a fever that comes and goes, and comes back again? I think she'll probably feel a lot better tomorrow.

More Monkey Blocks

I sewed up this set of 4 monkey blocks yesterday and cut out the group of 6.

And today I was able to get all 6 sewn together.

I now have 22 of these finished and need to make 13 more. I am starting to be a little short on some of the fabrics--I only had 1/2 yard of each of the solids and a couple of the monkey prints. I might need more fabric to finish this baby up. :)

If you want to make similar 13.5" quilt blocks with these measurements, the diagrams and cutting measurements are here.

p.s.Check out the We Love Jenny Auction, you can bid until 10 p.m. EST tonight (February 15).

the one I made

Finally I can show off the little quilt I made for Julie, for PQS5!

For this quilt, I started out just by making some selvage rainbows. Then I trimmed them all down to the same width (4", 4 1/2", I can't remember for sure) and made half-square triangles with the selvages and some Kona crush.

I wanted to do something interesting with the quilting... I think I achieved that. The swirls weren't too difficult, it was the straight-ish line spiral in the colored triangles that was challenging to get right.

Here's a view of the back, another look at the quilting:

These swap quilts are a good chance to try out new patterns, or piecing ideas, or quilting ideas, without committing to something huge and super time consuming. :)

Hope you had a great Valentine's Day! The We Love Jenny auction will be open until 10 pm EST, Tuesday February 15. Please check it out, and help out if you can.

Placemat Quilt Swap Arrived!

I decided to sign up for Placemat Quilt Swap 5 a few weeks ago, and got the mini quilt I made for my partner sent off this week. I'll show a picture of it here as soon as I hear that it's arrived safely...but meanwhile, the one she made for me arrived today!

It was made by Julie aka jgmehlin on flickr. I like it a lot! My main request (I think my only request) was that she use some white in it. I love how bright and cheerful it is. I love those different-sized triangles and the rainbow strips too. Thank you Julie! (I can't wait to show the one I sent to her...)

I also finished up my quilt for the We Love Jenny Auction, which is taking place on February 14-15. The auction will be raising funds to help Jenny Reeder with her medical and housing expenses while she is fighting leukemia. Check out the donated items at the auction blog and see if there's anything you're interested.

Here's the heart quilt front:

and the back:

I had fun with the quilting inside the heart--I got some good ideas from Leah's Free Motion Quilting Project blog. If you are a quilter and are at all interested in improving your free motion quilting skills, you should subscribe to this blog.

I hope you're having a good weekend! I have 4 quilt blocks for my boy's monkey quilt cut out and ready to sew so I might do that tonight. I also helped my 6-year-old set up a blog. He hasn't written his first post yet but I think it might be really cool (and fun and funny) when he does.

have a heart

Last night I read Amy S.'s latest blog post and was reminded of the We Love Jenny Auction which will be held on Valentine's Day. The auction is to raise money for medical and housing expenses for Jenny Reeder, who was diagnosed with leukemia in November and is working hard to beat it! I met Jenny when we were teenagers and have a lot of great memories of our neighborhood, camp, and church activities during our high school years. I was so sad when I found out she was sick... and I hope and pray she will make it safely through this ordeal. So anyway, I decided to go ahead and make something relatively quick for her auction. I found this Valentine Flag tutorial at Nanette's blog--I saw it a couple years ago and finally decided to make one.

I made one heart instead of two... The fabrics are mostly from a Love is in the Air layer cake I've been slowly using up. :) I will be finishing this mini-quilt up in the next few days so it will be ready for the auction on Monday!

9-patches week 12

How's everybody doing? Just how snowed-in did you get this week? We were homebound for a couple days--Tuesday, the day of the blizzard when we got 13.5" of snow, and then the next day, which was beautiful and freezing cold and the snowplow didn't get to our street until about 10:30 p.m. The kids had 3 snow days this week, and today's a professional day at school, so they only went to school on Monday. We have had fun playing video games and reading books (including Dr. DeSoto, Cannibal Animals, and finishing up The Wonderful Wizard of Oz). The boys have played out in the snow a lot too--I haven't ventured out in it much yet this time. Anyway, we have another storm coming over the weekend, but I hope we don't have another week like this for a long time!

Here are this week's 9-patches! This is the last installment of weekly 9-patches for a while as I have all the blocks made for my second 9-patch quilt. :)

And here's a shot of the rainbow of blocks I made this time. Plus one lonely black and white one.

Guess which colors are difficult to find in quilt shops these days?

I have a lot of time to think about it, but I wonder what color scheme I should do for my 3rd 9-patch quilt. (Yes, I'm pretty sure I'm going to make a third one. And then I'll probably move on to something else.) I could do a 2-color quilt, or even go monochromatic, or do something with a lot of black and white... what do you think?

If you're interested in making your own 9-patch quilt, I used the instructions from the crazy mom quilts one-a-day quiltalong. Here's the blog post about my first finished 9-patch quilt using this tutorial (I made another 9-patch about 10 years ago as well....) This time however, I'm making a smaller, throw-sized quilt with 48 blocks instead of 70.