Nautical Quilt

This year I didn't make any resolutions.  I fail horribly at them.

so I just decided to do things that make me happy and that I enjoy.  Currently, I am working on my nautical beach quilt.  Last summer a group of us went on a cruise to Bermuda and I made a nautical tote bag for each cabin and filled it with a box of sunshine.  Believe me we needed the sunshine, it rained all but 2 or 3 days of the cruise.

Anyway, with the extra fabric I bought I decided to make a quilt to take to the beach.  I decided to give a pinwheel quilt a whirl.  It has been slow going on the quilt.  You see the computer is in my craftroom/sewing room and when my youngest son needs to work on homework I am practically kicked out. Or I remove myself from the room due to his choice of music.

This past weekend I decided to get moving on the quilt.  I have two more waiting to be cut and I refuse to work on those when this one is still in pieces.

My layout.  I have just about all the columns made.  Then I will need to sew them all together and contemplate a border and backing.

Hopefully you will check back soon and it will be done.

Thanksgiving runner

In the past couple of years I have had my Mother-In-Law, Sister-in-Law and her kids over for Thanksgiving dinner.  Afterwards the rest of my husband's family will come over for desserts.  So I decided to make a nice Fall themed table runner.  Why do I wait till the week or two before a holiday to sew something? Is it me or do others find themselves in the same boat???

Anyway,  I found some fall material at Joann Fabric and got to work on it.  I wanted to try something that looks somewhat easy to make.  It was pretty easy to make until I got to the part of quilting it.  Instead of an all over quilt pattern, decided I only wanted to do an edging.  I bought a template for some swirls, traced it out and got to work on it.  Oh boy, I better stick with sewing straight lines. 

You can see for yourself. 

I tried to quilt an Acorn on the larger squares. 

Craftroom addition

In the past I have shown pictures of my craftroom makeover.  Well I have made another change to it. 

Lately, I have been sewing more than usual.  I generally cut my fabric out on the dining room table or the hard wood floors annd we all know the hazards (sore back/knees) of doing this.  I knew there had to be a better way of cutting.  One day I found myself sitting down here in the craftroom day dreaming of changes.  So off I went to search the internet for some creativity.  I was impressed by all the sewing rooms I found.  Wow some are just unbelievable. 

After looking for a while, I knew what I wanted to do.  You see I have an 9 square cubbie shelving system and I wanted to make a peninsula out of it.  My idea was to pull it away from the wall 4 feet.  So my cutting area would be 4x3.  I talked my husband into this idea and off to Home Depot we went.  We bought a full sheet of MDF and had the store employee cut it down.  Not only did I get the 4x3 countertop, I also have two large shelves below. 

One day while my husband was at worked I took the organizer shelf out to the garage, sanded it and painted it white.  Next was the countertop's turn for a coat of black paint.  Yes, I have to make sure my countertops match the other one in the room. 

I am very happy with the way my peninsula came out.  It is the perfect height for cutting without breaking my back. 

By the way, I had talked my husband into making a flip up iron board on the other side. 
  

The King and Queen are Reunited

A while ago I posted a photo of a Bergere chair I had reupholstered for my livingroom.  I knew I wanted another but could not find one anywhere.  After giving up hope, I was looking around Craigslist and found an ad for two chairs.  One of them is a Bergere style but smaller than the one I had.  I sent an email to the listing sellar and picked it up the next morning.  In the picture below the one of the left is the one I really wanted but got both chairs for $40.00.  Both are in great shape.

 

The chair project got put on hold due to the fact it was summer and awfully hot in the garage.  Then my husband and I repainted the livingroom.  Once the livingroom was repainted I knew it was time to get working on the chair.  I can honestly say I do not like caning on a chair or at all.  I spent many many hours ripping out the caning on the backrest.  When the spackle to fill in where the caning was, I worked on stripping/sanding and repainting the chair.  I am so glad I over ordered the fabric since I had to rip the seat cover off twice.  Do you know how hard it is to remove upholstery staples???  When I got the seat cover under control I stapled all of the double welt on the chair.  Now it was off to the sewing machine.  I had ripped apart the original seat cushion to use as my pattern.  I have found every sewing project I do I always end up ripping it apart.  I realized when I was half way done with makine the slipcover for the down cushion, I sewed the zipper on the front side not the backside.  Let's just say me and my seam ripper were good friends.  lol

Well enough of my ramblings, here is the find chair with the king sized match. 

My husband thinks the cushion on the "queen" looks funny but I keep telling him it is because of the feathers in the cushion.  I also make a back cushion for the "king, which you can not tell by the photo.  The red throw pillow were store bought.

Off to the next reupholstery project (the pinkish chair in the first photo).

Quilted Baskets

We recently went to some friends house for their annual Apple Cider Pressing event.  I knew what I was going to make the week before but I thought I didn't have "anything" to carry the treats in.  So naturally I had to make something. 

My friend Melissa had sent me a link to some cute fabric bins by Cutting Corners. How cute are these. I wanted my baskets longer lengthwise and shorter heightwise. So I sat down on my floor and started to cut out my own pattern. My measurements were 11.5 x 9.5 x 5.5 (including 1/4 seams).

P.S. I did not take the apples and squash as they are shown.  I made some apple oatmeal cookies, pumpkin muffins and curried squash soup. 

Randy's Quilt

I have a nephew named Randy who loves the Disney movie Cars.  I was in Walmart months ago and found a prepackaged Disney Cars fabric, which I bought.  (the best part it was on clearance).  I thought of Randy right away.  For a while I kept thinking what could I make out of the fabric.  I was totally clueless.  I had asked my sister if he would like a small quilt for the bottom of his bed.  She said, "yes, since he is always chilly."  (how can someone who lives in FL be cold).   Later, I found out Randy was going to have surgery on Sept. 26.  So I knew I needed to get moving on whatever it was I needed to make. 

A couple weeks before his surgery I was in Walmart looking at the books and magazines.  I came across McCall's Quick Quilts (October/November 2011) and knew this was the one I wanted to make. 

I did not make the quilt as large as in the magazine but it came out alot bigger than I had in mind. When I finished it I packaged it up and mailed it out to Randy. He received it two days before his surgery (it was on a Monday). My sister said the look on his face was priceless. He loved it and had it for when he woke up in recovery.

 What a precious face.

Ipad Cover

This year my husband bought me an Ipad for my birthday.  It came with a nice leather cover, but the girlie girl in me wanted something pretty.  At this time I was following the Travel Handmade challenges and saw one of their challenges was for an Electronics/Laptop bag.  Since I already made my black/yellow/grey tote bag, I decided to make a matching Ipad cover. 

I came across an easy to make Ipad cover by Dixie Mango. 

There are so many free Ipad/Laptop cover ideas.  These are the ones I found:

TipNut

Living My Life On Purpose

Film and Thread

The Cottage Home

Crap I've Made (this name makes me giggle)

I hope you find one you like.  I would love to see what you make. 

Thank you for stopping by and have a great day!