Quilts, Pillows, Seedlings and Vintage Sewing Machines!

Remember I wrote last time about how I was thinking of taking a break from the blog and the whole Lottery? Well, it seems as though I just needed a break from the Daisy Chain quilt. I got it all quilted and have buried the threads on the front but still need to bury threads in the back.

It has been sitting on my pink wingback for the past 10 days or so, unused, unloved and unfinished.

Just taking up space and a visual reminder of what I need to finish constantly in my face!

The back of the quilt looks super cool to me!

I really needed a break from the gargantuan task that was quilting this bad boy. During my little break I decided to make  a pillow for living room for summertime. I was inspired by @daisycottagequilting on Instagram. She posted a picture of a pillow she made and I was immediately smitten. I recreated it a couple of days after I saw hers.

My version

I had a 5" charm pack of "Fresh Flowers" by Deb Strain that has been calling my name since I bought it last summer. I knew when I saw Sharon's pillow I would be using that charm pack to make my own. The yellow gingham I bought at a thrift store (they were curtains) and the red border is "Vroom" by Avlyn Inc. I loved how my turned out! 

During my quilt break I also got real serious about my garden outside. I built an 8' x 6' raised garden (and am going to build another this week) and dug out all the garden fabric that was under where I wanted to place it. Here are some of the plants I will be putting out soon!

Cucumbers, zucchini, butternut squash!

I've realized that I am trying to live out my childhood fantasy of being Laura Ingalls Wilder. Now all I have to do is get my mom to make me a sunbonnet and I will be set!

I also may have made a tiny purchase:

I got this little guy from a thrift store (desk included) for only $18. Granted, who knows how much I am going to have to sink into it in order to get it work (Oh yes, I'm going to restore a sewing machine!) but it will make me so happy when I do! More info on the sewing machine later!

It's a new month and I hope to get a few things finished before Mom comes to visit next month and we head off to the Western Washington Quilt Shop Hop. I am already planning our route!

What do you want to get finished this month??

Happy Sewing!

Kate

Don't forget: you can always join in on more fun by following me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter!

Noel Pillow

Hi Friends!

One last item got crossed off the list before the New Year! Hooray!

I actually started working on it about five days before Christmas. As you might have surmised-from this post, this one, or this one (and I could find at least five more!)-once I get an idea in my head it is hard for me to move forward until that idea comes to fruition. That meant, I had to make this before I could start wrapping presents, shopping or cooking for Christmas dinner.

I finished this little piece of cross stitch two years ago but hadn't done anything with it.

It's the Noel cross stitch in the back

And I had this piece of fabric my mom's friend, Diane, had sent to me a while ago that just needed to be loved.

Don't they look nice together?

I was having a discussion with my mom over FaceTime about what to do with both of them. At first I was thinking a wall hanging but, almost simultaneously, we said "pillow." The best part was I had just bought a brand new pillow form at Goodwill for $2 and it was burning a hole in my pocket (so to speak). 

I used this YouTube tutorial and it was easy as pie. Except sometimes I can be a Grade A Idiot and I somehow messed it up (I think I didn't measure my pillow form correctly; I may have eyeballed it.) 

 I found a smaller pillow form and it was still too big so I modified it slightly by taking an inch off the whole darn thing. And it looked like this:

Not too shabby

But the back looked like this:

Not acceptable

So I added another panel to one of the envelope flaps to lengthen it and the back looked good:

Yay, I fixed it!

But....I attached the whole thing backwards and the front looked like this:

Back to unacceptable

If you can't tell, that's the back of the cross stitch. 

At this point I really was starting to question my sewing abilities.

I put it down for a night, took it apart once more and (finally) got it right. 

Close-up of the cross stitch

Here it is, in all its glory:

Finally!

I think it turned out pretty well!

I hope you are finishing some last minute crafts at home. Don't forget to submit a picture to me by December 30 and I will enter you to win a $25 gift certificate to JoAnn's.

I have some ideas for the New Year and can't wait to share them with you.

Keep on Crafting!

Kate

First Pick!

I am excited to be done with the Map of the World. Very excited. In less than 48 hours I was already itching to start something new!

So the whole point of this blog is that I have created a lottery system to choose which of my many, many craft and sewing projects I will work on next. That being said, I have a confession to make: I totally started a project on the sly since I was hoping to give it out as Valentine gifts. You know those cute little Quite Activity Books (like here , here , and here - just to name a few)? Well, I thought I would make a few for the various toddlers in my life and I kind of wanted it to be a surprise so I wasn't going to mention it until I was all done. I got all the supplies, I made various templates, cut out lots of felt and even made a few pages. It looked cute but I hated it; I hated every single moment of working on it. I kept on thinking of all the other awesome stuff I could be doing (even cleaning toilets- that's  how much I hated working on them) and this was such a waste of my time. So, I scrapped it.

I haven't throw it all away--I just can't bring myself to toss everything out--it's just too much waste for me and I don't like wasting stuff. Maybe one day I will go back and finish them but on the giant list of things that I need to be doing that I keep going in the back of my mind, this has a giant line going through it.

Sometimes you just have to walk away from the whole thing. One friend asked how I felt walking away from it and I said I felt kind of free. That was another monkey on my back.

Moving on!

The first project I chose was to convert one of the first counted cross stitch projects I ever started -and never finished- into something other than the pillow it was intended to be. Here's what I started out with: 

I wasn't a big fan of this project. It was too outdated-my mom told me she bought the pattern in the 1970's. It was supposed to be a pillow and I didn't like the idea of committing that much time, effort and money into making a pillow that would look so out of place. The idea was thrown out there to cut the piece up and making ornaments or door hangers. I did just that!

I cut the whole thing into fourths, picked some extra Christmas material I had laying around and just made little pillows. People of the internet, this will blow your mind: I finished this project in an afternoon! That included spending an hour trying to figure out why my sewing machine was broken-it turned out not to be; the needle was bent and once I replaced it it worked fine. Here's what I made:

The best part is I LOVE these little pillows. I love them! I don't know why. They are the same patterns but now they are small, compact and cute. Plus, the kids had a great time helping me stuff them with batting; they thought we were stuffing them with either clouds! It was great!

I walked around the rest of the day totally dumbfounded that this little project had been languishing in my sewing box for at least 20 years since I thought it was ugly and now I can't wait until next Christmas to display them. Simply awesome!

Later this week: loving this lottery system.