Merry Christmas!

Hope everyone is having a great Christmas! I just wanted to share some sewing projects that I made for Christmas gifts for a few children. The first is two pillowcase dresses. These are for two sisters. Age 2 and 8. They will look so cute wearing these! The little owls are made of bits of fabric that I cut from the background material. I bought this fabric at Fabricana in Richmond in case you are looking for it and live in the Vancouver lower mainland. It is called "Petticoats and Polka Dots" by Blue Hill fabrics.

  The second little project is a blanket and pillow for a doll. This is for the two year old girl. She is so into her little baby doll right now.

I had some chanielle left over from making the straps of the dresses so I used it for the backing of the doll blanket. The pink polk a dot fabric I used for the binding was left over from making the dresses as well. 

For the girls' brother I made a pillowcase. I used a good quality soft flannel with cars on it. I think he is going to love sleeping on it. I watched an online tutorial on how to make a "rolled pillowcase" to learn how to make it.

The thing I like about this method of making a pillowcase is that there are now raw edges.

This looks like it would be difficult but it is actually very easy. If you want to watch the tutorial I have included a link.
                                            Rolled pillow case tutorial

The dresses were constructed in the same way. No raw edges. Here is the inside of the dress.

I hope you have enjoyed viewing my projects. I wish you a Happy New Year!

Block of the month 2014

Well, here is the block of the month blocks that I have been working on all year. This was another sugar block club project lead by Amy Gibson. Now I just have to work on getting it all together. I have a plan in my head of what I am am going to do and I can hardly wait. It includes lots of whirly twirly little pinwheels and I think it is going to look great! I love the fact that I bought very little fabric for this project and that it was mainly scraps that I had, and scraps that were given to me from someone else. I also love the fact that I incorporated linen into these blocks. Almost every block contains some. Linen is not typically used for quilting but I think it is a nice addition that adds some interest.

Mystery Quilt

I have no clue what I am making here..... but I am using up scraps and having fun doing it though. This is for the scraptastic mystery quilt for the Crescent quilters guild. So much for dreaming of what this project may look like once it is done and watching it come to reality.

Little girls pillowcase dress

Until last week I didn't know what a pillowcase dress was. A relative of mine hinted that she would just love pillowcase dresses or anything sewn for her little girls for Christmas. I went straight to pinterest and checked out what a pillowcase dress was. I am now in love with the pillowcase dress.  I headed over to the fabric store and picked out the fabric. I found some nice quality quilting fabric. I made the straps out of chenille so they will be nice and comfy to wear. I made the owl applique mainly from the flowers which I cut from the background fabric and also chenille. the eyes are made from flowers, the wings are made from leaves, the beak is the center of a flower and the feet are also bits of flowers cut up.I stuffed the tummy of the owl with a small scrap of quilt batting.  This dress is for a two year old. Next on my sewing list is a bigger version of this dress for her eight year old sister.  

I joined a quilter's guild!

I haven't blogged in awhile. Still so many unfinished projects! I am slowly chipping away at them.

I joined a quilters guild two months ago. I have really enjoyed going to the first two meetings. 

After being on the waiting list for more than two years my turn finally came up to be able to join the Crescent Quilter's Guild in South Surrey. I was pretty excited to finally join and meet some other people with the same passion I have. I have started working on a project called the "community quilt". This is a project the Crescent Quilters do every year to give away to people in the community.
I cut all the strips using up some scraps. Now I just need a dark background color. I am thinking of dark purple. I have no idea what the quilt will look like once it is done. That's the fun part! I am a little concerned about the fabric on the far left. The patterns are all supposed to be small but this one is a little bigger that small. I don't want to break the rules already, since I am still a new member! I may end up switching it to something else although I really like the fabric.

I made a commitment last month at the Crescent Quilters meeting to finish up the "Rosie" quilt that I blogged about in the last posting. I will try to finish up some projects soon so I can blog about them.

Update: November 9th---

I completed the instructions for this month. I could not resist laying out the pieces to see what possibilities there are. There are many possibilities but I kind of like this one.

Update: November 22nd-- Quilt top now complete!

This just seemed to come together so nicely. It was quick and easy to assemble. I like the ribbon effect that is created by the placement of the blocks. I did stray from the instructions on where to place the blocks though. Even though the placement is different, the ribbon effect is still evident (This was the desired effect of the project).

Rosie the riveter quilt top done

Whew this feels good to finally finish this quilt top. This is my 2013 Sugar Block Club Quilt. This block of the month quilt from last year worried me for so long. I just couldn't figure out how to place the blocks around the Rosie panel. I had to get creative with the sashing to make the blocks fit. Now I just have to figure out what kind of batting to use and get going on the free motion quilting.

Pink Penguin lunch bag

I made these cute little lunch bags from a free tutorial on a blog called "Pink Penguin". They are fun to make and I really liked the tutorial because each step had pictures of how to do it.

I used quilting fabric with a medium weight fusible interfacing. This seemed to work well. When sewing the rim on and the lining to the outside I used a walking foot. It was quite thick as I was going through quite a few layers but it was quite easy  because of the walking foot.