My First Quilt(ette)

Here is my first "EVER" quilt. It is a doll quilt with doll. The quilt was supposed to be a baby quilt but I ran out of brown and pink fabric and it ended up being a doll quilt. It measured about 20" x 20", great for a doll quilt. This was for my neice, Christina, for her second little girl. I had so much fun making this. I worked every night for a week before the shower to make this and had the time of my life. These pictures are after I had gifted them. I didn't have time to take pictures before I wrapped them. I was still wrapping it while driving over to their house.

The doll is the Black Apple Doll and it was so easy.... and can I say its the cutest thing I have ever made. She matches the quilt. I made her with some muslin and left over fabric from the quilt. I love her embroidered face. She has a little smirk.

The binding was premade quilt binding and it was so easy. My mitered corners worked out the first time and I was so STOKED. I wish I had taken pictures during the process (I didn't because I was afraid it would be a disaster). I was dancing around the living room and my husband thought I had lost my mind and had no idea what I was talking about.

Here is the back. The pink fabric I had was too small so I used leftovers of the front to make a stripe in the middle and used some brown on the sides. I noticed in the bright sunlight that the brown binding didn't quite match, but in the house it looked fine. I machine quilted this with a diagonal. I was going to make a diamond, but after I did the quilting one way, I thought doing it the other way would be too much. After washing, the quilt was perfect and had that wonderful puckery (is that word?) quilted goodness.

Mama loved it! That's all that counts. I talked with her earlier about the colors of her nursery and she said Brown and Pink and that worked so well for me. I had a nice stash of pink and brown fabric and really only had to buy the binding.

I cannot wait to do this again and I am sure I will as we have about 4 more "mother's to be" in our family.

Valentine SNOW!

It's snowing! again. We here in Georgia don't get alot of snow, but this year is a banner year. This is already our 3rd snow event. I say "snow event" because when it snows here, everything stops. This is our back yard only after 2 hours of snow.

This is the boy at the basketball goal as the snow was initally falling.

This is our side yard while the snow was falling. Its pretty, but its cold.

Here's Toby trying to do his business. But its too cold and he doesn't know what to do.

Bucket of Monkeys

I have made a little gift basket for the my neice's baby shower. I made a flannel baby blanket with 3 matching burp cloths. I then made a fabric basket to put them in. I included a little monkey bib I found at the Dollar Store.

Isn't it cute?

The basket is a pattern from thestitchinkitchen.com and was made from a cotton dishcloth and I used cotton batting to stiffen it. I thought she could use this in the nursery to put diapers or other baby stuff. I have to make me one now. I think its so cute.

The blankets and burp cloths were just two pieces of flannel sewn together with cute stitching.

I'm loving this! I hope she likes it.

Homemade Christmas

Ain't it cute. I made this little sweater last year and it is so cute. There are matching mittens, hat, and a stocking on the tree also. I just haven't gotten any pictures of those.

This year I made all my gifts. I made this rice bag pattern from V and Co. blog. I made about 10 of these, but I forgot to get pictures of all of them. Here are a few.

I have also been working on these little magnetic paper dolls that I found at One Pearl button blog.

Heartfelt Thanks

I have spent quite a few hours (shhhh, don't tell anybody) going through the Sew Mama Sew giveaway blogs today. Oh, my goodness, there are so many inspiring blogs out there to see. You must go and see them, even if you don't join any of the giveaways, just look. Such inspiration, creativity, and just all around wonderfulness (is that a word?).

I have personally entered many of those great giveaways and have actually had some responses from some of the wonderful craftspersons(?) from those blogs. I am excited and humbled by their comments. Me and my elementary skills are thankful for the responses and good will that has come from them.

Thank you to all of the great people having the giveaways and for Sew Mama Sew for sponsoring.

I don't think I can ever find enough time to go through each and every blog that I have seen today, but I tell you, I will do my best. And there will be lots more buying handmade and from these independent sellers from now on. You can't buy this stuff in stores it comes direct from the heart. I think the thing I love the most is the little peek I have into their lives and homes and the new perspective I gives to my own life and home.

Sincerely, I thank you.

When they say Flash Flood, you better listen!

This is the creek by our house during the flash floods over the past week. I live in Douglas County, GA that got a good brunt of the worst of the flooding. My son took these pictures as he was walking the dog. Yes, I know he is close to the water and yes he got in a lot of trouble and was grounded. This creek is usually just a little lazy small creek and he fishes out of it from time to time. This little creek took out two roads of our subdivision leaving only one road in and out. There are over 100 roads that are impassable in our county and the major interstate from here to Atlanta was closed for almost three days as the flood waters from the Chattahoochee River and Sweetwater Creek took it over. Now that the interstate is open it takes forever to get anywhere as that is the only way in and out of our county now.

We were very lucky as we had no flooding in our house but we do have some new leaks in the roof. We just fixed some about two weeks before the floods so that was great. Others in our county and the surrounding counties were not that lucky. There are many people in our community with no home or belongings and 10 people lost their lives. I have lived in this area for 44 years and I have never seen anything like this before. My banner is a picture of Sweetwater Creek State Park here in Douglas County. It was completely flooded and I have seen aerial shots but you can't get to park to see it now as the roads leading to it are impassable.

Unfortunately, its raining again. Pray for us here.

Reuse and Recycle

I have been using the sewing machine as you can see. I am just doing some small things to learn as I go. This is the Kokeshi Stuffie from Melly & Me.




Cute and very easy. I have to work on sewing around the curves as these didn’t turn out as neat as I would have liked. I also ran out of stuffing material and it isn’t stuffed as much as it should. But overall I really like it. The embroidery was fast (as its all backstitch and few lazy daisies) and simple with minimal sewing. I am getting better at the ladder stitch to close up the turning holes.

This will show you the backing material I used.

This was my next project. These are crooked coasters from thelongthread.com.

I learned machine quilting and changing the feet on my sewing machine. I had to use the walking foot with the thickness of the material and batting. The linen set is some linen material from a shirt that I don’t wear anymore (the kokeshi doll was made from this shirt also). The white set is just some white cotton material I have had for a while to use with embroidery. I absolutely love these. I have a linen and white coaster on my desk at work. I haven’t washed these yet so they don’t have that quilted wrinkley goodness yet, but they will.

This set of coasters comes from a pattern from foofanagle.wordpress.com.

These were very fun to make. I learned to piece for quilting with this. The first few I made didn’t match up in size with the backing and batting and I realized I was using too large of seam. I changed that and they worked great. So, so fun. These were made from that linen shirt also with some scraps from some fat quarters I had.

These have been great to work on and have gotten me comfortable with my sewing machine and even hand sewing. I want to start a small quilt now.

As for the title of this post, I have used one linen shirt to make all of these projects and I still have more (I think I may make another Kokeshi doll). I have been going through my closet and the kid's closet for good material of things we don't use anymore or are stained or torn. I don't have a big budget for material so this has been a great way to reuse things that are old and really no one would want to wear. I have a closet full of acid wash jeans from my skinny days. I think I might make something from those.