Still Designing! Still happy!

I've been thoroughly busy and thoroughly enjoying this holiday season! I am also thoroughly glad it's over! My husband kissed me at midnight on New Year's Eve and I swear at that moment a weight was lifted off my shoulders!
I could look around and think clearly. I have no deadlines pushing in on the year yet. I'm learning to be a mom to my boy (this is a total adjustment, and I'm still figuring it out... it'll probably be that way forever :) ) and I felt the need to do things I enjoy again! It was so wonderful the New Year seemed to have washed away all the stress that had been hanging around for the last 6 months or so!
Seriously starting mid September through, well, January (and even March if you include my birthday, but we don't really want to do that!) is birthday/ Holiday season at our house. Don't ask me why I planned it that way. I didn't. But every 2-3 weeks starting in September someone is havin' a party whether it's a birthday or a Holiday! It's fun but totally crazy!

Anyway here's some sewing sneak peeks of what's been happening during the last little while!
Sunshine thoughts in this project :)
Lots of embroidery love here!
And this is a snippet of a pillow that inspired a new pattern idea!
(Now we have to see if I can get it written down. The problem is definitely not a lack of ideas!)
Anyway there will be more to come! There have been presents made and crafts that are super fun to play with!
But for now, here's one of my little sweeties,
wishing us all a Happy New Year!
I hope it's filled with friends and fun and sewing and peace (and quiet :) ) and all your grand plans fall into place for a magnificent 2011!

What do you call this shape?

I don't even know.

But I like it and I cut almost a hundred of them which puts me with a little over one hundred done. I need 240 I think. I cut until I ran out of steam a seam, so, I'll be heading to the quilt shop soon I think!
I can't wait to start putting blocks together!

Here's the link to my last post about my lovely Arcadia blocks and the fun pattern they will soon be :D

Happy quilting!

Three Sleeping Bears!

OK only 1 but there was no way I was making 3 of these! I don't care if there were 3 french hens. I'm not french anyway.

Have you ever made a teddy bear?

Yeah, me neither :)

Making one was enough but, it's exciting! You should try at least once!

(By the way, fur is very forgiving)

On this third day of Christmas I made (with my daughter) a teddy bear!

This is the pattern we settled on.

http://folkgal.tripod.com/freeaussie1.jpg

http://folkgal.tripod.com/freeaussie2.jpg

I'm not fond of the top image on the main page but the pattern looked easy to deal with and well proportioned. After the fact I think the arms are a little long but not to bad. I would recommend using a slightly shorter fur fabric for this. (Ally chose long fur :) )

My daughter did most of the sewing on this project so it is definitely beginner friendly with a few tips to help.

Leave a hole to turn every piece of the bear (2 openings on the body, 1 in the back and one for the neck, only the back opening is marked. Oops). Brush/push the fur away from the edge when cutting and sewing otherwise the fur gets sewn into the seam or cut off completely on one side. Very frustrating. Oh and pin your fabric particularly on the turns, fur stretches. Again, oops.

I printed the pattern on cardstock, it worked, but cut out the pattern entirely and so you can use your good scissors to cut around the pattern and not screw them up.

Stuffing is easy. Attach the head to the body before stuffing but otherwise the body parts are stuffed separately. Then hand sew the openings closed and attach them to the main body.

When you hand sew openings closed and body parts together use a heavy thread if you have one. I saw someone comment that they used dental floss.

When I attached the arms and legs to the body I sewed completely through the body and leg/arm to the outside looped around and went back through leg/arm, body, and the opposite leg/arm, and back again a couple times. The fur hid the stitching completely! I don't think this is the correct way (something to do with pins and washers etc. to much for me and my daughters little gift.) but it worked.

One last thing on the hand sewing. I didn't turn in any edges. Nothing showed and it went together with less stress.

Sewing the nose was the worst part! I'm starting to think that I should just take a little triangle of black fabric and stitch it on instead. To many seams to cover, to much fur, to much pain. Yuck.

Let's move on from the yuck and show you my nearly finished bear.

Poor thing is still missing it's eyes :D I'm thinking once he gets those it will stop looking so much like a puppy... hmm... if not, oh well! My girls like puppies too!

I love a good laugh but seriously this was an amazing experience to see a stuffed animal come from my sewing machine and my daughters hands! Definitely a cool experience, even with all the mistakes, there were many missed seams and pointed corners that now look perfect. Amazing.

And to top it off we made a little 9 patch midwest modern blankie for the teddy bear to cuddle.

Easy to do with any leftover quilt squares!

...and tada!

Happy bears under the tree and happy little people on Christmas morning!

Turning circles with our Jelly Rolls!

Jelly Roll Week is here!!!! Cruise over to MSQC and partake in the goodness that will be coming for us all! We should start getting jelly roll ideas later to day or tommorrw! If you don't yet have a jelly roll the daily deal is here to help us all find fantastic deals on jelly rolls, layer cakes, charm packs, patterns, etc. and word has it that soon there will be a free charm pack available on the daily deal site with only the $5 shipping to pay for your entire order!

Don't forget to enter my giveaway to win my "Broken Breakfast" mini quilt by commenting on any of my "Jelly Roll (end of the) Week" posts and/or blogging about them for more entries! The giveaway is open till September 20th! So comment away and share the fun! One entry per comment, One entry for blogging, only one of each kind per post!
Sew many entries! Sew little time!

Of course, while your here enjoy a quick tute of a fabulously fun, little circular rug!

Supplies~

1 yard of Textured of base fabric
1 yard of Heavy upper base fabric
approx. 44-2.5" strips wof or Jelly roll strips
Basting spray


I'm gonna talk base fabric first. I chose random fabric that I simply had in my stash and I have a lot of random fabrics! I chose something textured for the bottom as this is likely going infront of a dresser in my daughters carpeted room. I chose a denim for the top because I had it, it was sturdy for light traffic, and it was dark so hopefully it will not look dirty to quickly.
You may choose whatever fabrics you like for your base.
You might consider
a piece of canvas,
or heavy drop cloth,
or a light, thrifted rug
(though I would try to avoid anything to thick for sewing purposes and without a plastic bottom.)
The idea is that it will be completely covered anyway!

Making the base~

Fold your fabric square into fourths and stack both pieces. Using a push pin and a length of ribbon that reaches from the folded corner to the raw edge pin the ribbon down to the folded corner of the fabric. Stretch the ribbon across and holding the ribbon and pencil to swing across the edge mark a quarter circle on the top layer of fabric

Use this as a guide to cut through all thicknesses of your base fabrics.

Lay your base circle's out right sides together with the wrong side of the heavy layer on the top. Pin around the edge and sew together leaving a small 4"-6" opening for turning.
Spray the wrong side of the heavy upper circle with basting spray and turn the base piece right side out smooth the circles out immediately so the basting spray can hold it correctly in place.

I did my fabric in circles of receding sizes. If using an actual Jelly roll I would reccomend a spiral pattern instead do this by simply curving in slightly as you aproach the end of the circle you are working on and continue following the edge never finishing a circle round till you reach the center. I recommend this because of the lack of matching fabrics in a typical jelly roll. Spiraling justs give a more scrappy look.

Add your ruffles~
Start by ironing your strips in half lengthwise and trimming the selvages from your jelly roll strips.

Sew your strip down as close to the outer edge of the upper base layeras you can (less than 1/4" from the edge), finger ruffling it slightly as you go.When you reach the end of one strip simply add another by butting the 2 raw edges together.

My outer row took approx. 4 1/2 strips.

If spiraling simply curve inwards slightly once you have made a full circle to the next row. If you're doing full color circles finish a row by ruffling your fabric and trimming it to meet the beginning of the row you were working on and doing a small backstitch.

Then simply scoot in and add another row. When you add your inner rows pull the ruffles from the outer row away from the fabric strip you're working with and line up the edge of the new strip with the sewing line of the first to get your placement spaced right. Continue in this manner adding circles or spiraling inward till you reach the center. For spiralling simply curve till you get there do a little backstitch and your done!
For circles you will take a scrap of one of your strips and using pinking shears cut out an approx. 2.5" circle. When you reach the center there should be a hole about the size of a quarter left to fill. Place your 2.5" circle directly over this space and do a little backstitched X in the center!
Hurray we're all done!

These are super cute and fun for a kitchen, bathroom, or bedroom depending on your jelly roll :)

Sewing with Jenean!

Yeaaaah!!!!

I couldn't contain myself any longer! But now that that's out of the way sorry...

I know it's been a week and a half! I've been hit hard by summers last hurrah! You know all the things that "have" to be done before school starts again :)

Oh well :D I'm sewing again!

And not just any sewing.

Check out what came in the mail to me... oh... about a week and a half ago!

Yay! Jenean Morrison's Picnic Parade for Freespirit!

I'm sewing for Jenean Morrison!!

Not just with her fabric but for her!!! I'm so stoked! Thus the excited screaming you heard in my typing earlier :D

I'm not showing you the projects yet but I've already finished a couple of things :) and seriously I can't stop smiling about it!

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I'm working with fabric that looks like this!

I love them all though! I so excited about the projects I'm working on!

I'll be sharing more soon but for now I'll give you one more look at Jenean Morrison's so pretty fabrics!

Hehe! I was just looking at these and getting ready to comment on the fireworks fabric that I'm working with and realized it didn't make it into the pic! Oops!

It's a little busy right now becoming something beautiful!

So stay tuned there will be fireworks!