Little pouches

So the other day I was chatting with my mom when she pulled out her kindle from her purse.  It had no case!  You see, about a month ago her old kindle went totally crazy... kept resetting itself, trying to turn on, and then repeating.  I chatted with Amazon about it and they said it was done and that the case it was in, which had metal clips to hold it in, could have been the culprit.  Needless to say, she was very upset.  Well I got another kindle for her and set it up.  Since her old case was to blame for the problem she was not going to use it.  I didn't realize that for weeks she had been toting it around with nothing.  So the other night I saw this tutorial for an e-reader case on Sew Crafty Jess.  I immediately thought I can make that.  So I grabbed some fabric and went to work, changing it just a little from a pocket on the pouch to just a decorative strip.  And I added some extra quilting.

Yes, I know that my band across is not even.  I really don't know how that happened (I am guessing it got crooked when I turned it).  I did some pebble quilting on the band, I have been wanting to try it out.

I did some free motion squiggles across the case that follow the squiggles in the fabric.  I pulled a simple button out of my jar to close it up with.

And the reason I chose green... to match her bag of course.  Well, at least it goes with this bag.  

I also whipped up a couple little mini pouches to send out to my 2.5" postage stamp charm swap partners.  I joined in over at The Curious Quilter.  We are swapping 100 different 2.5" charms.  I have 2 stacks to swap and I am super excited to see what fabrics I will get from my partners.  

One has free motion squiggles, the other straight line quilting in the ditch.

I lined them with one of my favorite polka-dot prints.  

My original plan was to make pouches to put my charms in, but silly me didn't think about how large a stack of 100 2.5" charms are.  Oh well, I hope they like them anyway.  

Today I am linking up to Linky Party Tuesday at Quilting By the River and to Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story.

2012 Olympics have started!

So I am super excited that the Olympics have started and that I am able to watch my favorite sports online.  Today I have watched the men's C-1 and K-1 slalom.  This is so my sport!  (I am not sure you can tell that I am a kayaker by my background picture).  To celebrate this I figured I would post up a video from last year at Manor Falls on Slate Run in central Pennsylvania.  One of the men's Olympic paddlers is from PA.



Manor Falls, Slate Run April 2011 from Carolyn Daniela on Vimeo.

More times then not, I see videos of boaters ending up under the rock to the left (not where you want to be).  I have been out of my boat lately nursing my knee back to health, but you better believe that as soon as I can I will be back to my normal self on the water.

And to end off this fun Olympic post, I have a picture of my youngest nephew and myself.

If you notice, he is wearing a Union Jack on his t-shirt (and cheese doodle fingers).  My sister travels to the UK for work so much that my nephews are obsessed with the UK.  So much that I think they may be cheering for the British for the games.  

Happy Olympics everyone!  

Tetris QAL Week 2

So this is week two of the Tetris QAL over at Happy Quilting.  Let me say that I am looking forward to Tuesdays a lot lately so I can get to my block.

I got up yesterday and quickly got together so I could pull up the blog post and set to working on my block.  I don't color the chart I sit down with my blocks and just put them where I want them to be.  I think I like to just touch the fabrics as I lay them out.   

So this is my block 2.  Looking at it in the picture, those sunflowers looks more orange and less yellow then they did when they were in another quilt... but I still like them that way :)

And if you are wondering about that random orange block well...

It matches right up to block 1.  So here they are together, blocks 1 and 2.  I had to put that one in there or it would drive me nuts to have a half block.  So I don't loose or forget the charms that go off the block, I pin it to the block where it belongs so when I lay out my next block I remember to put it in.  

I am super excited about next week's block and I have to wait a whole 6 days for it.  

Head over to the Tetris QAL to see what other blocks were made this week.  

Zigzag Quilt

I finished up my zigzag quilt last week and was able to get it sent out to my friend for her wedding gift. It arrived at her house Saturday morning.

I quilted this by going about a half inch on both sides of my seam line and down the middle of each zigzag.  

I love the little pops of red that are in the one black print.  I only bought one black print for this quilt, the other 7 came from my stash.  Wohoo!  I love when I can use out of my stash.  

The back is super loud compared to the front, but I love it.  I put the Black strip in to add a little contrast to the back and it gives those precious inches that I needed to make it fit perfectly.  And I really like the contrast of the straight zigzag lines against the red floral of the backing.  

I put a special tag for my friends since this is their wedding present.  I had to put my little boater chick on there (Andrea will totally get it).

And since this is going to a boater friend, it had to have a picture with my boat.  I planned to lay the boat down and spread the quilt out on top of it, but apparently spiders like to hang out under it.  (Thankfully I have a cover over the opening!)

Finished quilt measured about 50" x 60".  Machine quilted with Warm and White batting.  Perfect for a good snuggle on the couch.

I hope they love the quilt!  Sorry I had to miss the wedding (travel + knee surgery = bad).  

I am linking up to Quilting by the River Linky Party Tuesday and Quilt Story Fabric Tuesday. 

Tetris Quilt-A-Long Week 1

I decided to join up with the Tetris Quilt-A-Long over at Happy Quilting.  This was the fist week and she posted up the blocks to use on Tuesday here.  I am so excited to join in and can't wait to see what the next 6 weeks will bring.

Although she is using 5 inch charms for hers, I have chosen to use 2.5 inch squares.  I don't know why I love those little things so much.

Here is my happy little bowl of squares that I will be using.  They all came out of my scrap box, bag, and bins.

And here is block 1.  I am excited for how this will turn out because it is going to be super scrappy.  

It is neat to see how the blocks are all so different.  Head over and take a look!

HST/Chevron Top

So the other day I was able to bust out my HST/Chevron?Zigzag quilt top for a wedding gift (I am not quite sure what to call it).  I had been auditioning these fabrics for a quilt for a while and trying to decide just what I wanted to do with them.  And then it hit me... big half square triangles would look great.  (Plus be quick since the wedding is the weekend).

I started this quilt by cutting 4 - 10" squares from each of 8 fabrics (4 white and 4 black).  I put together 1 black and one white and made the HST's.  I cute them apart and pressed them as usual, but here is where I made a major oops... I went right to laying out (because I had help) instead of squaring up.  I told myself, after you lay it out don't forget to square them up, but I forgot and started sewing. I was halfway through when I realized I forgot to.  Oops.  But it all worked out so I am ok now.  

This quilt is a wedding gift for a wedding I can't make it to since it is about 6 hours from home and I still can't drive :(.  I can't wait to show you when it is all finished.  I made a little tag for it, too.  

Little Update...

Sneak peak of what I am working on...

It is a quilt that needs to be finished by tomorrow... I should shave started sooner.  But I have to say that if it wasn't for these crutches and my knee this would have been totally finished already.

Now I have to ask, has anyone else had issues while sewing when they are on crutches?  I mean the getting up and pressing and the sitting back down and then there is the pedal for the machine... good thing I have great control with my left foot.  Oh well.

Now that I think I have sufficiently frozen my knee with my polar care cooler, I think I will try and get some more done.

Squishy Care Package!

I don't know about you, but I love to get mail.  I was so luck last week to get a squishy care package in the mail from one of the greatest friends ever!  Em sent me some fabric goodies!  This package totally made my day!  Everyday I crutch my way to the mailbox to get the mail and I crutched back to the house quickly when I saw my mail.

Em sent me some great hexagon pre-cuts that I couldn't wait to open as soon as I opened the package.  

I started drawing out my quarter inch lines on them because I am going to sew these on my machine as soon as I am able to sit at it again.  

This really made me happy and totally put a smile on my face when I opened it.  Em knows me so well, that I have been a little down just hanging around the house since my surgery and she knows what cheers me up.  Fabric and fun pictures of Delilah that I see on facebook.  

On another good note, I did get my stitches out and have been released to go in the pool!  Hooray... I can sort of swim.  

Plaid Placemats

So a little while ago I had been playing with some of my plaid that I have in my stash.  When I say I have plaids, I mean I have plaids!  All colors, all sizes.  I decided I wanted to put a bunch together and I came up with this set pf placemats.  

I cut up a variety of my plaids into 2.5" squares and then I did my cheating trick, I fused them onto some interfacing.  After I fuse them I fold and sew the seams, cut them open, press, and repeat.  I then used another plaid to frame out the squares and back the placemat.  

I quilted these by stitching a quarter inch outside each seam line.  I love the quilty pattern it makes on the back of the placemat.

I bound it with the same red plaid I put in the squares.

These will be sent off to Florida at some point for my Aunt Pam.  As I was making them I could just hear her saying how they match her kitchen perfectly.

I am linking up to Linky Party Tuesday at Quilting By the River and to Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story.  

Primary Baby Quilt

Right after I finished the stacked coin baby quilt for my sister to send to a colleague she asked for a second one.  But this time she did not know what the baby was going to be.  Her colleague in the UK had decided that they did not want to find out (which has become more common, in my opinion).  At first I was a little thrown off, but then I headed to a fabric store near me and I fell in love with some polka-dot fabric.  Once I saw it I pulled it out of the crazy stack of fabric and went to the solid section and found four colors to match.  

 

I do have to mention though, that I had my fear happen at the fabric store that day.  As I was trying to get the polka-dot fabric I had an avalanche.  The fabrics as stacked everywhere in this store and I was a section over, but I guess I touched the right piece when I pulled out the bolt and it all toppled, like a big jenga game.  

Ok, back to the fun quilt.  Once I brought home the fabrics I starred at them for a while because I had no idea what kind of quilt I wanted to make, all I knew was I wanted to showcase the fun polka-dot.  Then it hit me to frame it with the solids.  But I wanted something a little off so I didn't have to worry about everything lining up. 

So this is what I decided to do, a square in square block.  The finished block measures 8"x8".   The pieces I cut to make it were 8.5"x3.5", 3.5"x4", 3.5"x2", and 8.5"x2" out of the solid and the polka-dot I cut into 3.5" squares.  I put it all together and then squared it up  8" square.  I made the quilt 4 blocks by 5 blocks to make is a nice baby size.  

And here it is.  I rotated the blocks as I put it together.  I pieced the back with all of the fabrics I had left from the front.  And I bound it with the polka-dot.

A close up of the quilting on the front.  I alternated the colors of the thread as I straight line quilted it on my machine.  I quilted it about a quarter inch away from the seams and then around the small squares.

A close up of the quilting on the back.  I like the fun design it makes.  It looks a lot more wrinkly around the stitching in the picture then it is in person.  I will all look better once washed.

Draped over the pool railing.  

The finished size is about 30"x38".  A nice little baby quilt size.  It only took a half a yard of each fabric to put the entire quilt together, front, back and binding (leaving just a few scraps of each)

I am linking up to Linky Party Tuesday at Quilting by the River and to Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story.