Practical Guide To Patchwork Review

My review of Elizabeth Hartman's book The Practical Guide to Patchwork is up over at Craft Critique.

It is an excellent book with very good modern quilt patterns. I had fun choosing some modern prints for the quilt top I made.

She always presses her seams open which is.. um.. not a technique I prefer, but it was necessary for the pattern I chose to make. I started this project way back before Christmas but I had to set it aside to host the holiday and only finished it this spring.

Check it out at Craft Critique!

Baby Boy Bibs

There were a couple of baby boys born to friends recently. I have trouble crafting for boys, but bibs and receiving blankets are easy as there are lots of good novelty prints suitable for small boys.

These receiving blankets are a soft flannel on one side and a cotton print on the other and bound with packaged double fold binding. Fabrics are all prewashed and dried in the dryer. I make these blanket about 42 inches square, so they are larger than the little receiving blankets you purchase at the department store. At least they were larger than what was available a decade ago when I had babies!

I also made these baby bibs. Each is a layer of prewashed flannel and a fun novelty print. These bibs are more absorbent with two layers of flannel, but I forgot about that little tip until after the bibs were finished and packaged.

Honestly, I woke with a start in the middle of the night thinking, "TWO layers of flannel!" In any case, they are still absorbent and cute! I found a simple pattern free on the internet. They snap in the back.

One set of these were given at a shower to a mom who is an anthropologist/environmental scientist, so decorated the package with this elephant from the Martha Stewart website using fusible web backed fabric that I ironed on to brown paper. Have you tried finding something on the Martha Stewart website? Good grief... I'll keep looking for the elephant pattern and link to it if I find it.

My spring project this year was to organize my whole fabric stash in the basement. I'd say that I have needed to do that for about 4 years or more, but I finally got to it after rewiring some extra lighting down there and installing a television that runs Netflix Instant. I have a lot of fabric. In fact, I started to feel guilty, like I haven't sewn enough or something, but then I remembered all the quilts and pouches and bags and pillowcases I've sewn and I realized I've sewn plenty and I should not feel guilty about my hoard. I even used up some of the stash of red fabrics my grandmother started collecting for a Craft Critique review that will run soon. Here is a sneak peek at that project:

Felt Pinwheels

I saw this adorable pinwheel brooch project by Betz White last month in several crafty places on the internet. If you browse crafty blogland, I imagine you saw it too. I had to make them especially since I have that cherry fabric in my collection.

This is the one that my daughter made:

She's a bit crafted out since she got a nice variety of craft kits for her birthday recently, so I let her be the designer and I would simply be the craftsman for the rest of our lot.

This one is my favorite. I love that dotted fabric:

They all have safety pin backs. We each wore one to our holiday picnic, but the rest we attached to little sticks and stuck them in the flower pots as decorations.

We had a relaxing 4th of July holiday! Hope you are enjoying the season!

Geekery with Quilters Interfacing

Check out my article at Craft Critique to see what I made with Quilters Interfacing. It's a really fun and easy product to use. The only hard part is trimming and ironing the seams on the back to reduce bulk.

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I also spent some time listing inventory at my Etsy shop. Click through to see some great gift ideas! I have lots of new pouches, felt hairclips, and hand dyed wool flowers.

Sharpie Tie-Dye

You have to do this project. I saw this on Happy Things. She saw it on Steve Spangler Science.



You draw on fabric with Sharpies (I suppose you can also use other types of permanent markers. I happen to have a lot of Sharpies.) Draw a design that is at least an inch in diameter. More ink bleeds more. Drip rubbing alcohol into the center of the design and watch the ink bleed out to beautiful effect. More highly concentrated alcohol works better. Look for 70% or more concentrate at the drug store. This is probably what you already have in the cabinet.



I probably have a medicine dropper somewhere, but we just used a straw as a dropper for the rubbing alcohol. Let them dry completely. After a few minutes, we laid ours out on an old towel to dry. To set the color, they must be heat set, but be careful with the iron or the clothes dryer because alcohol is extremely flammable.



We were totally mesmerized by the process and could not stop. I had some white muslin that I cut up to use, but we used that up quick, so I also cut up an old sheet.



We had to quit when the alcohol smell got to us. My daughter already cut up some of our creations to make a card for her teacher. I think we might put some beads onto some of these and stitch them into pretty ornaments. We haven't decided. They would look great in a quilt too!



** Edit: How fun! I was contacted today by Sharpie and Steve Spangler about this project!

Envelope Pouches

I used THIS tutorial from maya*made to make some very easy envelope pouches.

Cute, Huh? That black and white fabric is a home dec weight from Ikea. I bought it to use my fabric markers to color in areas here and there, but I never got around to that.

These adorable pouches look great with fabric covered buttons. It may be hard to believe, but I have never covered fabric buttons before. I heard that it is easy. I think it is the prices on the notions wall that kept me away for so long. Dritz charges half these prices under their Prim brand at WalMart. Say what you want about Wal Mart, but at least they still sell sewing notions.. Seriously, that one large covered button is $3.49?!?!



Well, anyway, this could be super thrifty project if the covered buttons weren't about 75 cents apiece... So all my parts are lined up:

Get all that fabric straight and tucked in:



Push it all together with the little tool. Push hard until it snaps in place:


Voila! Nice right? I want to make about 50, just to have a big pretty pile to use for whatever strikes my fancy. Anyone got any bulk suppliers to recommend?

I was going to review this little product for Craft Critique, but Kim Fox beat me to it! She used hers for papercrafting. She also didn't say anything about the price. I would be much happier to have gotten about 10 or 12 buttons in the package for the price instead of just 5.

Green Tote

I loved the Amy Butler Birdie Sling Totes I made for Mother's Day gifts so much that I had to make one for myself:



Can you tell how large it is? This would make a great market bag. I plan to use it when I go on summertime outings with my kids and I need to carry a bunch of this-and-that.



Last year when we were in Estes Park, Colorado, my mom and I found a fantastic fabric and gift shop. Mom picked out these lovely green prints and passed them along to me when she realized that she wasn't going to sew anything with them. The greens are Anna Maria Horner Garden Party prints. I can't figure out what the brown and blue print is, but I like it!



I also made another simple styled square tote for my daughter's teacher, but I was in such a rush, I couldn't photograph it! I used four coordinating fat quarters and we packed it with some stuff for her dogs.

Its been really rainy and beautifully cool here and we have a sort of swamp in the backyard. This is finally the year all my neighbors are going to have drains put in so that we can use our yards again. My next door neighbors have younger children and this spring they gave up and let the kids be little mud people for an afternoon. It was adorable, but they didn't like getting washed with the garden hose!

Library Tote

I made my niece this little tote at the last minute for her birthday. Her mom suggested that she could use a bag for her library books. This fabric and straps are all from JoAnns. The red floral was a couple of fat quarters. I wish my store had that print on the bolt because I really like it!

I backed both the lining and the outside fabric with interfacing so this little bag stands up on it's own and is quite sturdy.

The reverse is cute too. The little pocket is for her library card. A couple of years ago, I made this same little girl a pink Hello Kitty tote. I always intended to make another one of those, but I never got around to it!

Mothers Day Totes

These are the bags I sewed for my mom and mother-in-law for Mothers Day this year. I still want to make one for myself, but none of my local fabric stores have the right woven interfacing and don't want to risk puckering if I use the wrong kind..

This is an Amy Butler Birdie Sling Tote pattern. Mom and I saw someone carrying a version of this bag in Paducah and I decided to challenge myself by making one from the pattern. The first one took me pretty much all day to make, but the second one was much faster.

I used fabrics I rummaged out of the remnant bin at Hancocks of Paducah, plus one from my stash for the lining on the orchid colored bag. It is hard to tell, but these are large bags and carry a lot of stuff. This is a good thing for my mother-in-law who carries EVERYTHING in her stuffed purse and then wonders why she gets shoulder pain...

Bibs

I'm one day late with my school fundraiser quilts, but thankfully, the deadline was flexible.. I'm doing the bindings today and turning them in this afternoon.

Meanwhile, I still haven't quite sent my last baby package. We got a message that sweet baby is already 4 months old and there were gorgeous pictures attached. As I recall, we started introducing solid foods around 4 months (or was it 6?). I decided to try my hand at bib making to add to the package:

These are infant sized bibs from a pattern I found on the internet, but I forgot to bookmark it for you. They went together pretty easily. I used two layers of flannel on the back. I am also happy that I went ahead and ordered a big supply of size 16 snaps on the internet so I no longer feel that they are too precious to use up.

Today is feeling a little bit more like spring around here! Time to get out the springy decorations.

Baby Quilts

These are two long overdue baby quilts I made for some friends and their new baby girls. The block is the churn dash which was a favorite of my grandmother. I used a beautiful fabric set that my mom gave me as a gift for my birthday.



I was happy to have the fabric pack because shopping for novelty children's fabrics is always a big challenge. I matched up the fabrics in contrasting colors and made two complimentary versions of each block. I delivered the above quilt to my friends and their gorgeous baby girl this weekend. I still need to send out the quilt below to the equally beautiful baby girl who lives out of town. I'm pretty sure the out-of-town parents don't read my blog, so the surprise is safe.

I beat myself up a little bit for not using sashing and border on these, but they were already big enough and I didn't want to worry about shopping for the longish yardage needed for borders. I used packaged double fold bias tape for the binding so that step went really quickly and easily. I like how they turned out although I took longer than I liked to get them ready to give.

Right now I'm stitching up some quilts for a school fundraiser. The school children each colored a muslin square which will be assembled into quilts for each classroom. I only have to do two of the quilts and I procrastinated as usual so it's a mad rush to get them done by Wednesday. Unfortunately, the fabric used for the kids drawing is really inferior and it is fraying and falling apart even though I am being really gentle with it. Alas...

Quilt and Corruption

I can't get enough of this Illinois corruption scandal! Let me tell you that none of this comes as any surprise to anyone in Illinois. What is amazing to people I talk to is the lack of finesse Blagojevich used in soliciting payoffs. This is hardly a dark time for Illinois. Things look brighter here all the time at they throw more and more if these corrupt politicians in prison.

Okay so back to crafting. I made this quilt for my brother when he got married 10 years ago. I think I gave them a regular gift and then got this to them sometime in their first year of marriage:


I remember having a whole set of fabric purchased for another quilt. My brother didn't want anything that was regular blocks. He wanted something that had a pattern that changed across the quilt. (My brother is sweet, he really had no idea that he was asking for something that was a stretch for me, a newer quilter, to make.) This pattern was on the cover of my Quiltmaker Magazine that came in and I knew that he and his wife would love it as they are big fans of color. The pattern wasn't that difficult but the setting of the blocks makes it really effective.



I machine pieced and hand quilted the whole thing. Hand quilting is happily something I never do anymore. It took a lot of work to finish, but I was really motivated and I think it took a few months to do.


At the time, I didn't know that it isn't such a good idea to trace quilting patterns with pencil because you can still faintly see them.



This was in my professional "Susan" period. I've since returned to the name I've had my whole life, "Susie" and only use Susan when I'm trying to get serious with some customer service department on the phone or something like that.

Now I am into holiday gift crafting. I'm afraid to photograph those things because I am afraid the family will see them. I think maybe it is only Mom who actually reads my blog regularly so I probably have nothing to worry about.

Craft Show!

This is my set up for tomorrows craft show. I thought I didn't have enough stuff but when I put it all out, I think I have plenty. My daughter's 2nd grade friend thinks I should have made more things with monkeys, but she assures me that she'd spend a lot if she didn't have to keep her money in the bank ;-)

The sun already set around here, so these detail pics are blurry. I sometimes forget to photograph things before I sell them or give them as gifts and then I forget how I made them. Anyone else do that?

Kitty Pouches:


Surprised Owl:


Mushroom and Sunshine Overtaking Cloud:


Whales:


Cupcake and Cookies:


I have a bunch more pouch designs. These are the ones I haven't shared yet.
They have a simple velcro closure and measure about 6 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches with a 1 1/4 inch square gusseted bottom and a velcro closure.

I also have embroidered hairclips, crochet flowers, Cotton crochet pots, and a few felt envelopes.

Wish me luck! (Edit: The show was tonight and my disc barrettes were my best sellers. I got great feedback. It was a really cold forbidding day weatherwise so it was kind of slow with customers.)

I do have an Etsy shop. You can email me there if you are interested in my work, but aren't local to suburban Chicago. Look for the little "Contact IamSusie" on the side of the shop page under "IamSusie's info". I ship worldwide!