Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Rainbow Quilt

Brandon has been asking me to make him another quilt for well over a year.  I found lots of different quilt ideas and asked Brandon to pick one.  He loved this one.  I LOVE the colors, but I still don't understand the whole puff quilt thing.  He wanted it very similar and loved the fabric colors, so I then started hunting for fabric in June.  Yes, I have been working on this for over 6 months.  The color fabric is all from Riley Blake Designs collection.   I drove to MANY quilt shops before finding some of the fabric in Pella, IA .  Although to be honest, I mostly went for the bakery and didn't actual think I'd find my fabric!  The white fabric I used on the front is from JoAnn's and it is white with white circles on it.  The back of the quilt is plain Kona white fabric.

So, here's what I did.  The color squares were cut at 4.5 inches and the white strips are 1.5 inches wide.  I sewed the white onto the top and bottom of each color square and then came back and sewed 1.5 strips on to each side.  Using a quarter inch seem, the finished size of each block ended up being 6 inches (the color is 4 inches, and the white is an inch all the way around).  

After laying them out and deciding on my pattern, I sewed them together from top to bottom (which is actually left to right in this picture).  Once I had all 11 columns done, I sewed them together making sure to like up seems as best I am able.   To sandwich it together, I used plain cotton batting.

I completely put this  quilt together with my plain old sewing machine.  I machine quilted a line straight across touching a colored square, once where the two white strips lined up, and once again on the top of the next colored square, so between each colored square there are 3 lines straight across (and up and down) on the quilt.  I used a 3 inch double binding and sewed it first to the back of the quilt and then used a zig-zag stitch to bind it on the front.  I ended up having the kiddos write their names on a colored block and I hand stitched them into the quilt.  It isn't the most readable, but it added a nice personal touch. The quilt is roughly 66 by 84 inches.  I love this quilt so much that I wish I would have made it king size for our bed, but Brandon is very thankful that this blanket is just for him.

Saturday, December 28, 2013

Washcloths

Kelly made these washcloths as part of her Christmas gifts for her mom this year.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Merry {Ugly} Christmas : )

Mike had an ugly sweater bar hop to attend and after seeing this on pinterest I knew that last minute craftiness was in order... I free handed all the shapes out of felt and then hot-glued on his buttons and booties and sewed down the rest.  It was the least stressful craft I have done since the whole goal was to make something ugly..... check : )