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.

Washcloths

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

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 : )

Christmas Star

Kelly made this Christmas Star for her front window.  She purchased 5 yard sticks from Home Dept at $.69 a piece.  Then she bought a pack of nuts and bolts ($1.18) to put it all together.  She used a strand of white lights she had to wrap around the star.

Here is the view of the star from the road.

Getting Nutty : )

With opening weekend of Nutcracker drawing near I am finishing up all my nutcracker gifts.  First I made cards for the children that I have - they are party boys and rats so I tried to combine it and make them "party rats"

"party rats" cards : )

Then for the Company I personalized all their ornaments according to their parts.  A huge thank you to Gail and my mom for helping me glitter all the insides of the ornaments (and thanks to Erin for the pledge!)  Then I finally put my silhouette to good use and cut out adhesive backed vinyl for all the different characters.  The fronts I made all the same so they would have the year.

Ornament Fronts

Ornament Backs

And here are a few of my favorites:

For Nutcracker, Snow Pas, and Cavalier

Flower Queen who also dances in Mirlitons and Snow

Clown Soloist, Flowers and Snow

Mirlitons, Chinese, and Snow

I can't wait to give them all out... now just to fill out the 40 cards I made...hmmm....

Birthday Shirts

 My son turned 3 this month and his two current obsessions are Legos and Angry Birds.  So I used my Silhouette and heat transfer to make him a shirt of each. They were a hit.

Wool Dryer Balls

If you don't know, dryer sheets and fabric softener are like the worst thing you can do to your clothes.  Throwing balls in your dryer is a much better alternative without the chemicals.  I've been using tennis balls in my dryer for awhile now (which still has rubber and whatever else they are made out of) and decided that I should upgrade myself to wool dryer balls.  They are natural and will help dry your clothes faster, by moving the clothes around better as well as absorbing some of the moisture out of your clothes and have then be static free.

I wasn't sure what to buy for yarn, so I bought a couple to start and ended up going back for more.  The yarn on the left is 100% wool while the yarn on the right was part wool and part something else (I don't seem to have the package still).  They both worked just fine.  The most important thing you are looking for is yarn that specifically says that it must be hand washed and cannot be machine washed.  Both of these yarns said this.  I also made more balls out of a gray and white yarn which is also the same as the pink one pictures above.

All you have to do is wind the yarn up into tight balls.  When you get it to the size you want, you just use a crochet hook or something else to loop the end underneath other layers of yarn to keep it together.  I made my first ones quite large, so I ended up making these out of 2 more sets of yarn.  I used half a skein of yarn which seems to be a good size.  It's important to have a few balls in the dryer so they work together to move your clothes around and the more wool you have in there, the more it will aid in drying your clothes faster.

Then you put them in an old panty hose, or since I don't have any of those a large sock will do.  Make sure to tie off between the balls so they don't felt together.  On my last set of balls, I simply put 1 in each sock and that worked also, just as long as your ball of yarn is nice and tightly put together.  Now is the fun part.  Wash them.  Over and over again.  Hot wash water, cold rinse water.  I just left mine in the washer all day on laundry day and then put in the dryer with the last load.  My second set, I just washed on a extra hot load and then put them into the dryer and that worked well for them.


Here they are, the finished product. They will continue to felt more and more as they are in the dryer.  The most important thing is to just make sure that they are felting together and are hard to peel apart before you start using them.  I'm very happy with how they turned out and that I can now my tennis balls can officially become kids toys! 

 

I'm adding this comment a month after the post.  I like the grey and white balls the most with how they have continued to felt and look, but that is really just a personal preference.  Also, It seems that the larger the ball, the better.  The little grey ones more often than not get stuck inside the sleeve of a shirt or somewhere.  I'm always taking them back to the dryer.  Whereas, the pink and white ones normally reside in the dryer.  If I ever make more, I would make 1 ball out of 1 skein of yarn.  I have found that my clothes have more static with these than with the tennis balls I was using, but my clothes are certainly getting dryer faster with the wool balls.  The dryer is always done 10 or more minutes before the washer.  I'm going to stick with the wool balls over the tennis balls!