Quilted House Trivet

For some reason I really love making hot pads. 

That's weird, right?

Maybe it's because I bake so much... or maybe it's because they're useful. 

Don't know. Just know that I enjoy making these silly things an awful lot.

So, obviously, I made a house for my Hearts and Houses challenge.

It's pretty cute, right?

And this quatrefoil on the back... swoon!

QAYG Trivets

 I love monochromatic projects so when I saw an absolutely adorable tutorial for QAYG trivets on S.O.T.A.K Homemade I got right at it.

It was terrifically fun to take a chunk out of my scrap pile and sorting things by color is just as engaging  now as it was in preschool.

Each hot pad is about 10.5 inches square and they are padded with Insul-brite so they are heat proof.

Now that I've made a purple and green one, I can't wait to get going on gray, yellow, orange and blue.

Have you been sewing? What have you made lately.

Throw Pillows!

The other day I shared my first paper pieced quilt blocks and then my modification of turning them into circles. And I promised I would show you what they ended up as.

Since I hate repeating myself, doing a whole quilt of paper piecing wouldn't be very fun. But we never have enough pillows on our couches so...

I used this amazing (saucy) Alexander Henry fabric on the back which I think is a nice foil to the orderly, conservative vibe of quilt blocks.

Paper Pieced Quilt Blocks

I've always been curious about paper pieced quilt blocks so when the Creative Bug block of the month was this  Whippper Snapper (paper pieced) block by Anna Marie Horner I couldn't resist trying it.

Fun stuff. I really like not having to fret about lining things up as I just put my fabric on the lines I drew on the paper. Drawing lines on paper is very much my jam... lining up fabric... not so much.

I always try to do something new at least twice so I can commit the process to memory. So I made this one. Much faster and far more confidently. Yay

And being me, not knowing the first thing about leaving well enough alone, I decided to convert the blocks into circles. Because... why not?

Stay tuned as I actually have a plan for these cuties.

Mixed-Media French Press Cozy

My husband's coffee kept getting cold so I made a cozy for our French Press. It's a great way to use up smaller pieces of painted fabric.  It's quilted and the closure is made from a large button and a (new) fabric covered hair elastic.

Paper and Fabric Art Quilt

For this assignment in our It's Sew Easy class we were shown how to make a paper art quilt featuring free-motion stitching and even more frightening - binding! Eek!

So I put it off... and off... and off. And then decided to quit being such a wimp and go for it.

To start I embellished tissue paper and lined paper with stamps and paint

Then I cut the tissue paper in squares and rectangles... ish. This isn't an exact sort of project.

Next I Mod Podged the tissue to my piece of batik fabric. I usually loathe batik but this one, to quote my kids, "looked like the sort of thing I'd make with paint and white fabric" so I went with it. 

I realized my piece was going to be HUGE so I trimmed it down a bit but followed the same Mod Podge steps with the spare strips so I had something to practice on.

And then, after all the glue had made a big old mess I placed my pieces in the bath tub to dry over night and then trimmed them into squared, usable bits including ATC sized cards.

If you recall my earlier post, I made these with the ATC-sized scraps:

Back to the topic at hand... I bound the scary art quilt and it really wasn't that big of a deal. I thought the mitered join of the binding strips was going to make me throw up with anxiety but beginner's luck saw me through. And Julie's instructions were excellent.

Trouble is... when all was said and done... (and maybe it was just the size...) I had made the worlds most time consuming placemat. Seriously. You'd want to place a plate on it if you saw it. Not good. I mean it was lovely, great colors and interesting... but so very, very placemat-like. 

So I printed a photo I had edited within an inch of it's life:

(Pretty, no? I went to Costco and photographed some of the bouquets. It was a cheap way to get some pretty images to play with.)

And then I sewed it onto the quilt to serve as a focal image.

I like this a lot better. It's certainly less like a placemat and once I frame it I think it might end up to be a pretty piece of art. That said, there's a fair-to-middling chance I'm going to seam rip that photo off of it, add a frayed, painted, textured mat of some sort and sew it back on. It looks kind of flat... and tidy. 

We can't have that!

What would you do?

Painted Heart Whole-Cloth Quilt

When I was working on my Dress Quilt I was really worried that the assignment was going to be WAY too hard for me to tackle so I made this heart quilt as a back-up project. My thought being if the dress is impossible I could at least work out the stitching. 

This was a nice, simple, mildly reminiscent of Van Halen sort of design that really popped once I added the stitching.

And more importantly, it gave me the confidence to make the dress project.

Remember, you can always take an run at a new technique in an easier way then it is presented. For example, try new paint or paper craft techniques on a tag, halve a recipe, make a pot holder instead of a quilt... gain a little confidence first, then you can bring your A-Game to your project.

P.S. Who thinks I'm going to be going back into this simple heart quilt and adding all sorts of messy fun stuff to it? Yeah... me too.

Whole Cloth Quilting

This is my first attempt at whole cloth quilting using free-motion. I followed Julie's example quite carefully and did the best I could with my limited skills. It was so fun!!! I'm hooked.

First you take plain white fabric and paint your design with watered-down acrylic paint.

Add in some patterns.

And free-motion stitch - just outline like you were sketching with a pencil.

(please click to see this full-sized, I'm so excited to have tried something new!)

Have a great weekend, everyone.