The other disappearing Nine Patch

As I mentioned in my last post, I liked the process of making a disappearing nine patch so much that, as soon as I'd finished the first one, I pulled out fabrics for another one. From my stash this time.

While sitting on the floor, playing with batiks, my husband came along and said he liked the colors. So, this is his quilt, blues, greens, aquas. It, too, went together easily, laying out the blocks took almost more time than the actual sewing. And no matter how hard I tried, there still were a couple of places where the same fabrics ended up touching. Oh well ..............

I started with lots of these:

Made a few of these:

And a few of those:

Which were cut into this:

And were then sewn into this:

As usual, the colors aren't true (even with lots of fiddling), but they are in this picture:

Too bad, I promised it to my husband, I kind of like it myself.

And on a totally unrelated note, my grandbaby was born this morning. Mom and  little daughter are fine, but pretty tired.

I am linking up with Randi of i have to say for Show and Tell Tuesday.

Quilt therapy

When life throws obstacles in my way, I tend to go for occupational therapy. Usually, I go and hit metal with a hammer, but this time around I opted for quilt therapy. I pulled out a bunch of fabric and got to work, cutting and sewing.

I sewed a lot of memories into this heart:

The inspiration came from here: Pixelated.

It's not quite done yet, I still need to add a sleeve for hanging it and finish off the binding by hand. I know it's possible to machine sew binding, but I'm not very good at it. And, besides, hand sewing is quite therapeutic, isn't it?

Next, I wanted to try something that's been on my Pinterest board for a while: a disappearing nine-patch. I've always been a big fan of nine-patches (there's a big quilt top upstairs that's affectionately knows as "The Quilt from Hell" (if I remember correctly, it was 2 or 3 days of mindless and very enjoyable sewing and several days of laying it out on the floor to try and arrange the blocks to my liking.) Once the top was done, I folded it up and put it away.

Anyway, getting back to the disappearing nine-patch: I had several charm packs and wanted to use those rather than having to pick out and cut up fabrics from my stash. So, I picked two (Giggly and Punctuation, I believe) that contained similar colors and sewed and cut and sewed again. The whole top was done in one day, it just needs to be quilted.

That was so much fun that I dug into my stash for another one but that'll be another post later in the week.

I am linking up with Randi of I have to say.

I play with worms

It's that time of year again, at least, here in California it is. Other places, not quite yet, I see snow storms in the news. But here, it's time to work in the garden again. And work we did over the weekend. We have one problem flower bed. Not only is it mostly in the shade but the soil is horrible. There still is builder's debris in it, there are tons of rock, there is clay and there are roots, many, many roots from all the plants we have tried there that failed to thrive. So, this weekend, we dug and dug and pulled and pulled. And carted out buckets full of crummy dirt . It will be replaced with nice potting soil and my secret weapon: compost.

Yes, I compost and I'm thrilled with the results. I'm not very scientific about it, I just dump kitchen scraps and a few other things (leaves, shredded paper, lint, grass clippings) into one of the three bins I have, turn it a few times, water it occasionally and leave it be. And I'm rewarded with the most magnificent soil ever.
The worms? They just showed up on their own, sort of like "If you build it, they will come." I know you can buy them, red crawlers, I think, but mine are volunteers and free. In return I obviously feed them well. And they return the favor by turning my scraps into beautiful soil.

Burp cloths and blankets and quilts

No, I didn't make everything I'm going to show this week. The blankets were made weeks ago, the quilt months ago, I just didn't take pictures until today. The burp cloths, on the other hand, were started yesterday. Now, those are fun - because they are fast.
I'm a little frustrated, though, with the quality of my pictures, I'm very obviously not a photo stylist, and there are times when that bothers me.
Anyway, here are my less than professional pictures: 

I love this quilt, I used two charm packs by Bonnie and Camille (can't think of the name of the fabric line right now) along with coordinating fabrics for backing and binding. Tried to machine sew the binding but it looked messy to me, so I unpicked the whole thing and did it by hand. Much happier now.

 Just a close-up of the minky blanket. It's just simply not a very interesting looking blanket, but it sure is comfy. The pink minky side is meant to be the front, but the flannel on the back is very pretty as well, so, I guess, it's a toss up as to which side shows. Both are incredibly soft and I'm having a hard time parting with this.

The above shows a no-sew fleece blanket, the second one I made. The first one was sent off without having its picture taken.

And the burp cloths, made from this tutorial: http://www.danamadeit.com/2012/04/celebrate-baby-tutorial-burp-cloth-gift-sets.html. Fast, easy and fun. I used terry cloth, not the stretchy kind, couldn't find chenille and I think it's just fine.
I think it may be time to do a little torching and hammering now, I haven't made a bangle in a while.

More baby sewing

After having sewn bags for a few years and quilts years ago, all this baby sewing is just plain fun. Quick, easy and, when the pattern is good and things work out, simply enjoyable.
Case in point:

 

A tiny circle skirt, newborn size. Maybe not the most practical thing in the world, but definitely cute.  There weren't any cute and easy patterns around when my kids were tiny and nowhere near as many pretty fabrics. And no internet with free patterns and tutorials. 

The patterns for this cute little skirt can be found here: http://www.danamadeit.com/2012/04/celebrate-baby-tutorial-and-pattern-little-baby-circle-skirt.html

I'm linking up with Randi's blog for Show and Tell Tuesday: http://ihavetosay.typepad.com/randi/

It's nice to have a big fabric stash ...........

................. because then you don't have to run out and look for just the right fabric when you need a bit of an accent.
Case in point:

Big Butt Baby Pants - pattern by Made by Rae (http://www.made-by-rae.com/2010/08/big-butt-baby-pants-sewing-pattern/).
I bought the flannel shortly after I found out my daughter was pregnant and finally, finally (the baby is due at the end of this month) got around to sewing yesterday. While the flannel is pretty and delicate, it needed to be enhanced with a bit more color. So, off I went to my studio and sorted through my stash and came up with plenty of choices.

I especially like the mouse fabric. That's been in my stash for ages.
I sure hope mom and baby like what I've made.
I'm linking this post to Randi's show and tell post on her blog: i have to say (http://ihavetosay.typepad.com/randi/2013/03/show.html). And I sure hope I've done it correctly because this is the first time I've done this.