boppy covers completed

I mentioned in my WIP posting that I was making boppy covers for my sister. She inherited 2 boppy pillows but they have boy fabrics on them.  She didn't really give me any direction. Just said they shouldn't be too girlie.

There are tons of tutorials out there. I used this one because it included a zipper rather than velcro. It was a different method of putting a zipper in, I liked it and will probably use it for other pillows. I will say, if you use this tutorial, definitely click the link she has for her pillow tutorial, it explains what she is talking about in much better detail.

Here is my first pillow.

I love Winnie the Pooh! Look at them, so cute!

Since I had no direction on fabric I decided to use stash. The tutorial calls for 1/2 a yard if you are using different top and bottom fabric, but that's not quite right. You really need about 3/4 of a yard. So my stash selections were limited since I usually buy half yards. Here's the back of that pillow.

You may be noticing that my pillow covers are a bit loose. It's because I used our
Boppy for fitting and ours has been heavily used! Samantha thinks it's her couch.

My sister's pillows are barely used and aren't so flattened so I think these will work okay. Here's the second pillow.

They'll be shipped to her this week, hope she likes them!


I'm linking up to Sew Modern Monday. Go check it out if you want to see some other completed projects!

Meeting new friends

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting one of my internet friends, Susanne of Susanne Loves.

She lives in the Midwest, but was out here on the East Coast visiting relatives so we set up a get together. We met when she made my awesome package for the Spice Up the Kitchen Swap. I was nervous about getting together. I've never met one of my internet friends in person. But we had a great time. Hit up the local fabric store and let our toddlers play together. Sadly it was a rainy dreary day so this was the only photo we got.

If you don't read her blog you should check it out. She takes beautiful photos, makes some great stuff, like this and this. And makes me laugh on a regular basis!




On a totally unrelated note (because I have to jump from thing to thing), I had a fun little surprise this morning. My daughter and I had planted these Elf Sunflower seeds months ago and have been taking care of them ever since. This morning I had a few blooms pop open!

I think I've mentioned it before, but the new house we are in has what I've been calling an arboretum all around it. It's crazy the amount of gardening! We bought it in December so of course I had no idea. Things have been popping up left and right. I have a black thumb so I have no idea what do with any of it

This was the one thing I knew was out there. I have several rose bushes! If anyone has tips for caring for them or any resources they can recommend, I would love to not kill these.

A little decorating and a little fabric.

If you've been here a while you know I've been working on my daughter's "big girl" room. She's 2 and just got her first big girl bed. This is the quilt I made for her and the story of how I picked her "theme". One of my inspirations besides this table...

was this Pottery Barn Kids room:

So I have grand ideas of making cute little pictures like those hanging on the wall. I have all the supplies but it requires me to stop quilting for 5 mins! LOL!

But the other day we were killing time in Big Lots and I came across this adorable frame for $5 and knew immediately it was perfect. I had purchased an Eiffel Tower applique ages ago and planned to make a pillow but decided to put it on some pink fabric and frame it!

What do you think? The only thing I'm bummed about is that it has no hardware to hang it.  So I set it on Samantha's shelf and when she saw it she said, "ooohh, a castle". hmmm... someone watches too much Disney.

And I don't want to leave you without some fabric goodness. Let me gush for a moment about Tula Pink. Those of you who are new here, you must know I adore her work. I love that she hides things in her fabrics, her colors are so gorgeous. Anyway, the new line is no exception. This stack of beautiful-ness arrived on my doorstep the other day!

Right now I'm torn between the Frogs and Snails as my favorites.

You can't even tell those are snails until you really look!

And I really want to get my hands on some raindrop laminate, its so adorable! But I think my favorite thing about this line is how well it plays with all her past lines. There are nods to the lines within the designs, but almost all the colors have some tie to her previous lines. They are just "juiced up" and more saturated versions.

So if you only have a little bit of a discontinued line **cough cough Neptune** this will go so well with it! I hope you all like Prince Charming too because I just blew my fabric budget and won't be purchasing any new fabrics for a while! ;)

Winner Winner!

Wow, wow, wow! I've been totally blown away by the response to my giveaway here. I really appreciate all of you guys for coming by. With 922 entries, I wish I had more to give away! I'll try and put something together again soon, this has been a lot of fun!

In the meantime, Random.org has spoken! The winner is:

That was mooncalf who said:

I've sent you an email! Congratulations!!

Work in Progress (WIP) Wednesday {28}

If you are looking for my Sew Mama Sew Giveaway, click here.

And speaking of which, let me just say I'm totally overwhelmed by all of you guys and the response I got to the Sew Mama Sew Giveaway!! It takes a lot for me to be speechless, but I really am! Normally I respond to all my posters, but with over 700 posts, I can't do it this time. Just know that I appreciate all of you who took the time to enter and especially those of you who became followers. Hopefully you'll like it enough around here to hang around!

For those of you who are new, Wednesdays are all about what's in progress in my sewing room. I like to try and share problems I'm having so I can get feedback and you can all learn from my mistakes. If you would rather see things that are actually complete, I've got links up top  for completed projects for 2011 and 2010. Feel free to poke around!

So, here's what's happening this week:

Finished:  Hopscotch knit dress

In Progress:
 I started a baby quilt for my girlfriend who is due in July. I'd love to get your opinion on this. I'm making the "little man" pattern from Simplify. I need to choose my "neutral". I have this blue linen print:

The blues aren't an exact match but they are close enough to work and the linen adds some interest I think.
Option 2 is Kona Medium Gray:

It's a safe choice I'd say. Let me know which you prefer!

Also in progress this week are my curtains for our bedroom. Would you all be interested in a tutorial on basic drapes like this?

Last time I blogged about this I was having tension problems with my machine. Or so I thought. Turns out I had forgotten to put in a heavier needle. Once I switched to a Jeans Needle, everything was fine!

Here's the first panel on the floor. Why not on the curtain rod? See if you can tell...

The curtain rod is too close to the shears rod. I don't know why didn't hang the sheers with a pressure bar within the window. Either way I guess it doesn't matter. I lined the curtains with blackout fabric and they are HEAVY. So that little dinky curtain rod won't hold them anyway. I've got a heavier bar to try. Just need someone to hang them....

Another project in the works, my sister needs two new boppy pillow covers. Here are the fabric I've picked for the first one. I'll give more details on this process as I get further into it.

And always on my design wall - the Bird Bath blocks for my mom's king quilt. My spreadsheet (yes spreadsheet) tells me I have 17 done. Only approximately 55 more to go! I haven't fully decided on the size of the borders and such yet but that's a guesstimate for now.

In addition, I don't have any photos to show, but I've been doing some block and quilt designing. It's been fun to play around with some ideas I've had and I hope to be able to show it soon.

Waiting for my attention:
Amy Butler bag - i know - this has been waiting WAY too long!

Total WIP's this week:6

I'll be linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced. Go see what everyone is up to this week.

Giveaway day - Sew, Mama, Sew style!

Time for another giveaway! Welcome to all of you visiting from Sew, Mama, Sew! And of course hello to my regular readers. I'm having a little giveaway for Sew, Mama, Sew's giveaway day. If you aren't familiar with it, click on that Sew Mama Sew link and go see all the amazing giveaways. But be prepared - there are a lot of participants, you may be there a while!

So I know you have lots of blogs to visit so I'll keep it short. Here's what I'm giving away. A set of FQ's that are good stash builders in rainbow colors.

And two charm packs of Moda's Pure.

And the fine print?
This giveaway will be open through Wednesday, May 25th at 8pm Eastern time.  Giveaway is now closed! I will draw a winner randomly at that time.
I will ship internationally.

To enter: 
1. Leave me a comment telling me what you are looking forward to this summer. {me - I'm looking forward to my little sister having her first baby! I made her this quilt to celebrate her little one}
2. My followers, new and old, can get a 2nd entry (because I appreciate all of you!). Just leave me a comment that you are a follower.

Thanks for stopping by and entering!

Knit Success

I know this looks just like the pictures you've seen before, but I swear it's a new one! I finally had success with knits!
Turns out the problem with the jumped stitches was being caused by me sewing too fast. Go figure. I knew I was a lead foot, but I didn't realize it was an issue until I watched this video by Patty Young of ModKid boutique. It contains a lot of the information that is in the Sew Mama Sew link I posted before. But if you are a visual person (like I apparently am), this will be helpful too.
Here's a close up of my sleeve hem.

YAY! I'm not afraid of knits anymore! Actually, so much that I hemmed a pair of pajama pants for my daughter.

Very excited about this and looking forward to doing more soft and cuddly knit clothing! If you are considering working with knits - do it! It's not that hard and so nice to work with.

The next best thing...

Everyone has been posting all these exciting pictures from Quilt Market. I don't have any pictures of Quilt Market since I wasn't there, but now - thanks to the super wonderful Julie of Jaybird Quilts and Candi of Raccoon Creek Quilts - I have the next best thing...

I'm such a dork - when Candi gave this to me at last nights PMQG meeting, I think I squealed!  Tula had seen my embroidered hoop of the Cameo from her Parisville line and posted about it on Facebook. Julie was sweet enough to think of me when she saw her at Market and got this signature for me. I love it! I may have to make myself an embroidered frog now and hang this with it!

Okay, I have to talk about other things because there are way to many exclamation marks happening on this post.
So since this all happened at the PMQG meeting, I'll also show my Kona Charm Pack Challenge since we had our reveals last night. We had a one charm pack of Bright solids to work with and we could add only prints to it. I knew I wanted to use my Lil' Twister ruler because that had initially been my plan for the monochromatic challenge and I got away from it. Here is what I came up with.

I added in a couple of random prints where there were missing holes or colors that I felt didn't have enough contrast for this.

Then I remembered that I had a lot of HST's left from the Supernova quilt. I had forgotten to incorporate them into the back of that quilt. So I started playing with them and made them the back of this one.

This is a pretty small piece, about 18" by 28". I plan to make it a wall hanging when I figure out my dedicated quilting room. Here's a sense of the scale.

This was also my first attempt at free motion quilting. I figured it would be good practice because it is small. But I forgot that there was a lot of bulk from the HST seams. I wound up with a lot of jumps when I got caught on some seams and pulled and went flying! ah well, live and learn right?

WIP Wednesday {27}

Lots of personal stuff going on this week, including the pending sale of our old house! So not as much sewing going on.
In process:

 Still need to finish this little dress, got lots of good resources at last nights PMQG meeting (and some fun things to post about). Once I get this figured out, I'll post an update since I know some of you are planning some knit projects.

As expected, these birdbath blocks are still on my wall. These 6 are new from last week. I really like working with that black fabric. You can't really see the seams at all because it's so dark! However, I'm not sure how I feel about that pale yellow. It almost disappears. But I'd have to find another yellow to replace it which could be hard since the color selections in Aviary 2 are limited. What do you think of the pale yellow?

I'm doing a little pattern testing for my bloggy friend Susanne. Of course with those bugs this is something for my daughter!

I finally cut the fabric for my bedroom curtains. It's home dec weight though and I was running into some tension issues so I need to play some more before I get any further on this one. Not sure what's going on since I didn't have tension problems with my last curtain project.
Waiting for attention:
The bathroom - sadly still waiting on hubby
Amy Butler bag

Total WIP's: 6

If you would like to join us, head over to Freshly Pieced and post your link with us!