potholders.....remodeled

My daughter had some sad looking potholders. ....I remodeled her 3 sad looking ones to these happy ones.
I think they are pretty great and so does Liz.
This is my first post using my cell phone
Takes some getting used to.

Valentine potholder

I don't think it can be a valentine if you give it to yourself. ;) I'll call it Hearts potholder.

I found the pattern here, on ravelry. It is knitted in the round (the other side is identical...'cept not so many mistakes)..so it is double thickness, very cushiony, and most places even more layers cause the inside looks like this;

It was my first effort at strand knitting. Before you know it I'll be doing Fair Isle patterns!
It is not perfect but I think it is beautiful and I'll enjoy it for years.

Valentine 2014

First up I did not come up with this idea on my own. I'd seen some marquee letters and was wondering which letter to do then I saw this! Of course it is on my Pinterest board of Hearts now too.
I have a collection of Heart shaped boxes....or at least I used too but I cannot get into the attic until the garage is cleaned...I haven't cleaned the garage sooooo I had to go buy a box of chocolates, and if I'm going to eat chocolates they had better taste good ...so I went to See's candy store at our mall and bought a box. :) Her it is finished;

 Here it is in my entry....I really NEED to get another box so I can make myself one, right?
The lights I found at Hobby Lobby. There are 15 led lights. Since the box had uneven humps it was a little challenging to get them equally spaced out.

 I used a drill to cut the holes. I sanded the box where I was going to paint. I taped the edge with painters tape and used gold spray paint for the center. Then glitter.

 

I taped the lights in then hot glued them. I wanted to include paperclips taped to the edge and bent to use as a hanger for the wall...but could find NO paperclips in my house! It is now at my sister's house. She sent me some pictures of where she might put it:

or

or

Valentine pillow

I try to do a couple little valentine projects each year. This year I made my Mother a pillow for Christmas, seen here, so I decided to make a pillow cover for the same pillow form for Valentine's day. I also had an idea for years that I wanted to try.

This is 4 layers of flannel, sewn on the bias 1/2" apart across the whole thing. But what is valentiney about that? If you look hard you can see some hearts in the middle. Three of them. After deciding on the order of the colors, I took the middle 2 layers and cut 3 hearts out of them.  The middle heart I just rearranged the colors, the outside 2 I replaced one of the colors with a purple and a lavender.

It was much easier to sew than the bigger chenille I made last spring, seen here, But I won't know if it worked until it comes out of the dryer. It was harder to cut, each time I came to a spot where the under flannel was cut I had to use my scissors to get it started. Word to the wise; look at the left side, see the pink sticking out? Next time make sure the lowest layer is bigger on 2 adjacent sides. It made it MUCH easier to slip the edge of the scissors and the rotary cutter under the top 3 but above the bottom layer there.
Here is is finshed;

Since the pillow form it covers is in Colorado I draped it over a folded up quilt. Love it! I think I will make another! I love the feel of the chenille. I put a zipper in the back; yeah another zipper used but I have neglected to mention that I visited an estate sale and bought 10 new zippers. So my numbers went up a bit. I like the large flap that covers this zipper.

I'll get this in the mail today; that will be 3 trips to the post office this week, hopefully the last. Valentine's to be sent to my Mother and my son and then I just get to think about a Valentine for my man!

Rejoice Pillow

Back in December I posted about quilting some linen here .

There it is. But I didn't post the finished project.
I had a friend, Lisa, embroider the word REJOICE on it. I struggled with which word to use, Mom already had a needlepoint pillow with JOY on it, I wanted it to refer to Christ and the real reason for the celebration that is Christmas. So here it is;

 I purchased a pillow form ; 12 x 22 to fill it.

A close-up of the embroidery. The first time I or my friend had tried quilting and then embroidering, she did put a water soluble stabilizer on top of the linen. It worked very well.

I used a man's shirt for the back. The only red and green plaid to be had was not 100% cotton, so after cutting most of it up into bias strips I threw the rest away. (Don't want it to get in my 'collection' accidentally.)
This is what I did with the left over bias strips;

a pom-pom using a pom pom maker that I bought just before the holidays.

Now to cover Mother's pillow form with pillows for other holiday's....

I also blogged some recent customer quilts over at the http://thequilterupstairs.com/

Post Cards

A couple months ago I realized that my Mother hadn't been reading my blog....the main reason I started writing one. I also realized that she doesn't do technology well. At the same time I was getting a couple simple texts a day from a friend and I thought that Mother would enjoy a text or too. She doesn't do cell phones either. So my postcard project began. I decided that a few post cards a week would be enjoyed. I started very simply, cut a rectangle of card stock, put the required postage on it, write a sentence or 2. Mail.
Then I got a photograph and wrote on the back of it....put a stamp on it and a message and mailed. However, have you ever written on the back of a picture? You have to have the right kind of pen. So then my post card was 'invented' HAH, like this was new. But this is what I do:

I have an app on my phone, Walgreens, I just send them the picture I have taken and then go get them next time I'm out.

 Then I lay them on a piece of cardstock, (or any scrap of cardstock like the package the photo's come in) and sew around them. I use a basting stitch and whatever color thread is in the machine.

 Then cut them apart.

 Making my own means I have a tiny bit more writing space cause the address does not take up half the card.

I tuck them into my purse with the stamp already on them. I make sure I keep a pen on me and then when I'm waiting for a kid I can write a note. I have written them at church, at a restaurant, on my couch. Any time I think of it. It is easy and quick.
That's how I do it, however Quilt Guild this month had Linde Teddlie Minton come and speak. She makes post cards just a wee bit different. Here are just a few. She had dozens to show us and talked about the method she uses. I don't think I'll be spending 8+ hours on a single post card anytime soon but I did decide to change a couple things occasionally. I bought some watercolor paper for my last batch of cards, it is a little stiffer and the photos may suffer less damage en-route. I also hunted up some free backs that I printed for the back of a couple. I found it here. I am also aware of other artists that regularly make postcards to send. Here is one of them, Vicki Welsch. She has created a flicker page of all her fabric postcards here.I have done 1 fabric postcard, scraps of 3 wools sewn to a card stock then sewn to another card then mailed....who knows where I'll go with this. I can see the need for a little note from Grandma to each of my grandsons.....my son on a mission surely deserves a few....my siblings might even enjoy it.... But for now Mother gets them.

Farewell to Jeffrey

My son left this morning to visit my parents in Denver. He will soon be gone for 2 years serving a mission for our church; The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Yesterday we had a 'farewell' get together for him. I spent all last week getting ready. At 10:30 P.M. I realized I had taken NO PHOTOS! I was just busy and stressed enough that I never thought of it. But I can tell you about it. I'll blog the recipes later.
Menu: Salsa made by Jeffrey. A spicy version and a mom version, very mild.
           Chips purchased.
           White Queso made by me.
           Reuben Dip recipe located by me but made by friend. (No mustard in our version.)
           Rye and pumpernickel bread toast made by Roger and Andrew.
           Fruit tray, brought by Mary. 
            Cookies and Muffins brought by friends. :)
            Cupcakes baked in jar, made by me. 4 different recipes; close to 130; 34 left. 
            Water bottles iced down and in a cute metal tin borrowed from Becky. 
            Punch found via pinterest a year ago. 

We started at 7 but several young adults came early to help. A friend, Becky, came with a few of her autumn decorations and spruced up a few places and we set up a shelf with cards for people to write Jeffrey a note about something they remembered about his life. We had a full house during most of the party. A small group played ping pong, there was singing of hymns around the piano. Jeffrey sang his solo from Les Miserables, Bring Him Home. A lot of hugs. A lot of talking.
About 9 I noticed some of the young adults washing dishes! They washed everything! Then one of the young women found the broom and swept! Wow! I had so much help doing this party. There are a few names I need to write down and invite them to EVERY get together we have. ;)

finished blanket

I finished the green light blanket while visiting my new grandson in June. This is a sheer cotton fabric just perfect for a summer baby. I mentioned that I was working on it here..Just want you to know that I finished something. ;)

I pressed the edge and it looked great, (but the picture did not!) I hope it got lots of use this summer.

baby blanket #2

So last week I stayed awake one night picturing the ideal baby blanket in my head. The problem I envisioned with a lightweight summer blanket was the traditional quilt binding that I had on some of my baby blankets, it seemed to weigh them down with a heavy treatment. In my mind I took the bias tape and just inserted it in between the front and back.
The next morning I went shopping trying to make it happen. (You would think I had something that would work in my stash but I knew I did not have a bright stripe that would coordinate with 2 other fabrics that would be suitable for a boy!) Three fabric stores and 2 days later I had found them.

 Hancocks

JoAnne's

JoAnne's
The bright turquoise stripe I found was perfect except it was not 100% cotton. I decided to use it anyway since it is just on the edge and wouldn't be touching the baby much. (My babies all broke out if the did not have cotton touching their face...but THEN babies slept on their stomach and their faces touched their bedding. Today, not so much.)

Here is the front,the back and the edge.
The tricky part is making the front and back the EXACT same size. I tried. The yellow ended up a smidgeon bigger and I thought that the owls were bigger.

• The bias is cut at 3/4" (I purchased a yard since I was brain dead by the time I found something that would work and I didn't want very many seams. Seams = work. Lots left over.)
• The front and back were 1 1/4 yards each, none left over. I noticed that the cutters at JoAnne's were very careful to give me exactly what I asked for and those at Hancock's were not. So I have a small scrap of the yellow for my scrap bin.

To keep the 2 layers from shifting I wanted to quilt something in the center. In the past I did a heart, here I did an owl. Jeffrey enlarged a section of the fabric and I traced it onto soluble paper and quilted it.

 Here it is finished with the paper torn out and then washed out.

 I thought it looked fabulous without the edge top stitching...but when it came out of the dryer it was obvious it needed topstitching to be shake and go....and what new mother is going to press the edge of a receiving blanket before it gets used?

Dr. bag

It just came to my attention that there is a Modern miniature quilt contest/linky party going on and this project is the putting together of 2 miniature quilts; back to back with a zipper in the middle. So here's my story of the making of 2 miniature quilts.
Two of our grandchildren have several Dr. things and when I recently sent them a bag, they tried to get all of it in the bag;

Soon after I received a request for a Dr. bag; just a bit bigger. My daughter's request was simple; just put a red cross on it...
I have been making bags for years, this one is before I had lots of zippers, made about 1981.

Luckily I was cruising through pinterest and found this darling bag. Then I was scrolling around and found this work of art. Then I had to read the artist's blog and then I read about her technique for many of her quilts so then I decided to try it. Materials needed;

•  liquifuse; purchased many years ago and experimented with, but got frustrated and set aside..(trying to applique just the edge like Terry did.) Found it in a drawer, dried out, but water rescued it.
• microtip applicator, don't have but to try her technique I could live with a thicker line.
• applique sheet to use with an iron; purchased about 5 years ago but only the size of my iron. Frustrating to keep changing the position of the sheet as I iron.
• tracing light box, I've always used a window but my shapes were simple so I cut them out and traced them onto the fabric.
• interfacing; mine was too thick but worked okay anyway.
• felt, waited a few days and decided to purchase some of this since I did not want the bag to shrink if I used my scraps of cotton batting, or my wool felt or wool batting, or introduce an additional layer of fabric.

 I cut up a pr. of thrift store linen pants for the background and found a red zipper I'd pulled out of a pr of red thrift store wool pants. I layered the white on top of white so the black wouldn't show through. So under the red cross is 6 layers.

 Here it is after working on it Saturday night. I wanted to quilt it on felt also so I had to wait until Tuesday to get some acrylic felt.. Silly me, all I had was wool felt and I wanted Liz to be able to wash it.

 The front...okay really the back but I put the zipper in the wrong direction, ripped it out once but when I did it again I left it. The simple cross that was requested.

Here is the back of the finished bag.
The things I would change;

• choose the buttons first and size the vehicle to match the buttons
• remember that the bag is going to be 'boxed' and set the items further up
• put the headlight with the fabric instead of embroidery
• repeat the straight lines on the strap instead on introducing a new curved stitch

I love it. Hope it gets years of use.
Do I have to make 2 more of these for our other families?
I'm excited to have another venue for quilt making...frankly I don't need another pillow or another quilt for that matter, but bags are useful and I don't have too many; yet!

star mobile

I saw a star 'chandelier' on pinterest and adapted it for Jeffrey's 'not prom' decorations. I had the dates help me sew the stars and attach them to the wreath form that was spray painted white. Ingredients for mobile;

• 12" wire wreath form from Michaels
• white spray paint (to match the ceiling)
• cardstock, various colors 
• used a couple papers that had music on them (to reflect Jeffrey's music interest)
• found one paper with their high school name on it
• pages from a German reader's digest (to reflect Jeffrey's German interest)
• pages from a Literature (reflect  one date's English major.)
• die cut machine (I used the one at the scrapbook store.)
• sewing machine
• crystal beads
• fish-line
• push pin

Cut your shapes out, we did a die cut machine and then a star punch to use the scraps up. Set up your sewing machine with neutral thread, set stitch  length to baste. Pull a long tail, enough to tie to wreath, then sew through a star, pull it behind the machine and grab another star, we put about 5 stars on each length. Varied the colors and sizes. Tie the wreath with 3-4 lengths of fish line above the wreath and hang it where you can work on it. (ours hung from a ceiling fan chain while we were working on it.) Tie your strings on the wreath all around until it looks full enough. ( We did 12 strings on one and 10 on the other.)

 We used lighter fishline for the crystals and hung them from the wreath at various heights.

I like to sit on the couch and watch it flutter and spin. I imagine it would be wonderful in a babies room; but I do not think it would be easy to transport....

Chenille blanket update

I kept looking at the blanket... and decided that I did not like the binding.
So I went to the store and auditioned another color; green but bought another package of blue.
Ripped off the poorly applied blanket binding....did I mention that I put it on after taking a sleeping pill?
and replaced it.

  changes;

• I actually used the 3-step zigzag stitch that I thought I'd used the first time.
• I did not baste one side down and then fold the binding over the edge of the blanket.(Which I did the first time.)
• I jostled the blanket into the fold as deep as it would go and put a few pins in, then stitched.
  This actually worked much better and the stitching is close to the edge on both sides. (you can see how far my stitching got from the edge in the ripped off binding above.)

 

• I machine stitched each side from the miter to the end of the side, then took it out from under the machine and hand-folded, pinned, then started the next side at the miter.
• I did not stitch down the mitered corners by machine, did them by hand.
• I did not try to end the binding inside a miter, ended it on a side, at a diagonal and then hand-stitched it.

finished blanket:

zipper pouch

 Ta da! A zipper pouch for me! It used 2 zippers. I had to go get a zipper foot for my featherweight

sewing machine so I could do piping on this bag...then I had to figure out how to put the piping in a zipper pouch. It's not a normal occurrence for me or for blogland, since I could find none that had the properties I wanted.

Now I have a home for my i-pad stuff. My husband bought me a great red leather flip folder for it but it has no pockets. I was sure I would loose those tiny plastic tips for my pen if I didn't find a place to corral them.

I'm down to 55 zippers!

Pot holders

It's play time here for Angela and she made herself some potholders and practiced her new-found binding skills. I even heard her say something about how sad it was that she didn't have so many lovely scraps! These are lovely over-sized pot holders; just like we like them; 8 inches square.
I've blogged about my method of making potholders here.

Valentine

Years ago my younger sister and I started exchanging a homemade valentine each year. Many times the valentine would get mailed after Feb. 14th but this year she will get it on the right day. Since my surgery I have had unrealistic ideas of what I can get finished in a day.....I totally thought I'd get a zipper pouch made for each of my valentine people this year; did not happen but I came up with a compromise.Color copy the 1 valentine I made and make cards out of it and mail the cards.I thought I was being clever when I stenciled the glue in a heart shape to apply the glitter. It did not cover well. It worked much better to cut the heart shape out, apply the glue and glitter let it dry, then attach the shape to the card. like this. (I like the way the glitter looks in this out of focus picture.)

My inspiration was last years valentine. I loved the way they turned out and tried to come up with a fabric version without buying any fabric... Since the zipper was pink - I had no red zipper - I used a pink fabric for the lining and the loose heart. The background is from a linen jumper I bought at a thrift store last year for $.99.
Method:

• I cut hearts out of a piece of freezer paper,
• ironed the freezer paper with the holes in it down and
  
• stenciled some white fabric paint into the holes. When that was dry
• I used a rubber stamp and staz-on brown ink to 'write' on the hearts. Added batting, then
  
• quilted around the hearts
• ironed a scrap of pink fabric back to back with wonder under,
• cut out a pink heart,
• sewed it down the middle. Instead of backstitching I pulled the threads to the back side,
  
• knotted them and fray-checked them.
  
• then made it into a zipper pouch like this. Only I was unable to move my needle on my sewing machine, so could not use the zipper foot. That was a little tricky.
  

zipper status: I've made 16 zipper pouches and now am down to 58 zippers.