2010 in Review

2010 was a very busy sewing year.  I didn't realize how much I had accomplished this year until I went back through all the pictures for the year.  Wow - I've been busier than I knew! 

• I finished 9 quilts this year (I'm counting the one that the binding will be completed on later today), 
• did my first craft fair, 
• sewed many table runners and pillows, 
• learned how to sew zippers into pouches, 
• designed some of my own bags and pouches and quilts, and 
• started this blog!

Here's a peek at some highlights in my year in review:

I can't wait to see what 2011 will bring.  I know right now that it will include my first online quilting bee - and maybe the Birdie Stitches block of the month on Little Miss Shabby.

Happy New Year everyone!

It was a Merry Christmas!

I hope Christmas found you all happy and doing well.  We had a great Christmas with all parts of the family and are finally back home from all our travels.  I'm here enjoying my Christmas tree and remembering all the excitement of the last week!

I made several gifts for my sister-in-law since I had her name for our gift exchange.  Her gifts included a handmade tote bag from me as well as a mug rug.

 

The mug rug featured some of the Make Life fabric line along with some others that I had.  I mirrored some of the words from the fabric onto the strips with some free motion quilting.  I think it will be nice and inspirational to use every morning.

 

 

All her gifts got wrapped-up in the tote - it made a great gift bag!

For my cute little niece, among her many gifts, was this crayon roll featuring Strawberry Shortcake.  I made one for her friend too so there will be no "mine" during coloring time together.

 And finally, for my brother-in-law my sister and I created this little mug rug for him.  I just love how it turned out!!!

Christmas came and went so quickly and I can't believe tomorrow is New Year's Eve already!  I hope all your Christmases were merry too!

Giveaway Winners

Thank you all so much for coming to visit my site during Sew Mama Sew's Giveaway Day!  I could not believe how many comments I had (452!!).  Thank you all so much.  I did read all your comments but there is just not enough time to personally reply to each of you, but do appreciate your kind comments.

Ok, so my husband was asked to choose two numbers between 1 and 452...and here are the lucky two numbers:

Number 65 (who wins the little owl bag, ornament and fabric):

Amanda said...
Christmas crafting...can we not talk about that? And all of these giveaways ... not helping!!

Amanda
amandaandandy@yahoo.com

December 13, 2010 12:27 PM


Number 408 (who wins the mug rug and coin purse)

ktquilts said...

Congratulations!!!

December 16, 2010 9:04 AM 

Congratulations ladies!  I am emailing both of you now also.

Thank you again to everyone who visited.  It sounds like most of you are right with me when I saw that I am still working on Christmas presents.  I do have another one finished - a crayon roll for a very special 20 month year old.  He and his sister may still get their gifts by Christmas!

This really didn't take much time to sew at all.  I found the cute bug fabric on clearance at JoAnn's and it was 50% off of the clearance price at the time.  I thought it was quite appropriate for a little boy!

I did finally finish my Christmas quilt top too - now just to get it finished this week by Christmas!  That will definitely be pushing it - but I may be up for the challenge!

Second Giveaway

** Comments are now closed.  A winner will be posted soon.  Thanks for visiting!**

Hi all! As I mentioned in my last post for the Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day (which is still open through Friday down below this post), I was hoping to reach 50 followers on my blog. I promised that if I reached that goal that I would post a second giveaway. It took me an extra day to get the second giveaway finished, but here it is!

This is a little mug rug and coin purse for a second lucky winner.  There will be three ways to get a chance to win this.

• The first entry into the drawing for these lovelies you did already if you commented on my first Sew Mama Sew Giveaway post 
• A second entry will be a post telling me you are a follower of my blog.  
• The third entry will be if you comment on this specific post.  

Clear as mud???  I know - kinda complicated.  But I don't want to deprive the people who have already come to visit my previous giveaway and have become followers of the chance for this giveaway though since I had promised it in the previous post.  SO, if you already left two comments on the previous blog entry - just leave one comment here and you'll have three entries as I'm going to combine all comments into this second drawing.

I hope you can follow my logic - if in doubt, leave a comment on this post and you'll at least have one entry!

Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day

** Comments are now closed.  A winner will be posted soon.  Thanks for visiting!

Welcome to my regular readers and all the new ones who have found me from Sew Mama Sew's Giveaway Day list!  I'm glad you came to visit my little corner of blogland.

This is my first time participating on the actual giveaway side and so I'm excited to have a little Christmas gift for one wonderful commenter!  You may recognize this little tote bag as one of the ones I was working on in an earlier post.  I'm also including a little handmade bird ornament.

I'm also giving away a half yard of this fun winter fabric.  The colors aren't appearing as vibrant in the picture as they are in person - beautiful aquas, pinks, purples, silver/grey.  Plenty of time left to whip-up a quick bag to use as a gift bag (have you seen the Green Bag Challenge info on SewMamaSew's website?) - or whatever you want to make!

I will leave the giveaway open until Dec. 17th and will randomly choose and announce a winner on the blog by the 19th.  To enter the giveaway, please leave me a comment on the blog telling me how far along with your Christmas shopping/sewing you are.  If you'd like a second entry, become a follower of my blog and then leave me a comment telling me you joined.  (By the way, I'm sorry, but I'm not able to ship Internationally at this time.)

If I reach 50 followers on my blog, I'm planning on posting a second giveaway.  Perhaps it will be a pillow or a mug rug I've been working on?  We'll see if we reach that number!

I hope you all take time to visit all the blogs that are participating in Giveaway Day!  Come back and visit me again!

Shameless Self Promotion

If you have a minute today (or any day through Sunday), head over to Quilting Gallery to see a wide range of Christmas tablerunners - and feel free to vote for mine in this week's contest!  Ha ha!  I entered the one I just showed you in yesterday's post.

Also remember to come back on Monday to enter my giveaway as part of SewMamaSew's Giveaway Day!  The whole list of participating blogs will be available on their site here.

A little village

Here's a little view of the tablerunner I made for my sister-in-law.  It's pieced houses and a tree with three appliqued stars.

It was a lot of fun to do some piecing without a pattern.  In fact, my sister and I are planning to get together this weekend to do some more of these little houses!

Also, be sure to come back on Monday for a chance to win my giveaway in the Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day!  There will be A LOT of blogs participating and A LOT of chances to win some really great items.

Work In Progress Wednesday

I'm finally working on a quilt just for myself!  I had a charm pack of yummy Figgy Pudding by Moda leftover from last year (as well has another half yard) and was able to find a few more Figgy Pudding yards and some similar fabrics from this year's line called Fruitcake.  All my squares are sewn and trimmed and ready to be put together into a quilt!

Here are a few more of the blocks.  I think I'll be able to use this quilt through January - it really has more of a winter feel to me than just Christmas.  Although I really do like these trees!

 My quilt squares are 11 inches (10.5 finished) and while they aren't wonky pieced, they also are randomly situated.  Some are centered, some are centered in height but not width - and vice versa - and some are not centered at all!  I think it will make it a very playful quilt.  Now to just get it done in the next two weeks!!!

Mom's Quilt

I realized that I have not yet shared the quilt I/we made for my mom this past year...

My sister and her husband lived in NY last year and we decided to do our own type of quilting bee.  We chose a pattern (wonky windmill) and fabric (Hunky Dory by Chez Moi for Moda) together over phone and email and then each made about half of the blocks for the quilt. 

I mailed my blocks to Ruth who then sewed the quilt top together while I pieced together a back for the quilt.  Then she mailed me the quilt top and I basted and quilted the quilt! 

It was a fun team experience!  And now our mom has a quilt made by both of us!

Of course, while quilting this one I did have some adventures.  I sewed right into a safety pin from my basting and broke a needle!  (Better a safety pin than a finger though!)  So needless to say, I am quite careful about sewing too close to pins now!

1st Christmas Present of 2010

On Sunday I finished making the 1st Christmas Present of 2010.  I should have finished it sooner since it is an Advent Calendar that starts on December 1st and it has to make its way all the way to Oklahoma!  But, oh well.  It will still be fun for the little guy who gets to use it.

I modeled this after one that I used to get to do in college when I worked in a lady's office whose mom had made a similar calendar many years before. The idea is that every day of December leading up to Christmas you get to put an ornament on the tree.  We used safety pins on the original calendar - but those aren't really handy for 4 year olds!  So, I sewed 24 buttons onto the tree to loop the ornaments onto.

The white background is felt (18x24) and so are the star and numbers.  The tree is fabric and so are the pockets.  My wonderful wonderful sister cut out all the numbers because I just couldn't stand the thought of doing it!  (Thanks Ruth!)  I also sewed a second piece of white felt to the back once I had the buttons sewn on.  It helped hide that stitching and then also gave me a place to sandwich the hanging tabs so that the bottom of the tabs were hidden.

The felt was fairly easy to work with, but when I make the next one (next year), I may try fabric (and batting?) instead to make it more quilt-like.

Holidaze 2010

Sorry for the lack of posts lately!  As I mentioned before I was getting ready for a craft show that happened this past weekend - and have been recuperating for the past two days!  Here are some pictures from my booth at the show...

Thanks to everyone who came to see me at the show too!  It was great to see and visit with everyone!

I was able to sew quite a few tablerunners for the show which turned out to be very cute and well liked!  Some were striped like the ones above and others had large snowflakes appliqued on them.

I also sewed-up some zippered pouches and wristlets and gift card holders.  I thought they were so cute.  Do you see the flower pin that I attached to the dotty wristlet - and the ric rac on it???  I had a lot of fun making those!

I had three quilts finished for the show.  Two that I had posted pictures of while I was working on them and then this large lap quilt.

It's all black and white which was quite a challenge for my eyes while I was quilting it!  I quilted it with loop de loops all over.  I really like this quilt!

Did you happen to see the snowman pillow up above in the booth pictures?  Here's a reminder of what he looks like...

Watch the blog over the next few days.  I'm planning on posting my first pattern and tutorial for how to make a cutie like him yourself!

Blogger's Quilt Festival 2010

I just read that yesterday marked the start of a wonderful on-line quilt festival!  I remember seeing blogs participating in this last year, but last year at this time, I didn't have a blog - or a quilt to enter!  So, this year I'm excited to get to share one of my quilts!  Yay!!

This is the quilt I made for my friend Laura's bridal shower.  (I shared this quilt already here, but Amy said it's ok to share an already previously shared quilt.)  I'll admit, I fell in love with this quilt when it was done and had a really hard time actually giving it away.  But, she's told me how she likes to use it, so I'm happy it's being loved!

This was the 4th quilt I ever made (the 3rd in recent times).  I had fallen in love with the Alexander Henry Starling fabric in a quilt made by Elizabeth from Oh, Fransson!  So I used the different birds as centers of some of the squares and put coordinating fabrics around them.

I didn't follow a pattern in making the quilt.  I had seen many similar quilts created by other quilters and just choose a center square size myself and decided how wide of a border I wanted - and how much sashing to add.  And...ta da!  A quilt was made!

As I said, this was my 4th ever quilt - and I also wanted to try something else I had seen others do - a pieced back!  I think I succeeded - and do love the back too!

I learned a lot about doing "quilt math" with making this quilt without a pattern!  There are a few things I would do differently, but I still love this quilt (and hope to make a similar one for myself one day)!

To see all the quilt festival entries, click on the button below.

A Finished Quilt!

I feel like I haven't finished a quilt in quite a while - but I finished one up today!  I posted this quilt top a few weeks ago and was able to get it quilted this last week and finished the binding today!

It's backed in a very pretty soft argyle flannel.  I've never quilted with flannel before, but I read some recommendations and did pre-wash the flannel (I don't pre-wash my quilting fabrics - ssshhhhh, don't tell!) since I was afraid it would shrink much more than the cotton quilting fabric.  That seems to have worked well and I think I will use the same method on my next two quilts that I have flannel backs for.  I did wash the whole quilt today after I finished the binding - and the back was not too loose or too taut.

I quilted this one with spiraling squares inside each square.  I used my walking foot to help with the flannel feeding with the rest of the quilt.  It worked well for me!

One of the squares has an appliqued "a" for the little girl who is getting this for her birthday.  I did free-motion around the "a" to make it stand out a bit.

Pictures, to make up for yesterday...

I felt like a very bad blogger b/c of yesterday's pictureless post.  So to make it up to you, here are some pictures of what I've been so busy making that I haven't been a good blogger.....