Friday, April 19, 2013

Bibs!

While I was still in Virginia, I decided the new baby in the family might like some bibs. There was a cute ladybug print in the scrap bag in a fairly large piece. Hmm. What could I do with that?

I found a pretty free pattern on A Spoonful of Sugar blog for "Boutique Baby Bibs."

I really needed size and proportions, not a specific design. Their designs were really cute and I was ready to do the hexagon design. But... when I put the tops of these together, I thought they were enough.


Lesson number one for downloading and printing patterns from the Internet:
  1. Check your PDF print settings. Make sure you're not printing with "reduce to fit page." 
Whoops. I had cut out and sewn the pieces together before I realized the pattern was too small. It was preemie size!  Reprinted and cut again.

I cut them out and put the tops together while in Virginia, and they arrived in my box last week. The back on the red one is green. The back on the green one is red.

Spoonful of Sugar has you use interfacing for substance and flannel for the back. I did a traditional quilt style with batting in between and fabric back. Quilting isn't necessary on theirs, but I like to quilt. As you can see, it's a simple grid design. The squares are 1-1/2" on the red one, and 1" on the green one.  Colorful and spring-y. I hope the family likes them and will really use them. These bibs are well made and tough, ready for spit up, slop, strained squash, and drool, and about a million trips through the washing machine.

Sunday, April 7, 2013

Crafting at Home Now

Back at home, and due to the small size of my luggage, I had to ship the quilt blocks (and my scraps, and the fabric I bought!) back home. I have made little further progress on the strip piecing. By the end of my stay, I was so busy with household things trying to wrap up, I barely had any time to sew.

While in Charlottesville, I completed a total of 10 blocks (I think...I can't remember!!) I was hoping to make 16, so when the box arrives on Tuesday, I can get back to work. However, I was running low on scraps. That's a good thing!

I couldn't possible be idle, though!

Here's my block for Douglass in KC Scrappy Bee.


He asked for an improvisational piece. I intended to include some of my fabrics, but this block emerged and it didn't need anything else... well... at least... that's my story and I'm sticking with it. I didn't intend to make a square - it just turned out that way.

I also picked up a quilting project I needed to finish up. This is a very small quilt (for my dog's crate) made from scraps from Bev's Garden Quilt. I messed up a bit when piecing that quilt's dark brown frames, such that I made too many green pieces with brown lines. I had a lot of frame pieces left over. I collected the scraps and fashioned them into a of pattern that pleased my eye. Now I'm practicing quilting designs in negative space.



The center portion of the quilt is a woodgrain pattern. The surrounding rows have those loops you see in the middle. The perimeter has a straight line design that makes random size rectangles filled in with straight lines. As you can see I used variegated thread. I like the effect overall, but in the straight line pattern, when you have to over-sew to get to a new area, the color is often different. So over-sewing is not so subtle

That's what I'm crafting on right now! Off to the sewing room.