Stash Busting Bunting!

I had a brain wave that for my garage sale next weekend I should whip up some fabric scraps into bunting!  That will sell won't it?  I have soooooo much fabric stashed away with lots of good intentioned plans for quilts and pillows, but why not take advantage of having all of those garage sale shoppers in the yard and use up some of those fabrics that are collecting dust in the corner!

I laid my baby down and started off by making this teal blue bunting banner.

I was pretty happy with myself at this point!  I have some nice big trees that I can hang this from in my front yard.  Baby is still sleeping though, so I might as well keep going.

Three hours later and not only did I have time to complete FIVE bunting banners, but I am also writing this blog post!  What a good little baby I have :)

My stash is still huge.  I bet I will have 10 of these by the time the garage sale comes around.  

P.S. I have also made double sided super classy looking bunting for a friend, but this time I went for the quick shabby look of raw edges.  This way I will be able to sell them at rock bottom garage sale prices as well.

My little love.

Cozy Woodland Baby Boy Quilt

This has got to be one of the simplest patterns I have used!  I love all of the pinecones and spruce branches on the fabric.  All of this material is flannel, so the finished quilt is so cuddly and soft.

Simple Diamonds

I did a rendition of a 10-minute block for this cute baby girl quilt.  I have had this Tula Pink Parisville charm pack in my stash for a few years and really needed to use it.  I had been saving it because I liked it so much.

I love the quilting!  I asked my quilter for something sweet, girly, and flowery.

I plan to bind it in an assortment of brights from this fabric set.  

Scrappy Patchwork

I got this quilt back from my quilter today, and I love it! 

I have been making patchwork blocks out of scraps for a few years now, and I finally put some together into this baby/toddler size quilt.  The squares are 2" each after sewing.

I had it quilted in a loopy pattern.  I think that I might bind it in a black print.

Sew and Slash

My friend gave me a box of fabric she wasn't using!!!  What a good day :)  There were so many super cute fabrics in the box and many of them coordinated.  I decided to start using them by making this simple sew and slash quilt top.

I cut rectangles and squares and just started sewing them together.  I made long pieces.  Then I cut them apart and pieced them back together in other places.  I did a lot of sewing and slashing and sewing again before coming up with this finished product!

Art Gallery Sampler

I finally finished this sampler quilt!  I have had these finished blocks folded in a bin for about three years....pretty bad.  This was part of a brown bag quilt project.  I was given the colourful fabrics every two weeks with two block patterns to make.  I had to add a third fabric, which is the grey.

The colourful fabrics are all from Art Gallery

 I hadn't finished this quilt because I just couldn't see how to put it all together with so many colours like this.  I have been trying to work on finishing things that I have started, so it felt good to get this one out of the way.  I am really happy with the result.

It measures around 60"x72".

Now I better bind it!

Pink Sampler

I didn't really have a plan when I started on this next project.  I had a bunch of pink/blue/green/gold fabrics, mostly from Art Gallery, that I needed to use up.  I have been saving this pile of fabric for a while because I love the main print.

This is the first 16" block that I made.

I had no idea where to go from there, so I started making smaller blocks, and now I guess I have a sampler on the way!

This last block and the first one are about 16" and the other blocks are 8", so as long as I can make enough blocks from my scraps they should fit together nicely!

Vintage Bears Paw

This quilt was given to my oldest son by his Great Oma.  I love it.  It will always have a sentimental value to our family because she made it.  

She made it when she was over 70 years old, and it shows.  It shows in the mistakes, holes, uneven seams, and wonky bear claws.  Nothing lines up perfectly.  The quilting on the top isn't smooth.  But she made it because she loved our boy.

The best part about this quilt is the craziness of the fabric choices.  Nothing really matches and it appears that anything goes!  We have teddy bears in pink dresses and pearl necklaces, footballs, bird houses, flowers and bam! neon polyester!

Right away the block with the neon polyester stood out to me and I told her it was my favourite.  So of course she replied with, "oh yes, I love that fabric too!  It was from a dress that I wore in the seventies!"  Oh wow, only Oma.

I am hoping to make my own quilt in this pattern as well.  What a great scrap buster!

Hello Bear Scrap Pillow

My latest sewing project was a huge scrap pillow.  I had made a quilt using these fabrics for a friend's baby last year!  I had a lot of left over fabric as usual.  I was recently asked if I could make a pillow cover for her 26"X26" floor pillow in the same fabrics!  Perfect.

I used the same sew and slash method to get all of the small pieces used up!  I was excited to find one little piece of the Hello Bear feature fabric still left in my stash. 

When done the pillow front, I added a layer of batting and sewed across the whole thing twice in each direction for added strength and comfiness.

I may attack my scrap pile and make a few more of these cute pillow covers!  It only took about 2 hours total to complete.

Black and Blue Sampler

This is the first quilt I ever made.  I love it!  When our first son was born I started making it right away.  It was part of a brown bag program.  

Every two weeks I had to pop in at the quilt store to get two block patterns with two pieces of fabric.  It was my job to add a third fabric and piece the block.  I had two weeks before I had to go back with my blocks to get the next brown bag.  The block patterns grew in difficulty as the weeks went on.  In total the program lasted 12 weeks and I ended up with 24 blocks.

After a while I realized that the blocks I liked the most were the ones where I used black as the third fabric.  It really just set the blues off!

This quilt is a single size so my son will be able to use it for many years to come.

 

I Love my Scrap Pile!

I made an enormous king size quilt for a dear friend a few years ago, and wow did I have a lot of left over fabric.  I had ordered fat quarter bundles and only used certain fabrics from those.  What I was left with was a huge stash of beautifully matching fabrics.  I had enough to make two baby quilts and still have some left over.

The fabric grouping is called, Prince Charming, by Tula Pink.  I love the fun teals and accents of deep blue and yellow.  If you look really closely, you can see turtles, frogs, a girl on a swing, and raindrops on the fabric.

For the King Size Quilt I went with a simple traditional pattern block using two half square triangles and two four patches per block.  Once I made all of the blocks it was very simple to piece them all together and add borders. (pictures to come!)

The baby quilts ended up being samplers!  I made blocks using the pieces I had left, some that were already made into hst's and others that were already strips.  I didn't spend a lot of time on these ones, but the cute coordinating fabrics really came together to make the assorted quilt blocks work.

The Quickest Quilt I Have Ever Made

I was really under the gun when I made this quilt!  My dear friend was having a baby girl and I had purchased a set of fabrics off of Etsy called, Hello Bear, by Art Gallery.  I love these fabrics!  So many adorable woodland type prints and a feature fabric with cute little animals.  

The birth was a good four months away when I got the fabric, so I didn't feel a rush to get going.  Then everything changed!  We got a phone call that we have been waiting for for a long time!  We were chosen to adopt a baby who was due to be born in under three weeks.

So yes, I needed to move on this quilt for my friend if I had any hope of giving it to her on time.  I certainly was not going to be sewing once my own little hunny had arrived!

My plan was simple.  The fabrics were great.  I just started cutting pieces in various size rectangles and squares.  Then I started sewing.  I added fabrics randomly until the piece was about the length I wanted for the quilt.  Then I made another section just as large.

Once I had many large quilt length sections I started cutting the sections lengthwise.  Then I would sew these long sections back together in other places.  I also cut the quilt widthwise and sewed those sections back together.  

This sounds confusing!  Anyways, the main idea is to sew big sections and then cut them into smaller sections and sew those all together.

In the end you get a random and modern looking quilt top that took me less than two hours to piece!