Twin Girl I Spy Quilts

I made these two I Spy quilts for my infant twin great nieces earlier this summer, but forgot to take photos of the finished items before gifting them. I like to keep photos of the quilts I make, so even though these photos are far from great, they are all I have to record by posting here.

It drives me nuts when people dress twins identically. They are each unique people, and should be treated as such. So I made their quilts similar but not identical. I used different fabrics for the pink sashing; one quilt has a solid and the other a patterned pink. The backings are two different green fabrics, and the I Spy fabrics are put together in different orders. I wanted them to be similar so that in addition to playing "I Spy", the girls can also play the "match game" with their quilts by finding the matching squares on each of their quilts if they want.

I originally planned to make one pink and one purple, but my own twin daughters said they each would have wanted pink, so using 2 different pink fabrics was the better way to go.

I machine quilted them using stippling.

Sleep Masks

     I am always interested in ideas to improve my sleep. I have no trouble falling asleep; my problem is staying asleep. I tend to wake up numerous times each night or else I wake up at 3:00 a.m. and can't go back to sleep. I have discovered that using a sleep mask improves the amount of sleep I get. We were meant to sleep in darkness, but in today's world we never have it. There are street lights outdoors that cast their light through our windows. Indoors we have alarm clocks and electronics throughout the house that give off light. So it is never truly dark. This project helps solve that problem, and is a great way to use up scraps.

     I cut rectangles and mask shapes out of scrap fabrics, sewed two layers, right sides together, left a small section unsewn for turning, turned right side out and top stitched all the way around to hold the layers together and close the opening. I used 1/4" elastic for the band, sewn into the seam. I have seen fancy versions done with matching fabric used to create a sleeve for the elastic. Cute, but that makes it too bulky and uncomfortable to wear. I used 2 layers of  100% cotton, dark colored fabric, with no batting in between. I want the mask to breathe. On the dark brown one I used a layer of super soft cotton flannel on the back side (the one with the teddy bear hugging a pillow)- the dark side blocks the light and the flannel side feels nice against the skin. I'm hoping to sleep like a baby tonight!

Quilts for Kids

     I finished my last quilt of the summer today, washed it and packed it up for shipping off to the local chapter of Quilts for Kids. It's a smaller I Spy made with the leftovers from my son's quilt, I had cut extra pieces planning to make this. I threw it over another quilt which is hanging in my living room and tucked it in to make it stay for the photo, which makes it appear somewhat distorted, but in reality it isn't.

    It's always a great feeling to finish a quilt, but this one was bittersweet since it will be a long time till I get to make another with school starting next week!

I Spy Quilt



    I spy with my little eye....... This quilt was fun to make, it's a twin size I Spy quilt for my son. It has all his favorite things from bowling and spongebob to pizza and strawberries, and lots of yellow! I free-motion quilted it on my machine with a meandering pattern. I've been collecting I spy fabrics for some time, and got a charm pack on ebay to top it off. I had enough squares left over to make an I Spy quilt to donate to Quilts for Kids, which I'm working on now. I only have one week of summer vacation left to finish it and then I go back to school, so it will be the last quilt I do for a while.

     I don't think I can go a whole semester without doing something creative if I wish to keep my sanity so I precut some pieces for a scrappy star quilt, I have a Take Five quilt that I'm in the process of hand-quilting and blocks for a crazy quilt that I'm hand embroidering and embellishing. Cutting is the part of quilting I least like; it's so boring and time-consuming, so having some precut pieces will allow me to do a little piecing from time to time. I have projects in each stage of completion along with a cable sweater to knit on so I should be able to squeeze in a bit of creative fix when the stress gets too high.
    
    

Baby Quilt

     Wow, I can't believe it has been so long since I posted here! I made this baby quilt for my nephew's daughter, my first great niece, back at spring break.  I used a rough approximation of the rectangle squared quilt pattern found here: http://www.filminthefridge.com/2010/10/20/rectangle-squared-a-quilt-block-tutorial/ . It was a fun easy quilt to make. I machine quilted meandering and a few large butterflies into it, but couldn't get the colors to show true in any of my photos.

Quick Weekend Bag

     I needed a bag with some pockets for school and while I have a large reuseable bag collection, as I mentioned once on my other blog, none of them had pockets. I never leave home without either my water or my reuseable drink bottle filled with herbal tea, and my water bottle leaked onto one of my school books when I didn't realize the cap wasn't all the way tightened.

    I solved that problem by using some leftover blocks from the turquoise quilt in my header and some fabric from my stash. I quickly put this bag together on the weekend and it has a bottle pocket for my water or tea, a pocket for my pens, pencils, highlighter, and flash drive. I squared off the bottom and lined it, it stands up perfectly and now I'm set for school. 

 Here's the other side-

I am trying to keep little projects going as often as possible, I feel so much better when I do something creative!

Organizing Scraps And Stash

     When I'm sewing I throw all of my scraps into the basket above. It became an unusable hodgepodge which sat there until it was overflowing. The pieces are all sizes and shapes, so they just sit there gathering dust. I decided it was time to get them organized, so I spent a few hours over break cutting them into uniform, usuable sizes that I will use and sorting them out. Here are the results:

 

I now have labeled boxes containing 2" squares, 5" squares, 1 1/2" strips, 2" strips and 3" strips. These are the sizes that I use most, now all ready to go. My scrap collection is tiny compared to most that I've seen online, but now it's usable. And with time at a premium, I may still be able to squeeze in some small projects during the semester by using my precut scraps.

 I am trying to build up my 1 1/2" scraps in order to do a scrappy log cabin later this year. I need to go through my fat quarters and cut them into strips for this when I get a chance. 

I also organized the rest of my stash while on break. I recieved a gift of money from my parents for Christmas which I used to buy this awesome cabinet-and it was on clearance too!,  for my fabric at Ikea.

Again, my stash is tiny compared to most I've seen, but I love having it out of the plastic storage tubs it was in, and behind glass. I can see exactly what I've got and it  still stays clean. Who else wants to show off their stash?