Project: Girl Dress and Leggings

Well, she most definitely has her own taste and style. We were visiting my sister in the LA area and decided to visit the fashion district with all its fabrics. We went to Michael Levine, were you could buy fabric for $2.50 per pound! Amazing, right? Too good to pass up. Well, Penny found a fabric that she attached herself to. It helped that I had already bought a knit only pattern for tops and pants (leggings) and I knew how much fabric I needed. She set her eyes on this fabric and no matter how much I tried she would not let it go:

 

You'll get a better view as I show you how I laid the pattern pieces out. I had to figure out the size for the pattern to cut- The only issue being is trying to figure out how much to add for any growth spurts that may happen and length for the dress. You see, Penny's size is between a 3 and 4 in this pattern for all the measurements EXCEPT length (so that the dress will come to at least her knee). That's where I have to make it a size 5 for length. I cut the pattern to size 4 (with the exception of length on the top where I cut to size 5).

We're going for the top right dress and the pink leggings (I didn't want to add the little string things out the pants at the bottom). (Letter "E" on the pattern)

So, I had to cut the bottom of the dress 4 times in the fabric (to make 8 total to go around the dress- although in the finished product I only used six route that would've been too wide). I still have a little of the fabric left over :) I have no idea why she was so drawn to this Hawaiian print so much but she would not let me leave the store without it. The pattern was pretty simple to follow.

Here are some photos of the progress/stages:

putting the neck band in:

Sewing the collar down:

Collar all done!:

Sporting the top (before sleeve and flounce):

So happy there's progress being made:

Sleeves on!:

Flounce on:

She wanted a sitting picture:

The next day, she wouldn't take it off:

Leggings- the two legs sewn together:

Picking where to hem it (she decided she wanted shorts instead of pants):

All done:

Posing:

All in all, not too hard or bad. Although I had access to a serger, the only part that got serged was the neck line before I top stitched it down. This is one happy girl!

Project: Baby Boy Quilt, Blast From the Past

Remember this quilt? From way back in August? 

It's back.... Time to mini-me it up for a cool friend having a baby boy.

Here is the color pallet she chose (beautiful, right?). 

This is the first time I've worked with this many solids.

I had to measure multiple times to get everything lined up well but it was worth it (using scrapes to try and try again). Here they are, ready to be sewn together:

Chain piece sewing was my best friend in this whole experience. First, you take the small squares and sew a small white piece in between and then add the sashing in the middle to make that piece of the block. 

Then you sew a sashing piece to the medium block, 

and then a long sashing piece to the biggest block piece.

Then comes the layout. I kind of just picked at random. You can see the sashing in between each "block" not in yet but I spaced them out so I could visualize them.

I then sewed the blocks together into rows. 

And then the rows together into a quilt top.

And then finally the last outside border. Now, usually, you press as you go but I was trying to pound this quilt out fast so I just laid the seams to the dark side (because you really don't want to see them under the white). Then, I pressed them all out before I added the outside border.

Here are the auditions for the backing fabric.

And here is what I ended up with:

Next, it was time to baste this bad boy up:

I had a little bit of a hard time decided if I should do an all over pattern on this quilt OR if I should just do a simple design and just outline the squares/blocks. Finally decided on just outlining each square/rectangle. I think it went pretty well:

(*Before the wash, front view)

(*Before the wash, back view):

Front view (washed):

Back view (washed):

Best photo op ever:

Love it!!!

Finished size is ~ 32"x 42". 

It's amazing what you can do when you have your mind set to do it. Believe it or not, but I had only some pieces cut on a Thursday, finished cutting and started piecing on Friday (night), and laid it out and sewed the whole thing plus quilting and binding it on Saturday... Amazing, I think. 

This is a lovely quilt. 

I was sad not to be able to go to her baby shower but 

I wanted to give this to her before I went on holiday.

She LOVED IT :)

Project: K's Baby Boy Quilt

I have had the chance to get to know an amazing woman who is about to embark into motherhood for the first time. It's fun to see how a first time parent acts (mostly because I've forgotten what it was like). She is blessed to be having a baby boy towards the end of June. There was no way I could let this chance pass by to make another quilt. This mom-to-be has gone to the fabric store with me before (so I could help her get fabric for a rag quilt) and she said herself that she's a little indecisive when it comes to fabrics and things like that (which is perfectly fine- I have my days too where I don't know what I want to do or what fabrics to pick). I was fortunate to come across this beautiful charm pack on the Missouri Star Quilt Company's daily deal and I couldn't pass it up (they were practically giving it away… What was I to do?). Here's the pallet:

How beautiful is this? She described her color pallet of choice would be warm pastels. I thought this fit the bill quite nicely. Then, it was on to choosing a pattern to make these into. She narrowed it down to three for me to pick from and so I ended up picking this one:

Try to look past the cute little baby on this quilt..

I sketched this out (not knowing what size the finished blocks would be off the top of my head). It ended up being 5 blocks by 5 blocks. Using the 5" squares from the charm pack, you need 3 squares of each color for one block and 25 5"squares to become the half square triangles. In the end, the half square triangles became 4.5" blocks. I trimmed up the 2 5" squares of each color to 4.5" to line up with the finished half square triangle blocks.

But first, the half square triangles: I drew a line down the center of one block and then you sew 1/4" on each side of the center line and then cut on the line to make 2 half square triangles from one block. 

I then sewed the 4.5" square next to it. It really helps to lay out the block to make sure you're sewing the correct sides together. I then put the whole block together, which is basically a four patch, with two of the squares being half square triangles. Once the block were made, I had the joy of laying out all the blocks to figure out how they should go. I decided on dark (brown) and then light (blue/green) and switch line a checkered pattern. It took me quite a while to make sure there weren't too many florals in a row. This is what we finally came up with (between Penny, Chris, and a couple friends):

I then sewed the blocks into rows and then the rows together (putting the first two rows together then the third and fourth together, sewing those two together and then the fifth row at the end *I hope that made sense*).

Here it is all completed. 

* Small note of making sure you are pressing your 

seams to one side so they come together beautifully.*

I ended up picking this for the backing (sorry the lighting is off):

All basted together:

I chose quilting around the inside outline of the dark colors and then adding in a special. I was thinking, what could I possible add in the middle of these blocks because it seems like some wasted space:

My creative juices started to flow and I had narrowed it down to teddy bears/stars/duckies or cars/planes/trucks. I asked a mutual friend which she thought (so I could make this a surprise) and she picked the cars/trucks/planes. As I was thinking of these "stencil ideas" and googling all I could for images, it occurred to me that I had bought a 100+ cookie cutter set (that some of the cutters are MASSIVE) and found these:

It worked out that there were 5 for the "trucks, cars, plane" cookie cutters so I laid them out and started marking up the quilt:

It went fairly quick to trace them on. Then, the fun began- the quilting!! Here's a view of just one of the squared fully done: (it's a train)

After all the quilting was done, the harder part started- picking a binding fabric. It's fun to pick the fabrics, don't get me wrong but I usually need some input. I already knew I wanted to do a darker kind of fabric for the binding so here were my choices:

I ended up going with the middle greenish one.

Binding before Chris got home from work:

All done and washed (front view):

Back view (again, bad lighting):

Up close back:

 Close up front view:

In the box, ready to go:

The final dimensions ended up being ~ 40"x 40".  Ironically, she won't be getting this quilt until her baby shower BUT she's not on Facebook so I can show off the finished work without ruining her surprise! And on to the next one...