No Excuses

I have been terribly neglectful of this site.  I have no good excuse for this.  Could be cause no one else ever sees this but me!  But I am here, now, to finally update this to the current time.  I am not big on News Years resolutions, or I would say I will resolve to keep this site fairly current.  I do enjoy reading other peoples blogs, so maybe someone will enjoy my projects.  I gain inspiration from others, and maybe some of my creations will inspire others.  I have been making gifts- from baby shower to Christmas presents.  I will show you what I have done.  I hope I took pictures of everything before I gave them away!
So here goes...


I am going to be a  "Great-Aunt"  again

My nephew and his wife are expecting their first child.  The baby shower was right before Christmas.  My nephew is a very good soccer player and his wife is quite the runner.  Using an athletic theme, I made a quilt.  Now I am not an experienced quilter.  I know the basics, so that is what I used.  Squares.  No fancy shapes.  But the embroidered sports kids from designsbysick.com make up for it, at least I think so!  We do not know if the baby is a boy or a girl so there is both. 

I drew it out on graph paper first. 
When I started sewing it together,
it grew!  Each square was 6" finished size, so it ended up being about
44" wide and 56" long with the binding.  
The binding was the blue tie-dyed fleece folded over the front from the back.

 There is a layer of batting in between also.  The polka dot fabric is a cotton blend to go with the primary colored squares.  To do the actual "quilting" I stitched around the embroidered squares using a variegated pearl cotton in the bobbin to add a little interest to the blue backing. 

It turned out bigger than a normal baby blanket, but I liked it. 

So did the new mama-to-be.

Baby Blanket #2

I could not resist this monkey print fleece.  It's so happy, and oh so soft.  I made this one regular baby blanket size, and got to use the little ribbon loops around the edge. I think they are so cute and baby likes to play with them.  I left them off of the upper edge so they would not tickle baby's little face!  I turned the outside edge of the fleece up and encased the raw edge in 3/4" yellow ribbon.  The tan and brown ribbon loops are secured with the stitching holding the yellow ribbon on.  Oh so easy! 

The yellow and brown is a perfect color choice for the coming baby.

 Boy or Girl!

On to Christmas Presents

I have 6 children on my Christmas gift list.  I decided to make personalized tote/book bags.  It was alot of fun deciding on fabric & color combinations, and which designs to embroider on them.  Each one was chosen with that child in mind.  So here they are:

A Song for a 14 year old

I was extremely happy with this one.  I wasn't sure of her current hobbies, but I figured music was always in.  And I just loved this embroidery design.  I found it at http://www.secretsof.com/kreationsbykara . Go check out her designs; they are wonderful.

I used black fabric, so I changed the design's colors.  It originally had black music-hair, so I changed it to white and altered the other colors so they stood out on the black.  The handle of the mask is silver.  It was fun to see it stitching out.  I guessed on some colors- but I really like the way it turned out.  

This sheet music print fabric that I used for the 

lining was  a perfect match and tied it all together.

The bag was stabilized  with iron on craft interfacing.  

I squared off the bottom corners so it would stand up.

A self fabric strap handle completes the construction

I chose this blue and red monogram to personalize this one. 

So - What do you think?