Banner Quilt

I have made a few quilts in my years of sewing, but this is by far my favorite.  Decided to research a bit, ask questions of my quilting friends, and do this right.  I am beyond happy with the result!

Last spring I bought these fabrics, just because I really liked them. I'll admit it, I'm a fabric junky.  The base fabrics are Heidi Grace prints from JoAnn's, and the rest coordinate. I wanted to make a baby quilt, but couldn't decide on a pattern.

Spent an hour or so looking on my pinterest quilt board, and chose an isosceles triangle design. See the third print from the left? It was a no brainer.  The pin linked to a blog post that was a quilt-a-long, so that was really helpful.  She used a triangle quilt template, I improvised with a 30, 60, 90 triangle handed down to me from my dad. He built homes for a living, and drew all his own blue prints. A couple pieces of electrical tape and I can start cutting.

Started cutting an even number of print and white triangles, laid them out and rearranged until I was happy.  I began sewing the triangles together, one row at a time.

I remembered a little travel iron my mom snagged for me at a garage sale. Set my sleeve board next to my machine, and I pressed each seam as I went.  

Once all the rows were stitched, I matched seams and sewed the rows together. Starting to look really good!

Time to lay out my quilt sandwich. I did it on carpet and tacked the back with pins to keep it nice and taught, then laid my warm & white batting, then the quilt top.  

This is the only picture I took of this process. This is the back, face down, pinned to the carpet.  After the layers were safety pinned together, I took these straight pins out and started quilting, 1/4" on each side of each seam. 

I used my walking foot, and if you have one, I would highly recommend it. The top foot feeds your fabric along with the feed dogs below, keeping your layers moving evenly. 

Forgot to take any pictures of the binding process, but used the method most of the directions suggested. Machine stitched to the top, and hand stitched to the back.  The angled edges proved a little challenging, but after a couple tries I got the hang of it.

Couldn't wait to wash it, and give it that crinkly, cotton batting quilt look. I wasn't disappointed.

The backing fabric is flannel, making it even more snuggly!

After washing it I remembered I wanted to sew a quilt label on.

Printed on a piece of fabric, sewed a little banner on, and hand stitched it to the back. 

A couple more pictures, just because.

Quilting might be my new favorite thing. Problem is parting with it when I'm done. Not sure about this one, I may have to hang onto it. The colors and pattern are really my favorites. 

Here is the link to the isoceles quilt along, if you'd like to try one.

Mommy by Day Crafter by Night isosceles-triangle-quilt-along

Thanks for stopping by!

Karilyn

Two Dollar Chair

Well, here it is.

 We were heading out to dinner one evening, and happened on an almost over garage sale. My husband and I jumped out, (against our children's wishes), and took a look. We saw this chair, and  I think it was marked down from $10 to $5. My husband and I looked at it, and the woman came up to us and said we could have it for $2. SOLD! Now, it looked pretty rough, but we could see it's potential.

The fabric was, as you can see, really worn out, and the arms were beyond filthy. I ripped the trim and nails from around the arms, to get rid of some of the yuck. 

Then I draped a blanket over it and there it sat, just like that for well over a year. Funny how after awhile you just get used to something, even if you don't like it. I couldn't decide on a fabric or color to recover it, so, it waited.

Then, when I put the chevron fabric on my wing back chair, I was inspired to finally do something with this chair. So, we un-upholstered it. It is the not fun part of upholstery, but not only to you get the yucky fabric off, you get patterns for your new pieces. 

You start at the bottom, taking it off piece by piece, and take a lot of pictures and remember the order that they came off. They will go back on in reverse order. This chair had 2 layers of cotton and horse hair on the seat, which I replaced with foam and dacron batting. It also had a major spring issue too, which required retying and new metal straps. Lucky I have an amazingly handy hubby, who loves to do that part for me.

This is what the bottom looked like after we took the black fabric cover off.

This is what it looked like after we took the straps and burlap off. It needed some major work. It was kind of wobbly too, and after removing the fabric and batting, we found the frame had a crack along the top. Again my hubby glued and screwed all the joints to make it sturdy again. 

After all that, we were ready to start putting it back together. I had found a fabric at Hobby Lobby that I liked, but it was a little pricey. That's probably why it sat for so long. But, with the 40% coupon, I decided it was my choice. I laid out all my removed pieces, figured yardage and went and bought fabric, gimp, foam, batting, staples and nail head trim. After I got the fabric home and started upholstering, I really fell in love with it. It's the coolest piece I have ever done.

It makes me happy every time I look at it!

The design on the fabric is shiny silver metallic. If you look in the cabinet to the right of the chair, the candlesticks are mercury glass I found at a garage sale last year. Perfect!

After

Before

It had great lines and the wood was in great shape, so it was worth the effort. I first just had gimp glued over the staples, but the nail trim really made it. 

One more shot of my new favorite!

Wing back Chair Before, After and After

Well, I'm going to try this blogging thing again.  New year, fresh layout. Also, new year, time to finish up those projects I started or purchased perhaps years ago with great ambition, but somehow they fell beside the way. I'm going to do my best to finish what I have started.

First off, I have a wing back chair I had made years ago. At the time all my living room furniture was a light pine finish. So... I wanted a chair with legs that matched, and at the time all I could find was dark stained legs. This was before craigs list and such, and I didn't have the common sense to buy a used chair and refinish the legs.  Duh, what was I thinking. Anywho, I had a chair made, finished the legs, and then had an upholsterer cover it with a lovely, (at the time!) navy, pink and green plaid.  I loved it, but some 20 years later, not so much.

So last fall I stained the legs a dark walnut, but it still wasn't working for me. Then the hubby and I recovered it in a green fabric to match our now living room colors. (Notice the before piano in a nice shade of aged orangeish pine!)

We lived with it like this for a year, and it was a definite improvement, but not really doing it for me. I wasn't really planning on ever upholstering  it again, as the front of those curved arms were a big pain. I figured I'd  

rather just sell it and start over with something else. 

But by chance I was at the fabric store one day looking for a gray chevron for a friend who wanted to recover a rocker for a baby room. Well... I found the most amazing chevron canvas prints, and they had one in green. I had to get a couple yards, just cuz I loved it.  It lay on the back of the couch for a couple weeks while I decided if I wanted pillows out of it. Then I got the bright idea of just recovering the cushion and back of the green wing back chair. Now, the greens don't match exactly, but I'm in love. Take a look!

 

I figured as long as I had to take the back off to recover the seat back, I might as well put the chevron on the back.  So now it looks cute from behind too!

Just one more picture, and then I have to get to my next project. Another chair we picked up at the end of a garage sale for $2.  It said $10, crossed off to $5, and when we looked interested the woman said we could have it for $2! Can't pass that up. Right now it's in pieces with springs hanging out of the bottom!

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

Scrappy Brown Quilt

Wow, time sure flies!  I planned to blog at least once a week, or perhaps more, but the weeks go by without stopping to tell me.  Anyway, it's been a week and a half, and I need to get posting.  Last year, when I discovered the wonderful, addicting Pinterest, I starting pinning way more projects that I could probably do in a lifetime.  But, when I need inspiration, it's so fun to go back to my boards and find a project.  Some of the ideas just stick in my head, and won't go away until I try them.  Some are successes, some epic fails!

I have a friend I follow on Pinterest, who pins tons of quilting ideas.  Now, I sew constantly, but quilting has never been my cup of tea.  I have made a couple of quilts for my daughters bed, but that's about it.  One of her pins was for a Raw Edge Layer Cake Quilt, that looked so simple and quick, I was dying to try it.

So off I went to Hobby Lobby to buy and cut my own cake layers.

Here they are all washed, pressed and cut into 10" squares.  I decided to make a crib size quilt. (to sell, I won't be needing anymore crib size quilts!)  I cut 30 squares, 5 across by 6 down, and 30 of the polka dot fabric for the back.  I have a zig zag blade for my rotary cutter, so I used that.  

Then I cut 30 9" squares of fusible quilt batting.  The idea is to fuse the quilt layers together, quilt each square, and then sew the squares together.  I wasn't too impressed with the fusible batting.  It only stuck on one side, and by the time I was done pressing it, it was pretty flat.  It fluffed up again after washing, but I'll try something different when this package is gone.  

After this step, the squares went to my mom, who loves hand sewing.  She just moved to a retirement community where the ladies meet every other week to visit and sew.  So I thought I would supply her with a project to bring!  We decided to sew 2 squares in the center of each block, a 6" and a 3" inside it.  It only took her a couple of weeks to get it done.

I then laid the squares out on the floor in a pattern I liked, and started sewing the blocks together into rows, and then the rows together.

You stitch the pieces together with the seam allowance exposed on top.  Check out the tutorial here for much better directions. It went really quick!

I followed quilt binding instructions here. It worked really well.  I machined stitched it to the front, pressed it around to the back and then sent it home with mom to hand stitch it to the back.  She finished the binding, and then snipped the seam allowances every 1/2" or so.  Then all that's left to do is throw it in the wash a few times to "rag" it up.

It turned out so cool.  I love it!

If anyone is in the market for a crib quilt, let me know.  I have one for sale!!

Singed Satin Flowers

Here's a simple one for you today.  Singed satin or organza flowers.  These are really popular for crafters, but in case you haven't seen them, I thought I'd share a how to today.  I used scraps I had left from other projects to start, then went and bought 1/2 yards of some pretty colors. Any shiny fabric will work, as long as it is man made.  The polyester (which I think is some form of plastic!) will melt and create the cool edges.  

You need fabric, scissors and a candle. 

Then you need to cut out a set of concentric circles.  I have 5 sizes, you can do as many as you like.  I use the smallest 3 or 4 to make a smaller rose.  Just find some round things around the house, and trace them on your fabric, or make templates if you plan to make a few.  I use a disappearing quilt marker, but a pencil will be fine, as it will get melted away anyway.

Now just take a circle and carefully hold it over an open flame.  Be careful, if you get it too close it just shrivels.  You have to experiment a bit, but soon you'll see it melt and curl and look like the edge of a petal. 

                          

Do all your circles the same way, and then stack them in order.  I usually take a few stitches in the middle to hold them, but you can glue them too.

 Now you can finish the center with anything you like.  Try some different beads, buttons, or whatever looks cute.  I usually spread a little E6000 glue in the center with a toothpick and sprinkle some seed beads in it.  I've also seen single pearl beads that are pretty.  

Then I had a happy accident.  I cut one too many green circles, so I thought I'd try to make a couple leaves.  I added them to the back of my small roses, and they turned out way cute.  Sometimes my best ideas come out of mistakes!!

Then I hot glue a hair clip or pin to it.  This batch I did all as hair clips.  I wrap the top half with ribbon and then glue a small piece of non stick shelf liner to it to keep it in fine hair.

So, there you go.  A craft that can be done with no sewing.  Just watch your fingers near that flame.  

All ready for Etsy or Aunt Candy's.