Well, after a beautiful day yesterday, we are back to rain and thunderstorms here today. Sigh. But the trees are beginning to bud, and my rose bushes have leaves coming out (eek---I haven't cut them back yet!). So, that is something!
I finished my little mini quilt that Amanda Herring, The Quilted Fish requested, using her new fabric line, Madhuri. This will be going to market, so I can't show it yet. Sorry! Here's a little sneak peek, though! There are some really great solids that go with these fabrics. I love the green and blue solids in this line. I used them for the binding. Aren't they terrific?
I'm pretty mad, though. I worked really hard on this...there is some embroidery on it. And my red DMC floss ran onto the white fabric! I tried getting it out, but so far, to no avail. I am heart sick over it.
The good news...NONE of the fabric dyes ran, including the intense reds. So, there you have it. That speaks to the quality of the fabrics and dyes Riley Blake uses.
I am not happy with DMC right now. Sorry. But the threads should be more colorfast than that!
I so love all the prints in this line, too. I love the diamond fabric, with all its great colors. And the elephants....well, they just screamed for fussy cutting and being lined up. :-) Here's a sneak peek at the back of my little mini quilt. I love the back possibly more than the front.
Although I won't be able to go to Market this year, at least my little quilt might get to go--maybe. I told Amanda if the red dye running was bad enough that she didn't want to hang the quilt, I would totally understand. I wouldn't what shoddy work to be hanging in her booth at Market.
Can you say, "Bummer?!"
On a happier note, if you want to see more of this fabric line, go check out Riley Blake's Coming Soon page. You can get a peek at it there. There are laminates coming, too. How about a fun bikini bag out of some of these laminates?! Too cute!
What does that name bring to mind for you? Not sure? Try doing a google images search and see what you find.....
Did you find something like this? Something with an Eastern Indian flair? This is The Quilted Fish's (Amanda Herring's) new fabric line from Riley Blake. It's called Madhuri. Isn't it fabulous??? I love it! I just love the elephant fabric, and how about that circle design here? Oh, my gosh. I'm excited to work with this stuff! (Sorry for the wrinkles. I haven't had time to iron it yet.)
Here are some more fabrics from the line. Can you see the selvages on that elephant fabric? The color dots are little elephants! Too cute. I might have to get some yardage just to have the selvages. (I'm not joking.) I also love the diamond fabric. The red floral is very in keeping with Amanda's style. The color scheme is similar to, but a little different from, her previous fabric lines. I like that. I can mix up all her fabric lines for a really scrappy looking quilt.
Here is some more fabric in the line. You can see there are some nice coordinating solids in the line, too. Green, red, (you can see a little shot of) white, and that pretty turquoise in the top photo.
Amanda has given the design team members a challenge for Market. I think I have a pretty good idea of what I want to do. What would you do if you were gifted some scraps of this fabric? :-)
Oh! I almost forgot to tell you! Amanda is selling her patterns for 30% off! You can see the patterns here: http://www.thequiltedfishpatterns.com/shop/Patterns-.htm Hop on over and use the code in the graphic above to get your discount!
I probably won't be able to go to Market this year (boo hoo!). I just don't know how I could get away right now, with everything else going on.
It has been raining here for 6 days straight now. I'm getting a little tired of the dreariness, seeing as we've been suffering it since October. The sun is still out there, isn't it? You've seen it, haven't you?
I am not complaining about the rain. We need it badly. I'd like our lake to come back! (There is more water in it now!) But a little sunshine here and there would be nice. Okay, I'll put away the world's tiniest violin now and quit whining. :-)
Have a wonderful weekend! Any fun plans? I have a sew day with Caroll on Saturday! Can't wait!
When Amanda Herring, The Quilted Fish, sent me my Flutter fabric to play with, you might remember she sent me a rolie polie (like a jelly roll) of 2.5" strips. (See my post about the fabric here...I am still hoarding the layer cake!) I wasn't sure what I'd use it for, but I thought about making some Christmas presents for one or both of Sweet Pea's Brownie leaders. I ended up making this little bag out of nine 2.5" strips.
(Sorry my photos are so dark. Seems like the only time I can find to take the photos is at night or early in the morning....and it's always dark! Not the best lighting for photography!)
It's kind of cute, I think. For this bag, I decided to pull nine blue strips of fabric, rather than making a multi-colored bag. I thought it would be fun to have a blue bag. I like it. I think it would be fun to do it again with lots of different colored strips. I like that you only need 9 strips in order to complete this entire bag. However, the size of the bag is a little awkward. I'm not quite sure how functional it is. It finishes at 8.5" x 10.25" x 3.5". It's really a "gift tote." I'm nost sure what you would use it for after you've used it as a gift tote.
I found the pattern in this magazine. You can see their sample in the upper right-hand corner. I thought it would be fun to sew a little bag and then put some goodies in it for the gift. As you can see, it's called the 3-hour Gift Tote. I think that's about right. It probably took me around 3 hours to make this. Maybe a little longer with the quilting.
The inside of the bag looks like this. It's fully finished...no raw edges show. That's because you do some French seams on the side. You can't really tell from this photo, but on the left-hand seam, I had some raw edges peeking out. I didn't catch them far enough in the seam. Dang it! And I was afraid to rip the stitches out for fear I'd get a hole. So I left it. My workmanship was less than ideal on this. But since it's a gift bag, I let it go. (Besides, I didn't have the time or inclination to make this bag again. It wasn't a bad pattern. I just didn't like the bag enough to make more at this time.)
Do you ever have days when you're sewing, and you just want to get it done? It's not about enjoying the process on those days. I was having one of those days when I made this. I just wanted to get it done, and I think my workmanship suffered as a result. I don't like sewing like that.
It was a good opportunity to practice my machine quilting, though. It was a small, nonthreatening piece on which I could practice. I used my gray Aurifil thread. I thought I did "okay" on my quilting. My stitches aren't all that even, and I think I quilted it too heavily. I have a tendency to do that. I feel like I have a "heavy hand" when it comes to quilting. It's not always good. I think this was one of those times. :-)
This is the back of the bag. You can tell, because you can see the join on my binding, and you can see where I overlapped the ruffle a bit. It's a nice, clean finish. The pattern had you drawing up a gathering stitch to make the ruffle. Since I've been playing with my ruffler foot, I used that to make the ruffle. I thought the ruffle turned out really nice and neat. I tell you, I am in love with my ruffler foot!
I love pistachio nuts. Our grocery store sells them at the holidays in these nice, canvas bags, all tied up in a nice ribbon. They make such nice gifts. And I thought one was just the right size to fit in the bag.
Yep. Just the right size! Now, I wish I had had the time and energy to pretty it up even further with some tissue paper and all, but to be honest, it was all I could do to get Sweet Pea out the door with this as she headed to her Brownie meeting on Monday night! She gave it to one of the leaders, thanked her for being her leader, and wished her a merry Christmas. The Brownie leader took the pistachios and apparently left the bag. I think she didn't realize it was part of the gift. The other leader is going to take it to her. I hope it's not that she didn't like it!
The other Brownie leader is a quilter and really likes Flutter. So, she got some fabric. She gets to make her own goodies from it. :-)
I so appreciate Sweet Pea's Brownie leaders. Sweet Pea loves Brownies, and without these two gals, who were willing to take on the troop, the girls wouldn't get to enjoy it. I admire people who are willing to take on 9 or 10 little 8- and 9-year-old girls a couple times a month! (At least one of them works full-time, too. Wow. I simply couldn't do it.) So, I really wanted to express my appreciation to them. I hope they enjoyed their gifts.
Next time, I'll be back with some more links to the rest of the projects in our Emag. I'll tell you a little about one of my projects. And as soon as I have time, I'll show you how I did the other project in the Emag (i.e., the one that's not featured on The Quilted Fish blog).
Are you ready for Christmas yet? I'm not! I'm really rushing around this week. I have to have all my grades in (all but one class is pretty much done!) and be ready to travel (oh, man, I have some shopping and all my packing to do!) by the end of the week. My deadlines for everything are Friday. So, I may be "here" only sporadically this week and next. But I'm very excited to get to see SisLH and the rest of my inlaws this weekend and then my side of the family after that.
Hope your preparations are all coming along smoothly!
Some of you were asking about tutorials for the projects in the Flutter Emagazine that I blogged about a little while back.
If you head on over to The Quilted Fish blog post today, you'll find free downloadable patterns and tutorials for these three projects. More will be coming soon!
(I know some things on my blog are off kilter a little bit. I am working on fixing it. Sorry!)
We have 10 very nice and helpful work-study students who work in our offices at the university. They are so helpful all the time. I wanted to do a little something for them for Christmas this year. So, I made these cute little earbud pouches for them. I like them. They are cute and practical. I want one now!
There's a little surprise inside each one. I made the lining out of different fabric from the outside for a little fun.
This one here is one of my favorites. :-)
I used matching zippers for the most part. Sometimes I went wild and crazy and used a contrasting zipper, like on this one.
I wanted all of them to be different. I didn't have the full set of Flutter fabric, and I didn't have enough different pieces to make all the pouches different. So, I made a couple out of my Delighted scraps. I went really wild on this one on the right by fussy cutting the fabric.
Cute, huh? Sweet Pea said this one was her favorite.
Each one only took me 30 minutes to make, from cutting the fabric out to completely finished. Yippee! I think it's a great product for only 30 minutes of sewing. I'm going to make five more for nieces and nephews for Christmas. I have some cute, but completely different, fabrics picked out for those. And of course Sweet Pea wants one now, too. I'll tuck some spending money inside of them and mail them off. It will be inexpensive to mail, too. Nice!
There is a free tutorial for making these. It is by Erin Erickson at Dog Under My Desk blog. She also has a pattern you can purchase from her pattern shop. I purchased the pattern, so my review will be based on the pattern I purchased. I wanted to provide support for all her great work.
I think I first saw this on my friend Lynn's blog. You can read her review of the pattern here. She used the tutorial, not the purchased pattern. So if you want to see how they compare, check out her post on the matter.
The pattern is extremely clear and contains lots of nice photos. Erin offers a lot of great tips in the pattern. As I said, I could sew this up in about 30 minutes. A quick and easy project! It is suited well to beginners. Not difficult at all. Not even the zipper. Don't be scared off by the zipper. It's easy peasy to install. I can recommend this pattern highly! Many thanks for a very nice pattern/tutorial, Erin!
I followed Erin's advice and mounted my pattern pieces on cardstock so they were durable. That worked out really well. I'd recommend doing that. Rather than using the half-circle pattern piece to mark the front pieces for cutting, I used the full circle piece that was used to cut the back. Then, I used the half circle piece to draw the line down the center. That was a quick and easy way to do it. And then the two halves lined up perfectly on the front and looked nice.
I used my little collection of zippers from Zipit. They sell nice bundles of a bunch of different colors of zippers for really reasonable prices. Just out of curiousity, I made one using a Coats and Clarke zipper I also had laying around, just to see if there was a real difference between the zippers. The Zipit zippers were easier to sew across and also zip and unzip more easily. (Nothing wrong with Coats and Clarke, however. They are fine. The others are just a little nicer, I think.) I love all the bright colors and the price, too. It was really fun using stuff in my stash. Made me feel good. But now I just want to order more. haha!
Kathy was asking on her blog the other day for some suggestions for quick and easy gifts. Well, I've got one now for you, Kathy! Hope you're reading this! :-)
On a side note, many of you asked about tutorials for the projects in the Emagazine. The Quilted Fish is going to have them on her blog...at least for some of the projects. I'll let you know when those are posted. For one of mine, I'll post a brief tutorial here. I thought that might make some of you happy to hear that. :-)
Hope you are having a good week. We are in the last week of classes, so it's busy, busy!
Until next time,
Note: I purchased this pattern and the zippers myself to make these earbud pouches. The fabric was provided to me at no cost by The Quilted Fish.
