Finished my June Goals

I am happy to say I finished all of my June goals, previous post can be found here.

My daughters birthday dress, check!

My I love Tammy Bag, check!

And the 3 challenges, I made several finishes for the Le Challenge

The Ellison Lane Modern Mini Quilt Challenge

And Blossom Heart Quilts, Kate Spain Blog Hop Challenge.

Cliff Hanging Terrain Totes.

Check, Check, Check!

Linking to A Lovely Year of Finishes 

and

A Stitch in Time June Finishes Party.

June's Goals and Challenges and a friends giveaway.

I love making goals and really like it when I can incorporate a challenge into it.

First:  Finish my daughter's birthday dress

That's some smocking going on, I am going to write a tutorial for the dress I am making, it is uber cute and super easy to make, about 3 nap times.

Second:
I need to finish my "I love Tammy bag"  I am kind of waiting on some fabric that should have been here over a month ago, hoping it comes here by this Friday, if not I will have to use some other fabrics.  Look for the blog hop so you can enjoy seeing all of the wonderful Tammy bags.  My day is June 17th, oh %$#@ I just looked and my day changed to the 14th, forget about waiting for fabric, I need to start today!

Third:
3 Challenges this month, the mid month "Le Challenge" is anything about MARITIME, got that one covered and almost finished, hint: a birthday suit.

Then there is the Modern Mini Quilt Challenge going on over at Ellison Lane, the due date for that is June 16th.

And another awesome blog hop, happening all month over at Blossom Heart Quilts the "Kate Spain blog hop".   She is having 2 linky parties, if you have previously made something using Kate Spain fabric then there is a mid month linky party or if you would like to make something this month there is a linky and prize party at the end of the month.  Now I don't own any Kate Spain fabric, but I have admired it, so I went out and ordered some Terrain, really cheap!  You can order some too and make something, go to Tipsy Quilters Etsy shop, she is selling Terrain for $4.20 a YARD!

Those are my goals and Challenges for the month of June, Linking to A Lovely Year of Finishes June Goal Setting Party.

If you are still here, there is a giveaway going on over at a friends blog SimpleSew, she entered her to cute quilt into a Pinterest contest, go check it out.

Shirley's use of Umbrella Prints Trimmings, made into a baby quilt.

April Finishes

A very busy month April ended up being.
I did pretty good at working on my goals and even added another one by doing a few stuffies for Hopeful Threads monthly project "Fluff for Foster Care".  I contributed a total of 17 little stuffed items.

2 rainbows

12 owls

and 3 cars

All my own little designs, so not perfect, but kind of cute.
I finished 5 mugrugs for the April Showers blog hop, you can view that post here.
I made my rainbow table topper you can read about it here and here.

Getting used right away.

But I am most proud of finishing my very fist quilt top, a mini version of the Anchors Aweigh quilt using Salt Water fabrics from Tula Pink.

I am hoping to quilt it in May to a blanket that I bought at IKEA, a little scared about that, but I don't have the way or money to buy batting, I think it will work and it will be nice and soft for my kids bed.

Linking to a Lovely Year of Finishes - April
and

April's Goals

Oh Boy, I have a lot lined up for April, so many things to do!
First I will be making several mug rugs for April Showers blog hop with Madame Samm and Erin as our cheerleader over at Sew We Quilt, it starts on April 8th and my day is the 17th (Arthur's Birthday).

Then I don't know if you have been following Sew Lux's charm madness blog hop, but if you make something with charms you can enter it in their linky (ends 4/6) for a prize as a charm madness project.
and I thought that while doing this project I could also link it to Le Challenge, this months inspiration is Geometrics (simple enough, right), it is due April 15.
I want to use these charms, Riley Blake medium dots (I had) and Riley Blake medium chevrons, that I won from Shirley over at SIMPLESEW.

I had actually won a pincushion at her daughter-in-laws blog To Love Handmade and Erica made such a cute dress form pincushion but it was to big to ship, so instead I am going to make my own dress-form pincushion, you can get the instructions and pattern from here.

This is the fabric I chose, another April project.

I am also almost finished with my Anchors Aweigh Quilt top, I just have to do Row 6 (the hardest row).  I am making a smaller version and you can find all of the information on my other blog Travel Thru Greece.

A complete mess, but I hope to finish this by Wednesday.

I want to finish this up so I can get working on the coolest and oh so cute Texas Teardrops Quilt.

Texas Teardrops QAL

Vicki over at the Quilting Lodge Blog is having a QAL and she has fabrics and supplies to go with it.
This is not an April finish, but an April start, I hope to get this finished in time with everyone else and that date is set at the beginning of June, just in time for my birthday and my daughters.
So wish me luck!
Linking to a A Lovely Year of Finishes.

Pantone Challenge - EMERALD

For my March Goal and the Pantone Challenge going on over at asquaredw blog, I made a WIP/hexagon/embroidery holder!  My own personal WHE Holder, Crazy heh! But totally functional and a great asset to my moveable sewing room.

Do you like my Hexagon Turtle, this is the first time I have ever embroidered, I think he turned out pretty cute, my own design.

The outside front and back cover and how I quilted, crazy hexagons and in the seam.

The inside, big pocket on left and 3 small pockets on the right

The little turtle flap on the left pocket holds needles and the pocket holds WIP's

A close up of the embroidery thread holder and 3 pocket sections, the top one can hold 2 1/2 inch fabric squares for 1 inch hexagons, the middle pocket section has different sized pockets and the 2 brown pockets are pen sized (one is holding the sewline fabric glue pen, that I just happened to get in the mail today), the third bottom row of pockets followed the lines of the hexagons from the front of the bag so they are a little less than 2 1/2 inches, perfect for the 2 inch hexagons.

I wanted the wool to be free of thread so I quilted the top part to a piece of muslin and then sewed the bottom pocket to the outside and then used MistyFuse to connect the wool and the front of the bag and tucked it up under the bottom pocket.  Then I put binding all around it to make sure it wouldn't move around.

Here's my WHE bag next to my Reversible Sewing Machine Cover that I made last month.

Statistics:
27 inches by 14 inches.

Green:
Emerald Batik
Kona Olive

Brown (my neutral color):
Re-purposed pants (the pockets had that design that you see in the middle of the bag)
Brown Wool (from the days when I thought I would make my own diaper covers, hah)
Timber Herringbone

Blue (my "other" color):
are 2 Kona blues, I don't know which ones, they just matched the water on my turtle fabric.

Some more pictures:

I hope you enjoyed my Pantone Challenge WHE Project, whehhhh.....

Linking to : Such a Sew and Sew March Finishes
           and A Lovely Year of Finishes March   

March Goal

For my March Goal I will also try to get it done in time for the Emerald Pantone Challenge going on over at a squared w.

So that means March 17 in time for Saint Patricks Day, I am going to make a nice little WIP container/Hexie holder.  I got my inspiration from these 2 blogs, from Quiltscapes and Comfort Stitching, I am looking forward to adding a few more things to my sewing room, yippee.  To go along with my new sewing machine cover that I was so lucky to be one of the winners for the February's A Lovely Year of Finishes, thanks to Shanna and Melissa and one of the shops that is sponsoring Stitches N Giggles.

Getting all of the stuff ready

I got some 2 inch hexagons done today, this will be the front cover

Do I dare try Embroidery, for the first time?

This little spool of Presencia Thread showed up at the door today along with 7 others, this one is in the color Emerald.  I won a gift certificate to Janes Fabrics from Madame Samm over at Sew We Quilt.
Thanks again everyone, lovely, lovely.

February Finish-Reversible Sewing Machine Cover

I LOVE MY FEBRUARY FINISH, this is the first time that I have started a new hobby and have kept the first project for myself, I am calling this my first quilting project, even though it is only a cover for my sewing machine, I did a little bit of stitch in the ditch quilting, yippee!

SO PRETTY!

For my first "quilting" project, not really a quilt but I did make my own binding and I want to share 2 really helpful little things that I found.

1. Making bias tape out of a fat quarter, I made 9 yards!

1 1/8 strips cut from a "tube", get the directions from here (opens in a new window)

2.  A Printable Bias Tape Maker, .5 inch (I did this, but will do the) 1 inch next time.

Pinned the free printable to my new IKEA ironing board

and with my little helper we made 9 yards of .5 inch double fold bias tape!

I used the Missouri Quilt Co. sewing machine binding tutorial, I just skipped the part about how to make binding since I had already done that, but I might try her way sometime soon, because it looked really easy.  She said for fun to have the binding stitch on the front of the quilt done in different type of stitch than the normal straight stitch and I thought what a great idea.  So I picked the J stitch off of my machine, it reminded me of waves (i.e. turtles swimming in water) and I didn't have to worry about it being a perfect straight line, sweet.
Space to put in a close up picture of "the stitch" later when we have sun again.
I love Turtles and I have a whole Pinterest Board filled with turtle ideas.  A wonderful lady named Roxanne sent me a turtle mug rug and some extra fabric, so I just had to make a matching turtle sewing machine cover.  And next month I plan on making a turtle pincushion (you can find it on my pinterest board) and a matching hexagon holder made with, what else, turtles!

A close up shot of the slit I made at the top for the handle and of course the turtles.

It's a Reversible Sewing Machine Cover, showing inside flipped out.

 A totally cool thing about my Cover is that I made it Reversible and used a little bit of Re-purposed material (see next paragraph).  When you flip my cover off you can put it under the machine, because on the back side I have made pockets, 1 for scraps and all of those clipped strings, 2 for my scissors that my kids keep hiding, 3 for my future turtle pin cushion.  I got the idea from Pinterest, where else, Joy at How Joyful has a tutorial although I did mine a little different, of course.

 I was going to use ties with cut out hexagon buttons to hold it but I made the sides so large that it really doesn't need them.  I used some left over brown wool and a pair of brown pants that I ripped a whole in the, well let's just say when I bent over I felt some cool air (I don't know how long I had it there but my husband spotted it as we were walking up the stairs and this was on a day after I had gone to the outdoor market with hundreds of people around) and timber herringbone from Surly Sheep.  I also used 2 different Kona blue colors and I wish I could tell you the names but I bought a whole bunch of blue's at one time and they didn't come labeled, so they are blue.  Also I used Emerald green batik fabric that worked perfectly in matching the sea turtles in the fabric that Roxanne had sent me.

I hope I don't offend anyone in saying this is my first "quilting" project, but oh my I can't wait to see how I do "quilting" on my home machine with a larger project, this one was plenty large for me!

Tell me, if you are still reading, do you love it as much as I do, or am I really turtle crazy?
 
Linking to a Lovely Year of Finishes

February Goal

For February I would like to finish my sewing machine cover, here it is as a Work In Progress (WIP)

Sewing Machine Cover

The Turtle Fabric you may recognize it from an earlier post it was a gift from Roxanne over at Scrapbook-ChickADoodle.
My Sewing machine cover will be reversible with a Sewing Caddy on the back.

Linking up to A Lovely Year of Finishes

January Finish

For a Lovely Year of Finishes, I got my tank top purse done, I know, I know something so small taking so long.  Well even though the tank didn't fit me it was still absolutely huge and after I sewed it, I realized that the arm holes just made it really big, so I had to cut it and resew, so it a little longer than normal, plus the kid (Nik) has been home for 2 weeks now sick.

It was claimed quickly as a the perfect carrier for baby.

The inside pocked, I really need to get a zipper foot for my machine.

Finally Finished

Linking to of course A Lovely Year of Finishes.
I was a little late in getting my first blog post in, so I don't count for any prizes but I still want to be accountable for keeping to my goals.

Working on IT

Okay dokey, so I am working on my re-purposed tank to purse project and all is going good, but I have decided to cut some more of the arm holes off, I had it all sewed and even put in a lining but now I pulled out some of my stitches so I could cut a little of the purse off and make it smaller.  The zipper is in but I really need to find a zipper foot because the stitching looks a little funny. Here's a picture.

Lining and zipper are in.

Linking to a year of finishes mid-month check in.

I need to finish this

Do you remember this post?

Up-Cycle Project

My next project is to take these 2 shirts and make some fun stuff with them.

The red long sleeve shirt is a maternity shirt that I won't be using again so I thought  I would use the collar and buttons along with some material to make Nik a Hawaiian shirt like shown here. (I need to work on this)

Nik modeling the Hawaiian shirt material, I only have 1/2 yard, I think it fits.

 For Kat I will be taking the Victoria Secret shelf bra tank top that never fit and cut out the elastic to make her a tube top t-shirt dress with some of this cute ladybug material below. (Instead I took the left over red fabric from the maternity shirt after cutting out the collar and cuffs and made this adorable ladybug dress for the UR Priceless blog hop)

She loves this material if I let her get into my stash she quickly grabs this one.

I will also use the tank top to make a purse like this women did here (working on the tank top purse now) and for a tank top for Nik (don't think this will work, not much material left).  The rest of the red material from the maternity shirt will be used to make a dress for Kat like the ones shown here and here.   Here are a few more cute pictures of the Kat.

linking up to a year of finishes.

Let's see how both materials look together, lookin good kiddo.