Finish It Up Friday

So happy to have crossed the second, big item off my baby sewing list- crib bumpers!  (And yes, I know the risks). 

I ordered the bumper foam on Amazon and was very happy with it. And also happy I read some reviews- one person mentioned having to trim the bumpers down in order for them to fit her crib and I had to do the same. So glad to have been warned about that before hand vs making all the bumper covers and then realizing they don't fit. Just one more reason to read those Amazon reviews!

The back bumper gave me the most trouble, but it was mostly in my head. With the solid part of the crib back there I couldn't make two separate bumpers with ties in the middle the way I had for the front. Instead I made two bumpers each with a very long tie across the back so I could wrap it around the wood panel and tie it there. That meant sewing the two bumpers into one big one too, and it took a few weeks for me to wrap my head around how to do that and have the seam inside the cover. Thankfully a few 1-2 hour wide-awake-at-2am bouts gave me some time to think and by the time I was ready to sew yesterday I had it all worked out and I'm happy to say it worked perfectly!  My only oopsie was not buying enough fabric, so one of those back bumpers is pieced with three pieces of scraps, but I figure I am the only one who will ever realize it. It is up against the crib rails and the wall, so it won't be seen. 

The baby will come home to this house when she is born, but our lease will end about 2 months later so I am keeping the decorating to a minimum. Once we get our own house there will be a very cute Anthropologie wallpaper on the wall behind her crib- I'm so excited to see my vision (eventually) all come together!

Linking up to Finish it Up Friday over at CrazyMomQuilts. 

Finish It Up Friday

Hi All!  Remember me?  Probably not, seeing as how I seem to disappear from here for weeks (ok, in this case months) at a time.  Oops!  I seem to be favoring Instagram lately, it's just so easy and convenient (@flipflopsandquiltblocks if you want to follow along on my adventures in sewing- and some kitty pics for good measure).  I have been in the sewing room though so I thought I would pop in and share what I have been working on.

With Baby Girl due to make her appearance in less than 10 weeks (eek!!) I figured it was time to get going on her nursery.  I fell in love with a floral wallpaper from Anthropologie so the color scheme for the nursery is based around that- shades of pink and mint green.  And yes, the photo below does not show the wallpaper.  Chances are good that we will only be in this home for a few more months and it is a rental, so there is no way I was wasting Anthro wallpaper here.  It will go in her real room when we get our own, real home.  Nesting did take over the beginning of January though and I had a sudden NEED to build the crib.  So with that came a few sewing projects.

First up on the list of needed items was a crib skirt-

 

I used a solid mint for the main part of the skirt and then a tonal mint printed ruffle peeking out the bottom.

As any good 21st Century sewer, I took to Pinterest before making the crib skirt and found this awesome idea of how to attach it to the crib-

 

Ribbon!  Meaning that when I lower the mattress as Baby Girl grows, I can just adjust the crib skirt instead of having it puddle on the ground or having to make a new one.

The sides of the crib turned out to be a little trickier than the front-

 

Though it may be hard to see in the photo, there is a bar that attaches to the side of the crib to support the mattress, so that messed with my plans on how to attach the skirt to the crib- I couldn't put a tie there as the bar was in the way.  And if I tied something to the bar, it might work now but it wouldn't when I lower the mattress.  Sure, I could have left it as it was, let's face it, I would probably have been the only one to notice the gap... but my OCD tendencies would not let me leave well enough alone like that.

 

Instead I attached a piece of velcro to the bar (as seen in the previous photo) and then made a small, 3" wide panel and attached it to the bar.  And yes, I even made a little ruffle to go on that piece :)  And by "that piece" I mean "those four pieces" as each short side of the crib had two bars that I had to do this to.  Yes, even the bars in the back got the treatment.  Again, I refer back to my OCD tendencies.  Figure I might as well give into them now, from what I hear babies/toddlers/kids/teenagers are all messy and will test my OCD-ness in the coming years!

Linking up to CrazyMomQuilts for Finish It Up Friday!

 

Baby's First (Momma Made) Toy

A few months ago I won a prize for the QuiltStory Lucky Stars QAL- a $35 gift certificate to Southern Fabric.  One of the items that I chose to use my gift certificate on was this Heather Bailey Happy Stacker ring toy, as I had just found out I was pregnant, I couldn't resist this cuteness!

 

I was slightly intimidated by the instructions, so over Thanksgiving I took everything to my grandparents house, figuring if I worked on it there my grandmother could help me if I had any trouble.  In the end I needent have worried.  The pattern was very well written and came together without too much trouble- if you don't factor in my newbie sewing pattern follwing mistakes.  Who knew you had to actually mark those notches and things when you cut your fabric?  Yeah... so there was a little backtracking.  The middle part (aka the hole) required handsewing and was probably what took the most amount of time- not because it was hard, but because I didn't feel like hand sewing and was taking my sweet time.

 

Most fun of all- when I finished and posted it on Instagram Heather Bailey herself wrote to me!  I had commented that I "hoped" to finish up the other rings, now that I had made this one.  She suggested "manufacturing" them, ie cutting everything at once and then doing each step like a production line.  Probably a very good idea and what I will do going forward- but I wanted to test one before cutting everything.  That way if I hated the result, I wouldn't have wasted any extra fabric :)

 

Oh!  And this ring is a little off kilter because it is not fully stuffed and stitched closed yet- I had almost a whole bag of fiberfill with me and still needed to buy more!

The Tedious Blanket

Even look at something online and think- that's so easy!  I can make that!  Yes?  Good.  Does it get you in trouble and take of every inch of free space in your brain too?  No, just me?

Meet the tedious "quick and simple" baby blanket-

 

And now, allow me to list some "fun facts" from this project-

- Applique on minky is NOT easy!  I saw something online that suggested heat setting the letters, then using the machine to stitch them down.  So I grabbed some WonderUnder and made my letters, but guess what, you can't really iron dimple-dot minky, it makes the dots disappear. 

- So I tried using a very low heat- either didn't work or I didn't have the patience.  Either way that was a no-go. 

- I tried using a very hot iron and holding it above the fabric and hoping the heat would melt the fusible web from there.  It kind of works, assuming you don't get too close to the minky and burn the fuzzies off of it. 

- Then I got the brilliant idea to get (as in, go buy) a hairdryer and use the heat from that to set the fusible.  Yeah, that just blew the letter around- including the ones I thought I had already fused down. 

- Next try was fabric glue.  Fabric glue that no longer had the tiny little pour spout, because it broke off.  So I used my fingers to apply the glue.  #messy  Again I thought it had worked, but when I went to sew the letters down it really hadn't and the minky was popping up through my stitches and bugging me. 

- It all got chucked at that point. 

- Finally yesterday I found another tutorial online and gave it another go.  Steam-a-Seam (NOT WonderUnder!), a warm iron, and a cotton scrap over top of the minky to iron finally got the letters attached! 

- Before sewing the letters on, I pinned some stabilizer onto the back of the minky/applique and also pinned the letters on for added stability.

- I tried to use a regular foot on the machine to attach the letters.  Too much trouble around the curves, so I switched to the fmq foot.  Much easier.

- Finally the letters were attached!  Yay!  The hard part was over!  #famouslastwords

- I pinned the minky to the cotton backing and sewed around the edges with a walking foot.  Turns out that is not the best option for minky.  It didn't pull the minky enough and I ended up with extra minky (in the photo above you can see the fabric pulling at the bottom corner, that is where the extra minky ended up).  Finally I was happy (enough) that I went ahead and turned the blanket and topstitched it- with my regular foot on my machine, which worked perfectly. 

- WHEW!  That was one heck of a "quick and easy" project!  See why I refer to it as the Tedious Blanket?  Also, to all the people on Etsy who make and sell these- I don't know how you do it! 

Of course, I couldn't just make a blankie- so I made a matching taggie too

 

This project went together much easier.  This project also has minky on the back, but with the regular foot on my machine I had no problems sewing with it.  The only issue I had on this little guy was when I pinned the ribbons on right-sides-together.  Turns out ribbons don't invert when you flip everything else :)  Thankfully I realized this before I got to that point- I only had one side of the ribbons attached when I saw my mistake, so it was an easy fix. 

 

And the two projects together-

 

 

I think it is cute.  I think I might run out to Babies-R-Us too though.  There are some pirate monkeys in the cotton print and one of the things on their registry is a monkey hooded bath towel, so I thought I might go and search for that to go along too. 

Linking up to QuiltStory for Fabric Tuesday.

Baby Gift Part II

I showed you the baby bibs I made last week, but I wanted to add a little more to the gift so I made matching burp cloths.

Just a layer of fabric, an inside layer of terry cloth, and a back layer of chenille.  Why oh why did Joanns stop carrying chenille??  I had one piece left so I was able to make these, but now I'm out.  Any suggestions on what else I could back a burp cloth with?  Or should I suck it up and order some chenille online (in which case, any good online sources I should know about?)?

Delivering these gifts to the soon-to-be mommy and daddy tomorrow night!  I hope they like them!

Baby Bibs and a new (to me) Quilt Shop

Oh Google maps, how I love you.  I was playing on there last night (you know, as one does when they are bored with all their iPhone games) and I searched my area for 'Brother Sewing'.  Low and behold a (new to me) quilt shop popped up about 20 miles away!  The Sewing Garrett.  Their website wasn't much, but it had photos of their Brother accessory wall and what did I spot- the two things I have been looking for!  A walking foot for my machine and a new embroidery hoop for my machine that has three places to connect it to the machine.  So instead of unhooping and rehooping my fabric, I can just hoop a big piece and then scootch the frame down as I need to.  I still have to stitch within my 4x4 size, but at least I can leave the fabric hooped if I have a bigger design that I want to do (I just have to split it into threes).  I may have stunk at explaining that.  I'll try again in another post when I actually use it.

I did use the walking foot this afternoon though.  One of my best friends from high school and his wife are expecting their first child this fall and my husband and I are going out to visit them next week- and Southern girls never show up empty handed.

Behold, the beginnings of their gift!  Homemade bibs for their soon-to-be little one.  The fabric on the right was just too perfect- Pat loves cars, planes, and skydiving (hoping he gives that one up now that he is going to be a daddy!)

 

I had made bibs before when I found out Angie was expecting baby Sam, but of course I found a tutorial on Pinterest that I wasn't smart enough to actually pin.  "I'll just search again the next time I need it"  #famouslastwords  Thankfully I mentioned how I made it on my other, family website.  Just two pieces of fabric with terrycloth sandwiched in between. 

 

 

For these I decided to put denim on the backs, mostly so the two bibs would kind of tie together.

 

On the left here is a finished bib (except for the Velcro closure which still needs to be sewn on) and on the right is the fabric before being sewn.  It always surprises me how much the bibs shrink after sewing, flipping, and top stitching.  Turning those ends right-side-out was not easy!  Thankfully I found a chopstick in my kitchen drawer to help.  I had never tried that trick before, but it was really helpful.  So much so that the chopstick now lives in my sewing room :)



Sam's Quilt

Sam's quilt is all finished and ready to be sent off to the adorable new baby boy!  A few days ago I drove to a quilt shop about 30 minutes north of me and quilted it on their longarm- so fun!  But a lot more work than I anticipated.  I never really thought about how you actually get the quilt onto the frame (pinning, it turns out) and I never considered that you would still have to baste it (just the edges and you do it with the longarm, but still never realized you had to do it).  I quilted it using a pattern- I had planned to custom quilt it a la Angela Walters and was all prepared with the sketches but when I showed the girl at the shop she - in a nice, round about way - told me I was a bit ambitious with that for my first go.  I realized she was probably right and decided to use a pattern.  It was also a more open design and therefore probably softer than my custom quilting would have been.  Better for baby.

I thought it might be easier for you to see the quilting on the back, but it looks like it isn't really coming across in the photo.  Sorry.  For anyone who saw my first post about this quilt, yes, the backing is slightly different.  I took out the dark green elephant print that was the vertical stripe and replaced it with this lighter print.  I figured it would hide any messy quilting stitches better than the dark fabric (especially with the light thread color).

Another "first" accomplished on this quilt was my first quilt label- also way more work than I expected.  I played around with different wording for the label, then different colors, different fonts, different stabilizers...  Finally I had the label and had to figure out how to attach it.  I managed to sew WonderUnder onto the front, put a slit in it and turn the label but it took a few tries.  Fyi, WonderUnder tears very easy it turns out.  Once I had it ironed on I wanted a cleaner edge so I grabbed some embroidery floss and attempted my first blanket stitch. 

My final "first" on this quilt- giving it away!  I have never given a quilt to anyone outside my family before (and by "give" I mean my mom is the only one who has ever taken one of my quilts from me).  Usually I am very protective and I want to keep the stuff I make- only child syndrome aka "its mine and you can't have it".  But I am SO excited to send this off to Angie and baby Sam!! Angie appreciates handmade items so it definitely helps to know that it will be so used and loved in her home. 

For Sam

Those few little extra scraps from yesterdays quilt for Sam where mixed with a few other scraps-

and after a little sewing-

(ok, maybe alot of sewing- trying to make it baby proof!)

 

 

I had this-

 



And after some minky was added to the back-

(wow, huge difference b/w daylight and nighttime photos! Will remember that for the future- promise!)

 

 

Tada!  A tiny taggie toy!  The tags are made of ribbon, jersey knit, canvas, and ricrac.  And FYI- jersey and canvas are not the best things for a taggie- at least not when it comes to sewing them on.  Trying to sew over fabric, two layers of canvas, and a layer of minky was not easy!  I'm still not sure if I will actually send this along or not.  It is the first taggie I have ever made and I am slightly worried about how it will hold up to a baby. 

 

Would you send it?  

Baby Sewing!

No, not for me!  My friend Angie will be having a little boy - Samuel - in the coming weeks!  She is a big fan of homemade gifts, which works out perfectly for me.  I already sent her some bibs and burp cloths when she first found out she was expecting but now that it is getting close it is time to up the ante.

May I present, Sam's quilt (or more accurately at this point, Sam's quilt top)-

I purchased some Karma Baby by Mint Blossom for Northcott Fabrics probably close to a year ago and am SO happy that I finally have the perfect thing to use it for!  I have never given away a quilt before (a blanket, but not a quilt) and am soooo excited to get this one finished and sent off to Angie and Sam!  I know it will be appreciated and that makes parting with it easy (normally I hoard the things I make).

The back is pieced using extra yardage that I had.  I have a tendency to find fabrics that I like and buy them with no real thought in mind to what pattern I will use them for.  So instead I just randomly choose yardage amounts based on how much I like the fabric instead of how I will use it.  Thank goodness it worked in my favor this time (just barely, but still counting it as a win- tiny scraps of the paisley and the green elephants which I will discuss later). 

My plan it to take this up to a Gammil dealer in the coming weeks and quilt it on a longarm- so excited!  I have been toying with the idea of purchasing one, even though I have never actually quilted anything more than some practice stitches at a quilt show on one.  I am a total Angela Walters groupie though (quiltingismytherapy.com) and have both her books and desperately want to learn to quilt like she does.  I have done a few pillows using her book as inspiration, but feel so limited by my little machine.  I want a big ol' longarm to play with!

On a different note, check out my creative quilting hanging for pictures system- 

Nails + binder clips! I tried washi tape first- how the heck do people do that?  Maybe it works with quilt blocks since they are smaller but it definitely does not work with whole quilts.  I came up with this system instead.  You do what you have to when you are the only one home and want to take pictures!