Teddy Bear Baby Quilt

I still haven't tackled a bed-size quilt, but wanted to make another baby quilt for my neighbor's first child, a girl. She did not want to use pink or frou-frou designs in the nursery. Instead, she chose neutral colors tending to gold and brown. I was inspired by the small collection of Teddy Bears she had ready for Emma. The Teddy Bear print is Bear Lake Honey Bears by Blank Quilting which I ordered from a great resource for all animal/bug related fabrics. The design was inspired by this quick strippie.

My First Doll Quilt

I have been wanting to try some Doll Quilts and my granddaughter Myla's second birthday was a good opportunity. I also wanted to try the Double Hourglass Block and found a great tutorial here. I used a combination of polka dot fabrics from my stash and various animal themed prints. As I wanted smaller blocks (5 inch squares), I cut strips 12 inches long by 1.75 inches wide. The backing is an Anna Maria Horner voile (also from my stash).

 

 

 

 

Ticker Tape Doll Quilt

Years ago, I had a neighbor who was extremely organized when it came to sewing. She only bought fabric when she was ready for a project and dutifully discarded all the scraps when it was finished. I was never quite that disciplined. Even when not quilting, scraps often came in handy for puppets, doll clothes, etc. Now that I've gotten interested in patchwork, I obsessively save every snippet, no matter how small. A Ticker Tape Quilt began to look like another great opportunity for delving into that stash. Unfortunately, being a Virgo, I was not able to just pick up pieces at random and sew them down. I meticulously lined up all those little pieces on my flannel board before sewing the first seam. I also incorporated some of the selvages that I am also obsessively hoarding. Next time, I'll be a little more adventurous. Not only does it make a nice wall hanging, it's also a nice archive of things I've made.

 

Cell Phone Cases

It's always fun to find THE perfect fabric. I wanted to make a cell phone case for my granddaughter with an appropriate fabric. I "googled" cell phone themed fabric and came up with Hoffman's "Techno-Kids." Perfect. The lining is "Peace, Love, and Joy" by Deb Eiseman from Andover. For a more masculine take for her brother, I picked up this peace sign fabric from Hobby Lobby.

Painting

Next to sewing, my favorite task is painting furniture. I painted this bench when we first moved to our home in San Antonio. After a couple of years in the weather, I had to do a few repairs on it this year. The design was inspired by a selection in Cressida Bell's book, "The Decorative Painter," which I found used on Amazon.

Note our resident gecko up on the left-hand corner.

Another project was this "originally white" cabinet that I painted to house my art work from Mexico. While living in California, my husband and I visited Mexico frequently and I collected these painted animals plus other samples of their folk art.

More Potholders

Our friends in San Antonio love palm trees. They have palm trees around their pond and pool and palm tree motifs in their home. I found this Palm Tree Quilted Potholder here and thought it would be perfect for their kitchen. My math skills did not work very well when converting this to an 8 1/2 inch block. I finally "winged" it and progressed one row at a time by "trial and error." I lost count of how many first rows I attempted (with scraps) before hitting the magic numbers. To complete the set, I purchased two kitchen towels and edged one end with the same fabric as the binding on the potholders.

 

 

 

 

Custom Kindle Cover

My daughter recently requested a custom Kindle cover. Our Kindle 1 covers had included an inside pocket and a pencil holder, but the Kindle 2 covers did not have these. I started out with a padded e-reader cover pattern from the Etsy shop Birdiful Stitches and made some adjustments: vertical pockets instead of horizontal and an elastic loop for a pencil. I decided also that I would like to have a firm cover rather than a soft one. I used PresOn Self-Stick Mounting Board designed for stitchery work. Before enclosing the bottom of the cover, I inserted the board, one piece to each side, leaving room in the middle for flexibility to close the cover with the pencil in place.

My daughter is an engineer (and a chocoholic) so I wanted something geometric in design. The fabric is Triskele by Poetryqn from Spoonflower. Here's her description of the fabric. "I enjoy playing with shapes and color and everything around me is grist for the mill. In this case, I was sharing a bag of chocolate kisses with an Irish friend and one thought careened into the other: Celtic Triskele with red chocolate kisses..."

 

Custom Kindle Cover

 

Inside

 

Pocket and Pencil Loop Placement

 

Back of cover