Craft Show Quilt Finishes

Four Quilts!

That's right, I finished four new quilts for the craft show.  Most of them you will recognize from here and here, then there is one that just sort of snuck itself in there.  They are all for sale in my Etsy shop, so if you see one that you just have to have, you can!

Elephant Quilt

I am beyond tickled with how this one turned out!  After so much hymning and hawing over how to quilt it, I ended up going with "organic" straight line quilting roughly 3/4" apart.  Despite the density, it is actually some of the easiest quilting I have done.  Not marking anything helps make it easy plus the fact that you aren't actually trying to get the lines straight!

The quilting just adds so much to this simple design!

Chevron Quilt

I think I have a thing about not being overly thrilled with blocks and quilt tops.  I have to say, for all my foot stomping, this one came out darn cute.  I ended up leaving the quilting minimal and only adding a few additional lines in some of the white zig-zags.

Granny Square Quilt

I love this quilt.  I came together just like I was hoping it would.  This was the first time that I have ever stitched binding to a quilt completely by machine and I am very pleased with the results.  I did simple diagonal quilting lines, pretty widely spaced and used a lilac colored thread.

You can almost see the zig-zag stitch that I used to attach the binding to the front.
I was hoping that if things were just a bit off, the stitches on the back would get
 lost in the pile of the fabric. Check!

Do you see my cute little tag at the top?  They came out very much to my liking.

Briar Rose Plus Quilt

I was pretty excited while I was putting this quilt together but it didn't really turn out like I was hoping.  I wish that I squared the top up a bit before sewing the backing on and I am thinking that it probably needed at least a mini border.  The minky blankets don't have binding which takes away that nice, unifying edge.  When I edge stitched the whole thing that certainly helped, but still isn't quite enough in my mind.  At any rate, I love the fabrics and the fun plus design, so I am still happy with it.

Which one is your favorite?

Skulls and Hearts in Hot Pink: A Finish

Custom Order

Remember how I told you that I brought my Lisa Lam Diaper Bag to work to feedback on pockets and such?  If not, you can read about that here. Well one of my co-workers loved it so much she ordered one! She plans to use it to carry all the crap that her husband and kids hand her while out on vacation.  What a perfect idea!

I ran off to Fabric Depot and clicked off some pics of fabrics I thought she would like but I had a feeling this would be the winner:

So Fun!  The skulls have hearts for eyes!

Lo and behold, I was right!

I gathered additional supplies, including the elusive hardware.  I decided to go with a 1.5" strap as the pattern calls for and save myself the heartache of finding a 2" slider and O-rings.

Also, Michelle had the fabulous idea of using lime green zippers.  I said I would look even though I was pretty sure that was too tall an order, but Fabric Depot didn't let me down:

I was very pleased with the black and white fabric I chose for interior.  Plus for the inside zip pocket I found a gray on black heart fabric that I thought was perfect with all the hearts on the exterior.  I was getting very excited to see it all come together!

Other than not really remembering just how many steps go into making this bag, it went together pretty easily.  I had to remind myself to slow down and follow the directions a couple of times.  I manged not to do too much ripping and re-sewing.  I would have been done faster, but there was a very distracting Castle marathon on TNT for Labor Day :-P

Finished

It came out even cuter than I could have guessed!

The Lisa Lam Diaper Bag

Sometimes the Fabric Comes First

Okay, for me, the fabric comes first a lot.  I am a lot like those designers on Project Runway that go to Mood without knowing what they are going to make.  I see fabric and sometimes it tells me what it wants to be.  Other times, it is like a little whisper in my ear, "You want me, you know you do, you should take me home."  Even more often than that, it's like a three year old throwing a temper tantrum, "But you have to take me home with you!!!!  You like me so much!!!! How could you even think of leaving here without me!!!!"  And so I buy some.  I think this goes a long way in explaining my extensive fabric collection.

A while ago, I was at Bolt, a local fabric store that has very cute quilting fabrics and crazy gorgeous clothing fabrics.  And I happened upon this beauty:

It screamed awesome bag.  I knew I had to have some, but without a super specific project in mind, the question is, how much to get?  I knew that there were several cute bag patterns in the One Yard Wonders book but figured I would want something bigger than that, so I settled on a yard and a half.

After walking by the fabric several times at home, I realized that what made the most sense given it's cutesy, fun, bright nature, was to make a diaper bag.  Plus, I knew a friend who was in the market for one :)  I went to my favorite bag book, A Bag for All Reasons and there it was, the darn cutest diaper bag ever!  The best part, I totally had enough fabric!

The Making

I went to Fabric Depot to get all the interfacing and lining and got cutting.  It was so much cutting.  I took me over four hours to get all the pieces cut, so many pockets!  Then began the epic search for hardware.  Wow, this was SO HARD.  I went to ever store I could think of, including the leather supply store, including JoAnn's (and I don't go there for much).  I finally found some good stuff back at Bolt, thank goodness.  The sewing went pretty smoothly and I was very happy with my choice to go with a little lighter weight interfacing on the exterior and compensate with a little heavier interfacing on the interior.  Again, this was a lesson learned from making Amy Butler Weekender bags (you can find photos of those on Flickr, I promise, one day, I will take better photos!!!).

I also took the bag to work  to confirm that I had added enough pockets in the right places (the directions were a little confusing).  There are a lot of moms at work and since I am not one, I had no idea what you put in a diaper bag.  They were uber helpful, thanks ladies!

Getting ready to sew the interior and the exterior together!
Also, a good view of all the interior pockets.

The Bag

It turned out terribly cute!!!!!  I actually went back to Bolt and bought several more yards of the outside fabric so I could make a couple more :)

The pattern is just fantastic with this fabric.  Squeal!

One of my favorite things is that the bag is big, but not TOO big.