Cynthia Rowley's "Oh Baby" line - shorts and tie

Have I ever said that I love working for/with Trenna?  Well, I do.  It's an exciting life, though I think I'd rather live it from where I am rather than where she is.  She does an incredible amount of work and pulls things off in record time. Yet at the same time, she makes it look amazing!  To top it off, she's so complimentary of my small part in her job.  What's not to like?

Friday, she called me up at 11:15 as I was about to walk out the door to pick up Gideon from Kindergarten and wanted to bring me fabric to do something really fast.  Still working with Cynthia Rowley's fabric, but needing to make something less "girly."  The catch is that she needed it faster than fast.  The catalog was supposed to be printed by Monday.  After I had picked up Gideon, she came over, we talked and figured out what to do.

Behold the end result with just over 4 hours of sewing and using my own made up patterns and son to model it.  (Constantly blurry photos since he won't hold still for long).  He loved the shorts and didn't want to take them off.

Cynthia Rowley's "Oh Baby" line - nursery set

 Cynthia Rowley's new "Oh, Baby" line!

Here's the pictures of the work Emerald and I did for Trenna with the new Cynthia Rowley "Oh, Baby" fabric line.  There's a pillow, bumpers, sheet and crib skirt. 

For the pillow (shown without the pillow form inside), I tried to match up the fabrics, but as you can see, lining up in one place did not make it line up all the way down the line.  Thus we see that all animals (at least those printed on material) are not created equal. ;-)

Some nice colorful bumpers in the same fabric as the pillow.

Beautiful crib sheet.  A nice soft print with letters in the middle.

Yes, I know I should have ironed the crib skirt, but it was already 11:00 at night and we had to be up early for work/school, etc the next day.  Besides, I knew Trenna was going to iron it before she photographed it and it was going to get all wrinkly again in the bag as I brought it over to her, so I didn't bother - and it shows.

King Size Pillow Cases with Style

One Christmas I made or helped one of the kids make these pillow cases for Sterling.  They would go on some king size pillows and help to make a little corner of his bedroom into a comfy, cozy spot for reading.

It's really very simple cutting strips of the coordinating fabrics, sewing them together, cutting them into joined squares, flipping every other set to make the checkerboard pattern and sewing them back together.  Then adding them to the pillow case near the end and finished with a nice decorative stitch.  Easy, peezy.

This has been a busy week sewing for Trenna.  New Michael Miller fabric including some Cynthia Rowley fabric. I will try and get those pictures up next week.  I've also begun working on some items for a fundraiser auction to send our youth group's boys and girls to scout camp and girl's camp.  I will get pictures up as I get things done.

February Quilt

Here is the February/Valentine's Quilt.  It has two different background fabrics and 4 fabrics that make up each heart.  The heart is appliqued onto the background fabric and then cut in quarters on the diagonal.  Then swapped around and sewn back together.  It has pink sashing with the red teddy bear fabric for the sashing corners and the border.  Pretty simple.

 

Doll Nine Patch Arrow Quilt and Cradle

Of course because Fiona had such a fabulous doll cradle and blanket, for Christmas 2009, Karina got one as well.  For Karina, I had plenty of her baby blanket fabric left over and made the same pattern, only without doing them on-point.   It was easier that way.  I made both sides identical so the back looks the same as the front.  Lining up each corner to tack it down was a bit tricky.  Sterling got to make the cradle/stool this time, using the same pattern I had made for Donovan to use for Fiona.

Doll Split Rail Quilt and Cradle

 The center of this quilt was made totally out of the scraps cut off from making something else.  What could I make with 6 scrap strips that were barely over 1-1/2" wide?  Why, a little doll blanket.  I simply cut them all to the same width, sewed 3 of them together side by side and the other 3 together.  Cut them into squares and arranged them into a split rail.  Then I slapped a boarder on it with coordinating fabric, sandwiched it with batting (left over from something else) and a back and tacked it down with the machine at all the corners. 

Et voila, a lovely and loved doll blanket. It was given to my daughter, Fiona for Christmas and fit very nicely with the cradle/step stool her brother Donovan made her for Christmas.  These were made and given to her for Christmas 2006, I believe.  Eight-year-old Donovan made the stool/cradle (OK, I helped by copying the pattern from one my dad had designed and made probably 25 years before, cutting it out and helping him put it together, but he painted it and painted her name on it).

Quick Quilt for the Nursery

OK, I'm not showing you this quilt to account for some amazing technique or talent.  Maybe it's only to account for my time. :-)  We have quite a number of young children in the nursery at church.  So many that we have divided them into several different nurseries.  One of the nurseries needed a quilt to sit on for snack time / lesson time.  I looked through the fabric that had been given my by a friend when she was cleaning out her mom's house (after taking her to a home that could watch her better with the dementia she was suffering).  Lo and behold there was some printed fabric to look like a quilt that had a matching back.  What I used for the top had been cut - there was a big square with a hole cut in the center (maybe a tree skirt) and a cut from the middle of one side up to the hole.  There was a rectangular piece left over of the printed fabric.  There was also a plain green bagged with the fabrics that was close, but not an exact match of the green on the printed fabric.  Looked like a perfect way to quickly throw a quilt together.

I used left over batting and pieced it together. Then tried out a couple machine quilting stitches the plain green areas.   The rest of the quilt just got a "stitch-in-the-ditch" type quilting, nothing too complicated.  Finished it all in 2 days (piecing the batting took a lot of time).  But presto, a quilt that cost me nothing (but a little time).  And the children can eat snacks and contain the mess.

January Quilt

Where has the time gone?  I'm sure most of you feel the overwhelming load of work from time to time.  I'm no exception.  Since our furnace just went out overnight with the outside temperature in the single digits, now would be a good time to show you my January wall quilt, made 15 years ago to grace my wall each January. (Don't worry, we have a fireplace insert and it's keeping us pretty warm in the front room). 

My sister Tamia did most of the designing for this.  This was the first of the wall hangings I finished quilting and I used regular variegated thread.  Pretty thread, but didn't withstand the vigor of hand quilting.  The thread kept breaking.  Then when all was done, you couldn't even see the colors in the thread, nor the snowflakes I quilted into the big blue areas.  So not worth it. . . .  I learned that hand quilting thread is special for a reason - and worth it.

New Lunchboxes for the Girls

Well, it took me 3 extra months to get the girl's lunchboxes done, but I finally did and gave them as gifts at Christmas.  They were done in leftover fabric from the Toujours Bleu et Blanc fabric as well as the matching Blue and White Porcelain fabrics from Michael Miller's new Blue and White Collection.  They are fully lined and washable as well as insulated with Insul-Bright.  They have an inside pocket and elastic for holding a bottle upright. Two pockets on the outside as well.

Here you get a quick view of the interior.  I plan on putting up a tutorial at some point.

Silky or Magic PJs for the kids

My sister, Emerald made pj's for my kids.  The girls got matching silky pajamas and the boys got matching Magic The Gathering pajamas.

Here we have the girls, Fiona and Karina had been begging for silky pajamas after Emerald made some for Fiona when she was 3.  She grew out of them and Karina inherited them and wore them until she couldn't put them on anymore.  The fabric is so hard to work with and the seams can't take a lot of pressure.  So Karina rolling around on the floor and doing cartwheels in them have ripped out seams twice in her armpit area.  We may need to put a gusset in.

Donovan and Sterling really enjoy the card game "Magic the Gathering" and have instilled that Magic cards are "cool" in their younger brothers.  Donovan has made decks for them and Gideon will play with him (rather randomly as far as which cards to play when, but enthusiastically, none the less).  For Christmas, Gideon had put on his wish list "more Magic cards than Donovan."  Emerald made them each pajama pants then scanned in their favorite magic cards and printed them on the special fabric paper that you can print from your computer.  She then appliqued them down the sides of both pant legs.  The little boys also got their favorite card (based solely on the picture, not what it does) on the shirt.  They LOVE them.  As soon as they are washed, that's the pj of choice.  Porter wore them the last two nights in a row since they had been washed in between.