John Deere Baby Quilt

This quilt was not commissioned by anyone. It was a case of love at first site in the fabric store. The front is regular cotton and the back is a snuggly flannel. I love the cute little cows, horses, sheep and tractors. I have two little boys who love everything John Deere, so my eye is automatically drawn to the fabrics that John Deere produces. They really have quite a big selection of a lot of fun things for babies and children.



I had noticed in my browsing a red barn-wood print that ended up going perfectly with this quilt as a binding.


I have recently changed my method of binding as well. I still machine attach one side and then blind stitch the other, but after a little research and noticing that the aging binding on the quilts of my older children was beginning to wear out, I decided that from now on I'm going to use bias binding whenever possible. I found a great tutorial here and have been using the instructions to make the continuous-cut bias tape for all of my past several quilts.

This quilt is currently at Lucky's Grill, waiting for an owner. The price for this snuggly little guy is $50.

Cupcake Car Seat Tent

I recently completed this car seat tent for a friend, along with six burp cloths. Originally, she asked for brown and pink polka dots, but I saw this cupcake pattern and fell in love. Fortunately, she agreed!



I no longer have an infant carrier to use for display with the car seat tents. You just have to use your imagination to see them draped elegantly around a sweet little bundle. Both the front and back of this particular cover are regular cotton. The back is the diagonal stripe that I used for the straps and you can see it in the detail photo below.



Don't those cupcakes make your mouth water?

I edge-stitched both the tent and the burp cloths with a very simple wave design in pink. My only regret was that I didn't get pictures of the burp cloth bundle before I sent it off. My friend showed up to pick it up literally as I was tying the ribbon around the cloths. The front was a rich chocolate brown with tiny polka-specs (not big enough to be called dots) in pink, cream and green. The back was a pinky-coral crackled design. Both, of course, were in flannel and they went with the cupcake fabric very well.

T-Shirt Quilt

A friend asked me if I could put together some old t-shirts of her dad's into a quilt. Most of the pieces were already cut from the shirt. There were a few that came from jerseys, duffel bags and hats. Her dad used to coach high school football and now works as a scout for college football.




I fused each piece to Wonder Under (I love that stuff!) and then squared up the edges of each one. I left a one to two inch border all the way around most of the shirt fronts . Then I fused the pieces onto an 18 inch square of quilter's cotton and satin stitched the edges.

When I started this project, I thought that I would end up with a throw-sized quilt. It ended up being 93"x103" which is King sized!

I didn't quilt this project. I have mostly used my machine to quilt baby quilts and the occasional twin sized quilts and I have found that the bigger the quilt is, the more of a headache it is to quilt it on my machine. My friend will take it to a long arm quilter to have it finished.

I have found a local quilt shop that offers lessons on their long arm machines and then allows you to rent them in four or five hour blocks. I may look into doing that sometime next year.

Blue and Brown Cuddle Quilt

This quilt is made from super soft and warm Cuddle fabric. The customer bought a kit from a craft store and then asked me to put it together for her. I used a high loft batting and both the front and the back of the quilt are made with Cuddle. It was a chance to try out basting spray again, and I don't know how you would sew Cuddle fabric without the spray! It's so slick! This was a sew and flip project, or I've also seen them called quilt-as-you-go.


The end result is an extremely soft blankie that none of my kids could resist stroking whenever they passed my sewing desk. I'm eager to try more projects with Cuddle fabric and I have a few ideas of things that I will do differently next time.

Monster Quilt is Finally Done!

This quilt started out as an experiment with applique. I have wanted to try it for a while but have been too intimidated. I got the idea for a monster quilt from Little Birdie Secrets. Their monsters inspired some of mine and the remainder I made up. Each piece is hand drawn, cut out and fused, then machine stitched. There was a ton of time involved in the making of this quilt but it was a lot of fun and I love the end results!








I also used this quilt as an opportunity to try out a few other firsts, namely basting spray and stipple quilting. The basting spray was nice and I think I'll be using it again in the future. The stipple quilting took a while to get used to. I had trouble getting the tension right and there were issues with the top looking great but the back being too tight. Also, I learned the value of good quality thread. I thought that I was using good stuff but after it broke innumerable times and I finally switched to a different brand, I was much more pleased with the results.

All in all, it was a great learning experience and I'm very proud of the end results! I think that for a quilt that started out as just an experiment it turned out very well. If I was asked to make one of these for someone, I'm not sure what I would charge because I worked on this quilt off and on for over six months and didn't pay attention to the total amount of hours put in, but I'm sure there were a lot of them! If you're interested, let me know and we'll work something out.

Mini Wallet

Introducing the Mini Wallet! Perfect for credit and debit cards and all those rewards cards you need to have for every store at which you shop. Also has two extra pockets for receipts and cash.




More colors soon to come.

Mom's Purse

I just finished this purse for my mom. She picked out some red and black fabric and next I'll make one for her best friend.