Friday, January 1, 2016

Happy 2016!

And - snap - just like that!  Another year!  Welcome to 2016 - I hope it brings only good things to you and your special people.

Here are a few things I've been working on in the last couple of months.

These are "one hour baskets" - a free pattern found on Craftsy.  I attend the Calgary Modern Quilt Guild and we decided to do a basket swap so I made up these two, took them to the last meeting and swapped them for two different ones.  They are fun and fast to make - although slower than one hour if you do a bunch of piecing and decorative stitching like I did.




I made my Diva friends each a little sewing kit - let them choose their own because all a little different in terms of embellishments and fabric.  I will have a couple left over so will have to find them homes.




I made a prototype (the top one in the pix below).  This one is more or less the way the tutorial (Fat Quarter Shop - binding kit) has it.  What I found is that the only section I really used was the zippered section on the left.  The centre panel has a little pocket for scissors - completely impractical as they kept falling out, the right side has a larger pocket, which I really didn't think was any more useful than a zippered pocket.  So when I made mine, I did all three panels as zippered pockets - everything can go in a zipped pocket - works like a charm!  


I made these two tree blocks as mini quilts to give to a couple of friends as gifts.  Note that one is bigger even though the same pattern.  I forgot to uncheck "scale to fit" on the printer options and so ended up with a smaller size on the second one.  So lesson learned: always make sure the scale is set to 100% before printing a paper piecing pattern.  This one is one of many found on Craftsy.

Husband needed a little add on to get his order to $25 for free shipping.  I didn't realize you can get quilting supplies on Amazon, but you can - not a lot, but some.  Among them, these little clips.  I ordered 50 for $7.60.  If I were to go to a fabric store, they would be about $1 each.  Crazy!  No wonder the stores are going out of business.  There were only 49 in the bag though - but I'll suck it up.  :)



I made these three "wide open zippered pouch" bags as experiments and to use up fabric - the first one (far right) turned out so well, I made the other two and will make more.  I gave them as Xmas gifts and the ladies love 'em!  The butterfly and cupcake paper piece patterns are free on Craftsy.


And at long last - the Metro Rings (Sew Kind of Wonderful) quilt for Eric and Jess - complete!  They loved it and I'm glad its done!!!!








I made two of these little guys - one is "regular", one "scrappy" to use up the fabric.  I'm really happy with the way they turned out - they will be going to friends - "just because".  






So that gets me pretty well caught up.  Looking forward to another year of quilting fun!