Gma Bag #3

Amy Butler Birdie Bag.

I have had this in a to-do basket since early 2010. I made a Zebra themed quilt for our very first great grandchild. I had tons of left over fabric!  I had an Amy Butler pattern!  Make a diaper bag!  Cut the fabric!  Out of interfacing!

After a few stumbling blocks, I put it away in a basket. I moved it around lots and lots!  That baby will be 8 years old next month!  Sheesh!!

I finally decided to dig it out of the UFO pile and see if I couldn't get it completed.  I had to retrace the pieces...I had cut some, so I know I had traced some, but they have disappeared,  Then I did not have fusible fleece. I made a trip to Joann's. They had one piece of fusible fleece on the shelf. It would work. I needed Pellon SF101 also. (no affiliation, I just use this interfacing a lot, and it was recommended on the patter)  I had a coupon, I bought a whole bolt!!

I cut more fabric and set to work. In no time, I had this finished bag.

My granddaughter made a comment a week or so ago, that she was going to have to get a "go bag". She carries water bottles for both kids and herself always. Now she is "potty training" Miss B, so there is a necessity of several changes of panties and shorts/leggings. I decided to give this bag to her last Tuesday. She was thrilled and put it to immediate use.

Her sister  has this bag!

Her mom has this bag!

So she is calling it her Gma Bag.  She has always referred to me as Gma when she writes it!  I am glad she likes it and the other bags are appreciated and used as well!  All that makes me happy.

Stay Busy and Stay Happy

Teal, Turquoise or Aqua Slabs!

I pulled my teal, aqua, turquoise stash. I have a lot of medium prints, not a lot of solids or blenders.  So I started. I try not to make my slabs too much like a log cabin.  Sometimes that’s harder than it might seem.

These blocks need more scraps added to make them the necessary 10" X 10".  Some will be wonky as those are the scraps I have!  It's OK!  I like that look!

Not exactly the June rainbow colors but I did get the binding sewed on to my OMG challenge and a graduation quilt for my daughter. She graduates in August from her 3rd discipline!  She is an RN with a degree in business and now will add Healing Touch Therapy to her repertoire. I am so proud of her!  She follows her heart and she is amazing!

It's Saturday, I have a hair appointment this afternoon, then if I feel brave I may go to the grocery store!  Never a good idea on Saturday!  

Happy Weekend

Stay Busy and Stay Happy 

I'm linking up with So Scrappy's Scrap Happy Saturday  and Busy Hands Quilts, Finished or Not Friday!

June Goals -Quilt Binding and some Embroidery

My One Monthly goal for June is to trim and put the binding on the quilt for my daughter's graduation quilt and to finish the July Calendar Girl stitchery.

This is kind of a weird angle, but here they are together on my cutting table!

A close up of the quilting my friend with a long arm did for me. The dark gray thread she used shows up great on the light gray border. I 

am still deciding on a binding fabric. I don't have enough of any of the fabrics used in the quilt. Maybe the backing, it is white with black cursive words: Courage, smile, etc!

And here is the partially completed July Calendar Girl stitching.  I have a few more words to stitch, the rest of her very curly blond hair and her eyes and nose, and then I'll  embellish with star buttons and some metallic thread in her hair decoration.  Don't you just love her striped stockings?

Not much will be done today, I am taking a friend to the hospital for an IV infusion, then there is a T-ball game for our great grandson ( he's 4, so it's mostly playing in the dirt, :)!) and today is our 54th wedding anniversary, so there is dinner out!  Some planting will be done too, it is finally warm enough. Though yesterday the 1st,  there was a tornado touch down northwest of town. It's wide open there, but 2 families lost their homes and out buildings.  So sad!

Happy June, 

Pink Stuff

Not much happening that would qualify as a finish this week. The only real finish I had was to make a cute little "top" for my great granddaughter. I try to keep an extra top, bottom and socks here at our house for both grands!   A bit ago, we used the t-shirt that was here, for  Miss B.  It went home with her and the blue frilly tunic she had on that day has a whole other  backstory!

I had been wanting to try to make a pillowcase dress so this was the opportunity. The knit pants that reside here, have multicolored dots on a black background. Versatile, yes?  I had been working on my pink slab blocks for the RSC18 and came across a chunk of bright pink with lime green dots. I measured Miss B and it seemed the top should be 14" from shoulder to bum! Luckily the piece of fabric was about 19" by WOF. I perused the internet and Pinterest for patterns and ideas.  I settled on a tutorial from Melissa at Polka Dot Chair that she created for Bernina's WeAllSew blog. It is well written and worked well for me. There are lots of variations on Pinterest too.

I made a trip to JoAnns for the proper pink bias tape and some wide enough lime green ribbon. I did not add the bottom contrasting band, though I could always do that. I'll try the band technique if this one works well and make her a longer dress length for her birthday. She'll be two in July!

Nothing fancy about this dress!  I used the thread I had, and even two different colors in top and bobbin. But you can't tell. I like it a lot, we'll check it out on the "model" soon.

I also worked on my pink slab block, but they are still in construction.

Today these go in the box and I'll start the new color. It is an ongoing project for this year.

I did piece the wide borders for the plus quilt I showed last week and got the side borders added. With Mr. Busy's help, I will measure the width of the quilt top today and sew on the top and bottom borders. I have to lay it out on the family room floor and then can't hold the tape measure and crawl on my knees at the same time!  It's not easy being "old".

I'll be linking this post to Finish It Up Friday at Amanda Jean's blog and
Finished Or Not Friday at Myra's blog.


Stay Busy and Stay Happy

May Finish ~ One Monthly Goal

My OMG for May was to find background fabric, and cut the pieces for our son's birthday quilt. You can read more about that at this post.

Well, I traveled to our LQS, 20 miles from my front door and selected a fabric. So the pieces were cut and put on my design wall. I decided that one of the light fabrics was too light. So I  cut 3 different darker squares and rectangles. Not a problem, I had lots of fat quarters to chose from.
I liked the layout now, so decided to sew it together. Normally I would web the blocks, but this design does not lend itself to that technique. I made some marking tabs, some marking pins for the end of each row and got started. First I sewed each row together. Then I sewed in set of 2 rows each. Two rows became 4 rows at the top, and I repeated the process from the bottom up. My plan was to end up sewing the 2 sections together in the middle. That helps me manage the bulk to the left of my machine. It worked out great.

There are still borders to be added, but then it will be ready to have backing purchased and off the the longarm quilter!  I have a piece of black and gray fabric picked for the binding. I think it will be perfect, but I will not know for sure until I decide on the backing fabric.

Here are some close ups of the fabric.  It is almost all from the Tag collection by Cheryl Arkinson,

I am a push over for text fabric!

Don't you just love the tic tac toe and the fingerprints?

but the Sulfur green brick print is from Latifah Saafir's Grafic line and the borders and fill in fabric is from Kanvas Studios Bernatex, Swirling Leaf pattern designed by Maria Kalinowski called White Out!  I hope it looks like pebbles or rocks, more urban in feel than leaves! 

So my May OMG is met, and then some!   

Elm Street Quilts One Monthly Goal - May Finish Link-up


Stay Busy and Stay Happy!    Now I'm off to help Mr Busy complete the filling of the raised bed he made for me this week. I may try to put some tomatoes and peppers in addition to some herbs and some hostas, and some other filler plants. Wish me luck there too!!!

Cutting, decisions, graduations and some mending!

This week was a working week. 

I began cutting the fabric for the Plus Blocks for a quilt for our son. His 50th birthday is the end of September and it's about time he had a quilt. Cutting the fabric is my OMG  for May.  Accomplished!  I also purchased some background fabric. Originally, I was thinking a light to medium light gray, but my local quilt store is tiny and the next closest one is 100 miles away. So I chose a white with a tiny bit of gray. The shop owner said it was "pebbles" and that is what I hope it looks like, but the selvage says Swirling Leaf pattern. The selvage also says White-Out and that says surfing to me, so we are going to go with an Urban Street Surfing vibe!

All the squares and rectangles are cut out and in the process of being assembled in rows. I downloaded a pdf from a blogger's page that had printed Letter/Number squares for marking blocks to keep them in order.  Do you think I can find my printouts?  Nope!!  Can I go back to the source?  Nope, no luck there either, so I made my own out of blue post-it-notes!  If you know who shared that pdf file, could you please let me know???

Sorry about my messy sewing space!  I have outgrown it!!

I have since this picture was taken, pulled the fabric on the plus sign just under the upper left hand sulfur green brick print. It seemed too light. I love the brick print, it is from Latifah Saafir's Grafic collection.  The other fabric is Tag by Cheryl Arkison from Connecting Threads. I should have the rows all sewn together by next Friday. Then I have to take a road trip to get fabric for the back. I saw a beer print in a store in Rapid City SD , 150 miles from here. But Mr Busy wants to go to the hobby shop there and maybe I'll get to see my sister and her husband for a little bit.  Fingers crossed. 

This week, our great grandson graduated from pre-school. His teacher is a gem and gave out award to each child. J got the "Most Curious" award. It is so true, he always wants to know "why?', "how?", "what is that for?" Questions, questions, questions!  His gramma calls him her "little engineer"!

I caught him "off guard" just before he had to turn in his cap and gown. I may not be around when he graduates from high school in 19 years. So I needed this photo. 

I also did a bit of mending for his baby sister, B.  She had a pretty dress, turned tunic because she is growing so fast.  But it itched and she didn't like it.  Her mom thought I could, maybe, fix it. She thought it was the inside of the bodice that had stitching . So I found a well worn t-shirt of Grandpa's and cut a piece of the back to the shape of the bodice. It rolled nicely and I just hand stitched it to the neckline and armholes and loosely basted the waistline. 

We put it on her. It seemed fine for about an hour and then she started tugging at it again. It has sequins that extend to the edges of the armholes and the neckline. I think they were the problem. 

It is a beautiful dress, but it is going in the "give-away" box. Maybe some one else won't be so sensitive. She is a fair skinned, red haired beauty, but she'd rather have on pants and play in the dirt. 

Stay Busy and Stay Happy

I'll be linking to Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts

and Finished or Not Friday at Busy Hands Quilts. 

ScrapHappy Saturday 5-11

May's RSC18 color is pink and rose.  Some of you may remember I participated in Carla's 30 Blocks in 30 Days  in April. I originally started to make the blocks in the order Carla presented them, but using the color order from So Scrappy's Rainbow Challenge.  Of course, I did not know in what order the rainbow colors would be selected. I did know what the colors might be and finally I decided to just make the colors willy nilly, but following Carla's Rainbow layout. (I hope you could follow that bit of rambling.)

The beginning of May, when pink and rose was chosen, I gathered the rest of my chunks and scraps of pink and darker other pink. I made slab blocks to go with the other slab blocks from the previous months. I think I need one more for six total.

They are odd varied sizes as of now. I will add more as the month goes one. One of my other challenges for May (One Monthly Goal) is taking some time too. I'll post about that later, but I will tell you it is definitely NOT pink.

I decided to pull the pink block from 30 Block challenge to show you here too.

There is lots of white on white negative space in those large blocks. I am sort of anxious to put these blocks together. This one is way outside my box..really pushing my envelope. Not the piecing of the blocks, they are super easy and super fun. But the modern look with all the negative space and the rainbow look is definitely different for me.

Stay Busy and Stay Happy

I'll be linking up with Angela at SoScrappy!