Christmas Reveal: Batman Quilt

My little nephew has so many passions, I never know if his latest favorite thing is still his favorite thing when I am making him gifts.  This Christmas, though, I think I hit the nail on the head.  I made him a Batman mini quilt to go along with a Batman figurine and a Batman shirt.  The whole kit seemed to go over pretty well.

This is, of course, another Fandom in Stitches design, this time by my quilt designing idol, Jennifer Ofenstein.  Now, I have to pause for a minute to mention the Fandom in Stitches designers.  They are all volunteers and contribute so much in time and designs that  are open for everyone to use.  Most importantly, every time I have had a question, they are there with courteous and helpful advice and support.  Part of the reason I want to design and offer free fandom patterns -- besides the fun I have doing it -- is to offer back what I can to this incredible community.

I took Jennifer's 5" block and blew it up to 20".  I kept the colors neutral with just black and grey, then added extra black sashing and some Batman logo sashing all around.

Finished Batman quilt.

The logo.

I can't honestly remember the exact shop were I got the Batman fabric (I bought it off eBay), but to the best of my knowledge, it was from Over The Rainbow on Camano Island, Washington.  I didn't realize they were fairly local to me, and my fabric arrived the day after I ordered it.  I have since ordered several fabrics from them and been very happy with the products and the speed with which my orders arrive.

I zigzag stitched around the logo to keep the quilt layers together, then outlined the bat a quarter inch inside the seam lines.  I then stippled the bat for some interest and bound the quilt.  The backing was the same Batman fabric I used in the sashing.  Except for accidentally cutting the seam allowance off one section for the first time ever when I didn't have enough fabric to redo that section (whoops!), the whole thing came together quite quickly and easily.

Stipple quilting on the bat.  You can hardly tell I
had to add in extra sections after cutting off
the seam allowance.  :)

You can find the pattern for the Batman logo here.

Frozen Friday: Party Time!

I had grand hopes of revealing my quilt today, but unfortunately, I was out of the house all day today and now it is too dark to take pictures.  I thought I would have the afternoon to take pictures and blog, but I had to unexpectedly go to a school assembly today to see my daughter get a character award for "Acceptance."  No better reason to miss out on a scheduled posting.  :)  I will be out of town this weekend to take part in the Hot Chocolate 5K, so I already have other blog posts written and scheduled to come out Saturday and Sunday.  Don't despair; Monday you can look forward to the pictures of the completed quilt.

But we can still have our Frozen Friday, because in lieu of that, I have pictures of our Frozen party to share!  We made a winter wonderland out of the house and had seven wild little girls invade it.  That was six days ago, and I am just starting to recover.

My birthday girl!

My little ones getting ready for the party.

Every girl took home a blueberry lollipop and one of these little "build a snowman" kits.  Just throw three large marshmallows (body), two mini marshmallows (feet), two stick pretzels (arms), five chocolate chips (eyes and buttons), and a piece of candy corn (nose) in a sandwich bag and add a topper.  This is not my unique idea, but I've seen it in so many places I wouldn't know who to credit.  I also printed up water bottle labels that said "Melted Snow" and had a picture of Olaf in summer, then taped them on water bottles.  These were a huge hit with the girls, especially when they got to add their own water flavorings.

Another huge hit was the hot cocoa bar.  I used what is normally my menu board and drew Olaf on it.  Let's just say that I have a lot more respect for Disney animators after several attempts at that.  We put out hot cocoa in different flavors, marshmallows, Andes mints, caramel, and whipped cream.  There was a run on the Keurig machine for the hot water, and soon everyone was settled in with a warm cup of cocoa.



We had plenty of purple and blue decorations.  We covered our walls with small snowflakes cut out of blue vinyl.  Sparkly snowflakes and acrylic "ice chunks" were strewn about the tables.  We strung balloons all through the downstairs using a needle and thread, which was an idea I found on Pinterest.  It worked great!  And I just happened to have PartyLite lanterns with snowflake patterns that were perfect for the party.  We even made magic color changing drinks by dropping blue food coloring into the cups, pouring ice on top, and then pouring clear pop on top.  As the pop bubbled, it turned blue.  Mini carrots served as snowman noses for a snack before gorging on pizza, and we served blue Jell-O in individual packs. Our cake had a bit of a sliding mishap because there was so much filling, but we told everyone that it had melted in the summer warmth and moved on with life.

I made the prizes for our "pin the nose on Olaf" game.  I decided to try making sugar lollipops for the first time, and I actually had a blast.  They were much easier to make than I anticipated.  We had large snowflakes and little stars.  Just a week earlier, my mom had given me some LorAnn flavorings in blueberry and mint that she didn't plan on using.  I threw a few drops of the blueberry in, and it turned out great.  Since I had extra sugar left after filling my molds, I put the rest in a pie tin and created "ice shards."

We needed plenty of activities to keep the girls busy for the entire party, so we set up a necklace-making station.  The girls picked a precut 1-inch character circle (not shockingly, every girl wanted Elsa), sealed it with an epoxy seal, glued it into a pendant back, and added a chain and an accent bead.


We also made a borax snowflake station.  Each girl created a snowflake out of a pipe cleaner, then suspended it in a jar.  The girls measured out their borax and poured it in, then I took them all to the kitchen and added boiling water.  We have been watching our snowflakes grow crystals ever since.

Everyone seemed to have a really good time at the party.  My daughter seemed to think it had everything she could have possibly wanted, so I think I'll go ahead and put this one in the "win" column.  Now it's time for me to get planning a dragon party for her big sister for June!  If you have any good ideas for that one, please let me know in the comments.  :)

My mother made this amazing gift topper for a birthday gift.  Makes me think there really might be a "crafty gene."  ;)

Christmas Reveal: My Little Pony Mini Quilt

This Christmas season, I finally decided to sponsor a child through The Christmas Fairy.  I have made personalized necklaces for children through the program in the past, but never done a full sponsorship.  We got a 6-year-old girl who liked My Little Pony, and in addition to the other gifts we bought for her, I wanted to include a handmade mini quilt that she could hang on her wall or use as a doll blanket.

The completed quilt.

I used liljab's pattern for Twilight Sparkle (you can find the pattern here), and at the risk of sounding conceited, I think it turned out pretty well.  What a fun and pretty easy pattern!  The colors ended up perfect for the design, even though I picked them out without writing down what I needed or looking up a picture while I was at the fabric shop.  This was totally from memory.  I think I may have watched a little too much MLP in my parenting life.

I quilted with loose, knotty spirals.

Personalized tags.

I did stitch in the ditch all around the pony, then quilted with clear monofilament thread in a loose spiral pattern to get a sort of "magical" feel.  This is Twilight Sparkle, after all.  Then I had to include a little quilted cutie mark.  It's just not a My Little Pony without one.  The backing was some purple starry night fabric (Robert Kaufman, I believe) I had bought as the backing for a Harry Potter quilt, and I had enough extra to back and bind this quilt as well.

Quilted cutie mark.

I am loving these little tags I can use to mark my quilts.    I ordered a bunch and I have been marking all my handmade quilts and other projects with them.  I am not one for putting a lot of information on my quilts, which I may regret in the future, but this tag serves as my signature and shows (as if my poor quilting and binding wouldn't do that well enough) that the item is handmade.

 I had so much fun shopping for our girl.  I hope we can take part in the program again next year!

Such a girlicious haul!

Frozen Friday: Olaf!

It really was a frozen Friday around here today!  I was glad I filled all the bird feeders yesterday because we woke up to snow and a two hour school delay.  That meant no therapy or preschool for my son, so I wasn't quite as productive as I normally am on a weekday.  (Frozen Friday almost turned into Snowy Saturday!)  I can't complain too much, though, since we don't have to make up late starts, and I know the rest of the country has really had it bad this winter.

We are continuing our Frozen patterns with Olaf, another 5" paper pieced block.  This guy was a lot of fun to piece, and seeing his big grin come together was really lifting my spirits.  I found a white fabric with tiny daisies that actually looked a little like snowflakes, so I thought that would be fun to play with.  I actually love the way it turned out.  Olaf is available here or on Craftsy (coming soon).

The computer-generated image.

The real deal!

Olaf, like his counterparts, is probably rated at a healthy advanced level.  I have to say, though, that it is mostly the size of the block that leads to this difficulty level.  If you are enlarging him, he should be much simpler to put together.  Because of the small pieces, I have included both a numbered and an unnumbered pattern in case you find it easier to work with the blank pattern.  I am always happy to enlarge my patterns for people and email them to you if you need help with that.  It won't be in the whole pretty pattern package, but I can send you just the enlarged pattern pieces.  Just leave a note in the comments!

Another thing I wanted to mention about these tiny patterns is the importance of accuracy.  Before I stitch two sections together, I fold one piece back along the line where I will be stitching to make sure any spots that need to match up do, and that I will have straight stitch lines on all sides when I am finished.  Sometimes if I have more than one spot that needs to match up, I will baste those spots and fold the section back to make sure they line up, then I will go back and stitch the whole line.  Once I stitch it, I take it to the iron to press the seam.  If something doesn't line up PERFECTLY, I will use the seam ripper and give it another go.  If you leave a small mistake there, little problems can multiply exponentially over the course of piecing the block together and your block can end up seriously malformed at the end, which is a lot of hard work gone to waste.  It is better to check and double-check at every step.

I can see some bits of adhesive stuck to my piece from ironing on the girls' Girl Scout patches, so it's probably time for me to clean my iron.  I usually get rid of all the gunk by mixing baking soda, some rock salt, and a tiny bit of water to make a thick paste, then take a paper towel to it and give it a little elbow grease.  My iron comes beautifully clean in no time.  If I get it in the little steam holes (I'm sure they have a more technical name than that), I just use a toothpick to pluck it out.  I never use the steam function on my iron anyway, so I don't worry about it too much.  If you are worried about it, you could probably cover them with a little tape or something to keep them clean while you scrub.

Over the next week I will be stitching Kristoff and Elsa, and hopefully retesting my revised Anna pattern.  I have to have this quilt done by next Saturday, so we are in time crunch mode!  If you give any of these patterns a try, I would love to see and here about your results and share them here on the blog.  :)

Frozen Friday: Anna!

It may be late, but it's definitely Friday.  Thank God for little miracles, like making it through this week.  :)

So I guess that makes it time to introduce our next Frozen Friday pattern:  Anna!

The computer-generated image.

This second block in our series is also a 5" block.  I embroidered the white streak in Anna's hair with a chain stitch, as well as a couple of small nostrils.  You can embroider as much or as little as you like to add details to the pattern.  I simply free-handed it.

The real deal!

I will wait to post the pattern to Craftsy until I have officially tested the redesigned block.  If you would like to download the pattern now, however, you can find it here.

The difficulty rating on this is really based on what you find difficult.  If you find teeny tiny pieces difficult, then this would be rated at a very advanced level.  The eye pieces are the only place where that will be a real issue.  I like to sew slowly, cut my seam allowances to 1/8", and even use a ruler and pencil to extend each line to make it easier to see under my presser foot.  If small pieces don't bother you at all but angles aren't your thing, this is probably more of a mid-range pattern.  It is easily blown up to a 10" block if a larger block makes the pattern easier.

This post is a little unusual, because I totally redrafted my pattern after completing my sample.  I realized after I had stitched all the pieces together and went to assemble it that the original pattern had some itty bitty Y-seams and other strange angles.  Not very easy to paper piece.  So the sample you see here is the old, more complicated version, but the pattern is the new, simplified version.  Because of that, technically you are receiving an untested pattern.  Between the two patterns, the only pieces I changed were the eyes, so it should work out just fine.  If anyone happens to test it out, please let me know and I'd be glad to feature it here!

Frozen Friday: Sven!

As promised, today is our first "Frozen Friday!"  I am really excited to be presenting my first series of blocks.  I know that other designers are working on Frozen blocks as well, but I wanted to be responsible for these start to finish for my daughter's quilt to add to the special, homemade quality.  You can probably expect another short design series this spring as well for my other daughter's birthday. We are thinking dragons, which should be a lot of fun.  Maybe something based off Eragon?

But back to Frozen.  :)  We are beginning with Sven.  Not only is he really adorable, but I wasn't quite ready to design blocks with people's faces yet.  That was a bit of a scary prospect until I actually got down to it.

Here's the computer-generated image ...

Here is the completed block!  (Please forgive the terrible lighting, but I had to take the photo after it was dark out.)

and the real deal!

The stitches are still stretched a little tight and are a bit visible because I haven't removed the paper yet.  I find that I have better luck with my stitching holding together if I wait to remove the paper until the quilt has been assembled.

The snowflake fabric is Wintersburg, by Abbott Designed (licensed to South Sea Imports), and everything else was scraps.  I actually found other snowflake fabrics that looked more like "Frozen" to me, but I didn't want them competing with the characters too much.  Maybe I will use one of those prints for the backing.  I haven't quite decided yet.

You might recall that I designed these blocks at 5" to fit into Jennifer Ofenstein's Classic Film pattern.  Because of that, this pattern can be incredibly complicated.  I don't personally find small pieces to be an issue, but I know some people do.  There aren't any strange angles that I can remember, but there are lots and lots and lots of tiny pieces.  I suggest that you blow it up to a larger size if you are intimidated.  Another option is to leave the inside of his eyes entirely white and either embroider a pupil or add a small black bead to your design.  You will, until I can convince my husband to get me EQ7, have to compare the pattern pieces to the section key and write in your own colors, but it is very manageable.

You can find the pattern free here or on Craftsy.

I do have all the other patterns (Anna, Elsa, Kristoff, and Olaf) designed, so I am looking forward to testing those over the next few weeks and releasing them to the public.  If you have a serious preference for which one is released next, be sure to let me know in the comments and I can take that into consideration.

Enjoy!

Free pattern: Shaun the Sheep!

I hope you are all huge fans of magic, because I pulled off the most amazing disappearing act this fall!  I was there one moment, and the next:  Bam!  I was gone.  :)

2013 was a little cruel to us here, and the year really ended with a bang.  My husband was deployed to Afghanistan the day before my birthday, leaving me to pretend to hold down the fort here.  School started right before a bad bout of strep throat and other illnesses swept through the house, then my husband's grandmother became ill and we thought we would lose her.  Not long after she recovered, his other grandmother unexpectedly passed away and he came home early to be with the family during our exceptionally crazy holidays.  Somewhere in the midst of all of that, I was volunteering at the kids' school, leading a Girl Scout troop, trying to navigate the medical system for my son, and carting the kids to their activities.  Since I believe that my blog is a way of sharing my craft and not a job, and I never want blogging to become a stressful exercise, I simply let it languish until I was ready to return to it.

Now that life is returning to normal, I am very excited to work on "As You Wish," a fun paper pieced project going on over at Fandom in Stitches.  Jennifer came up with an exceptional book quilt design for the project that I am looking forward to trying out.  I am also back to designing.  First, since some of you have been patiently waiting, I have finished up reworking the pattern for Shaun the Sheep, which you can find here or on Craftsy.

The computer-generated image.

The real deal!

The pattern is for a 10" block.  I made mine 20" to serve as the large centerpiece of a small quilt, and I knew he had to be on a grassy background.  I love this Danscapes fabric by Dan Morris.  I am a huge fan of what I call semidirectional prints, where they have a general direction, but no one will notice if you make a small mistake here or there while piecing it.  The Danscapes line has some really beautiful natural materials in their prints, like bricks, pebbles, and grass.  I know I will be looking for more of those in the future.  Moda has a really pretty grass print in the Modascapes line as well.

My fabric choices:  grass, white, and black.

 This is a pretty simple pattern, with only a few really small pieces and not many angles.  It should come together fairly easily, as long as you take care to compare the pattern to the colored key and write the correct colors on the pattern.  You can opt to leave his face as it is here, or you can easily embroider some eyes on him.

A fellow quilter on the Fandom in Stitches Facebook page, Vanda Chittenden of Insanitree, graciously offered to test my pattern last year, so I wanted to take a moment to thank her.  I appreciate her willingness to help and her time, and I do regret that I was not able to release the corrected pattern until now.

Vanda's Shaun the Sheep.  You can visit him at http://vandachittenden.wordpress.com/2013/10/04/shaun-the-sheep/.

Eventually I will design some of Shaun's friends, but that won't be for a while.  We have some other fun things coming up in the meantime, though.

Coming up!

January:

• "Christmas Reveals" will showcase some of the projects I made for family and friends that I could not post before.  I have some really fun things to share, and I will have links to all the patterns or tutorials I used.
• This week, we will begin our "Frozen Fridays," where I will share a series of Frozen designs with you.  Since I am working on a wall hanging for my daughter's February Frozen-themed birthday, I thought this would be a perfect time to release these patterns.  I am designing five 5" paper pieced blocks, perfectly sized to fit in Jennifer Ofenstein's Classic Film pattern.  This week, you will be meeting Sven.  Since I am still in the design and testing phase, I cannot commit to a new paper pieced pattern each week, so Fridays may feature tutorials for Frozen jewelry and other goodies instead.  But rest assured, all five patterns will be released by the end of March!

February:

• "Frozen Fridays" continue until all five patterns are released.
• With the Superbowl coming up, I thought it might be fun to have a little "bowl" giveaway ourselves.  More information about this giveaway will show up in February, but I do have three prizes, so there's a good chance you could win if you stay tuned!

Free pattern: Curious George!

Calling all curious monkeys!

My little man’s birthday is coming up, and we are doing it up in a Curious George theme.  I even ordered just the banana Runts (who eats the other ones, anyway?) as part of his birthday favors.  Now, my little guy has autism, and when he loves something, he loves it as fiercely as it has ever been loved.  George has been one of his favorites (and a HORRIBLE influence on him, I must say!) since the beginning.  This mom is always good for something homemade on special occasions, and I have wanted to make him a Curious George pillow for his three stuffed Georges to hang out with for a while now.  But I have been waiting and hoping and adding my name to request lists, and so far I haven’t seen a pattern for one.  I could be wrong, but in case I’m not, I finally got around to designing it myself.

Here he is, in all his yellow and brown glory!

The computer-generated image.

The real deal!

I would consider this block to be at about an advanced beginner level.  It really comes together quite easily and is pretty forgiving.  This comes out to be a 10” square block (without the seam allowance), and it is a paper-piecing pattern.  Once again, I was unable to put in section letters or colors.  I realize that is very frustrating, but hopefully these blocks are simple enough that you can add that information yourself to the patterns.  I will update my patterns once I have the capability to add all that.

I don't normally embroider on my blocks, but look at that face!

 

The mouth and nose are embroidered with a simple backstitch.  All I did was take the computer-generated image that you can find on the cover sheet of the pattern and blew that up to 10” square, which is the size of the block.  I then cropped out what I didn’t need and converted it to black and white to save my colored ink, and held it up to the window to trace it lightly so I would have my embroidery pattern.  Very high-tech.  :)  This would be easy to free-hand, however.  You could also appliqué something on, or even use a fabric pen to add it.  Of course, George is pretty recognizable even without the mouth, so you could leave it off entirely and be just fine.

George tested and approves of this pillow.



I turned mine into a simple throw pillow for my son’s bed by adding about 2” of sashing on each side.

This would be great blown up to a larger size for a little wall quilt.  You could add some blocks with bananas, or find a cowboy hat pattern and do it all in yellow to make the famous yellow hat.  I would love to see what you come up with!

You can download the pattern here or on Craftsy.

I hope your little monkeys enjoy.  :)