Vintage Christmas Quilt

This month I had the pleasure of quilting a Lori Holt Vintage Christmas sampler quilt. I wish I could say this was my quilt. It was really hard for me to choose a quilting design, I wanted it to be perfect. 

I finally chose a pantograph called Twinkle, I thought it was a perfect complement to the quilt blocks. I used a grey variegated thread on the top and a green that matched the backing perfectly. I need to make this quilt for myself, I love it that much.

This quilt will be on display at the quilt shop where I work later this year.

Pencil Cases

I'm starting to get used to my new embroidery machine. This week I made some pencil cases using some new embroidery files I ordered online. I had two different bundles of teacher-themed fabrics so I decided to make some pencil cases using a little of the fabrics in the bundles. Thanks to ZipIt, the Etsy store that sells zippers cheap, I have plenty of zippers on hand so I can easily find one to match most projects. 

I didn't really follow any specific pattern or tutorial to make these pouches. I did look at the finished sizes of a few sewing blogs that had online tutorials and I settled on a finished size of 9" x 5". Here are the two I made. 

I discovered that I like the look of the embroidery on linen. Luckily, I have 10 yards of this good stuff. I washed it along with 10 yards of muslin to use as stabilizer on the back.

My granddaughters will give the pouches to their teachers during teacher appreciation week in April. I hope it is easy for the to decide who gets what.

Small Projects

I've had this small Chalk Couture project for a few months and I completed it today. My husband made me some shelves for over my coffee station. The shelves are made from wood we had milled from trees on our land up in Marinette County so they are special to us. The shelves are sitting on pipe fixtures, just like some I found on Pinterest. Once he put up the shelves I was excited to make the Chalk Couture project. 

Here's what it looks like on the "coffee wall" shelf. 

I still have some decorating to do to make it look like I want it, so my next step is to get some greenery for color.

Once I finished the chalk project, I dug out some vinyl I've had for a while. I made up this project bag to take to my quilting group. I quilted the back patchwork panel, added a zipper and vinyl window to the front and sewed on binding. It was so quick and easy. I plan on making more in different sizes as teacher gifts for teacher appreciation week which is in April.

Quilts for Kids Finished Quilts

The snow keeps piling up; there's now 22 inches on the ground. The piles are so high, you can't see over the top of them. To make things worse, the average daytime temperature is 6 degrees so it's not fun to go outside and play in it. While we're hunkered down, I did finish two charity quilts. I had these two in my stack of finished quilt tops since last year. It felt good to put them in the washer once they were finished. I seemed like a good idea to photograph them on top of the piles of snow.

My 10 year old granddaughter did some of the quilting on the minion quilt. She had a good time working the longarmer. I hope she wants to do it some more.

This quilt pattern is called Perfect 10. I used fat quarters I got from a friend who didn't want them anymore. I promised her I would use the fabric for Quilts for Kids so I finished the quilt top in October. I just never took the time to quilt it. I don't know why.

Quick Weekend Projects

This weekend I downloaded an apron pattern off the internet. The pattern had 17 pages and it went together a little like a jigsaw puzzle. It was quite fun to do. Last month I had embroidered a kitchen design and I really wanted to make an apron so I can sew the embroidered piece on as a pocket. 

I cut the pattern out as well as the fabric and in less than 2 hours, I had finished it. I used some really nice linen fabric and I washed it before using it. The pattern was as simple as sewing a few seams, turning and pressing, then hemming and topstitching. Here is the finished apron:

Since I finished the apron so quickly I put a charity quilt on the longarmer. The quilt top was made by some of the ladies from my Sweet Sundays sewing group. I decided to free motion quilt it so since I wasn't following a pantograph I quilted the whole thing in 45 minutes. Another fast finish. Yay!

Farmhouse Pillow Covers

I made some pillow covers to decorate the bench in my kitchen. I used my embroidery machine to embroider on some white linen. I used a nice farmhouse plaid to frame the embroidered pieces. I really like the look.

Snow Day

We had a heavy snowfall yesterday which was the first in a while. So far, there's been little snow to report which is unusual for Wisconsin. We even had local news reporters in the neighborhood this morning to do interviews on the snow between traffic reports.  Here's what it looks like out my bedroom window.

Normally I would mention how nice it is to be snowed in, however my husband tested positive for covid-19 last week so we are under quarantine which means I've been stuck at home even before the snowfall.  

It all makes for a good reason to work on a quilt project. In a effort to finish an old project, I took out a quilt I started in fall of 2019 called Flying Leap. Here it is in sections on the design board. 

 I wonder if I can finish the whole quilt top by the end of the day. I'm sure going to try!

Coffee Tea Towel

I finally figured out what to do with the first embroidery piece I made with my new machine - a tea towel! I washed up some blank tea towels last week and today I cut some 2 and a half inch squares of coffee themed coordinating prints. I sewed the squares together and stitched them onto the towel 3 and a half inches up from the bottom of the towel. I cut the embroidery piece down to fit in the center and used a sating stitch to attach it to the towel. I do like how it turned out.