I used this tutorial to make pillowcases for my goddaughter for Christmas. One is made from a dinosaur skeleton fabric, and the other from Riley Blake’s Saltwater collection. They both seemed perfect for a toddler!
It’s two-sided:
I love the turtles:
I know it’s Throwback Thursday, but I don’t post on Thursdays, so Throwback Tuesday it is.
I made this pillow for my uncle who loves the Beatles. I don’t remember when I made it; I actually don’t remember making it at all, but I know I did because I still use those fabrics. My aunt has it on display at their mountain house and my mom took a picture last time they were up there and sent it to me, so I decided to post about it.
Cute, right? As I mentioned, I have no memory of this, so I don’t know what I based the design off of. I obviously did a lot of fussy cutting. You may recognize the fabric from these coasters, and I also made a Christmas ornament from the fabric at some point, but I don’t know if I posted about that.
Hi habibis! I wanted to share a few presents I made recently:
I made this quilted bookmark for a cousin for her birthday, using leftover Air Force fabric. I quilted it with white thread.
These sashiko coasters are from the Handstitched class. (Yes! I finally finished a project from the class.) I didn’t follow the instructions 100% when it came to the design because I couldn’t figure out how to replicate it properly, but I’m very happy with the design. I made them as a birthday/apartment warming gift for my friend R. I love the geometric print, and I think I matched it up nicely with the solid. I used variegated thread. I swear I took pictures but I can’t find them, so here’s a picture R took. Isn’t she a great hand model?
This shoe bag is for my friend A. I let her pick from a few different fabrics, all of them blue/purple-y. (She loves cool tones.) I wish I’d made it bigger – it should fit most shoes, but I would have liked something larger. I love the butterfly print.
My grandmother has pretty much everything she needs, and probably most of what she wants as well, so when it comes to presents for her I try to make things. She always appreciates something handmade. I decided to make her a mat for her tray table.
I used scraps leftover from my brother R’s wedding quilt – the forest green and the cream – and I added some gold and the green on white print from my Aunt D’s stash. (Did I mention last time I used this fabric that it reminds me of an ivy print my grandmother used in her mountain house when I was a little girl? It makes me really happy just to look at it.) My grandpa’s favorite color was green, and my grandma has had a fondness for green since he passed away. Her couch is dark green and the mat will match the pillow I made her for Christmas, too.
I made small blocks with scraps – do they count as courthouse steps blocks? Then I took the cream squares and squared everything up (as best I could – everything is 6″-ish, emphasis on the ‘ish’).
The back is just a large piece of cream and a long piece of cream. I layered them with a leftover piece of batting, sewed around the edge, and turned it right side out.
For the machine quilting I used cream thread. I did geometric quilting in the blocks. Each block is slightly different, but they’re all quilted in concentric squares of some style. Then I drew hearts freehand and quilted them with a running stitch in forest green.
My grandma really liked it. I wonder if I should have used more dark colors to hide stains, but it can always go in the wash.
Hi habibis! It’s still technically winter but it’s finally starting to feel just a bit spring-like, isn’t it? I’m so ready!
A few of my friends are having babies or had babies, so I’ve been making some baby gifts/baby-themed gifts. Here are a few of them:
Here are mom and dad mug rugs – for a pair of new parents-to-be. I hand embroidered “Mom” and “Dad” in stem stitch. Then I pieced the tops and backs from scraps. The mom one is machine quilted with a freehand heart and then a wavy box surrounding everything. I used bright green thread.
The dad one is machine quilted with concentric rectangles. I filled in the remaining space with other geometric shapes using dark blue thread.
Here’s an uncle bookmark for an academic and bibliophile. Again, “uncle” is hand embroidered in stem stitch and then I machine quilted rectangles around the center rectangle. The blue book print is from the same line as this bookmark and mug rug. The back is the same print.
A grandpa pillow for a baseball lover: I saw a tutorial on sew mama sew handmade holidays for a pennant pillow and loved the idea. (I didn’t actually follow the tutorial.) I hand embroidered “Grandpa” on the light blue fabric and then added a darker blue border to get the size I wanted.
I chose baseball fabric for the back because this grandpa is a huge baseball afficianado. I added the blue to the back side, too. I sewed them right sides together, stuffed it with loose batting, and handstitched it closed.
I made quick and easy decorations for Valentine’s Day. My roommate and I had a small dinner party, just my boyfriend and another friend, and I spent my day at my guild meeting and then cooking, so I didn’t have a lot of time to decorate.
I’d had an idea – probably during my guild meeting – for decorations. I cut out hearts from pink fabric. I just did it freehand and then trimmed as necessary. My plan was to safety pin them to ribbon and tie the ribbon around our kitchen cabinet handles, but the ribbon pulled too much when I did that and the hearts wouldn’t hang straight. I ended up pinning each end of ribbon to the heart instead.
Cute, right? I made six of them and it took maybe ten minutes. I’m going to reuse them for applique, maybe for a doll quilt or something.
Happy Tuesday habibis! It’s present time!
I could probably write a post a day for the month of January showcasing the different Christmas presents I made this year. Instead I’ve combined them by theme. Today’s theme is pillows. I have four to show you.
I mentioned a while ago that my Aunt D, who also sews and quilts some, decided she didn’t want to keep a stash and gifted her fabric to me. It was a big Macy’s box full of fabric. I decided (it might have been my mother’s suggestion – she’s so smart) to make Aunt D a Christmas present using some of her scraps. My mom definitely consulted when it came to fabric choices and Aunt D’s color preferences. I knew I was thinking some kind of lattice work design. Aunt D had a pansy fabric that I love, which would look pretty as the center of each block. (My favorite flower is the poppy, but I find pansies incredibly appealing and pleasant to look at – maybe it’s the combination of purple and yellow in one flower.) My mom suggested yellow, and of course that would perfectly complement the yellow in the pansies. And what else but green to go with it? Aunt D also had a lovely green on white ivy print. It actually reminds me of the mountain house my grandparents had when I was a kid – one bedroom was entirely decorated with a green on white ivy print and it was so airy. So I picked the pansies and the ivy and pulled a pale yellow out of my stash – it’s the backing print from this yellow and orange quilt I made my other grandmother. I made a windowpane/latticework pattern – pansies in the center, then yellow, then the ivy.
Aunt D also gave me a nice forest green – not that I’m lacking those, after making R and M’s wedding quilt, but I used hers because it’s richer than the hues in my forest green prints, and also it’s from her stash. I used that to make the back, with a strip of pansies on the envelope closure to make it pretty. The closure doesn’t overlap as much as I’d like – I guess I miscalculated – but otherwise I’m 100% happy with the pillow, and Aunt D was delighted to recognize some of her fabrics in her present. I’m putting the rest of her stash to good use, too – some of those fabrics will feature in future posts.
The other three pillows are for my mom’s family – my grandma, my Aunt M (my mom’s sister, not my aunt M my dad’s sister), and my cousin S, M’s daughter. I’ve made stuff for my grandma before – in fact, I’m sure I made her a green and pink star quilt years ago, but I haven’t seen it in years, so who knows. S reminded me that I made her pillows a few years ago but I have only the vaguest memory of what those look like. I’m pretty sure I haven’t ever made anything for Aunt M. I decided it was high time I made them all something. I thought matching/coordinated pillows would be cute. I talked to S about color choices. She likes light blue and Aunt M likes yellow. I had already decided to use gold to tie all the pillows together, since I had so much gold fabric leftover from R and M’s quilt, and to do my grandma’s pillow in gold and forest green. It would match her couch, and green was my grandpa’s favorite color so now it’s more special for her.
I wanted my grandma’s to be a checkerboard pattern but I cut wrong and didn’t have enough of that gold. So I added another gold print and made this modified design. The back is forest green with gold on the envelope closure.
For S I decided to do diagonal stripes in gold and light blue. I actually sewed them into a big block of vertical stripes, then cut a diamond the size of the pillow out and turned it on its side to get the diagonal. I used the corners of the big block to make the back, with extra blue for a border and the envelope closure.
For Aunt M I wanted to do something with half square triangles and make it kind of like the gold emanating from one point. While I was thinking of the design I was reminded of the line from Romeo and Juliet: “It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.” I decided to name this pillow “and Juliet is the sun.” It’s like the sun rising. I didn’t make a tag or anything, or even tell Aunt M the name of the pillow. (Half the time I don’t even name my quilts, much less a pillow.) However, that is the pillow’s name. I pulled lots of gold prints to make the HSTs and I used extra HST blocks and extra gold fabric for the back.
Here’s the three of them together:
That’s four presents down…and a bunch to go. Plus everything I’m working on now. It’s funny how I used to sometimes start a project just so I had something to post – because I used to only work on one quilt at a time and they’re usually presents. Guess I don’t have that problem anymore. Suddenly it feels like I’m working on everything!
Merry Christmas, habibis! I hope you’re having a very happy holiday if you celebrate (and if not, happy Thursday)!
For my goddaughter N’s Christmas present I thought I’d give her something religious. I was thinking I’d stop at the Catholic store in my parents’ town and then I remembered that I had bought a Nativity wall quilt kit years ago. I think I’d originally planned to make it for my parents but I never got around to it, and it’s been sitting in my stash for some time. I decided it would be perfect.
The kit consists of a panel featuring the Holy Family and the three Wise Men, in shades of blue and gold. It’s beautiful!
The back is a starry print.
I added this silver-edged ribbon to make loops for hanging.
I did all my quilting in gold thread. I tried to do some FMQ on it, more free-form than free motion I guess. I quilted around the halos on the Holy Family, but I didn’t trace in advance, so they aren’t perfect curves.
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I quilted inside the Star of Bethlehem, from point to point, although you can’t really tell. I quilted around the blocks at the top and bottom of the panel. I quilted along the edges of the center panel piece. I had some bunching issues at the corners – the little finial kind of shapes – and I wanted to flatten them out as best I could, so I then went along the edges of the quilt in navy.
Can you see that in the above picture? It did help.
Here are full shots of the front and back:
It’s really cute, right? I wish it were less bunchy but that’s a chronic problem of mine, and it still looks great!
Happy Third Sunday of Advent!
Today I’m showing you a Christmas present for Z’s dad J. (Not to be confused with Z’s grandpa, Mr. J. This is how I differentiate between them when I speak to them, actually.) Months ago I went to the LQS near my parents’ house with my mom and I bought the fabrics I would ultimately use for my magnum opus. While I was there, a runner kit caught my eye. They were selling this pattern, “Braid Runner” by G. E. Designs, with all nautical fabrics. It was adorable, and perfect for Z’s dad, who spends much of his retirement at the beach, or out on the water fishing. I had to buy it. (When I started telling my friends what I was making for Z’s family this year they thought that everything in their house must be patriotic/nautical and I’m trying to match it. I had to explain that, no, that’s not the case – at least not until I started making things for them hehe.)
I made it over the summer, knowing how crazy December would be, present wise. Z doesn’t read my blog and I don’t think his dad has any idea I even have a blog, so I feel comfortable sharing it now even though I won’t give it to him until Christmas.
I cut the fabric for this, the flag quilt, and the flag pillow all at once so I could use scraps in the different projects if I wanted to (and so I’d know if I needed to buy more fabric for Z’s quilt). I used some of the same fabrics in the quilt and the pillow. I might have used leftovers from the runner in the binding for Z’s quilt but now I’m not sure. I’m keeping all my red, white, and blue scraps together for future projects!
This kit is quilt as you go, which I’d never done before. (After this I did my butterfly doll quilt partially quilt as you go, but this was my first time.) I’ll tell you what I liked about it and what I didn’t like:
I liked that I finished it all in one go and didn’t have to go quilt it once it was all pieced and sandwiched.
I didn’t like that I had to keep taking it off the sewing machine to go pin the next piece on. I like doing all the cutting at once, and then all the sewing at once, and then all the ironing at once. It disrupted my rhythm. I also didn’t like that if I made sewing mistakes they showed up on the back in the quilting. I forgot about that until I had made a mistake and then I could see it on the back.
I hadn’t even thought to change threads – I could have used a pretty pale blue thread that might have blended into the back, but by the time I thought of it, it was too late. I used white thread instead because that’s what I always use when I’m piecing.
I accidentally left in a safety pin holding the batting and backing together. I later had to cut it out. It doesn’t show too much, I don’t think. That’s my own fault and carelessness, not necessarily a problem with quilt as you go, in general, but I could see myself having the same problem in the future.
I do think the quilting looks good on the back despite my mistakes. I wasn’t sure about binding a non-square object but that turned out okay. I’m very happy with how the runner came out. Also, I would recommend this pattern if you find it appealing. Although I struggled a bit with adapting to quilt as you go, the pattern itself was pretty easy to follow and I think it’s really cute. (Ignore the unevenness of my borders. Obviously I did something wrong there, but that’s user error.)
I never took a picture of it after I sewed all the binding down – sorry about that!
Z told me his dad will love it, once I explain what a runner is.
Habibi Homemade 