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Adria lent me her Denyse Schmidt Quilts book a while back and I’ve been slowly working on a few projects in it.

A while back I made a quilted heating pad cover and I’ve been meaning to work on some of the scrappy projects to get through my stash and to build up some fun inventory for Market Day. I came across a project for some greeting cards with fabric sewn to the front. Denyse Schmidt calls them “Dis-Cards”. As a graphic designer, I’ve got a TON of paper samples stocked away. The particular paper I used for these cards was something I’d ordered when I was thinking of re-tooling my portfolio a couple years ago. Obviously (as you can tell by my main website) I haven’t gotten around to doing that. So, instead, I used this lovely Classic Columns duplex 120# cover weight sheet to make cards. Funny thing — it’s like the paper was waiting for this project. The sample sheets I have cut down to EXACTLY the size of 4 A6 greeting cards.

Anywho, here’s a sneak peek at the cards that I’ve made with some of my scraps. I’m planning to have about 100 of these by Market Day (which, by the way, is May 29th this month from 9 AM–2 PM). I’m putting them in coordinating packs of 5 with envelopes.

This one is my favorite one that I’ve made so far. I love the combination of fabrics.

These cards are a LOT of fun to make. It’s a great scrapbuster for those super small scraps that don’t have enough edge to sew together. Of course, most of these cards use Wonderland. I’ve got a few scraps left from the Puzzle Quilt I’ve been working on. I’m digging the frayed edges on these. As well as the faux quilting. I’m having fun playing with a few different stitches. I don’t have a super high-tech sewing machine, so I’m really stuck with zig-zags as my creative stitch, but mixing the different stitches gives a really cool look.

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I’ve been obsessed with Wonderland by Momo ever since it came out. So, I’ve started working on two new projects with what I’ve got left.

I bought a jelly roll a while back and decided to make Thea’s Puzzle Quilt (a pattern by Amy Butler). I’ve got the middle section done, so I just need to create the border of solid color that goes around it — and for Mark’s sake, I’m going to do brown instead of pink (apparently he hates pink … and I’m hoping that both him and the quilt stick around for a while!).  Then I’m going to add an oatmeal-colored fabric for the border and possibly the backing.

Above is a close-up of my favorite block. I love how the scissors pattern is echoed a bit smaller in the patchwork fabric.

I’ve also been wanting a DayRunner for a while, but I didn’t want to just buy a pre-made one. It’s not as fun if you do things the easy way! So I bought the “guts” for a DayRunner and figured out a pattern (which I will post eventually after I do a testrun with it on the road).  Of course, I used Wonderland.  Here’s how it turned out.

I need to sew a button on the front yet and I need to add some binder rings and sew those in, but otherwise, I’m loving it.

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I’ve decided to drastically reduce the price of my Butterflies in Wonderland quilt on etsy.  This quilt is made from a now-discontinued line of fabric (my absolute FAVORITE) by momo from Moda.  The machine quilting is done in a contrasting yellow stitching and is in a butterfly pattern — which, when seen as a whole, turns into a centered flower pattern.

Original price: $300
Sale Price: $85

It’s almost killing me to do this — I love this quilt so much, but I’m moving soon and need some of my items to go.  I love this quilt and it’s hard to get rid of it, but it’s just got to go!

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I’ve been reading the Denyse Schmidt Quilts book that Adria let me borrow and saw the heating pad project and just HAD to do it. I hardly make anything for myself, but it annoys me that I have my heating pad out in the middle of my living room and it’s so not cute. It had some weird 90s pattern on the cover.  Not a fan.

Well, now, it’s stylin’!  I used the original cover for insulation and quilted the patchwork piece to it. The original cover had a snap closure on it, so I didn’t have to mess with putting a closure on the new cover.  Pretty smart, eh?

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My grandpa had given me a bunch of things that my granny (great grandmother) had left behind when she passed in 2002.  I’ve been using some of her materials (embroidery thread, fabric, pins, etc.) to create some of the things I’ve been making.  I’ve had 10 quilt blocks that I’ve been hoarding that she had made a long time ago.  The fabrics were impossible to match with modern-day or even reproduction fabrics.  The block pattern was too complex for me.  So, I’ve been sitting on them.

Last weekend my mom and I went to Valley Junction and found some really amazing vintage blocks that matched pretty well.  So, I finally got out the blocks and made a quilt top.

Here it is!

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Again, going through my scrap box and found some scraps that Adria had given me from her Hello Betty quilt.  I had enough left to make a large block and I decided to finally cover the 18″x18″ pillow form I’ve had lying around.

I did another wonky log cabin block because those are just too easy and addictive.

Here’s the finished product. It doesn’t go with anything I own other than the chair in which I photographed it.

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I took today off since I had to take my mancandy to the airport at an obscenely early time and wanted to sleep/clean/catch up on crafting the rest of the day.

Needless to say, I didn’t get a whole lot of cleaning done (I did put the dishes away!), but I got a little sleeping and a LOT of crafting done.  I finished off both sets of wonky log cabin blocks I’ve been working in — one with my repro fabrics, and the other with Wonderland and Amy Butler fabrics that I’ve been hoarding.  I have 17 of the repro block and 24 of the Amy Butler/Wonderland blocks.  I’m going to make a queen-sized quilt with the AB/W blocks, but not sure what I’m going to do with the repro blocks.

Here are some of the more fun blocks from the repro log cabin set (8″x8″).

And here are some cool ones from the Amy Butler set …

Eventually I’ll make these into quilts, but until then, they’re just pretty patchwork pieces.

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Since I’m feeling sassy, I’m having a February $5 off sale on all my wallets on etsy!  Also — if you follow me on twitter or if you found this sale through my blog, convo me and I’ll give you free shipping on your wallet.

Check it out!

Oversized Clutch Wallet — $35

Funky Patchwork Wallet — $25

Wonderland Patchwork Wallet — $15

Funky Patchwork Wallet — $15

Funky Patchwork Wallet — $15

Large Park Slope Patchwork Wallet — $20

Large Park Slope Frog Closure Wallet — $20

Medium Echino Wallet — $15

Enjoy!!

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I blogged earlier today about the 2nd hardcore quilt top that I made.

Well, I took the plunge ladies and gentlemen.  I officially quilted a full-size quilt.

I took photos of the process. One thing I learned — I desperately need a walking foot. I couldn’t find one for my machine (they were sold out in two places, so I gave up since this was just a practice quilt anyway). Also, quilting on t-shirts is difficult when you come across larger patches of screenprinting, especially when it’s a newer shirt.

Here’s what I did: I got some backing and batting and made a quilt sandwich. I basted it with large safety pins. I took tape (artists tape would work the best but I only had athletic tape at home, so that worked) and created uniform lines to follow with my stitching….and I was off.  I only had to reload the bobbin once, which was awesome because I hate doing that (I’m lazy. if I had a self-loading bobbin or never-ending bobbin that would rule. also — self threading needle).  I trimmed it and sewed the binding on (backwards I believe) and since I’m really lazy, I zig-zag stitched the binding to finish it.

Anyway, here’s photogs of the process.

basting and taping before quilting …

the whole safety-pinned, taped-up mess before I started (note — I taped in one direction at a time because I didn’t want to sew through the tape)

here’s where the bobbin ran out of thread. I took a much-needed walking break and came back an hour later refreshed and ready to conquer the rest of this thing.

ta-da! finished quilt. took me from 1 PM to 9 PM to finish top to bottom (minus 2 hours for supper, walking and errands)

okay… so the back picked up a ton of fuzz from the batting and a bunch of threads that were randomly strewn about my floor. I’m washing this thing tomorrow. Hopefully fix that problem.

And … DONE!

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A while back I made a “hardcore” quilt top out of a bunch of band t-shirts I had lying around. It was sort of practice for piecing since it was one of the first things I pieced.

Anywho, I only used half of the 50 blocks I’d created for it and shoved the rest of them in my closet to be used at a later date. Well, today was that later date.

This quilt top isn’t as cool as the other one, however; I did find one of the blocks I’d started embroidering back when I was all “ooh I should embellish these all with embroidery!” Not so much. Would have been cool, but too time-consuming for the likes of me.

Here’s a closeup of the embroidery.

what I love about these two quilt tops is that any-which-way is up.

Yay!

Now I’m off to Hancock Fabrics to get some batting, some backing (I think I’ll use the backing to bind in this case), some contrasting thread, a walking foot, some artist’s tape and a bunch of safety pins. You guessed it. I’m going to use this guy as my practice quilt to actually QUILT.

Wish me luck!!

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