Blankets for kiddos this Holiday season? I'll take that challenge!

In the quilt-y bloglands there is this awesome project for the holidays - 100 Quilts for Christmas.  Although I have a list of projects to make gifts for friends and family, the reality is that my family all around is opting for less "stuff" and more charitable giving - and I love this!  So, in addition to the regular donations we make to honor people for the holidays, why not make a couple of blankets to donate?

The quilts and blankets don't have to be very elaborate - just bright and cheerful and snuggly! I'm planning to donate through the local Project Linus branch - the SF/East Bay Chapter who have a great list of recipients including shelters, hospitals, and individuals.

Ideally, I'd like to make one quilt (and practice more free motion quilting!), and probably something else simple like a fleece blanket (which seems like something you could do in an hour or less not counting shopping for fabric time).

Anyone want to join me?  You can easily find local organizations to donate to, and if you want you can post your pictures of projects on the 100 Quilts for Christmas link-ups to enter for fabric giveaways from sponsors!

List-o-mania!

I am such a list-y girl. to-do lists are my favorite - daily at work, weekly for home stuff, weekend to-dos seasonal to-dos, crafty projects, menu planning lists, party planning lists (for the rare time these days when we actually entertain!), packing lists, shopping lists...anyway, you get the idea.

Here is a real-life example in which names are changed. Most of it will be gibberish to anyone but me, but looking at my lists makes me laugh. I mean have you ever checked out Martha's to-do lists in Living? She does like one thing a day? No, I don't think so. (And yes, it is true that there were 3 different going away parties at work today. Yes, that is a little freaky and depressing - although 2 of them are people transferring to different jobs at other sites for our company in Europe so I guess it's not really good-bye but farewell?  But I only made it to one out of 3 anyway...)

To-Do Friday Nov. 19th

• BB check email (work)
• quick check email (home)
• TC @8am re: compound XXX
• deal with flagged emails
• So-and-so's Research meeting@11am
• going-away luncheon for Dr. X
• workout (? not sure I'll be able to make small grp training, so come up with plan)
• scan and send out copies of signed blah blah documents
• review new blah blah presentation and send feedback to boss-man
• finalize travel plan for Dec F2F
• come up with 2010 hits and misses, plus some goals for 2011 and send to boss-man
• going away party for Dr. C at 3:30pm
• make appearance at company social - theme "Courage" (?WTF)
• clean desk piles
• going away dinner for Mr. BD - probably need to decline
• pick up Wild Thing at 5:30 (he wants to do 6pm KF)
• what's for dinner? (heh. pizza and a movie)
• take photos of FO (rainy today - try weekend)
• finish blog post from last night

Since the holidays are nearly upon us, I've got lists going for gifts, especially handmade ones. But the list I haven't thought about much is a wish-list for myself. Now I've got a new category of wish-list that is sort of like a to-do list - things I'd like to try in 2011. Sewing wise, I'd like to be brave enough to make some clothing. Basic skirts are not too scary, pajama pants are high on the list because I don't have to wear them in public, but I have knits on my mind (remember?) too. And voile for a shirt or dress - I've never sewn with this either, but there are some very pretty fabrics out there.

An on-line fabric shop I've recently purchased quilting fabric from, Above All Fabric, added a wish list feature to their site. The challenge was to build a list and blog about it to have a chance to win a gift certificate. This offer came out last weekend, but I really couldn't figure out what to put on a wish list from a fabric store without going crazy and putting a bazillion fabrics on there (and I don't have that kind of time!). Then I thought I should think about my vague plans for garment sewing and find maybe a couple of patterns and new (to me) fabrics like voile. The pattern that appealed to me most on their site is "Liverpool" by Amy Butler - a shirt/tunic/dress pattern that features bold prints - I figure using a vibrant busy fabric would help compensate for amateur sewing skills (but I could be making a terrible miscalculation!)

Some possible fabrics? There are these lovely voile prints from Anna Maria Horner -

I also have on this wishlist a scarf pattern booklet that I'd seen somewhere else on a blog that I remember looked promising...

Anyway, I'm still too bogged down in gift list-o-mania to spend too much time dreaming about new projects for 2011. BUT, that's what a list is good for too - keeping track of fun ideas.

Fall Craft - a little leafy wreath project

Last year I picked up a couple packages of faux oak leaves in the clearance bin somewhere. I stuck them in the "Halloween and Fall Decor" box and forgot about them. They are sort of a fabric/plastic hybrid stuff (made in China, so who knows), but they look quite nice and not plastic-y.  I have no idea what I had in mind when I bought them, so they were sitting around on the buffet in the dining room waiting for an idea.  I thought a wreath would be nice, but never made the trip to the craft store to buy a wreath to tack them onto. I figured I could pin them to a foam wreath, or hot glue to a grapevine wreath...I hadn't decided.

Then Wild Thing pulled a coil of wire out of my wire and ribbon box in the craft corner while we were looking for a ribbon for a bell he found to tie into a necklace for him. At first I snapped at him a little for uncoiling it since I couldn't get it back in the box easily...but immediately I thought maybe it could be fashioned into a circle to make a wreath.  So I set out sticking the end through the leaves and experimenting with how to arrange them.

I tried to convince Wild Thing that this would be a fun craft to do with me, but he was not persuaded.

Then I tried to entice Teen Wonder, but I don't think she even took her earbud out long enough to hear a complete sentence. In her defense, she is writing a novel this month for NaNoWriMo. So okay. I was on my own...

Once they were all strung, I just wrapped the wire ends and fashioned a little loop to hang it with.  I had to fuss around with the shape of the wire and with the leaves to minimize the amount of wire showing. Then after I hung it on the door I had to do that again. A drop of glue here and there would probably minimize the shifting around of the leaves - we'll see after a day or two.

voila! A little Fall crafty for a Sunday afternoon.

In other news, I am overcoming my fear of free-motion quilting.  So far, not too bad though my stitches are all over the map in length. I'm sure I will get better and hopefully the recipients don't know much about quilting!

Baby, it's a coin quilt!

Time for another baby quilt!  Wild Thing has been sick this week and going to bed very early, so I had a couple of evenings with time to work on a project.  I've managed finally to give up a more complex plan for this quilt (more on that another time) and am using a very straightforward coin quilt design.  It's my first coin quilt, but I foresee more of these in my future.

I just sketched up the dimensions and used a Tweet Tweet by Keiki charm pack plus cream muslin. The back is a nice Valori Wells flannel. I'll show pictures of the final quilt once I figure out how I should quilt it and then put on a binding. I'm thinking something pink for the binding because 1) it's for a baby girl, and 2) the colors aren't too girly on purpose, but the flannel a green agapanthus print making it even less girly. Pink binding could draw out the pinks in the Tweet Tweet and contrast with the green. But I don't have anything suitable in my stash, so it's a little mission for the weekend (darn, I'll have to go to the quilt shop). This baby is coming within the next 2-4 weeks so there's no time to waste!

I used this tutorial from Quilt Taffy for a quilt as you go baby coin quilt with somewhat different dimensions. Overall I'm pretty happy with it so far - though I'm not sure my stacks are as straight as they could be.  I started out pinning like crazy (see below), but ended up with fewer and fewer each strip until I just just had a couple at the top and that was it. The tutorial advises more pins due to shifting of the layers.  I think this is probably true, but after the first 3 strips the layers were more stabilized.

no time to blog really...but there are some great things happening out there!

I just found this particular holiday ezine chock full of projects for gifts and holiday decor!

And of course there is the annual Sew Mama Sew! Handmade Holidays for the month of November - I have been trolling these for, what?, 3 years now?  That would make sense, since it's the 4th Annual one...

Anyway, I hope to have some good crafty gift action to post in the next little while.  

In the meantime, if any of my few readers know about spray adhesive to baste quilts, let me know. I have a pattern that is a quilt as you go thing and it just says "spray adhesive" - but I'm sure it needs to at least be water soluble so it will wash out.  Same pattern uses glue sticks for raw edge appliques - but I'm pretty sure you can get the washable school type for that.  Do I need a special basting adhesive or can I use the craft repositionable stuff?

Blogger's Quilt Festival entry - Angela's quilt

(see button to the side or the following link for info on the Bloggers Quilt Festival)

I'm entering a quilt into the Blogger's Quilt Festival that I made over a year ago. But I didn't blog yet, and it's a quilt that I still feel so happy about.  It was made for the daughter of some dear friends - the whole family was going through something of an ordeal, and especially focused on this beautiful baby girl Angela. So the whole time I was piecing and quilting and binding with handstitching to the back it was a meditation and a prayer for her. For the whole family.

I didn't use a pattern - it is just simple 4 patch blocks alternating with solid blocks. The Heather Ross prints are so happy, and I used my Janome embroidery function to try out a ring of hearts pattern on the solid blocks, and it all came out just as I had pictured in my head. I learned a lot about being more precise in my work, slowing down enough to really focus. As one of my first quilts, I was so pleased with how it came out!

The last blog post I made was about Megan's quilt,  also filled with happy Heather Ross prints and happy thoughts and prayer and tears... I really love the feeling that the final product carries in it with these "prayer quilts".

Megan was here!

She and her sweet man came over and went to church with our family today. It was so great to see her - and we had brunch at Ole's, so what could be better?

(Thanks for braving the storm and coming across the bay to be with us!!)

Also I had a chance to give her the quilt I've been working on...and that I had to use yesterday to teach myself how to put a binding on without hand stitching. Thanks to some great tutorials out there, I managed it with minor hitches. I basically followed the one over at Red Pepper Quilts - and I would say that pinning is probably a good idea (I didn't), and that I hope my technique will improve over time because it was a lot faster than hand stitching and my results were not as picture perfect as those shown in the tutorial.  Now I have no excuse for not finishing OUR bed quilt! It's raining today, so maybe I will put some time into that.

Anyway, here are some shots of the final piece - Megan's Quilt. I think that between this project and Angela's quilt, I may be completely out of Heather Ross save a few small scraps. I just love these prints!!

The quilting was done by Patty via QuiltFans - the second time I've used her, and I will definitely again in the future.  I asked her to choose something pretty that would complement the piecing and prints, and to stitch in some extra Mojo for Megan's health.  I think she definitely came through (and I'm officially addicted to having someone else quilt anything larger than a small lap quilt!). Isn't the flower stitching great?

Not sure what's up with the lighting...our house feels pretty dark with the weather today.  So we laid it out on the table for a couple last shots - it's all crinkly now after wash and dry yesterday.

and the back...