The Stitch Up

Crafting in Montana

We mainly stayed in Whitefish Montana during our vacation in September.  When we were there several years ago I had found an awesome shop called the Back Door General Store.  They have a ton of cute things, and - most important to me - a section for quilters.  They carry patterns by McKenna Ryan, a local Montana artist and I loved her quilt designs.  They are mainly inspired by the outdoors - animals and moutain scenes from Montana and I picked up three applique quilt kits on my last trip.

However, as often happens, when I got home, life took over and these awesome quilt kits just sat in my "some day" craft pile.  On our most recent trip however, I dropped back in to Back Door General Store and found out they have classes on applique quilting and use McKenna Ryan patterns in the instruction.  I was down for this in a big way, so in between fishing - I scheduled a class.

We used a simple pattern - the applique was made up of just a few pieces.  The instructor is the owners daughter.  She was very patient and fun.  On the day I took the class it was just the two of us, but I think she gets more students once the tourist season lightens up.

I just finished quilting and framing this piece last week - it's a nice souvenir.

And while my main purpose in taking the class was to get skilled at applique so I could complete the McKenna Ryan kits I'd already bought, they had just stocked her line of Christmas patterns, so I didn't leave empty handed:

It's Bears in Santa hats - I had to get it.

Despite spending most of my craft time (and dollars) in the Backdoor General Store - I did manage to find some spare moments to check out a very cool yarn store in Whitefish.  The Knit n Needle Yarn Shoppe has a great selection of beautiful yarns and some of the most helpful staff I've met.  I told them I was just shopping without any project in mind, but after finding some beautiful yarn for socks, they gave me a beginner sock pattern and some basic instruction.  They would have sent this to my Ravelry account if I'd had one, but I don't.  Although this made me think I could use one.

I haven't had a chance to start on this, but the winter months after Christmas are perfect for knitting - so I'm all set.

It's always nice when my outdoor side and my indoor crafty side can coexist on vacation.  Whitefish was a perfect location for both and I can't wait to get back.

Baby Quilts

It looks like it was a cold winter because we have several friends who just had babies.  All the cute new baby arrivals provided a great excuse to buy some adorable fabric and make some quilts.  

Etsy has been my go to for cute fabric and it came through with some great stuff this time as well.  First up was the Monkey Bizness Kitty Garden fabric by Alexander Henry.  

It's so cute and Scrappy Girl Shoppe is the excellent etsy shop where I bought it.  My fabric choice for the other quilt was the adorable Birch Storybook.  It's organic cotton, and very soft.

Cedar House Fabrics was my supplier for this sweet fabric.

I had a short time to do both quilts and I knew that I wanted to embroider a little something on each one, so I stuck to a simple pattern.  7x7 inch squares, five rows of 4 squares each.  They came together pretty quickly.

After the top was all sewn together, I took some soft flannel, embroidered a "sweet dreams" message to the new baby and stitched it up.

The second quilt came together the same way.  7x7 squares and a little message on the back for another little baby.

I didn't have time to bind these quilts so they are not fully quilted - I just did a little stitch in the ditch on the top, stitching it to the batting.  They made up into soft, snuggly quilts, that both babies can drag around as they get bigger and their moms can toss in the wash with no worries.

It's always so fun to have an excuse to make a gift with really cute nursery fabrics and even more fun to get to snuggle the new babies that come along!  Welcome to Hattie and Emma.

Labeling

I finished ONE of the projects on my February to-do list.  Sigh.  The weekends this month have been a little busier than I expected.  That just means I'll carry over some projects and add one or two.

The project I finished is the Quilted Canister project from Handmade Mommy.  I really like how these turned out.  The directions were very clear and the process turns out a very pretty finished product.

The basics of the labels are like any other quilt project.  You cut strips of coordinating fabric, cut those into squares and then sew those squares into strips.

The strips are then sandwiched with batting and a backing fabric and quilted together.

At the end you use printer fabric to sew labels for the individual spices and dry goods you'll be storing onto the quilted fabric.

My finished product looks very nice stacked on top of my counter.

I really did love this project and I encourage everyone to head over to Handmade Mommy for this project and lots of other cool stuff!

 

A Quick Quilt

Last year some friends and I went to Oregon to visit our girlfriend Lianne.  We wanted to see her new home and life in Oregon and celebrate the fact that she and her husband were expecting their first child.

While we were there we had a small baby shower and did one of my favorite shower activities.  Everyone decorated a quilt square with a message to the baby and I collected them together to make a baby quilt.  I finally put everything together and mailed it out to the new mom and baby (Aaron) last week. 

Everyone did a great job on their squares.  I played around with the squares a little to find a nice mix before pinning them together. 

We used blue for the personalized messages as we knew in advance that Lianne was going to have a boy.

I found some yellow gingham to set off the blue squares and a really cute farm animal print for the back as Lianne grew up on a farm and I had a feeling Aaron would have a few farm themed baby things around. 

The quilt came together pretty quickly as it was small and I just did some "stitching in the ditch".  

The final product is cute and I hope for years to come it will bring sweet dreams to Aaron and remind him and his parents how much we love them.

Does This Look Familiar, Lianne?

Ah, Spring!  Such a good time to clean out the closets and cupboards and wrap up those lurking "to be finished" projects.

I've blogged before about the classes that my friend Lianne and I took years ago to learn quilting.  And how we somehow managed to leave behind unfinished projects after each class.  I've been completing these poor forgotten quilts here and there over the years.  Two potholders, (I still can't believe we took two potholder classes and didn't finish either one!), a small lap quilt, and finally, I've unpacked the remnants of a double irish chain quilt I'd started in the last class Lianne and I took together.

I think we were struggling to finish our projects in each class and figured that we'd take another class and finish up our projects then, but each class had a different pattern.  The potholders were just some basic piecing, while the lap quilt was a log cabin pattern and the final quilt was irish chain.  Obviously our logic was flawed.

I've been carting around the fabric and pre-cut rows and squares for the irish chain quilt for at least 6 or 7 years.

Part of my issue has been I'm not as excited about my fabric selection now.  At the time we started taking quilting classes I was a little nervous about picking out too many patterned fabrics and having a quilt that looked too busy.  But now, I really prefer a lot of coordinated pattern and color and wish I had something other than the basic green and the faint pattern in the white.  I still love the green paisley!

In any case, this quilt needed to be set free.  I spent a weekend getting the top completed and am pretty happy with the outcome:

I need to complete the back, pin it all together and bind it, but it's a lot closer to finished than it's been for the last 7 years.  I think in the future I'm going to have to make myself finish all outstanding projects before taking a new craft class.  

Finishing this also lets me feel more comfortable continuing on with my Spanish Quilt project.  I should have a new square ready to go soon!

 

New Year Resolutions #1 - Complete a Quilt and Enter a Contest

Oh yeah peeps - I'm taking on some mad challenges this year!  Resolution #1 - Complete a new quilt.  But that's not all - I plan to enter my first quilt contest!  I don't imagine winning any prizes, but I think it will be a good motivator to complete the quilt and fun to be part of an event.  I have taken the first step of deciding what my quilt theme will be and what contest I want to enter. 

First, I want to do a quilt themed around our time in Spain.  There were a number of awesome street signs I saw around Madrid and I want to turn them into embroidery designs that will make up the bulk of the quilt.  The first street sign and design is obvious.  There is a street in Madrid just off of Puerta del Sol that has a decent Thai restaurant we used to frequent quit often.  You can see why I loved it:

That's right - it's Embroiderers Street!  Awesome.  In order to turn the pic into a pattern I used a program online that will take a photo and transfer it into a sketch.  I think there are a few different programs out there but I used Sporkforge which can change a photo to a sketch, charcoal drawing or even a cartoon.  It turned out like this:

It obviously needed some cleaning up, but it's a good jumping off point for a pattern.  After cleaning it up I used a transfer pen to trace it and ironed it on to some basic white fabric:

I've started some outlining and I plan to keep the colors true to the sign.  I'll update with additional street sign patterns as I make them and load up the pics of the completed squares as well.  I have an idea of how I'm going to finish/border the quilt as well, but I'll post that later after I've played with the idea a bit more.

As for the contest I plan to enter - it is none other than Quilt Contest at Lake Metroparks in Kirtland, Ohio.  You may remember that posted last year about our trip to the quilt contest at Lake Metroparks and how awesome it was.  The contest is at the beginning of the year - so technically I will be entering the contest in 2011, BUT that gives me the whole year to finish the quilt, so I think it's perfect.

O.k. - that's my first resolution.  I look forward to sharing my progress with you throughout the year!

 

Herbology

After my fairly successful pesto experiment I realized that 1) I should do more with the herbs I've grown and 2) the basil and oregano in the backyard are out of control. 

I was looking for recipes that would use fresh herbs and came across Kalyns Kitchen.  This blogger gives instructions on how to freeze fresh herbs.  Perfect!  I would love to be able to use my own fresh herbs in the winter rather than buying it in the grocery store, shipped from goodness knows where, so I decided to do a little freezing experiment.

To freeze basil you apparently proceed almost like pesto - you clean and dry some fresh basil, pop it into the blender, cover it with olive oil and blend like crazy.

 

After that you can either put it into a container or freeze it in an ice cube tray so you have a tablespoon sized portion of fresh basil (with a little olive oil) whenever you need it.  Perfect!

 It actually looks a little gross in liquid form but it's going to taste delicious! 

Freezing Oregano is a little more straight forward.  You wash and dry fresh oregano, lay it on a cookie sheet and freeze it whole.  Then you break off the individual leaves and store them in a container in the freezer for later use.  Easy peasy!

 

Since I was on a roll I decided to roast a little garlic using a method my friend Eva recommended.  You cut the top off the garlic head, pour a little oil over it and then bake it in the oven for about 45 minutes at 350 degrees.

 

The garlic then pops out of the head all warm and delicious!  I had intended to pop most of this into bags for freezing and using it in soups in the fall, but it was so good I ate a bunch of it, warm out of the oven spread on bread instead.  So yummy!

 

Despite my little foray into herb freezing I did have time to finish up the potholder that has been half done for years and years:

 

Doesn't look too bad and I needed some additional hot pads.  But while looking through my scrap fabric - I found this:

 

ANOTHER half done potholder??  I spoke to Lianne last night and asked her if we really took two potholder classes when we were starting our quilting.  It seems a little sad that we actually needed to take two potholder classes and that we didn't finish either one in the class - but I think that's the case.  So, one more potholder to finish and then on to some other crafting!  I've started to plan out some Christmas gifts.  I realized that I'm actually behind if I want to get things done by December.  How crazy is that?  I'll update with my non-Christmas gift crafts (can't spoil Christmas!) as I finish stuff.  Meanwhile - have a great weekend everyone!

The Secret

Well it wasn't a secret necessarily, but, Katie and I tried to play it cool over the last couple of months and keep our "project" on the d.l. (that's the down low for those of you who are not as "street" as Katie and myself.)  We plotted, planned and executed - a baby quilt!  Yes, the magic waters of Madrid were at work again this time on our friend Amy who had a beautiful baby boy in September!  Katie and I started planning this quilt back in June and worked on it as we could over the summer as we each took off for a bit on vacations. 

As Katie and I are the sole remaining members of the craft club (except for Amy but of course we couldn't have her make her own quilt!) we planned a basic 9 patch quilt that we thought we could complete pretty easily.  Katie scouted out the nursery colors so that I could pick out fabric when I was back in the U.S. during the summer.  We also decided to "spice" up the basic nine patch with some applique.  Amy has decorated her nursery with some cute elephants so we decided to include an elephant pattern on the quilt as well.  I found the perfect pattern at the blog AJ Quilts .  It is a mommy and baby elephant pattern - so sweet - and Marie, the blogger was nice enough to send me a pdf of the pattern that would work with our quilt plan.  So without further ado, here is our quilting process.  First, Katie and I hard at work:

 

 

AND - the final product.  (Please excuse the wrinkles, I hadn't ironed the quilt when I took the photos):

 

 

 

It was a fun project!  To give the quilt to Amy we planned a nice afternoon tea at a spot here in Madrid called Living in London.  It is a store that sells cute stuff from England as well as a tea house:

 

 

Katie's sister Kellie was in town and joined us in our afternoon tea.  We got down with those little sandwiches.  It was awesome!

 

The new momy is the pretty lady in the red (although all three ladies are very pretty!)  This is our tea tray shortly after we dessimated the sandwiches and had started on the sweets:

 

Oh yeah!  After tea we adjourned to Amy's house to play with the man of the hour.  The little cutie very thoughtfully wore an outfit that matched the quilt!

 

He's so flippin' cute it should be illegal!

Quilting Otra Vez

April was a busy month. Not only did we take the trip to London, but I was working on a project with some of the ladies from our craft club for the impending arrival of another member's new baby. We decided once again to make a quilt (you might remember last year around this time we made a quilt for Tara's wedding shower) but as it was going to be crib size it was a much smaller project! Tara picked up the fabric on a trip back to the states (boy colors as we had been informed of the sex of the new addition) and then we all met up to put the quilt together.

The actual process took a couple of days - spread out over the month of April. We were able to finish the whole quilt top in one day:

Not bad for one day especially as there were some breaks for lunch and snacks, some chit chat and the girls were also nice enough to give the cat a little exercise with the quilt scraps:

A few of us got together a second day to pin the top, filling and backing together and start quilting. We also got the binding on the front half of the quilt but I admit, hand stitching the binding to the back actually waited until we had given the quilt to the Mom in question and she ended up having a hand in finishing up her own quilt. It's o.k. though, I swear - this is becoming the tradition with our gift quilts.

Tara hosted the baby shower and it was great:

The lovely lady holding the new arrival (we planned the shower for after the little guy made his appearance) is actually not the mama. Kate, the proud mom, is the pretty woman wearing the fuschia standing next to the baby somehow looking like she didn't just give birth a few weeks ago!

The quilt was a hit:

and I also stitched up some onesies as a gift just from me (using my favorite resource for patterns Sublime Stitching.):

In addition to great food and company we got to enjoy some other babies at the shower. This pretty girl was the subject of the last baby shower I went to about 6 months ago:

She is so flippin' cute - she has the prettiest little face! Also pretty and too cute for words is the older sister of the new arrival. Big sis showed up for a bit of the shower and entertained us all with her balloon chasing skills:

The party was so fun and reminded me of how much can happen during a posting. All three of the kiddies above were born here in Spain and they'll all be off shortly for adventures in other places. The short duration of these assignments can seem like a real bummer when everyone is getting ready to leave, but I also feel so lucky to have met so many great people (and their great kids!) while here in Madrid.

Quilting Bee

So what does a crafty girl like myself do when she's not traveling around Spain? She has a quilting bee!! I was actually lucky to meet a group of ladies when I first arrived in Spain who had a variety of crafty skills. We started getting together once a month to gab while we worked on our respective projects. I learned to crochet and knit from a couple of these gracious ladies and we all have a great time. One of the girls in our group is getting married this summer and the rest of us decided that it would be fun to make a quilt in her wedding colors as a gift. It was a fun project and we pulled in many of her friends from around the embassy who had never done any sewing but who wanted to be involved. Myself and two other ladies managed the project: we picked a nice basic nine patch pattern, picked out coordinating fabric in cranberry and sage (the bride's wedding colors), washed and cut the fabric in preparation for our "Quilting Bee" day. Here are some shots of the sweat shop we had going on:

Here's a shot of the (almost) finished quilt (we only had about a week to complete the quilt after we ordered the material and set a date to sew that worked with everyone's schedule. The only thing missing was the binding which we finished last weekend.) and the beaming bride and groom:

We've got a couple of friends with babies on the way, so the next quilting project may be a baby quilt or two. I'll post some pictures of projects I've completed in my "spare time" (i.e. that big chunk of time when I first arrived and was looking for work and learning spanish) and future projects from the craft group!