Home at the Cabin Quilt Block

Here is my quilt block for August :)  So much detail on this one.  Between starting school (homeschooling high school) and end-of-summer vacations, I'm thankful I managed to get it done!  Love how it turned out.  This fun quilt a long can be found at Sew Incredibly Crazy.

Lunchtime Bear Fishing Quilt Block

I made this for a quilt along I discovered a few months ago.  I had a chance to sew this weekend and I'm nearly caught up!  (It began in February.)  You can find the patterns on Sew Incredibly Crazy.  So far, the blocks are super cute!  They have an outdoorsy theme and plenty of cute woodland animals so far.  I have never appliqued like this before and I'm really enjoying it.  Thanks, mom, for the light pad....it helps a ton!

Sports Jersey T-shirt Memory Quilt

 This has to be one of my favorite projects ever!  I love all the memories that are captured in this. I have t-shirts starting when he was 3 all the way to age 12!  I followed the instructions from a video tutorial by Missouri Star, only I made it much bigger so it would fit an extra long twin bed (he could take it to college one day!) It was reeeeeally time consuming, but worth it in the end.  With the basketball jerseys (tank top style) I had to add some fabric to the square.  I really love the squares that have his name on them and the button-down jerseys, too.  I think the black sashing really unifies it all.  This thing is crazy cozy---I use a soft fleece on the back.  I also quilted a big "x" across each square.  I pieced together a square of sleeves with patches and stars, too.  The hardest part was trying not to melt the numbers as I ironed on the squares to the stabilizer.  I hope my boy loves this for many, many years to come.

Butterick (B4251) Tepee Sewing Project

 This was a crazy, last minute (have I mentioned insane??) project in the couple of weeks before Christmas!  But how fun!  And what a great surprise to wake up to on Christmas morning.  I used THIS Butterick pattern.  I ordered the indoor/outdoor material from fabric.com I think for only a few dollars a yard (which is good because you need a lot).  I went crazy trying to find 6 bamboo poles and we ended up cutting them down and adhering them to pvc pipes on the inside.  I also added this fun, beaded upholstery trim across the front.  It folds to basically the size of the bundled poles so it doesn't have to be up all of the time.  It is also big, which is nice cause my kids are older.

Ruffled a Tree Skirt

I love all the pretty ones on Pinterest. So I bought a plain red felt tree skirt from Target, drew concentric (nice word :), I know) circles on it 3" apart, and cut strips of fabric 4" wide. I used the awesome gathering foot for the ruffles for the first time. I was ruffling so fast that I wanted to do a happy dance! I also left all edges raw except for the satin, which I serged.


Oh yeah, it could also be a "skirt"....according to Joy. :)


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Maiden Costume

On the last day of Vacation Bible School (which had a Medieval theme), the kids were to come in costume. Of course, my daughter didn't want to wear one of the dozens of princess dresses she owns. She wanted to be a "maiden", since she thought all the other girls would probably dress as a princess.

I was so proud of myself not buying a thing to make this (I love using up my fabric stash!) We looked online so I could get an idea of what she had in mind. Then she drew the corset she wanted and I modified a vest pattern with a scoop neck and taking a bit off the middle fronts so it wouldn't meet in the middle, then added grommets and ribbon. She wore a red shirt & I made a long black skirt from some double knit fabric I had. We also did a crown braid and added spray glitter and ribbon roses to her hair.

I think she looks a little Snow White-ish and I certainly think she is the fairest of all. :)
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Mermaid Pool Party

Wow! Was this ever a fun party (well the preparation might have been more fun than the actual party...at least it was for me!). But the party wasn't for me, it was for my sweet daughter and her little mermaid friends.

I am thrilled to be able to link up to Decorate to Celebrate this week as the theme is "Anything Goes!"


The invitations were from Paper Doll Dress Up.  They have cute Peachy Keen faces and dance on their little springs! (Action Wobbles)  Their tails are cuttlebug embossed.

 Joy stamped Ariel on the envelopes and colored them in:

 Here is our door sign.

I drew on the face because I don't have PKS that large...I think it turned out ok.

The idea originated from our Yum! magazine with an article by One Charming Party and quickly spiraled out of control thanks to Pinterest!

Ideas we used from the magazine were:

This fun mermaid sign Joy painted and decorated (we used the cricut and contact paper to put the letters on while she painted the blue layer and peeled them off while the paint was still wet).  It was very cute that she asked her dad for a 2 x 4....

Cupcakes also from the magazine:

We got the seashell mold for the white chocolate from Michael's.

And the fishnet on the table:

The only reason my table is inside is because it was storming when the girls first got here, so we improvised with a game of Twister (it cleared up beautifully within the hour):

I remembered this adorable mermaid towel from the project section at Embroidery Library (great resource for creative sewing projects whether your embroider or not). I looked at cute ones on pinterest, too, and came up with my own adaptation:

                                               

I embroidered the names in a big, curly, girly font.  We stuck to our turquoise and lime green theme:

I crocheted this mermaid outfit for Joy to use with her Barbies a while ago, I meant to blog it, but it disappeared into her Kingdom and we pulled it out to use as decor for her party.  The pattern is here at Crafty Mama Sanchez blog.  It took some youtube viewing to master the crocodile stitch, but I love the texture.  It was made with lots of love at many baseball games and other mom-has-to-sit-and-wait events. :)

These fun, free water bottle labels are from Bumpsmitten.com:

And last, because I made them the morning of the party---too much coffee, perhaps....these stitched dish clip labels made using chalk cloth!!!  I love them because I can use them for every pool party.  I cut the chalk cloth with Nestabilities on the Cuttlebug and stitched them to rectangles of felt, then hot glued them to clothespins:

 Ocean Water

 Mermaid Treats

 Shark Bait

Fish Food

A good time was had by all the little mermaids....

Felt Valentine's Chair Envelopes

I didn't do much in the way of decorating this year for Heart Day, but I totally fell in love with these and decided they were worth the effort to make since we can have the fun of using them year after year.
I found this wonderful tutorial at
">I Candy Hand Made. Hers are really pretty with the Rick rac.
I decided I like the hand-stitching, though, on the original one from Pottery Barn:

It will be a fun tradition to bring them our on February 1st each year and occasionally fill them with a little surprise!
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More Pillowcase Dresses - with Accessories!

What can you make with two king size pillowcases??

How about:

• 2 Dresses
• 2 Drawstring Bags
• 2 Rosette Hairclips
• 1 Fabric-Covered-Rosetted Headband

Here they are:



So, my grandma gave me these gorgeous vintage pillowcases she found at a thrift store. The bonus was when I started making the dresses, I saw the Ralph Lauren tags, so now they are "designer" pillowcase dresses!!





These awesome accessories were made using instructions from AGAAG, as she calla herself found under the tag "hair crap" I think. Don't cha love it? :) and I seem to have accidentally deleted the photos of the drawstring bags, but you can picture a simple drawstring bag, right?


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Barn Challenge

This was a fun challenge on Bitten By The Bug 2 this week.  We were to use a barn on a project.  I am loving Create a Critter and that is where all of these images are from.  I used a Scrappy Moms Stamp and Ribbon on the Barn Door and fabric behind the heart cutout.  The barn is embossed with the cuttlebut and I machine-stitched around the red part of the barn.  The roof is inked and the cow's horn are metallic silver.  This is for my grandfather's bday this week.  He lived in WI, which of course, makes me think of cows!  LOL

Colonial / Princess Dress

My daughter loves to look

through my sewing patterns and found a pattern she really liked among them that had Colonial-style dresses. This one really looks "princess-y", though, when made of satin with gold lame trim. It took most of the day, but we are pleased with it. It is actually 2 pieces: an underdress, of which the skirt is visible, and a jacket-type top that fastens in the back.

Pillowcase Dress

I had so much fun making dresses

out of a set of pillowcases my grandma found secondhand. I love how sweet and summery and vintage-y it turned out. I made one for my daughter and one for my little niece. They both loved them. I used the instructions off of Embroidery Library except I used ribbons as drawstrings through a casing.