My First Quilt

Here it is .... my first quilt.

Well, technically it's my third quilt, but it's the first one I'm willing to show you.. ha ha! 

I followed this tutorial to make it. It is such a great tutorial for a beginning quilter like me, and it doesn't require a lot of fabric. I was able to use a fat quarter pack I purchased at Wal-mart for about $10, as well as pink fabric for the backing and binding that I already had on hand. Since I'm new to the quilting game, I'm not ready to invest in really good quality fabric just yet.

I definitely learned some things along the way:

• I'm going to use painters tape or make markings on my quilt next time to get the horizontal and vertical quilted lines. (Yes, this was supposed to be quilted with horizontal/vertical lines, but as you can see, it didn't quite turn out that way!
• I need to practice more so that I have less starts and stops; you can definitely see jagged lines in places where I stopped and started sewing.
• I learned that I love the process of sewing and pressing the quilt top - for me, that was the fun part!

This was also great practice for my rotary cutting skills, and I'm getting much more adept at using my ruler and rotary cutter to cut my fabric.

My binding came out really good, thanks to Jera's tutorial. I am not a big fan of hand sewing, so I searched for a tutorial on machine binding and found this great one. Jera is a very talented quilter, and she has lots of great tutorials on her site. If you want to go the more traditional route of binding and then blind stitching, she has a tutorial for that too. But this method, which involves cutting your backing fabric a little wider on all sides and then bringing it around to the front for the binding, is so easy and really works good for someone like me who is new to quilting (and still trying to get mitered corners to look good).

I think I'm going to use this same pattern to make some of the baby blankets that I need to make - I currently have 4 that I need to make, so I best get busy!

Some Weekend Crafting

I did two easy craft projects this weekend, neither of which cost very much. I had most of the items I needed already, and what I didn't have I found at Dollar Tree or Wal-mart.

The first things I made were these magnets:

I got the idea from the tutorial found here. She did Christmas magnets, which I'm sure I will do in a few months.. along with Halloween ones too!  I pretty much just followed her tutorial, except that I don't have Paper Mod Podge, just the regular kind, and it worked just fine.

The second thing I made was a new wreath for our front door. Since I took the July 4th decorations down, I needed something to put there that would last through the summer months.

I simply tied scrap pieces of fabric onto a grapevine wreath... couldn't be any easier! As I was going through my fabric scraps, I found a lot of blue and yellow fabrics, so I just went with those, but you could do this in any color combination you liked.

I started a third project, but it's not finished yet, so I'll post about it once it's done. Hope everyone is having a good week.

More Pillowcase Dresses

I cannot stop making these pillowcase dresses... they are so adorable, and the pattern is so easy and fast. Here are three more that I have made:

I think I may try to sell some of them locally and see how I do.

I've Been Sewing!!

I am so thrilled to be working in my new craft room. I can't tell you how fantastic it is to have everything organized and close at hand. I've already been sewing. Here are a few pillows I made:

This one is for my craft room.

Becky found a fabric she loved in my stash, so I made her a pillow using it:

I have to say that I love that fabric too. I bought it at Hancock Fabrics over a year ago, so I'm sure they don't have anymore now... it's one of those fabrics I should have bought 4 or 5 yards of!!

I finally jumped on the bunting bandwagon... or pennants, or whatever you want to call them. I have seen them all over blogland and wasn't going to make any, but then I decided that I needed some color over the window in my craft room, but didn't want to put curtains there. Here is what I came up with:

It adds a nice splash of color without blocking the window too much.

I also made a couple of mug rugs. I am new to quilting, so these did not turn out as good as I would have liked, but I will keep trying!

Finally, I came across a pattern for an easy toddler pillowcase dress using 2 fat quarters of fabric. It was so easy to make, and you can whip one up in no time at all. The pattern can be found here.

I plan on making more of these, as I have lots of fat quarters in my stash!

Okay, off to do more sewing... have a fabulous day!

My New Sewing/Craft Room

With the help of my wonderful sister-in-law Becky, the sewing/craft room in our new home is all organized and beautiful. Let me take you on a tour. Here is the view from the doorway:

Right to the left as you come in, you see the cute picture frames that Becky made me:

Here is the view facing the closet:

Above the closet doors is my favorite thing in the room; it is a "Sandy Sewz" sign that Becky made for me... isn't it awesome???

Right in front of the window is my desk with my computer and printer:

On the wall to the left of the desk is the bulletin board, also made by Becky! The armoire to the right of the desk has my television on top, and is filled with fabric:

The fabric is stored on comic book boards, an idea I had seen here. It worked great!

Becky stayed up till the wee hours folding fabric onto boards... I am so lucky to have her!

To the right of the armoire is a 9-cubby organizer I purchased at Target that is filled with yarn:

Do you see the cute buttons above the storage cubby? Once again, my creative sister-in-law made these (inspired by the blog post found here)  I had seen that project and wanted to make them, but never got around to it - Becky saw it too and made them for me, and we had never even talked about them!

On top of the cubby are magazine storage boxes that Becky also made me! She purchased plain white boxes from Ikea and then decorated them with scrapbook paper.  They hold my quilting and sewing magazines.

Here is my sewing area:

It is pretty small, but it will do for now. Eventually I want to get a bigger table to sew on. In front of it is another Target cubby; the "Craft" and "Create" signs were purchased at Jo-Anns.

This room has a great closet, and we took advantage of every inch of space:

I needed more fabric storage, and Becky came up with the great idea of using closet organizers:

They hang from the rod in the closet and give me lots of room ... look, there's even empty space for more fabric... yay!

I found this ironing board cover at Ross, and since it was the colors of the room, I just had to get it:

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my wonderful sister-in-law for all of her help with this room ... she is so great at organizing things, I think she missed her calling!

I sooooooo love my new space, and have already made several things. I'll save them for another post though. Hope you enjoyed the tour!