T-shirt quilt

Another project I started while at home was a t shirt quilt.  I've had quite a few shirts in the basement just waiting to be chopped into bits.

 I brought them all out and started though one stack of the four.  I separated them into elementary through high school, diving, college and Disney.

I had already started a long time ago with some high school diving shirts.  I didn't cut them with a rotary cutter so I had to re-cut them all.  Kept me busy for sure! 

One stack of new quilting fabric and one huge stack of left over cut of shirts.  Wow, those stacks look a little different.

 I left all my shirts at home in KC.  That will be a good project when I come back home.  It will be nice to get rid of that giant bag of shirts!

- Bryn

It's been too long!

Wow, it's been over a month since my last post.  Needless to say, the holidays have been crazy!  My mom visited from KC, my aunt and uncle visited from Idaho and Colorado and it is the busiest time at work of the entire year.  And now I'm sick!
My projects got a little mixed up for the holiday season.  The quilt I wanted to make in the fall is my project now and my Christmas presents I did in the fall.  But I suppose, better late than never!  A while ago I found a picture online of a quilt made of solids and triangles.

I thought it was beautiful so I decided to give it a try.  I bought a whole bunch of solid colors from this crazy store in Anaheim.  I have never seen so many fabrics in one place in my entire life!  But I digress.

Opposite all colored pieces I bought a charcoal solid.  I really wanted to challenge myself to make something different than I usually do.  Most of my projects lately have had a light muslin or white as the background color but for fall charcoal seemed to suit the season better.  

I made five inch squares and cut them diagonally.  I used four yards  I found a little trick earlier this year of not separating the pieces until I had sewn thirty to fifty together and then cutting them apart.  Seems to work well and saves me a lot of thread.

I ended up with about 25 different colors.  Some of the colors ended up a bit too bright so I didn't use them.      More cutting, ironing, and sewing to come.  Feels good to start another project.  More to come soon!
- Bryn

Christmas presents with scraps

 My Christmas stockings left me with a ton of left over fabric that was already sewn together.  I've had a Chrismtas pillow on my project list for a while.  It dawned on me that my scraps would be perfect for those pillows.  There is no time like the present to make presents!

For each 16" pillow I cut a 8 inch square white piece of fabric.  I needed more white fabric on the outside to create a diamond shape.  Two - 8 1/2 squares for the sides of the pillows and cut them once diagonally to create two large triangles.

I cut 2 inch wide pieces from my last project and framed in 8 inch piece.

 I pressed out the seems and added my other pieces of white fabric on each side.  I had 4 square pieces of fabric with a colorful border along each edge.

I sewed on the large triangles on each side of the square to reorient the fabric square in the center to create a diamond instead.

All that hard work left me with a beautiful diamond pillow top.

That is all I can get done today.  It's time to head to work.  Tomorrow I plan on using even more scraps for more pillows and other projects.  

- Bryn

Silly things I make

I found this super cute pattern and tutorial online and thought I have to make that!

Check out the tutorial here

I had all the fabrics around.  All I needed to buy was a zipper.  In the tutorial they used a tan zipper but I found a yellow zipper that matched my fabric almost perfectly.

Time to go the cutting board.  My mat is so dilapidated.  It has seen a lot of usage over the years.

All the pieces cut

My lining - yes, it's Disney 

Assembled and cut

Hand embroidered - #2 of course

Complete! 

Now my colored pencils have a real home.  I might actually make one specifically for them with a color on the outside.  But that is for another day as it is 11pm.

I always finish all my projects at night.  It is still the college student in me.  I can take better pictures but the lack of sunlight makes that a little difficult.  

Another night, another project

Putting together rainbows

I was planning on going to the beach today, well needless to say, that didn't happen.  I laid out the majority of the rest of the quilt.  I had to cut some extra pieces of teal, orange and yellow.  I thought I might be able to make my quilt with no fabric repeating but I was wrong.  So close!  But my stash is probably big enough as it is.

I was able to sew together 3 more rows today.  Only 4 more to go from what I set out in the picture above.  

Only need to add about 3 or 4 more rows to the width to make a queen size.

My project stack is growing!  And this is only part of what I'm working on above.  I've got a whole resuable bag full of projects just waiting for their turn.

4 1/2 Harry Potter movies down, 2 1/2 more to go! 

Piecing together

I finished cutting up most of the pieces of the quilt yesterday and starting piecing them together today. 

It is hard to tell the complete pattern, the floor that I work on is very distracting.  When I add in the white between the colors it will make a huge difference.

I will have to piece together all of these and then add additional rows afterwords.  I don't have a lot of crafting space in this house.  Have to be creative with not only crafts but construction!

3 rows down, 8 to go.  3 Harry Potter movies down, 4 to go.  Off to work, the quilt will wait until tomorrow.

Starting another quilt

I saw this quilt online and wanted to make it.

It's gorgeous.  I finally found the website again at Fresh Lemons Quilts and it had a tutorial on how to make it.  

I starting cutting up the pieces from my fabric collection.  

3 days of cutting will do it, when work gets in the way

Time will fly by while watching a Harry Potter Movie Marathon before the last movie comes out.