Valentine Boxes

For F.H.E. all my kids came over and we had a lesson about loving one another.  After the lesson each family made a love box.  Over the next week we are suppose to write love notes to each other and put them in the box.  Most of the kids took off before I could get pictures but this is Jenny's Love Monster box and my attempts. It was so much fun! 

These were so cute

In November I was running a bit bored so I thought these might be a fun gift for the Grand kids for Christmas.  I knew they would be incredibly labor intensive but I had a bunch of time.  Soo...  Then the church decided to let the Sisters go on missions at 19 and all of a sudden my little part time job went to a 25 plus work week.  I was pretty crazy by the time I got finished with the pillows, but they were so fun.

The patterns for the pillows came from a "Art to Heart" book.  

The Book is titled Curiosities and Mischief by Nancy Halvorsen

First part was the hardest: the choosing of the fabric and the design for the pillow.  I wanted to used only the fabric I had in my stash and so it was hard plus the fact that I always have a hard time with deciding.

Second you applique the decorations and the names on the pillow top, I used wonder under and then appliqued on the sewing machine.  I added lace, ruffles, rick rack, buttons and even hoho's.  It was really fun to be so creative.

Third you put in batting and quilt the tops,

Fourth you trim it to fit pillow.  Make the bottom of the pillow so you have a slit to insert the pillow and sew top and bottom together.

I ended up doing 13 of these for Christmas and all of them were different.

 The boys were not as excited as the girls...  Oh well.  They still were fun.

My latest projects

January 5th Was Ella's baptism and Maxwell's blessing.  Earlier in the year I had volunteered to make Ella a dress and do the blessing outfit.  It came fast right after Christmas.  But all turned out well.

Ella is the first of three baptisms this year,  I can't believe they are all getting so grownup. 

 She wanted the dress pink and I found this pretty fabric several months ago and knew it would be perfect.  She looked so pretty.

My smocking teacher suggested this fun pattern, I love the nautical look.  I found the waffle type fabric as a scrap on a sale table and so glad I picked it up long ago.  It made the outfit turn out like I wanted it to.

Maxwell is such a fun baby, he loves his Mom.  By mid week after the blessing he was in the hospital with RSV, but now is all better.  So fun to have a baby around.

Valentines

Today is a very snowy day, a perfect day to finish up those Valentine decorations I have been wanting to get done and up.

This monkey sings and the grand kids love it, it also yells at you to put him down when you lift its arms, I gave it to Gary last year for Valentines Day day and he still isn't that excited about it.  But I loved it.

Fun with felt, I just cut out a bunch of o's and x's and hearts and ran them together 

with a heavy piece of string. I doubled the felt pieces to give them some weight

This is new, I made it with some fun scrapbook paper and a few fun buttons.

Look at those cute Grand Kids!!!!

 Elayna was helping Grandma, while Kat ran a few errands,  she is almost one, and such a cutie.

They are staying with us for a few months.

 The doily on the table is one Grandma Anderson gave me when I graduated from college. 

 I love it, and love how pretty it looks on the table.

On Sunday the lawn was finally cleared off from our December snow, I think there is probably 8 inches out there since yesterday with more to come.  It's pretty but a pain to get around in.

Quilted Pot Holders

I whipped these babies up for a friend's birthday recently. These would be great for a beginning quilter to practice on. They are kind of addicting. I think I ended up quilting about 20 or so pot holders for my friends for Christmas this year. I used all scraps. 

After that just use some Thermolam heat resistant batting stuff, and essentially make a mini quilt sandwich. I added little tabs for them to hang.

And striped binding. Of course. 

Loopy Squares

I finally made a quilt for my parents. Long overdue. All the fabric was from the same line, so I thought squares would be fun. A few cutting errors later, squares became rectangles. Happy accident I suppose.

Rob says the strip down the back is my "signature." In reality I'm usually scrimping on fabric so I have to add a strip somewhere :)

This was my first go at loopy quilting like this. I originally saw the idea here. It was so fun. I used the seams on the front as my guide. If you're not super confident with stippling yet, I thought these loops would be a great way to ease into free-motion.

Striped binding, of course. I love this Dick and Jane fabric too. I've been holding on to it for years. My mom said it was fun because that what they grew up with. 

 Off to a good home.

Heritage Quilt

This quilt came to me in a very round-about way. Long story short, someone found out I quilted, so I after a first unsuccessful attempt, they asked me to make this "heritage" quilt. It is for a little girl and all the squares are from clothing items of family members. When they asked me to do it, I immediately thought of this pattern I had in an old book. It's called an Autograph Quilt, and I ran with the idea.

 So after interfacing every single block, I came up with this. Her name is on the middle on the bottom row. Her parents are on each side, and it graduates all the way up to her great grandparents on the top row. 

They were originally going to write the names on with fabric marker, but I wanted to sew them in. (Read: add tons of extra work) It ended up being a lot of fun though. I used a dissappearing ink pen to write it in rough, then I sewed over it with my free motion foot. Thank you fourth grade cursive...

Green on the back.

 Stippled around the names. 

Stars on the border.

And a little helper through it all.

So glad to have this baby done for Christmas. It was a job.