Hello my nearly a dozen followers! I thought I'd post a picture of a quilt I'm "working" on for Phillip. By "working" I mean it's about half quilted and has been sitting in it's hoop under the table by my nursing chair for about two months. But now that I've made two shirts (almost) and two pairs of underwear and a skirt (still needs hemming) maybe I can get back in the mood to hand quilt.

The color of the green is really hard to capture. The embroidered square in the first photo can be seen in the upper RH corner of the second photo. It is of the same fabric I used for Phillip's little coming home pinafore - in the third photo (there's a tiny appliqued brown bear on that).

The blue in the quilt is really a tiny gingham, oh yes it was used as the edging for Rosie's dress which I just realized I never blogged! The darkest red is really a calico that I used on Mom's oven mitt for Christmas. The green baby-buggy fabric was a gift at my baby shower (where it was also the table cloth!). As you can see, there's not a single solid in there. Two kinds of polka dots, YES! No florals, three plaids, and my favorite, the circus fabric. I tried to fussy cut the circus fabric but it was just the wrong size square to look it's best that way. A little bigger, or a little smaller would've been better. The size of the square was decided by the smallest scrap that I really wanted to use and I hate sewing really tiny squares so - oh well. I love it. It came out looking way more sophisticated, random, and homey than my quilts seem to do.

So I really like it. Now to finish that hand-quilting!

Ice Cream and Dinosaurs

Good morning friends!

I’ve been working on a shirt for Peter this week. Sewing on the sewing machine is so soothing to me. It helped me slide into this week. Last week I had so much fun with my sister and mom in town for Spring Break. We did so much! Monday however, I spent half the day in my pajamas working on this shirt for Peter.

I saw that I Am Momma was having a boy shirt contest but I thought I remembered it ending on Monday. So when I checked her site I was pleasantly surprised to see it didn’t end until Friday! So I gave it a shot.

I didn’t have anything very creative to do so I tried to just do my best on the quality and details.

I used Simplicity 7994.

Started with:

1 yard of fabric from Hobby Lobby ($3 a yard on sale!)

A brown thread that I already had and sort of coordinated

Bag of buttons from Wal-Mart ($1.50?)

And then at the end I decided to do a little hand embroidery for it – you’ll see!

I’m really proud of the sleeves this time around. I actually stitched the gathering inseam thread so I could ease it in. An elderly friend in Hillsboro had emphasized that this step keeps you from getting ugly little gathers in the sleeve or shirt body.

Dun TaDa DUN!

No ugly little gathers in anything!

And look at my cute buttons with three different color threads.

The next thing I’m rather pleased about is the button holes. My button holes always look like horrible gashes in the fabric of time. Well. Maybe that was a little dramatic, but they look bad.

But not this time!

I finally figured out the button hole feature on my machine. Woohoo!

I’m also really proud that I didn’t have to rip out a single seam. I wait for them on every project: the moment when I realize I sewed a wrong side to a right side (that’s a real duh moment too), the moment I break a needle, and the moment I realize my bobbin ran out of thread way at the beginning of the seam.

None of that happened this time!

HA!

Here’s Pete mugging for the camera. Isn’t he beautiful?

And here’s the baby I was holding in my lap while I took pictures. Not his best moment, but he was very good and happy the whole time.

Now as a reward, I'm going to go buy some BlueBell Homemade Vanilla!

P.S. See all the other great shirt entries at I Am Momma Hear Me Roar!