My Orange Peel Finish

This summer I have had a ton of fun making mini and baby sized quilts, mostly so that I could try some different techniques and enjoy designing my own quilts.  An added bonus has been making most of these projects out of fabric from my stash!

I think my most favorite finish is my orange peel mini which I just completed this afternoon.

The orange peels are made out of several fat quarters of Mimi by Chez Moi for Moda.  I have had them since last fall and I was just waiting for the perfect project to showcase this beautiful material!  The background squares are low volume fabrics that I have been collecting.  For the backing I used a fun multi-colored polka dot fat quarter from my stash, and I used the leftovers from the orange peels to make the binding.  This mini finished at 18 1/2 inches by 18 1/2 inches.

To quilt this mini, I stitched around each orange peel and then used this idea from Crazy Old Ladies quilts to add echoing lines in the space between the orange peels.  I love the pattern the quilting created!

I am linking up this week with Quilty Habit for the Orange Peel QAL, as well as Sew Cute Tuesday and Needle and Thread Thursday.  Have a happy week!

Quilty Flashback Friday

This is a quilt I made for my mom to celebrate her 80th birthday.  I was just visiting her in Arizona earlier this week, and realized I had never gotten a good picture of it since she hung it up on her bedroom wall.  It's still not a very good picture because of the lighting, but it's the best "official" picture I've got!  :)

I made this quilt in 2011, right before I started blogging, and I am really proud of it for many reasons.  My quilt group was doing a medallion project where we learned how to put on various sizes of borders, and to do the math correctly for the borders!  And, by golly, I did the math right on these borders!

The center block is called "Sharon's Star" and I found it on Quilter's Cache.  I chose that block because my mom's name is Sharon.  I didn't keep track of the particular fabrics I chose for it, but I am still enjoying them because the scraps keep finding their way into my current projects!

I'm linking up with Don't Call Me Betsy for Quilty Flashback Friday, a fun new linky party I just discovered. 

Back to School!

It always seems like the beginning of August means it is time to think about school again.  Even though teachers in our district don't officially report back until August 14th, there are many trainings scheduled for this first week of August.  It will seriously cut into my sewing time!  Oh well...

For a back to school gift for my teaching partners, I made these fabric lanyards for our keys and name tags.  I used this tutorial by Gemini Stitches.  It was super easy and I made three of these lanyards in less than an hour!

I chose a couple of fat quarters of text fabric I had in my stash that seemed perfect for teachers.  Both of them have letters of the alphabet in fun fonts and colors.

For the third lanyard, I made a patchwork of both of the fabrics.  At the bottom of each lanyard, where the hook goes, I stitched across a couple of times so that the hook will stay in place. 

 

 

 

Hope my teaching partners will enjoy these and get a lot of use out of them!  I know I will!  Linking up this week with Sew Cute Tuesday and Needle and Thread Thursday.  Go check out all of the fun projects!