A little of this and a little of that...

I have been neglecting this space lately, and have no real excuse for it except that there are many things higher on the list right now!  I am retiring from teaching in 5 days, which is just amazing, but comes with lots of work!  I have to clean out my classroom and, of course, there are gifts to be given which I am busily sewing away at.

But first... I won a giveaway on the May Great Big Giveaway Day through Faith at Fresh Lemons and Shabby Fabrics!  So fun!!

These Bali Pops are called "Sea Glass."  Aren't they pretty?  I am going to enjoy figuring out something to do with them!  Thank you Faith and Shabby Fabrics!

My lovely, quilty friends in my quilt group surprised me with this fun box full of fat quarters as a retirement gift:

What a special treat, and so unexpected!

And my sewing this week has consisted of finishing this table runner for my teaching partner.  It is made of strips of Gleeful from Art Gallery Fabrics and done in a "quilt as you go" technique.

I did have fun adding some decorative stitching to the top on every other strip or so.

For one last gift for a fellow retiree, I am making my favorite reversible cloth napkins from this tutorial.  I love giving gifts that are useful! You can make 2 napkins out of 2 fat quarters, so I'm going to make my friend two more out of some other coordinating fat quarters.  I hope she likes them!

I will be absent from my blog again for awhile because we are celebrating my retirement with a trip the day after school gets out, but I will keep tabs on all of the scrappy goings-on through the Oh Scrap! link-up while I am gone!

Have a great week everyone!

Diann

QAYG and a Giveaway!

Happy Mother's Day to all of you moms out there!  Here was the view out my backdoor this morning:

Yes, that is snow!  And if you look closely, you can see a sheen of ice on the fountain, too... I guess I won't be planting flowers in my yard, which is my usual tradition on Mother's Day! It does make for a good sewing day, however!

Inspired by posts I read this week from Svetlana at s.o.t.a.k. handmade and Amy at Diary of a Quilter, I decided to play around with some quilt as you go techniques and out of it came this pouch:

Front and back views. It is made out of a panel from my Charley Harper bird fabric.  I made a slab from pieces of the panel and some strips of navy and white Gleeful that I've had in my stash.  Then I cut the slab apart to make the front and back.

The inside comes from a fat quarter of Comma.

This was the first time I've tried making a pouch without any directions.  Since I've made a few in the last year or so, I thought it would be a cinch!  (Ha!)  After sewing the zipper in backwards, and then sewing the whole thing closed without a way to turn everything right side out, I decided I will not be so self-assured next time!

While looking for an idea for an end of the year gift for one of my teaching partners, I found a tutorial for an easy quilt as you go table runner on Amy's blog, and decided to give it a try.  I am using the rest of my fat quarter bundle of Gleeful for this project for a fresh, happy, and spring-y look.  So far, here is how it looks:

The top is made from 2 1/2 inch strips, and the back is pieced from some larger pieces.  I am hoping it will kind of be reversible!  I have plenty of the 2 1/2 inch strips left for the binding, too.

And finally, to celebrate my 101st post of last week, an inspiration from a comment left by Lara at BuzzinBumble!  I'm going to have my first giveaway, a small bundle of 6 fat quarter dot fabrics, an homage to the 101 Dalmatians, and my most recent fabric obsession!

If you would enjoy having this little bundle, leave me a comment, and I will choose a winner this coming Thursday, May 14th! 

Have a great week, everyone!

Pushing Along

There hasn't been much scrap play in my sewing room this week, but I have been on a big push to finish the quilting on my Winter in the Woods quilt.  It is going pretty slowly, probably because I am quilting it pretty densely (for me!) in organic wavy lines, but I am making progress.

See those lovely purple gloves?  They are gardening gloves with a coating of nitrile that I bought at Lowes! My Machingers quilting gloves got so dirty on the fingertips that I had to get rid of them, and I saw something about trying gardening gloves like these posted in Pat Sloan's quilting Facebook group.  They work great, are inexpensive (I think I got 3 pair for about $5), and there is the added bonus that they are purple!

I did have to take a break at one point and try something new and different.  This is a Triangle Zipper Pouch from the blog of Vanessa at The Crafty Gemini.  Isn't it cute?

All it takes is 2 - 5 x 10 inch pieces of fabric, a little bit of fusible fleece, and a zipper, and it goes together in about half an hour!  So fun!  I can see more of these in my future!

I just noticed that this is my 101st post!  I totally missed that I had come that far.  This must mean I need to have some kind of celebration.  Stay tuned!

Baby Quilt Finish

It is so nice to have a finish this week!  The last month or so has been extremely busy, with little time to sew, so I have been determined to get to it this week.  And I finished the "Very Hungry Caterpillar" baby quilt!  Hooray!

It is in the dryer as I write this, hopefully getting soft and fluffy in preparation for gifting it in a couple weeks.  That's right, it's even finished early!  I am so proud of myself!

This quilt is a combination of fabric from my stash and some I needed to purchase.  I definitely got a little polka dot fix from this project:

It was also fun to see what I could do with my walking foot for quilting it.

Please ignore the little bits of thread that I didn't notice were on the caterpillar when I took the photo!

And finally, last weekend I got to see my Scrap-a-Palooza Bricks quilt in a silent auction benefitting a special charity that helps families with large medical bills due to unforeseen circumstances with their children.  I hope someone will love it as much as I enjoyed making it!

My quilt is underneath the doll and minky blanket, all sold as a package together for a little girl.  

Happy Sewing to all of you!

Something New!

Hooray for Spring Break!  Although it didn't allow me much sewing time, it was a great break from work and a nice visit with my mom in the Valley of the Sun: Phoenix, Arizona!  We had lots of patio and pool time, as well many opportunities to get outside and go for walks.  I did help my mom trim t-shirts for a graduation quilt for my youngest niece, so that counts for something anyway.

While looking for a hand sewing project to take along, I rediscovered a stash of Color Me Happy (leftover from this quilt) charm squares that I had forgotten all about!  I have been wanting to try some English Paper Piecing with hexagons for awhile, but hadn't gotten around to it yet, and it turned out to be just the project to take along on this trip.

I am a pretty slow hand stitcher, and it isn't usually usually my first choice for sewing, but this was fun to take along and try for a vacation!  I have enough charms left for one more flower, which I think will be enough for me to make a mini (which I do love to do!) and then I will call it good!

I did discover that the Two in One Pouch which I made earlier this year makes a great travel sewing kit for packing the scissors, thread, glue, needles, etc., that are required for EPP.   I love being able to make useful things for myself and for gifts!

Arizona is a very different climate and environment from Colorado where I live, so I always enjoy the chance to get out into the desert for a hike.  We spent several hours one day exploring the Boyce Thompson Arboretum, which is a state park east of Phoenix.  It was full of opportunities for walking, photography,  and birdwatching, all of which are activities my husband and I enjoy.  We had a great time exploring this fascinating place!  Wouldn't these colors make a beautiful quilt?

Time to go back to work tomorrow, but now that Spring Break has passed, that means we are closer and closer to summer.  I'm ready!

Linking up to Oh Scrap today, one of my favorite places to hang out on Sunday afternoon to get lots of scrappy inspiration!

A Fun Baby Shower Quilt

One of my favorite books to read to my boys when they were little was The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.  So when I saw this panel at my LQS last summer, I knew I had to get it!

I wasn't sure what I would do with it until I found out that a sweet young teacher at my school is expecting a baby this May.  Then I knew what would make the perfect gift!  (My teaching partners are adding the book and a few other little things to make a team gift!)

I decided to add some sashing out of the leftover Kona Snow jelly roll strips from my Winter in the Woods quilt. And then I thought of the leftover yellow and white polka dot fabric I used for the backing of this quilt.

It's going to be adorable!

A few more signs of Spring... And dots!

Seen in my flower garden this morning: the first daffodil!

And a Spring-y finish:

I love the teal, flowered backing I found in my stash for this one.  

I am definitely slow at the big projects, i.e., I am still quilting Winter in the Woods.  But the little ones are sure satisfying for me!

I have been adding to my stash of dots this week.  Fun shopping, for sure!

Looking forward to the Oh Scrap! link-up today, for more scrappy inspiration!