Project complete and Baby booties

Hooray!!! I am so happy I have finished a project that was started before my first son was even in the picture. 

I began this quilt by sewing three 3" strips together and cutting the new strips into blocks. Then, I intended to arrange the blocks so that there were blue and brown "steps" but for some reason I must have had a brain fart and couldn't accomplish this. I began quilting it as my first hand quilting project but had apparently not yet learned how to hide my knots within the batting layer. I now have two knots on the top side of every strip throughout the middle of the quilt. When I picked it back up again I knew I wouldn't sell this one but rather finish it for my own conscience and keep it as a reminder if how far I've come.

I also tried out a new pattern for baby booties. It was a free pattern and I will need to look through my history to figure out which one it was, but I'm not a fan. The sizing is pretty small, and I think it could use more fabric on top. Hoping to have around 10 pairs by September, as well as some baby girl hair accessories. 

I've also gotten a backing for Taine's Quilt. It's a beautiful polka dot batik. I used warm 'n' natural batting which is a very thin, yet also very warm cotton batting. I'm hand quilting large diamonds through the pinwheels and may try my hand at free motion quilting on the inside of the diamonds. 

Ava Claire Designs and The Riverside Trilogy

I'd like to take a moment to showcase a couple of friends of mine who are a couple sources of inspiration for me. I can appreciate the time and effort these ladies put into their work and love seeing the new things they come up with.

Ava Claire Designs is run by Teresa Apel-Heinz. She creates exquisite pieces by hand that are both stunning and conversation-worthy. Here is one of my favorites from her collection. Head on over and 'like' her page to keep updated on all of her new, beautiful and creative designs.

If you're a fan of a hot and steamy romance, check out author Brooke Cumberland's The Riverside Trilogy. If you are a Kindle owner, follow Drake and Molly's escapades from Kitchen Affairs to the newest, Kitchen Scandals to be released July 1, 2013. 'Like' her page to keep updated on fantastic giveaways and news on everything from swag to autographed copies.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BYD1CWM

Practice makes perfect...

I haven't had the time lately to go out and buy new supplies for new projects so I'm a little at a stand-still. I have been working on some of my scrap bin, though. I started a new tote, a bit taller than the past few. It's called Anchors Away! because of the lovely anchor fabric I featured on it. I'd like a matching lining and so it will be until my next trip to the fabric store before I can finish it. 

I've also been quilting my strippy quilt...I think the reason it's taking me so long is that I'm just not in love with it. It's an old project that I didn't give the time and patience it deserves as I was still learning when I began it. I'm about 2/3 done with it and would like to see the binding on by the end of the week. 

Two of the things I've been practicing with are a feather block  from Anna Marie Horner (http://www.annamariahorner.com/Feather.Bed.Quilt.pdf) and also a couple blocks of a Winding Ways quilt to test out my template. 

Hello Kitty Herringbone and WIPs

I originally made these 2 herringbone strips to work as sides to the MHKL quilt but didn't care for the pink shades against the purple and blue. Instead, I sandwiched the two strips together and decided to do a pretty horizontally stacked border on the sides. This quilt ended up being perfect for baby's crib. It was quilted by hand and features a cozy, soft Hello Kitty backing. I even decided to go with a nice, hand-stitched binding that I'm pretty proud of the way it turned out. I had always thought that hand binding would be a very tedious project, but instead I found it to be a nice way to pass the time and found my happy place. I am very happy with how it turned out and hope that it makes a little baby very happy in the near future! Click here if you are at all interested in purchasing.

Now that this is completed, I have a few more things up my sleeve to keep me (crazy) busy. I've started cutting teeny, tiny little hexagons for a project I have yet to determine. I also dug up two quilt tops I made back when I was first learning how to do this stuff. There are some MAJOR flaws in these, but I believe I'll keep them the way they are to show character. I can always look back at them and show my growth, if there is any.

These projects are: one strip lap quilt, and one lazy log cabin queen-sized quilt. I may try my hand at machine quilting on the queen, but I'm not committed to that idea. The corners are nowhere near matchy-matchy, but it holds a special place in my heart. The strip lap quilt may end up being pet-bedding on my Etsy shop, or for our cat - Sam, the queen. Who knows? Maybe it will look nice at the end. The pictures I have aren't pressed as I had just dug them out of my storage box, so please disregard the wrinkles.

Yummy...Pancakes!

• I've finally found the perfect pancake recipe! I tweaked it a little because I always find homemade pancake recipes to be much too sweet. I cut the sugar by half and added a little lemon juice for that melt-in-your-mouth type pancake. I don't do anything fancy with the mixing. I sift the dry and add in the wet. Mix and pour batter in 1/3 cup portions onto my pan after melting butter. They were a hit with both boys and my husband! Not too sweet and a beautiful rise. If you get the pan the right temp, you'll get that crispy edge that is sooooo good with syrup poured over. And yes, we are using old BK Hercules plates that my husband had. 

• 

  • 1.5 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1.5 T sugar
  • 1.75 T baking powder
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1.5 cups milk
  • 3 T melted butter
  • 2 eggs
  • .5 tsp vanilla
  • 1 tsp lemon juice

Shop!

It's been a while that I've been thinking about starting a shop on Etsy. First, I wasn't sure about how much of my earnings would go to them and didn't take the time to do the research on that. Second, I've always considered my work to be mediocre and to be honest, in the past I tried to get as much done in as short of time possible mainly due to work or school, or both. Well, I finally put my big girl pants on and found out that a very small portion of earnings go into the company and, apart from the boys, I've got all the time in the world to sew now that summer's here and the quality of my work has drastically improved since I've been paying closer attention to the details. So, here she is: my quilt shop! I named my store Paigey-Pie Quilts, which is a nickname my friends donned upon me years ago.
As far as production goes, I'm about 2/3 finished with quilting the Hello Kitty baby quilt. I chose to do a stacked horizontal stripe for the border on either side, leaving the top and bottom with the inner white border only - to give the quilt a little extra width. I love the look of this border and will be using it again in the future. Here's a glance at what I have going on the hoop as of now.

After this one is finished, I am looking to work on some bibs and burp cloths, possibly some craft wallets, and some lovely totes with these beautiful prints I picked up from Hobby Lobby this weekend. 

Embroidery, baby quilts, and Br Ba

I have had a slow week for production due to my latest obsession with Breaking Bad. I'm on season 3 right now. I'm so addicted - I wait for the boys to go to bed and watch 3-4 episodes at night and 1 or 2 at naptime.

Yesterday, my mom and I took a lovely trip to Kohler and spent the morning in the spa before doing a little window shopping in the afternoon. I saw a Vera Bradley display and after reading comments about how my work resembles hers, I've found a bit of inspiration. I even went to pick up more goodies today to get chugging along on.

Somehow between all of this, I did manage to finish up another quilt top, a pink baby girl chevron that, in my opinion, needed a lot more planning before I started. It actually began as an idea for a very wide border on the Meadow Hello Kitty Lilies quilt, but I was not fond of the pinks on the top of that quilt. I sewed my sides together and ended up with a not-so-terrible quilt top with a cute stripey border. It's on the hoop right now and I will post pictures once it has been completed. 

I also began a patch for the MHKL quilt that has the recipient's name embroidered on it. It's going to have a solid fill, I'm considering trying ombre but I have yet to commit to that idea.

Tote bags

Quite a gloomy day outside this morning! I've been carousing through Pinterest looking for easy sewing ideas because I am trying to build an inventory for Fondue Fest. My goal is to create quality products that are relatively inexpensive yet desirable to young parents/young adults. I'm hoping to have a few completed baby/toddler sized quilts as well as baby items such as booties, dresses, and onesies. In addition to all of that, I've also started working on these tote bags. They are SO easy and end up with a nice, finished product. My goal is to make more with better lining on the inside with loops, pockets and flaps.

This past weekend, I almost completed two quilt tops. This seems like a crazy amount of work considering that I also finished these bags, but one of them was already in blocks and the other was all cut out. One quilt top still needs a border and the other just needs to be sandwiched, stitched, and bound.

Normally, I would try to get a lot of sewing done today since my husband switched days to be off because I am walking at graduation tonight. Mom said, "I won't speak to you if you don't walk at commencement," and Hub - in a very ultimatum type fashion, "you're walking." It just feels strange because I finished this associate degree in December, and I don't feel much like celebrating after my terrible first semester at "the big school". All that matters is that I accomplished something - got my two year degree! Yay! I deserve to celebrate with my loved ones and so I will  try to enjoy myself. That being said, I am sure I'll have a lot more fun than my hubby and parents sitting in the audience with Linc (1) and Chase (3), neither of whom wants to sit still for more than 30 seconds. I won't feel to bad about that either, I'll just tell them, "you people wanted me up here!"

Meadow Hello Kitty Lilies

It all began with a drawing. Ok, I didn’t design this quilt but I am awful at visualizing what my final product will look like. It helps for me to draw things out and imagine my fabric in the pattern, sometimes even using colored pencils to shade it in. I’m pretty sure that eventually I will master the color palette and be able to visualize my quilt without this step, but for now this happens.












Sewing time usually gets squeezed in when my husband is home from work in the morning or in the evenings when the boys are in bed. I like to say I'm going to sew in the afternoon during nap time but it never happens. Netflix happens. When do I clean? Hahaha...clean... That being said, I do sometimes get the urge to sew when the boys are awake. It requires snacks, tv, and also singing and dancing but, hey. It's pretty easy to dance when you're happy sewing!

This quilt is from a Thimbleberries book, and the pattern is "Meadow Lilies". My niece, Giana, loves Hello Kitty and I like to make kid-size things because I am fond of instant gratification. I'm working on this weakness. The pattern is composed of Meadow Lily blocks offset by nine patches with borders. The nine patch blocks frame the lily blocks and makes a fairly easy pattern look très fancy and complicated. I can't wait to try this pattern again. A lily block is composed of 4 lilies and 4 leaves. Obviously my colors aren't true to the pattern as the leaves should be green, but that's the story of the pattern.

I didn't get a good photo of a finished nine patch block. Here's one in the quilting process. I love the diagonal line quilted through the nine patches. It's funny how I do kid-sized projects for quicker gratification and yet, I prefer to quilt by hand than by machine. I prefer this for a couple reasons. One, I like the way it looks - homemade with love and "stitched in the ditch". Two, I don't have a walking foot yet and I will need a lot of practice as I have trouble sewing a straight line with machine.

I finished her off with a cozy flannel in hot pink Hello Kitty fabric and a satin blanket binding. This was also my first time using binding - in the past, I've wrapped the border around to the front by hand. This was a very handmade feel and took a lot longer than I like. When I get to the binding, I usually am so excited to see the finished product so I loved the fastness of machine binding. I used a zigzag stitch on the top of the binding and I couldn't be happier with the way it turned out. Lesson learned though, if you've never done something before, best to not use slippery satin to experiment on your first try! Or use pins? Maybe that would have helped!

Chase Conquers le Potty Monster

I am happy to say that Chase is finally potty trained. Finally! I don’t mean to sound like we were rushing him, because we let him go at his own pace. We didn’t actually expect him to be potty trained this soon, he’s only just turned 3, so it came a huge surprise when he decided that he wanted to ditch the pull-ups. So when I use the word finally I mean that it’s way expensive to buy diapers for two little guys. Now we only have to buy for Lincoln. And hey, if we get him potty trained by 14 months (which I believe to be an urban legend, personally) we will be done with diapers completely. Yay!

So, how did we do it? Well, if you would like to know, read on.

First we introduced him to the potty when he was 2 by (creepy, I know) bringing him in with us and letting him watch us use the potty. He never liked the potty chair so we got him a seat for him to use on our toilets. He wasn’t understanding the concept of holding it and then going potty, so we decided to put him in pull-ups until he was more ready. We would let him wear underwear every once in a while to let him slowly adjust. Then, seemingly overnight, he was ready. 38 months old, he went an entire day without wetting his underwear and we decided for fun to see what happened overnight. I’m not going to lie, I was skeptical. I was positive that he was going to wet the bed that night. Now it’s a week later and he hasn’t wet the bed once and has had underwear on every night.

In other news, he started seeing a speech therapist to work on certain syllables that are difficult for him to say. He’s there with another little boy his age and same speaking level and I couldn’t be happier with the results. People had told us about using speech therapists since he was 2 and not saying mama or dada. We waited it out and now I wish we hadn’t because he has done SO much better since we started. He says full sentences that we don’t need to instruct him on. He has actual conversations on the phone with his grandparents. I’m proud of his progress in the past few months. It’s hard to believe how far we have actually come. 

Spring Projects

     I started working on a couple of projects in January. Yeah, my New Year’s res was to only work on one project on a time so that didn’t last long. I decided it was OK since they are different mediums. This concept of actually finishing projects is new to me. Oh hell, working project to the halfway point is still new to me! I’m getting used to it, though. I keep adding things to my list of what I want to get done and it is HARD to keep myself from starting tout les nouvelles projets. That’s Paige French for ALL OF THE THINGS. You’d think only working two projects at a time would give me enough time to get my house cleaned. NOPE. I’m usually lucky if we get the toys put away at the end of the day, but spring semester is drawing to a close so that’s just not happening.