Make and Takes » Quilts

Fabric Scrap Project Ideas

Marie — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:39:58 +0000

Once all your sewing projects are complete, you may still have some left over fabric scraps. I’ve been saving my scraps, thinking there must be something I can make with them. Well, here are some great projects using fabric scraps, turning them into something fun and new! (click on the photo for the link to the project)

Fabric Thumb Tacks by How About Orange

Fabric Scraps Necklace by Designing Moms

Managing Fabric Scraps by Old Red Barn Co

Fabric Scrap Art Collage by The Long Thread

Fabric Scrap Pom Poms by Molly Chicken

Fabric Scrap Wreath by Little Birdie Secrets

What projects have you made with your leftover fabric scraps?

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Back on the Quilting Wagon

Marie — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 10:17:24 +0000

I had a goal last year to make one quilt a month. Well, I did good for the first 6 months, until I had a baby last June and all sewing stopped at that point. But now that my little snuggley baby has worked out a good napping schedule, I’m going to get back to my goal!

The first up is my baby’s quilt I started last May, pictured above. I hope to have this one done by the end of March and if you haven’t seen it posted by then, ask me where it is!!

To help me get some fun fresh inspiration for my goal this year, here’s a few great quilting sites I love:

My Aunt June – Great video on how she machine quilts.
Crazy Mom Quilts – Fabulous Tutorials on her side bar.
House on Hill Road – Darling giraffe with fun swirly machine stitches.
Old Red Barn – Beautiful quilts and a Giveaway today!!
All Sorts – Crazy nine patch tutorial.

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Quilts for Baby

Marie — Tue, 20 May 2008 10:00:53 +0000

This is the latest installment of my quilting bug. My sister just gave birth to the most adorable baby boy. She doesn’t sew much, okay not at all, so my other sister and I put this cute quilt together for her. We each bought different fabrics of brown and blue, then got together to sew one day. For the final quilting, we took it to my local quilt shop and they did the fancy stippling there. I love the browns and blues. It makes me wish I was having a boy!

I’ve wanted to sew at least one quilt a month and have done it so far. My next one will be for my own new baby girl coming next month. But I am in need of some serious HELP. I have quilter’s block. Here is my first daughter’s quilt: pink, white, and mint green.

My girls will be sharing a room, but that doesn’t mean they have to have the same color of quilt. I thought maybe a little yellow would change it up. Or I could even go totally different with wild and crazy fabrics. I would love some ideas on what to do. With two of the same gender now, I don’t know if they should match or not. I am running out of time and need to get started on this soon, before she’s born. HELP! I am in Nesting Panic mode!

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Memory Quilt

Marie — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 10:00:49 +0000

As I have been quilting quite a bit lately, a new idea came to my mind a few months back. A Memory Quilt for my Mom and Dad’s anniversary. It turned out better than I expected and packed full of fun memories.

With 8 children, my parents have been through a lot, together for 53 years. I thought it would be fun to get all the siblings to donate fabric for a family quilt. They all came through. Here is a photo of my family below, I am the baby of the family, the cutest one on the bottom right. This was taken sometime in the 80′s. I love the hairstyles and brown coordinated clothing.

The 10×10 squares were quilted, stitched, ironed on, and fun printed fabric. Each square represents a memory, something about us, or something fun about my mom and dad. Here are just a few of them explained:

We used to own chickens
We love to play PIT
My mom makes the best chocolate chip pancakes
My mom plays piano and sang in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
My dad loves to read Louis L’amour books
My dad has taken us all out fishing on his trolling boat
“Good Kid Money” my dad would give us
M&M’s my dad loves to give to the grandkids
A large squirrel caught in the house by Jared
Ice Cream is a big part of the Holt house, especially homemade
My dad used to pull our loose teeth out with pliers! Talk to my sister Steph about that one!

My sister and I presented the top portion to my mom and dad, then we got out my mom’s quilt frames and tied it all together. I am so excited for how it turned out. Thank you to all my loving family for helping me put this fun idea together. Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad.

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Spring Time Quilt

Marie — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 10:00:23 +0000

I was going to wait on this Spring quilt, as I thought Easter wasn’t going to be here until April. But since it’s in less than 2 weeks, I sped it up and got this spring quilt done to display for the Easter holiday.

This quilt pattern is supposed to be easter eggs with a little white fluffy bunny in the middle of each. It is a log cabin pattern, sort of. It took on a life of its own after I got started. It is about 42 inches square, just enough to hang on my couch.

I was also going to try to machine quilt it, but it kept puckering and I didn’t want to keep using my seam ripper. So I ended up hand sewing this one. I love to hand sew quilts, I have done 2-3 that way. It makes it feel very old fashioned. Here is what the back looks like with the hand-sewn squares.

I am very happy with how it turned out. It is sprucing up my living room for Spring, super bright and cheery.

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Mini I Spy Quilts

Marie — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:00:59 +0000

I have finished my Mini I Spy quilts and love them. I love that these quilts are easy for my kids to hold and carry around. My daughter has been sleeping with hers, she loves all the girly fabric. (This is a mini version of this I Spy Quilt.)

Each quilt has 30 squares of fabric, 2 of each kind for matching. Each square is 4×4 inches once sewn, (I used a 1/4 inch seam allowance, so I had 4 1/2 inch squares to start.) Some of the fabric is flannel and some cotton, either is fine for me.

For the back, I used a fun flannel animal pattern. It came in purple for my girl quilt and green for my boy quilt. We use the back side for even more I Spy fun searching for certain animals too.

The batting is a thin cotton batting. Then I pinned all three parts together laying it on the floor, it’s small and wasn’t not hard to do. Then I tied it together with Embroidery floss doubled up. For the binding, I used Double Bias tape and sewed around the whole thing with a zigzag stitch from my machine.

These were super easy and fun. If you come across fabric on sale (I collect this kind of stuff all the time) or just happen to have some fun fabric laying around, I highly suggest making one of these for a child!

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Here Comes the Sun Quilt

Marie — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 10:00:56 +0000

It’s finished! I am done with the quilt that I started almost a month ago. Here were the quilt colors from a previous post. Now they are put all together in a fun pattern that was easy and fun. I love it and think it turned out great, all vintage looking. I am naming it “Here Comes the Sun” as I am hoping it melts the snow outside my house.

I am still getting this whole quilting thing down. I learned I am impatient and press the sewing foot too fast with my lead foot, so some of my sewing lines are squiggly. I looked to Crazy Mom Quilts for attaching the back with the middle and the top. I don’t have wood floors, so I pinned mine to the carpet and then pinned it all throughout. Also, I was a little rusty on finishing the binding, so I looked up these great websites for help: Kelly Mccaleb, Expert Village. Here are pictures of the pinning, of the quilt all done, and what the back looks like. I machine quilted across every line horizontally.

Things I love about this sun quilt:

It cost me $14 for the whole thing, top, batting, and backing. Good ol’ Walmart fabric. Perfect for practicing my quilting.
The rectangles are long and fairly wide at 4 inches each, so it was fast to patch together.
It is not a squares patch quilt, so I didn’t have to match any seams together, stretching the fabric until each line matched up. Yeah!
I used my machine for every part of the sewing. It made it very easy. Normally I have at least hand-sewn the binding, but I wanted to test the machine out on that. I think the binding turned out great and when I need to finish a quilt fast, I will do it again next time.
I sewed a little sun in the corner of the quilt to remind me of its sunny purpose.

Things I don’t like about this quilt:

I should have used a little less green and emphasized the yellows more.
Some of the fabric was not cotton, rayon or something, and one piece melted from my hot iron.
Next time, I will try to use quilt frames my Mom has to attach it all together tighter. But I do love this washed look, all wrinkly and vintage looking.

My next quilts are for my kids. I have left over I Spy fabric and I am making them smaller versions to play with in the car. I will post them when I have the Mini I Spy’s done.

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Quilting Bug

Marie — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 10:00:55 +0000

I have got the quilting bug and I’m ready to make a new quilt. As a self-taught quilter and sewer, I picked up a few things from Mom and I have taken a quilting class at one point, but mostly just giving it a try. I know fabric from a good quilt shop is much better quality, but I decided to head over to Wal-Mart for the discount stuff and not brake the bank on a quilt that is just for fun. I am still learning to quilt and experimenting needs to be cheap. I can easily justify quilting on a $1 per yard. When all was said and done, I ended up spending $11 for ALL of it.

I am calling this quilt, “Here Comes the Sun” because these Winter Blues have gotten to me. I have been craving a trip to Southern California or Arizona, anything warmer than Utah. This fabric takes me to those places. I love the bright oranges. Especially the floral one on top. We will see if it turns out and I will post when it is finished. I am going to try something new this time, making a new year’s resolution to not quilt with just squares, inspired from Crazy Mom Quilts. So people, head over to Walmart, get your cheap fabric, and practice your quilting.

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Two Holidays in One

Marie — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 10:00:52 +0000

I have had my kitchen table for too long, but it is not quite time to replace it. So I needed to cover it and give it a little color. I wanted to make a fall placemat, but I also wanted to make a Christmas placemat for the next month. I decided to combine the two and make a Double-Sided Placemat. One side is for Fall and one side is for Christmas, two holidays in one.

I bought 2 fat quarters of fabric, one has leaves for fall, the other has stars and swirls for Christmas. Then I bought red double bias tape to bind the placemat together. The red color is perfect because it matches the Fall colors and the Christmas colors. I did cut down both fabric pieces, you will need to decide how large you want yours, square or rectangle.

Then I laid one piece down (right side down). I cut a piece of batting the size of the fabric. I laid down the batting on top of the first piece and laid down the second piece (right side up) on top of the batting. They make a little sandwich.

Making sure it was all flat and straight, I pinned the whole thing. The placemat is so small that it wouldn’t fit onto a quilt frame to get it all straight, so I had to just keep checking the bottom piece and make sure it wasn’t bunching.

Next, I got my red binding and sewed it around the edges. Here is a picture of how I fold each corner. I sew to the end of the edge, then take the piece off the machine. Then fold the corner over and start sewing again. Repeat this for 3 of the corners. For the last corner, I just fold the binding under and sew it to the end. This may not make sense, so try to look at the photos, or do whatever works.

Once the piece has the binding, remove all the pins. I then tied the quilted placemat with red DMC floss thread (all 6 stands). I tried to follow a pattern with the thread, making it even all around.

Now you are done and have a fun quilted placemat that is double-sided for 2 holidays in one. Simply flip the placemat over on December 1st.

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Little Girl’s Nursery

Marie — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 15:02:47 +0000

When I was first pregnant with my daughter Lucy, almost 2 years ago, I thought she was going to be the color yellow. But as it goes, all I had were pink clothes and she is a girl. So I changed my thinking and picked a Pink and Green room for her nursery.

I got busy sewing at the end of my pregnancy and made a fun pink and green baby quilt for her. I had taken a quilting class at the local quilt shop and learned to patch a few squares together and in different ways. I highly recommend a quilting class if you are interested in sewing or quilting more. I learned a lot. Then I had her quilt machine-quilted by the quilt shop for fairly cheap and I love it. (I had also made one for my boy, but sadly the red fabric bled into the cream fabric after I washed it and so 10 of the patches are now pink!)

I wanted a pillow for her room to display on a shelf. I came up with butterflies for decor in her room, so I hand embroidered this cute little butterfly. Then I sewed on fabric patches to make it a pillow and stuffed it. I love that it says her name and date of birth.

For her crib bedding, I just bought plain white crib bedding from BabiesRus. I bought a plain white bumper and a plain white crib skirt. Then I sewed rick-rack down the seams of the bumper and sewed a quilt binding at the top of the bumper and at the bottom of the crib skirt. At the time, they made a gingham binding.

Then I decided to make some large pillow covers for her room to give a little more to it. I sewed large patches together for the tops of the pillows in pink and green. Then I sewed on the back of the pillow so that it overlaps and I can take the pillow cover off in time.

Have fun with your baby nursery’s. Now I am off to finish my little boy’s room, clean it up a bit and pick a theme for decor.

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