Jacksonville Quilt Fest - Fun Fun Fun!

Quilty Indulgence Quilted Toddler Bib

Here in my lovely state of Florida we have a wonderful quilt show called Quilt Fest of Jacksonville.  It is put on by seven amazing guilds who who come together as a group, calling themselves "Seven Sisters" for the purpose of this show.  And what a show this is!  I was in awe of the beautiful quilts on display as well as the 70+ vendor booths.  Wow!  It was row after row of quilter eye candy and goodies!  I met many wonderful people and I spoke to several about my Quilted Toddler Bib pattern.  Everyone loved the design I put onto the bib and I promised to post the source for the design and the bib here on my blog.  The pumpkin is a free machine embroidery pattern from Sew Swell Embroidery Designs (scroll down - it's in the fifth row) and let me tell you, the quality of their work is amazing.  I love their work!  The font was one that came installed on my machine.  I believe it's called Kidz.  There - that's the source list for the whole project.  Now all I have left to do today is unpack, do the laundry, catch up on paperwork, vacuum, empty the dishwasher, dust, sort through the mail, do more laundry, change the sheets, sweep, and get groceries.  Yeah, a relaxing Sunday for sure.... 

Monsters, Piranhas, Dinosaurs, and Rock Stars!!!

Yes, Grandma has been very, very busy! As I mentioned in a previous post, we are happily expecting a new grandson. He and his parents live in New York and I have flown up there (I wrote this blog before I left for New York) for a visit. This is my "show off" post. I hope it inspires some ideas in addition to stroking my ego....

The denim shirt you see above is one of my favorites - I bought the shirt and embellished it with designs I purchased from my favorite machine embroidery website, Emblibrary. Isn't it just darling?

Here is the quilt that I made for Jackson. I have to admit that currently this quilt is classified as my "Most Fun Quilt Ever." I drew the biggest piranha by hand and then copied it, making it smaller by maybe 20% and then smaller again by another 20%. I say "maybe" because honestly I don't remember exactly what the percentage was but in my mind (and that's a crazy place to be sometimes) 20% seems to be about right... Then I designed and built it as I went along, literally with no real plan, until I ended up with what you see in the photos. The best part (I think) was when I decided that the quilt needed more "teeth." Finally, I was able to put Prairie Points on a quilt. Aren't they the perfect piranha "teeth"? I had never done Prairie Points before... and for the record, I can almost guarantee I won't do them again... but that is another post.

Then I found these plain white bibs (below) at Babies R Us.... so I embroidered them with a design or three that I got from my fav machine embroidery website, Emblibrary. When I finished embroidering them I thought they were still too white, so I sewed a coordinating row of stitching around the outside of each bib. Then they were finished...

Then I found this newborn onsie (below) at, yes, you guessed it, Babies R Us. There were actually three in the package but I was still learning to properly embroider on fine knits and well, two of the onsies didn't make the cut. Also, I decided that the embroidery design couldn't touch Jackson's skin because it would be too rough, so I embroidered it onto the butt of the onsie (over the diaper). And FYI, there is great iron on interfacing called "fusi-knit" that my friend, Alison, of SewBeeItClothier on Etsy turned me on to. When you are done with your machine embroidery design, you can iron this wonderful product onto the back of the design to make it silky smooth next to baby's skin. And that's a good thing...

And then the fun really began and I got to make some of my Quilted Toddler Bibs for the little peanut. Since my red-headed step child said I couldn't embroider a bib that said, "I probably will not like Country Music," I compromised and embroidered the bib below. Yes, you guessed it, I am not a fan of country music (that blog link sums my feelings up nicely, and is hysterical!). I have asked my Grandbaby Momma to lay pillows over her belly to muffle the sound while she and my son are listening to country music.... Sadly, I doubt she complied.

Then I found the FABULOUS fabric below and made another bib.

And then I found this fabulous turtle fabric and, yes, I made another bib....

And then I started digging in my stash and I made this one....

and then this one...

Yes, Grandma has been very, very busy!

Sewing Chair Questions...

What are you all sitting on while you sew? I have a very ugly office chair that I have had for years. My husbands family owned and operated a magnificent fine dining restaurant in Cassadaga, New York, many years ago. When they closed the restaurant the chair from the office was about to be rolled out to the dumpster. I grabbed it because I knew it had good bones and it was fabulously comfortable. It just looked horrible and, well, smelled a bit like garlic. Time fixed the garlic smell and I fixed the ugly blue tweedy fabric by recovering it with a fine tan canvas. Then to finish the chair off, I tied a big bow around the back of it to match the sewing room decor at that time (I KNOW! But honest, it really did look good when I did it!) and have happily used it for about the last 8 years. The photo below is the front view. Yes, it gets worse. Funny how we don't notice sometimes how awful some elements of our decor actually look.... I do remember the day the seat cushion got the apple juice stain on it, though. My granddaughter and I were having such fun - she sits on my lap and pushes the buttons, lifts the presser foot, and chooses the stitches, etc., while we sew. I was surprised that the canvas stained like that... Anyway, what did I do to hide the juice stain that looked mighty suspicious? I covered it with a towel. Really, I did. In the interest of full disclosure I took the towel off the chair for the photograph so you could see how really terrible this chair actually looks!

So, the reason for the post? Really, what are YOU sitting on while you sew? Does it need a face lift like mine did? Currently I am making a quilted cover for the seat cushion. I am stipple quilting it right now and will finish it off in the same way I do the Quilted Toddler Bibs and Quilted Toddler Jackets. I will show you the process in the next post. I can't believe how easy it is to do... although it isn't done quite yet... but we shall see...

Come One, Come all! Bib Class in Clearwater!

I will be teaching a Quilted Toddler Bib class at Country Quilts and Bears in Clearwater, Florida on Saturday, July 10th. The class will run from 10 a.m. until 4:30. Many will leave earlier than 4:30, but if you want to make a day of it, you certainly can! We really have fun in our classes there!

The Quilted Toddler Bib is a fabulous blank canvas that allows you to practice and learn any and all of the following if you are interested:
* Basic piecing
* Machine embroidery placement / personalization
* “Whole cloth” stipple, meandering or grid quilting
* Hand or machine appliqué
* Bias binding creation and application



You leave this class with a smile and a finished project in hand. You also leave with nearly all the skills necessary to create the Quilted Toddler Jacket. My bibs can be bought on etsy - my shop is: http://www.quiltyindulgence.etsy.com/

Above is my darling Granddaughter, Lucy, wearing the small size bib on her first birthday. See how well she is covered? It is marvelous! Coverage isn't the only plus for this bib, either. It wears like iron. It can be washed over and over again and is as comfortable as an old quilt.

These patterns sew up to make great gifts and with the holiday season fast approaching, it is a wonderful addition to your repertoire! I can promise you that once you make one bib, you will have to make more! They are great stash busters, too. You can use up those orphan blocks you have laying around. You can make a bib or two from leftover charms or jelly rolls. You can use plain denim with the edges finished in bias binding and no quilting.... the options are limitless! Let your imagination soar!

Ann the Gran picked up my patterns!

I woke up this morning to find the most wonderful of emails! Ann the Gran confirmed that they have picked up, and listed for sale, my patterns on their website! This is a wonderful website that is very well established and offers a wide selection of machine embroidery designs, as well as sewing and quilting related products. They also have a tremendous amount of software, tips and techniques, thread charts, and free stuff. Prior to them carrying my patterns I had purchased many designs from them and love their website. It's needless to say that today I am one very happy quilter!

Quilting in Paradise

Occasionally there are times in our lives when we get to sit back, sigh and be truly grateful. I recently had a weekend where I got to do just that. I was invited to teach a Toddler Bib class in beautiful Key West, Florida at The Seam Shoppe on Truman. First, I get to actually work doing what I love to do most - quilt! Add to that that I got to do it in a setting like Key West? Are you kidding me? I hit the karmic jackpot on this one. Ahhhhhhh....

I had a great day and I got to meet more amazing, fun quilters. Aren't quilters just the best people to hang out with? First, let me introduce you to the wonderful lady above. That's Meg up there pinning her bias binding on the bib. She lives in Key West and came to The Seam Shoppe to take the class. She was a wiz at sewing and I loved her fabric choices. The watermelons were so cute, and she left with a darling bib ready to catch melon drips!

This lovely lady, Lynn, (above) has a grandson she is sewing for. He lives quite a distance from his Grammy so she is going to be shipping many packages overseas. After some rather frustrating sewing machine issues (we've all been there!) Lynn took right off and was stipple quilting like a pro. Lynn, I'm waiting for a photo of that finished bib......

Above is the firecracker, Betty. She has been sewing for awhile. Betty, however, tried to cut a corner or two and not stipple the entire rectangle, but I caught her. Slacker....wink wink. Either way, she did a wonderful job on her bib and if I'm not mistaken, she finished first. We won't mention that she jumped ahead by making the bias binding at home before class. Hey wait, I think Meg did that as well... there's usually only one over achiever per class. This class seemed to have two! That's not in keeping with the laid back Key West way of life, now is it?

And this photo shows the view from one of my favorite places in the Keys. A boat! This was taken while we cruised through a great section of the Channel Keys on Sunday before we headed back home.... Ahhhhh.... what a wonderful weekend it was.

One Thing Led to Another...

You know how one thing just leads to another? Well today, for me, is a perfect example of how this happens and even the best laid plans can go astray. It all started last week when I stopped by my favorite fabric shop in Key West, The Seam Shoppe. It is located on Truman Ave and I have been going there for 15 years. That store always puts a skip in my step - they have the best batiks and island prints anywhere! As luck would have it they carry my Quilted Toddler Bib pattern and I needed to stop by and pick up some fabric to use to make a sample bib for them to display in their shop. The bib to the right is the sample I made for their store. Then, as is often the case when I begin to sew, one thing led to another, and another, and another, and that's why I didn't get any laundry done today.... isn't it?

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While I was sewing the sample for The Seam Shoppe, I remembered the fabulous citrus fabric I had bought there a while back and I decided to make my darling Granddaughter, Lucy, a bib with the remains of that fabric. Isn't it grand?

Here is the back. I love it!

And then, as luck would have it, I had just enough left over to make Lucy TWO "drool bibs." Here is one of them.

And when I finished the drool bibs, I remembered the fabric I had left over from the aprons I made my daughter and her girls for Mother's Day, and, well, that led to this bib here on the right ------->

Then I remembered another sample I had made for a machine embroidery website, so I started digging through boxes until I found that bib so I could include it with the other bibs I had made today. I couldn't send the box without this one in it, right? You wouldn't believe the stuff I found while hunting for this bib.... but that's another post entirely...

So all of that is why I didn't get any laundry done today. Or dusting. Or bookwork. Or the newest pattern uploaded to the Library of Congress. One thing just led to another...

Hey! How did Lucy's photo get on here? Now that it's on here, I certainly can't delete it.... Isn't she darling? Just look at those eyelashes!

Sewing Out Samples

I have been very busy sewing up a Quilted Toddler Jacket and Hat pattern and a new Quilted Toddler Bib pattern for this wonderful quilting and embroidery site, Ann The Gran. They are going to sell my patterns and asked if I would sew up a few items using their machine embroidery designs. So that's what I have been doing. The bib pattern was a tremendous amount of fun to create. I used their Jacobean Style embroidery designs and let me tell you, they sew out beautifully! It was especially fun for me to make that bib since I have a new granddaughter named Lucy. She was born on December 8th and we just got back from spending nearly two weeks up in New York with Lucy, her big sister, Madelyn, and their parents.

Here is the jacket I made for a little boy using Ann The Grans Zoom Zoom design pack. I was nearly knocked out of my chair at the detail and precision that these designs sew out with. They are amazing and I couldn't have been more pleased to put these on a finished jacket.

The font is Arabesque from Ann The Grans web site as well. It happens to be my favorite embroidery font and I use it all the time. I actually bought this font months ago, long before we were in talks about them selling my patterns on their site. It is fabulous!

I would also like to point out the condition of my lawn. I am sure that if you have read this far down the blog, you are saying, "What is wrong with these people. Their lawn looks like a hay field." Well, let me tell you what's wrong with "these people." My husband decided to "go green" and buy an electric lawn mower that you plug in and charge, then you unplug it and mow. Well, you can see by the height of our lawn just how reliable this "green" lawn mower is. Since day one it hasn't had enough charge to mow all of our incredibly small yard. Our lot is only 50 feet wide and 100 feet deep. On that is our house, a shed, a double driveway and flower beds. That doesn't leave much lawn space. So, suffice it to say that when you "go green" and buy an electric lawn mower, you literally "go green" because in no time at all you have a hay field!

Penny Pinching Patchwork Post ~ Re-Purposing Clothes!

The house dress you see above has been hanging in my closet for more than a year. It was a gift from my wonderful mother-in-law and well, I just never wore it. She bought it for me at Neiman Marcus and it was a fabulously soft cotton fabric and even she said when she gave it to me, "I don't know what I was thinking..." It seemed such a shame to never use it so my creative quilter's brain got busy. You will not believe how many useful items and gifts I made from this one article of clothing!

First off, I made the Quilted Toddler Jacket and Hat that is shown above.

Then I made TWO Quilted Toddler Bibs!

And this photo shows you the the entire clothes line full of booty that I got out of ONE unused article of clothing! I was able to make ELEVEN quilted, and very useful, articles of clothing for babies and toddlers. The baby bibs would make darling baby shower gifts and no one would ever know you made them out of re-purposed clothing! A good movie on the TV, a seam ripper in one hand and a hot cup of tea in the other, and before long you have fabric just waiting for a new career! I pieced together the batting from scraps and used old yardage for the backing before I quilted the pieces, and made my own bias binding from stash fabrics. The entire clothes line was made from fabrics that literally were just laying around my house!

If you don't have anything laying about your house that you are not wearing, one trip to the SA Boutique (Salvation Army Thrift Store) and you could have for less than $3.00 enough fabric to outfit a baby's layette. I went there this past week and found several BRAND NEW floor length flannel nightgowns for $1.50 each that would make perfect burp cloths, bibs, changing pads, and jackets. During these difficult financial times it seems to make incredibly good sense to use our creative brains to re-purpose that which isn't being used. Buying from the Salvation Army is also giving to a good cause!

Quilty Indulgence Goes Live!

Happy Friday! I have finally finished the big secret project! I have completed the copyright for my bib pattern, the Quilted Toddler Bib!   I have some more patterns that I am working on and will get them copyrighted and posted soon.

The bib pattern grew out of necessity as I watched my angel of a granddaughter eating her first little bowls of baby food. Her daddy would warn you to watch for what he termed “blow back”. Then there was the “waterfall of food” and a number of other potential actions that were a constant threat to whatever my little darling was wearing. I immediately saw the problem and needed to think of a solution. Thus the Quilted Toddler Bib was born. I chased my granddaughter around the house with an old T-Shirt, snipping and clipping to get it to fit properly in order to make the pattern and then, because she wasn’t the most patient of models, I kept modifying it at home and taking it back for fittings. We finally got it just right and I started making them for her.

That’s when the fun really began because as the parents of my granddaughter’s friends saw these bibs, they wanted some for their own children. I became a bib making machine and then a light came on in my head and I realized that I really had something here. I just had to get it all down on paper, and then get that paper printed!

I wanted the actual bib pattern to be full size (not one you had to tape together), so that required “big girl software” so that when I took the final drawing to the printer, it would print all in one piece. The paper needed to be 24 X 30 inches and my home printer certainly couldn’t handle that task. During this time my granddaughter turned two and outgrew the original bib, so I then I realized I had to make a larger size. So back to the computer drawing board I went, and I overlaid the larger size onto the same paper, like you do with sewing patterns and back to the printer I went. The printer I was using specializes in construction blueprints and such, and talking to him about sewing patterns was quite a lark. He just couldn’t wrap his head around what I was trying to accomplish until I stated, “this is the blueprint to build a bib.” Suddenly we were on the same page! The rest, as they say, is history.

Stop by my etsy shop, if you will, and have a look around. I love company! Have a great weekend, everyone!

Oh, and the inspiration for the bib is the little princess below, Miss Madelyn Mary!