Nautical Baby Quilt

Posted on October 8, 2016 by oliver's fancy

I’m back with baby niece number 2’s quilt! This sweet babe is due a mere 10 days before my own little boy, so it’s very exciting to have all these cousins coming so close together! My brother and sil are doing a nautical baby nursery with the main colors being red and navy blue.

I wasn’t exactly sure how I wanted to include the nautical elements into this baby quilt so I did some Pinterest searching for inspiration and came upon this gem. I basically copied this idea pretty closely.

I had one yard of white kona cotton to use and figured out my dimensions around that. The large middle white section ended up being around 20-22″ by the width of fabric and the striped sections are about 2.5″ by WOF.

For the anchors, I found a template online, used that to trace the anchor shape onto my fabric, applied heat n bond lite to the back of the fabric, and then appliquéd the anchors to the quilt. The anchors are around 7″ tall.

The final quilt size ended up being about 41×45″… I used some navy kona cotton to bind the quilt and this awesome lightweight chambray anchor print for the backing. I had bought this chambray at the beginning of the summer to make shorts for the boys and never got around to it. It ended up being the exact size I needed for a backing so it was awesome not to have to piece anything for the back!

The quilt is free motion quilted with a pretty dense loopy stipple on the white sections. I thought all that white fabric needed some dense quilting to add dimension. And then I left the color strips and anchors un-quilted to let them pop a bit.

My goal with this quilt and the previous one was to only use fabric from my stash. With the exception of the yard of white kona that I had to buy, everything else was stashed! I think I used up every single piece of navy blue and red fabric that I own but I had enough! Apparently navy and red are not colors that I use a lot.

I love how this turned out and I am excited for my baby niece to get to use it!! FYI I blurred her name out on the label because it hasn’t been announced to the general public yet, and I wanted to let her mom and dad do that, not me!

A baby quilt for Chloe

Posted on August 24, 2016 by oliver's fancy

So you know that I’m expecting this fall, but the other excited news is that I have two sisters-in-law also expecting! Both with baby girls- so yay for some baby girl sewing in my future! I’ve actually already had a bit of fun sewing for them both, but am waiting to share here until I can give the gifts to the expectant mothers.

chloe's baby quilt (2 of 6) We are on a nice long road trip this week to Wisconsin for a family wedding, and it just so happened that my brother’s house was the halfway point so we stopped there for the night and I was able to give baby Chloe’s quilt to her mommy and daddy!

chloe's baby quilt (4 of 6) I’ve had this charm pack sitting around for a very long time and while deciding on a quilt for my upcoming niece, I realized that these charm squares were the same colors as the nursery theme- match made in heaven!

chloe's baby quilt (5 of 6) After some pinterest searching, I decided on the fast 4-patch quilt pattern. It was a super quick sew since I didn’t have to cut out the smaller squares! I alternated the 4-patch squares with white and teal solid Kona cotton blocks. The design was an evolving one, and I was thankful for my quilt layout board on the wall in my sewing room to hang the blocks up as I decided how exactly to arrange them. I super love the end result!

chloe's baby quilt (6 of 6) My sil loves teal and chevron so I used this chevron print from my stash and combined it with the grey solid and grey polka dots to make an easy backing. The quilt is bound in some dark grey metro dots from ancient days… Are you sensing a theme? My goal was to have all the fabrics come from my stash and I’m happy to say I was successful!

chloe's baby quilt (3 of 6) I quilted it with a crosshatch pattern and love the crinkle it gives to the finished quilt. I’m normally really bad about labels but I wanted baby Chloe to have this quilt as a keepsake so I hand embroidered a little note for her on the back of the quilt.

chloe's baby quilt (1 of 6)

Baby Chloe is due mid-September and I am so excited to have a niece! Hopefully she likes to play and snuggle atop her her baby quilt!

Valentine’s Mini Quilts

Posted on February 9, 2016 by oliver's fancy

mug rug and runner (2 of 6) I’ve been struggling with my sew-jo the last few weeks and just have not had the drive to tackle all the projects spinning in my head. All last week I wanted to make some more valentines decor but just couldn’t decide what I wanted to do. Finally this week, I got a little inspiration and whipped up these two little mini quilts and I’m so happy with them!

mug rug and runner (3 of 6) This first mini is a table runner for my dining room table. I had some leftover valentine-ish fabric from when I used to sell baby onesies and wanted to use it to make a heart runner. I just did not have the patience or brain space to figure out how to piece this to make a legit heart runner so I totally just appliquéd the hearts onto some white Kona. Easy peasy! Then I had some fun with the quilting and decided to try to free motion some hearts in my loop-de-loop. It’s definitely messy but I kinda love how it turned out! Lots of pink and white and red all meshed together…perfect for some cheerful decorations.

mug rug and runner (1 of 6) I had a little bit of the arrow fabric left so I appliquéd two more hearts onto a smaller white square and ended up with this little mug rug. Since there’s less white space on this mini, I decided to stick with some straight line quilting in coordinating thread. I was afraid it would look too busy otherwise. I don’t have a lot of decorations out on my coffee and side tables in my living room because kids. (need I say more?), but I have started keeping some seasonal mug rugs out and I love how they brighten up the room and add a little something special. Plus I love to drink my tea so they are actually quite handy for my mugs!

mug rug and runner (4 of 6) Now that I’ve got these sewn up so quickly, I’m wondering why I dragged my feet all last week on these projects! I know not everyone decorates for Valentine’s Day, but I can’t resist a chance to be cheesy and I do think hearts everywhere just brighten up a room! Plus Oliver is now used to my decorating and asked why we didn’t have Valentines stuff up last week…that kid is getting way too observant!

mug rug and runner (5 of 6) This won’t get too much use this year as it’s so close to the actual holiday, but now I’ll have some stuff ready to put out next year when February rolls around! And I may just leave it up till the end of the month…just because I can. 🙂 mug rug and runner (6 of 6)

A Very Grinchy Christmas Quilt

Posted on December 10, 2015 by oliver's fancy

So I have a confession to make. This quilt was finished last year. Which at this point, I’m wondering if I should even blog about it but I do love to have an online record of my projects. And since I actually managed to get a few pictures of it when I took the boys Christmas pj pics, I figured I’d throw it up here.

grinch quilt (2 of 6)

I bought the main panel piece along with the first border print several years ago and had been hoarding it until I could figure out what to do with it. Last year, I decided I would finally cut into it and make a quilt. I happened to run into hobby lobby and see that they had the Santa Grinch print that you see in the backing and outer border, grabbed a few yards of it, and started planning my layout.

grinch quilt (6 of 6) I cut apart the panel pieces and arranged them in a 3×3 rectangle of blocks. I added some white kona cotton as necessary to even the blocks out. I was really trying not to spend any more money on fabric so I used the two green Grinch prints that I had to border the quilt. In retrospect, the two greens together are a little too busy and I wish I would have spent a little more time and money to put a border between them . Especially for something like a quilt that’s going to last a long time, I have learned it’s not worth it to make something I’m 100% happy with.

grinch quilt (5 of 6) I didn’t have quite enough of the Santa Grinch print for the backing so I used a red and white stripe print from my stash to complete the back. I do so love the little pop those stripes give it. For the binding, I just used a pre-made red binding….which I would not recommend! It bled all over the white spots in the quilt and I had to do a lot of re-washing and sun-bleaching to get the red stains out. Thankfully they did eventually come out.

grinch quilt (4 of 6) The quilting is just a basic stippling in gray. Love the texture a stipple quilting pattern gives without taking away from the main focus of the quilt.

The boys love this quilt so much so even though it’s got a few things I wish I would have done differently, I’m glad they are happy. It’s so fun to see them lay it out in the living room floor and check out all the Grinch’s and Who’s. They love the old version of the Grinch movie and get so excited to “read” the story through the quilt panels. And, you know, I love any chance to encourage a love of Dr. Seuss. 🙂

Dr Seuss Halloween Quilt

Posted on October 27, 2015 by oliver's fancy

Here’s the second project I made with the Spooktacular Seuss fabric. You can see the first project here. I wanted to make something that we could enjoy for longer than one season so a quilt seemed like the logical choice. I don’t quilt very often but it is fun to have holiday themed quilts. I actually made a Grinch one last year that I never blogged so I’ll try to get pics of that this season! You will notice, I’m not an intricate piecer. My sewing time is so limited and Halloween was coming so quickly that in order to get this finished, I needed to do something quick and easy. While fancy quilts are nice, in my house they never get completed!

I decided to have fun with the Suess theme and go with stripes of various widths and colors- pulling from the colors in the main fabric. I found all of these Kona cottons as my local Hobby Lobby. They don’t have a huge selection but they are close by my house so I was happy to see that they had exactly the colors I needed. I got a half yard of each fabric and cut a few different widths to get the length I wanted for the quilt. I used the entire width of the fabric to make the quilt as wide as possible. It ends up being a great lap quilt size about 41×62″.

Once I had the front pieced, I used up all the remaining Konas for a random striping back. I didn’t even lay the colors out beforehand- just picked up the next one in line and sewed them all up. I love how fun the back turned out! I had a few little Seuss people left from the boys’ applique shirts so I appliquéd them to the back of the quilt to give the boys something fun to look for and give the back a little more interest. I can’t decide if I’m 100% sold on whether they add to or take away from the quilt, but the boys really like them so that fulfilled my main purpose.

I used a curvy stitch on my machine to quilt lines at random widths across the quilt. That meant I didn’t have to stress about how even my lines were, plus the waviness adds to the Seuss effect. The binding is pieced from random leftover bits I had on hand- aqua, purple and orange. It’s the first time I’ve done a pieced binding and I kinda love it!

This was pieced over the weekend and then quilted and bound yesterday. Super crazy fast for me, but I’ve learned to push through and finish something like this while I’m in the mood or it will languish undone forever. I’m pretty excited to have a fun Halloween quilt to pull out every season and put on my quilt ladder! Though if I’m being honest, this will probably stay out until Thanksgiving so we can really have time to enjoy it. The boys (and I 🙂 ) love snuggling under quilts- especially ones with Horton and the Grinch. I wish I could say that in Eliot’s Grinch voice for you. It’s the most adorable thing. He quotes lines from the Grinch movie in his mean Grinchy voice and I just die. We are kinda Dr. Seuss fans over here, can you tell? 😉

Chevron and Stripes Mini Quilt- Handmade Birthday Club

Posted on October 8, 2014 by oliver's fancy

I have another installment of the gifts for my handmade birthday club members to share with you today. This is a mini quilt that I made for Jamie. Jamie had given us a great list of suggested fabrics and color schemes along with a link to her pinterest boards. While perusing her quilt board for ideas, I came across this chevron fly block that I thought would be perfect for a mini quilt. The best part is that the block is that it’s made up of half-square triangles- so easy! I played around a lot with layout and color but in the end decided to go with shades of gray with a pop of this alison glass feathers print for color. Once I made the chevron portion, I improvised the rest of the quilt top- putting the different ideas up on my design wall until I settled on varying widths of the fabrics for a bit of a stripe effect.

I backed the quilt in some geometric print that I had in my stash and did matchstick straight-line quilting on the white sections of the quilt to make the front design pop even more. I bound the quilt in Kona Olive which I just recently picked up thanks to Kristin continually lauding its ability to coordinate with any project. I have to say I might agree with her. Love extra color pop it added to my mini. And I promise the binding looks better than it appears in these pictures. For some reason it looks super wavy in the pics but it wasn’t in real life!

I just recently got two of my half-birthday presents in the mail from my fellow birthday club members and one of them put these great envelope sleeves in the top of a mini quilt. I hadn’t thought to add that little detail before so I decided to try it out on this one and it was quite easy and will make it much easier to hang!

I had a leftover chevron piece so I made a quick little zipper pouch out of it and added some fun office supplies to finish up my birthday gift. I really love how this turned out and hope my recipient loves it as much as I do!

Handmade Birthday Club: Distorted Triangles Mini Quilt

Posted on June 23, 2014 by oliver's fancy

My next handmade birthday gift (see previous one here) is to Jeni in Canada. (@quiltedontherock). She finally got it after two weeks in the mail so I can share it with y’all here. Jeni said that she loved black & white with pops of color, text prints, and mini piecing. I decided to make her a mini quilt based off this pin that I found. I used my text bundle that I won from Pink Castle Fabric’s IG giveaway and then some fabrics from my stash to make the loose rainbow running down the mini.

Sooo I wanted to make a triangle quilt, but so far all I’ve ever done is half-square triangles. I looked up some tutorials on pinterest (you can check out my quilt board here) and then made up my own triangle template based on what I thought would be a good size. I think I should have researched it a little more before jumping into it. Somehow I messed something up because I ended up with pointless triangles. See what I meant in my last post about the maths not working out for me most of the time? I almost scrapped the project after the first row but I’d already cut out all the triangles so I just continued with it and figured I’d see if it looked better all put together. Once I got it finished up, it kinda grew on me and I decided it was kinda of a cool look. Hopefully Jeni agrees!

FYI I starched and ironed all the triangles after I cut them out and it made the sewing process much easier! I used my walking foot and quilted it 1/4” on either side of the horizontal rows and then random widths of straight lines going down the vertical length of the quilt . I used the same black sketch print for both the backing and binding.

If anyone has any suggestions as to what I did wrong, please feel free to weigh in. I almost didn’t publish this post because it shows an imperfect project but I think it’s important to show our flaws as well as our successes. Keepin’ it real here, folks!

Handmade birthday club

Posted on April 29, 2014 by oliver's fancy

Those of you who are on Instagram may have seen references to the handmade birthday club. I missed out on it for the first signup round but when my friend Lisa (@modern_balabusta) posted another signup list for a late to the handmade birthday party, I jumped on the train. Basically you have a group of makers who agree to send a handmade item to each other in their birthday month. The group is arranged with only (mostly) one person per month so the participants don’t get overwhelmed.
Lisa’s birthday was April 27th and I got my gift mailed off a few days late but it was the first gift so she cut us all some slack. It was so fun to get to make something for a fellow sew-er who I know will enjoy the value of a handmade gift! Based on Lisa’s list of preferred fabrics and after perusing her Pinterest boards, I made her this mini quilt as her main gift item. Isn’t it so cute?

I’ve always wanted to make a plus quilt and it was quite easy once I sat down to do it. I didn’t follow any pattern; just cut out 3.5″ squares and arranged them on my design wall until I liked the arrangement. Then I sewed them together- making long rows, then sewing the rows together. I decided on a straight line quilting pattern down either side of the seam allowances using the side of my walking foot as a guide (about .5″ from seam). The finished quilt measures at about 18″x24″.
I picked up a few fun office supplies at target to coordinate with my gift and threw in one of my hoops that I had made up already. I think it’s a fun gift and I hope Lisa enjoys it!

WIP Wednesday: A dress, a quilt, and some fabric piles for inspiration

Posted on April 2, 2014 by oliver's fancy

So the sickies hit our house this week and the kids and I have been down for the count. I’m going to apologize in advance that all my pictures are IG pics. Just the way life is sometimes. So many projects brewing in my mind, and so little time to get them done! I am *almost* finished with my second Bianca– this one is going to be my Easter dress! I just have a teensy bit left on it and hope to finish that and get some pics for you by this weekend. Here’s a sneak peek from my IG feed (@oliversfancy). I took the plunge and cut into my Nano Iro double gauze! And its gonna be awesome!

I am also hoping to finish the binding on Oliver’s quilt this week so I can finally cross that project off my list! Can’t wait to show you the finished product. Btw did you know that quilt and myself made it into our local paper? Yep, I am now famous. 🙂 A reporter came to check out our quilt guild at the March meeting and ended up using my picture for the front of the article. Pretty cool. I ran out and got the last copy of the paper at a gas station and think I shall frame it in my craft room. Hey, my first time in print has to be special, right? Here’s a link to the article if you want to read it.

my attempt at a picture of the actual newspaper article.

Don’t forget, next week is Kid’s Clothes Week! I’ve been making all kinds of plans in my head and am getting antsy to begin. My goal is to have all my patterns prepped and fabric cut out by Monday morning so I can spent next week sewing. Here’s my IG capture of my new knits purchase…got some pretties from Girl Charlee in preparation for KCW. I also took the plunge and bought Dana’s shorts pattern since it came highly recommended from my sources. And last, but not least, I bought some stretch thread after Rae recommended it so highly. I’ll be sure to let you know how these all work out for me.

As I was writing this post, it unintentionally morphed into a WIP post…funny how blog posts take on a life of their own, huh? So I’m linking up over with WIP Wednesday at freshly pieced for the first time today.

Modern Instabee, Hive 10

Posted on February 24, 2014 by oliver's fancy

I am so very excited about what I have to share with you today. I got lucky enough to get the opportunity to participate in the phenomenon known at the Modern Instabee. A quilter (Lisa- @brazenlisa) had bought a copy of the new book Modern Bee and had the idea to create an Instagram version of a modern quilting bee using this book as a template. When she asked for participants, 120 people signed up to be part of this bee. Groups of 12 people were matched up, and I got into the last group-Hive 10 (just barely squeaked in before the pool closed!). Each member is assigned a different month to be the “queen bee” and during that month she picks a block from the book and everyone has to follow her fabric/color specifications, make the block, and then mail it to her by the end of the month. February was the first month and my queen bee assigned our group the String Circles block- which was a fun challenge to complete!

I assume I am probably going to need to make a sample block for each month just to make sure that the one I send to the queen bee is perfect. My husband gave me the idea to save all those blocks and make another quilt at the end of the year as a fun remembrance of all my quilting bee friends I’ve made. I loved that idea! You can see my sample block below on the left.

I love the group of ladies that I am joined with and am so excited to see what happens over the course of the year. I also love that this bee is an IG users-only bee. IG is my favorite social media (I’m a bit addicted) and I just really love everything about it. It has opened up my realm of sewing friends so much and given me a real sense of friendship with people I (for the most part) only know online.

One of the members of our hive (Renae- @rlchandmade) designed this super-cool logo for us using the Rhonna Design app and another very nice member (Lisa) is machine embroidering it onto fabric for us all to include in our quilts. Seriously, y’all, I’ve got the best group 🙂 .