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)

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!