You are My Sunshine

I realized i never blogged about this finish!`
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We made friends with Casey and her daughter Brailey who were regular customers at Zippys. Through horses and visits at zippys this little girl just warmed my heart and i decided i needed to make a quilt for her.

Seriously... how could you not fall in love with this girl. I think it was the purple shoe thing that made it an instant bond. One day she asked how old i was and i said the same age as your mom... she said my mom is too old to wear purple shoes but your not. lol. I had a pair of purple crocs on. She of course had purple sandals on herself... we were a pair!

and yes, she is as sweet and as mischievous as this picture makes her look!

So i made "You Are My Sunshine" for her. It is from 8 1/2 in squares with alternating white snowballs. The prints are a variety of pieces that i have bought over time. It is bright, and scrappy and happy!

This quilt sat in my pile of ufo's for a while because i just didn't like the background fabric i had chose. All i had was a green sheet that didn't really match. Then i found this. They were curtains or something and i bought them at the local resale shop for 2.00! I pieced them together and honest to goodness after piecing i only had a 10"X 12" square left, it was PERFECT. I now had a hot pink back for Brailey's quilt and that was exactly what it needed.

I quilted it on my home machine and used some striped fabric that is in the quilt. I wish i would have taken a closeup of it, there are lady bugs in the stripes.

Mindless Piecing

I never really had an interest in making table toppers or things like that. I made BIG utilitarian quilts, but this etsy thing opens up a whole new world. Why NOT make some table toppers? they are cute, they are easy and they sell. What i didn't realize is how much FUN i was going to have making them and how in love i was going to fall with them.....

How could you NOT fall in love with this?

Let me see if i can tell you how this little gem came to be....

It started here. I wasn't in the right mind-frame to quilt the gigantic quilt, or put the borders on the 4 other quilts, or do some hst's for another quilt... i was in the mood for something much more playful. So I took out my 1 1/2 in squares and started playing. (i also accomplished sorting them by color and they are now in their own color bins... yes i have enough to make separate bins of my 1 1/2 and 2 1/2 in squares!)

I have a bin of these little 9 patches (actually 2 bins of 3 in 9 patches one with 4 white patches and one bin for these where i use 2 colors). I have plans for them someday so every once in a while i will just play in my 1 1/2 in  bins and make some more 9 patches. Well... as you can see 9 of them caught my eye because they were red and blue. I had those sitting out and saw the cutest little table topper in my mind and had to make it!

after peicing them... I had a blue picked out for another border and the back but i saw the white with litte red polka dots and the red and white striped and thought... nope... that is what it needs. I finished it up yesterday by hand sewing the binding while we watched a movie. 

Oh, i am also in love with the close quilting. Now... im not sure i would do the gigantic quilt im making in this but i do want to quilt a throw with it. I cant believe how much it shrinks it... this project is 12 1/2 X 13. I lost a whole 1/2 in in the quilting.

So... im now a fan of table toppers and small home decor projects. I did put this in my store for sale... its going to be SO hard to sell it.

pretty quilting!

I have realized part of the problem with an etsy store. Its getting the listings in there! Yesterday I had a photo shoot with a bunch of things i have been stacking up to put in my store but haven't had the sunlight or time to photograph and put in the listings. I took over 200 photos! that means i have about 20 different fat quarters, pillow cases, old fabric im destashing, and table toppers finished to put on there... but just haven't gotten around to it yet! It wont sell unless i put it on there!!! right?

The good news is in the next couple days, there will be some vintage fabrics, old patterns and upcycled sheets, cloth napkins from vintage sheets and adorable table toppers on etsy... brand new listings!!

Here is a sneak preview of some quilting that i finished yesterday on one....

I do not normally quilt this heavy and i love the "organic" lines (yes, organic means they are far from straight! lol) I am loving the table toppers because they are small and im sampling some different quilting that i haven't done before.

I did manage to get all of those pictures taking while babysitting Tristan yesterday. I haven't had my little cowboy that much lately so we had fun. We of course had to visit with Cutter (our stud horse who loves the babies) 

that was the sweetest hug between a little cowboy and his horse that i have ever seen.

and of course what is cuter than a  little cowboy at the fence....

lol i just wish i could get his mother to give him a real haircut so he looked more like a clean cut cowboy! 

anyways, let me leave you with the favorite piece of destashed fabric that im putting on etsy... its so cute i had to share some. (no im not selling all i have)

my scrappy trips

My latest obsessions. I started these from the scraps i had. I got 1/4 of the way done with my scraps and then had to cut more. I take this approach sometimes, if i dont like what im making i stop and never finish it. It was just scraps. I have a bin where i put all my abandoned projects and orphan squares and im sure some day i will make something of them.  With these... i love both of them so i finished cutting the strips for the red one last night and im half way thru the blue one.

and i promised pics of the plus quilt.... here is a sneak preview...

The three finishes

Ok, I put off blogging about these because i couldn't get good pics... then i got the pics and forgot to blog. But here was my industrious weekend work (a few weekends ago)

First is the vintage sheet throw. This one is for sale in my etsy store. I made it from 8 in square blocks 64 of them. What i love most about this quilt is the back is a lavender piece of muslin sheet. Laying under this quilt on a warm day with the windows open while i was sewing the binding i was transported back to maw maw and paw paw McGraws house in the hills of west virginia. A summer night, a fan blowing over that cool muslin sheet... I loved those sheets. I am calling it springtime in a hammock because i can just feel it wrapped around me on a spring day sunning in a hammock, how sweet is that?

It measures 60X60 and has an 80/20 batting. I quilted it on my home machine. I used a green polkadotted sheet for the binding which is perfect!

Next is the baby quilt from vintage sheets. I chose 4 pink floral fat quarters for the back of this one and it turned out adorable. Again another simple one, i cut all my scraps into various sized squares, this happens to be the 4 1/2 inch scraps.  Again a green polkadotted sheet for the binding. 

Finally the men's shirts. These three shirts just went together so i made them into a quilt. I love the zig zag pattern and its a flash to put together.  The back is a green and blue plaid sheet i just happened to have and the binding is the plaid shirt used in the quilt. I think i will do more zig zags... i really like them.

all three are for sale in my etsy store. Click here to see more.

this and that

changes just keep happening in my life! Last week we turned the restaurant over to ralph's daughter Caty. Caty has worked here since day one and she was going to get it eventually but in our "what are we going to do when we grow up" search we decided that we loved working in a pizza restaurant but we did not enjoy running one.  We decided to close zippys down and direct our efforts elsewhere (remember the make stuff and sell it plan... become hippy's and live in the woods?) Caty didn't want us to close it, she wanted to keep it open. I know she can run  it so for a long term buy out she is "buying" the restaurant from us. Ok... so here is the really cool thing. The deal is we had to work for her for 6 months at least so now i just WORK at a pizza restaurant for 8 bucks an hour (dont tell her but i think doing this i got a raise! lol just kidding)

What this has done though is instead of working 12 hour days (she is now doing that) i only work 6 hrs 6 days a week and that leaves lots of time to make stuff!!! Now if we could all get over the flu and winter colds, i would have more time! Because of the crud, it seems all my spare time is spent here....

lol my bed looked so nice after i made it the other day i took a picture. I love the quilt  "lonesome dove" when its on the bed. The sweet girl is emmajean. She is about 100 years old  (but that is really her bed that she allows us to sleep in!) Pillow cases are vintage dark blue gingham. the embroidered pillow is from ikea.

As far as sewing... i have mostly been puttering. I am organizing and finding homes for everything in my "new" sewing room. Ok, i just need to confess that i will NEVER have that much fabric organized, i just keep moving it from one side of the room to the other, but there has been SOME improvement..

My holy scrap batman quilt.... I now have a desk drawer with my tiny bits in them and while i was making that move, i made a few more 6" square blocks. I am not sure how to keep this drawer under control. I really have trouble throwing even the littlist bit away, but these blocks are time consuming since most scraps are smaller than 1 1/2 inches! I do think i will have to do a "dump" of some sort every once in a while to keep it under control. Maybe after every quilt, just dump what i didn't use@!

on the other hand they are fun and mindless to make. I think i need 28 more to finish the quilt so it will be a while! This one is going to be a gift for a friend. I plan on making a throw.

Table toppers and table runners. I have been playing with my vintage sheet scraps, namely the 2 1/2 in square pile. Seems like i have alot of those! I have made three table toppers out of it and im working on a runner.

This cute little table topper i have decided to keep. When i get home today im going to pick some paper whites that are blooming in the backyard, getting a mason jar and put it in the center. aww wee (how sweet). as my adorable grand daughter alyssa would say. (its only adorable with a childs southern accent, just sounds silly when i say it... but she says aww wee all the time)

And yes, i am always the last to jump on to a fad. The scrappy trips around the world, i have loved them and just wasn't sure where my 2 1/2" strips were. I found them last weekend and looking them over i think i am going to make 2 trips... one brightly scrappy colored (with the red stripe down the middle to tie them together) and an all blue trip. Im not sure what i will do with either of them but i definitely have enough scraps to make the trips! lol.

The plus quilt. Wow. Once you get going on it it flys together. I am doing 25 rows and i only have 8 left to put on. I have not taken a picture of the plus quilt in progress because its scrappy but honestly it is ugly. It is by far the ugliest quilt i have made but im sticking with it because at the same time i love it because of all the different fabrics in it and what they represent. So, im sure by my next post i will have a picture of the completed top. But im warning you, its ugly!