12.25.2009

Merry Christmas


 


ASCII wishes you all a very merry Christmas!
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12.19.2009

Making Christmas...


Remember that song from The Nightmare Before Christmas? Well, I've made a little Christmas this year. This year I made purses and a wallet for my mom and my mother in law. Neither of them read my blog, so I have no fear of spoiling the surprise for them.

I was in a rush to get stuff shipped out, because I never get anything done early. So I forgot to take pictures of the first purse and the wallet I made. I'm hoping I can get Sam's mom to take a picture for me.

I did remember to take a picture of my mom's gift. Mom likes blue, but I thought that brown with blue might be a bit more versatile than all blue.


The bag is a Claire Bag from Lazy Girl Designs. This was the first Lazy Girl pattern I've used, but I've been wanting to make this bag since the first time I saw one. The pattern was well written and it was pretty easy.

The wallet, glasses case and check book cover to go with the hand bag are from Vera Bradley. I intended to make a wallet to go with this one like I did for my mother in law, but I just ran out of time. I think this pattern goes really well with the fabric I chose.

The wallet I made was based on a tutorial from that*darn*kat. It was really fast and I actually think I like it better than the Vera Bradley wallet. I used a button and ribbon loopto keep it closed. I'm a little worried the button will come off with use. The next time I make one of these, and there will be a next time, I will use snaps.

12.01.2009

What I'm currently working on...


I have posted pictures of the Underground Railroad blocks I worked on over the past year.


The quilt blocks are now all sewn together with the sashing. I wanted to put a border around the outside and had planned on doing 2 plain borders. When I started planning out the border, I decided that this quilt deserved some more exciting borders. So I decided to try a pieced border (insert ominous music and thunder claps here). I know how important good borders are but I have a tendency to just slap on plain old borders and call it done, so this is a challenge for me. I'd seen a ribbon border in one of the quilts from Elm Creek Quilts that I thought would look good. Judy has a similar border (except more colorful than mine) in the quilt in her post about deciding whether you need odd or even blocks in borders. This is the first time I've added my own pieced borders to a quilt.

I laid the quilt out in EQ with blank blocks and used a Y block to make the border. The problem was that EQ wouldn't let me have more than 24 blocks on one side of my border. I don't know why but the little drop down only went to 24 and it wouldn't let me type in the field. You might be able to see in the image below that the blocks on the long sides are not square. This meant that I couldn't print out correct measurements and cutting instructions for the borders. I finally just adjusted the size of the block when I printed out the cutting instructions for the block.


I added some "floaters" around the outside the quilt to make it the right size to use 3 inch blocks in the border and to make the ribbon look like it was kind of floating in the border. I've got all the blocks made and just need to finish squaring them up and sew them together. Hopefully all my math was correct and the borders will fit!

I'm working on a few Christmas gifts right now, but hopefully I'll get back to this before the end of the year...End of the year! What happened to August?!?!
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