Canvas Gift Bags

As I was wrapping gifts on Saturday it occurred to me that a reusable bag would make more sense for several of the items I was about to wrap. I don’t usually purchase a large amount of any single fabric, but I did have some plain canvas on hand. Since the canvas has more body and substance to it than a standard quilting cotton, it didn’t even require a full lining.

The Christmas-y fabrics I had on hand were also very limited, but I did have enough to use as a facing on the top of the bag to add a bit of color and create the drawstring casings. Awhile back I had ordered 3/8″ grosgrain ribbon in a variety of colors to have on hand for various projects, and it worked perfectly for this project. It was purchased from cheeptrims.com (not an affiliate) which has great prices, but does have a minimum order, so you may want to pool orders with a friend.

To calculate the size of each bag, I loosely wrapped a fabric measurement tape around the gift, leaving a few inches excess to allow for seam allowance and ease. Half of this measurement was the width of the bag. For the height I also wrapped the measuring tape around the gift vertically and divided the measurement in half. I made sure to add 7-8″ to each half to allow for the gathering at the top of the bag and for the ruffle at the top. The corners are also boxed out to give the bag a bit more dimension.

These bags work great, and I’ll be making more to gift in future years!

Ornament Swap

Posted on December 11, 2017 by thenotsodramaticlifeadmin / Posted in Holiday Sewing, Quilting Community / 1 Comment

An ornament swap was one of the activities the Columbus Modern Quilters scheduled for our meeting in late November. The only rule was that our ornament must include fabric someplace in the construction.

Never one for a purely traditional color scheme, I used pink and green as the dominant colors. The ornament was made from a large styrofoam ball that I wrapped in narrow bias cut strips of low volume white and a pink Tula Pink print, which hopefully gave it a bit of a peppermint vibe. Lime green grosgrain serves as the hanger for the ornament, and is held in place with a few drops of glue. (I hardly ever combine glue with fabric, but I’ll make an exception for something like this with light use that will never need washing.)

We were not assigned a partner ahead of time. Instead we all wrapped our ornaments and did a version of a “bad Santa” exchange. No two ornaments were the same. We had a couple variations of fabric scraps enclosed in glass or plastic bulbs, some embroidered pieces, and some fabulously done fabric folding. I absolutely love the one I received! The feather piecing is gorgeous, and I’ll be able to display it in my sewing space all year round!

Baubles Quilt Finish

Posted on January 31, 2016 by thenotsodramaticlifeadmin / Posted in Finished Quilts, Holiday Sewing, Quilting / 9 Comments

Baubles is one of my oldest UFOs, and I am thrilled that I finally finished it up this week!

The blocks were designed on EQ7 when I was first experimenting with the program. These are some of the first paper piecing blocks that I designed from scratch. Once they were assembled, they got set aside, and I didn’t touch them for nearly a year.

From the start, I didn’t have a particular plan for the blocks, but eventually I brought them together in a configuration resembling hanging ornaments.

The quilting was probably the most fun of the entire project. I really enjoy doing all over free motion quilting, and this quilt is done almost entirely with this technique.

The only exception is that each bauble is quilted with coordinating thread and a combination of free motion and ruler work specific to each block.

Once the quilting was finished, I embroidered silver hanging strings for each ornament.

I decided to keep the binding white to allow the illusion of the baubles floating in space.

Quilt Stats

Title: Baubles

Size: 44″x53″

Techniques: Foundation paper piecing, traditional piecing, hand embroidery

Quilting: Hand guided longarm quilted on an A-1 Elite using free motion and ruler work techniques

Fabric: White Kona cotton and assorted pink, red, blue, and turquoise cotton prints

Batting: Warm and White cotton blend batting

Thread: Pieced using white Gutermann Mara 100, Quilted with white, bright pink, and blue Aurifil 50wt cotton thread, embroidered with silver Wonderfil and Gutermann Metallics

Binding: White Kona, cut in 2″ wide strips on the bias, machine stitched to the front, hand stitched on the back.

This quilt was my One Monthly Goal for January!

Goal #1 is Complete!

Pi Day: Mini Quilt #11

Posted on March 14, 2015March 18, 2015 by thenotsodramaticlifeadmin / Posted in Finished Quilts, Holiday Sewing, Mini Quilt Mania 2015, Quilting / 17 Comments

Happy π Day! Best wishes for peace, hope, and joy during the glorious season of pi day- Who can’t get behind a holiday that requires the consumption of pie! There are so many kinds of pie you could celebrate with . . . fruit pie, cream pie, ice cream pie, chocolate pie . . . Or a savory pie . . . pot pie, shepherd’s pie, pizza pie, quiche . . . Okay now I’m hungry. I thought that the best way to celebrate such a wonderful day would be to make a mini quilt that could serve as a pie plate mat.

I knew I wanted to do a circular mini quilt, and a pie motif seemed too perfect to pass up. I pieced a “lattice” top and then used a bias cut strip of fabric to create the outer edge of the “crust.” I had never attempted curving a bias strip around the edge of a full circle, but this worked out well (a great deal of steam was involved).

Today is a particularly special π Day since twice today we will have seven digits past the decimal point align with the date and time. 3.1415926 translates to March (month 3) Day (14th) Year (’15) and Time (9:26 am & pm). To commemorate this once in a lifetime event I decided to embroider these numbers to my mini quilt.

The backing and binding fabric is a grey print- think tin pie plate. For the quilting I decided to keep it simple by stitching around the edge of each red square in the lattice work. Of course “simple” involved a whole lot of thread tails to bury- maybe I should have thought that through a bit more! But since I like the result, we’ll say it was worth it!

Now to see the pie mat in action:

Coconut Pie with Meringue Topping- I adore Meringue.

Cherry Pie.

Quilt Stats

Title: π, pi, PIE!

Size: 14″ Diameter. 3.1415926 x 14″ = 43.98229″ Circumference

Techniques: Machine Piecing

Quilting: Machine quilting- stitching in the ditch

Fabrics: Red: Batik, Tan: Print from Carolyn Friedlander’s “Doe” line, Grey: Lonni Rossi print from Andover Fabrics

Batting: Hobbs Heirloom Bleached Cotton Batting

Thread: Pieced with white Gutermann Mara 100, Quilted using Mettler cotton quilting thread in red

Binding: Bias in coordinating grey fabric, cut in 2″ strips, machine stitched to the front, hand stitched to the back

What was new:

Adding a strip of bias around a circle and pressing it flat (other than bias binding)

Quilt 11 / 50

Goal #10 is Finished!

I’m linking up with Show Off Saturday at Sew Can She, Let’s Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts, and Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation. Please stop in to see all of the fantastic work being done!

Valentine Tic-Tac-Toe: Mini Quilt #5

Posted on January 30, 2015March 31, 2015 by thenotsodramaticlifeadmin / Posted in Finished Quilts, Holiday Sewing, Mini Quilt Mania 2015, Quilting / 22 Comments

What could be more fun than a mini quilt? Eleven mini quilts! This week I decided to make the fun and games of Mini Quilt Mania into a real game! This mini is a quilted version of tic-tac-toe with a Valentine’s Day twist.

The game board section section of the set is comprised of a grid of red echoed with this fun pink print. The background of white Kona Cotton really shows off the echoing heart spiral quilting.

The backing of the quilt is also white Kona, which shows off the pink quilting thread.

One quilt isn’t enough for this week, so I made ten more mini quilts to act as game pieces.

The five X’s for this game are square blocks made from half-square-triangles that are paired with one another then stitched and cut again along the opposite diagonal.

I replaced the standard O’s of the game with five heart shaped pieces. The inner hearts are fused using Wonder Under before being machine blanket stitched around the edges.

All of the game pieces were “bagged out” (stitched together with right sides of the fabric facing one another and then turned right side out through a small opening in the stitching) with a piece of cotton batting. I had never tried this technique with batting before, and I was a bit concerned about the bulk around the edges of the pieces. Fortunately, a row of edge stitching around each piece allowed them to lay flat. The added bonus was that the edge stitching closed up the openings used to turn the pieces right side out. No hand slip stitching on this project!

To keep the game pieces together, I whipped up a cute little drawstring bag in matching fabric. It is fully lined in the light pink cotton.

Quilt Stats

Title: Valentine Tic-Tac-Toe

Size: Quilted Game Board- 16.5″x16.5″ Hearts and Squares- 3″x3″ Storage Bag- 5″x7″

Techniques: Machine Piecing, Fusibles, Machine Applique, Bagged-out shapes

Quilting: Machine quilted. Game board- Heart shaped spiral. Heart Pieces- heart shaped ech0. Square Pieces- diagonal orange-peel shapes

Fabrics: 100% Cotton fabrics including Kona Cotton in White, Marble Dot from Moda, a Suzy Ultman print for Robert Kaufman, and a Nancy Halvorsen design for Benartex

Batting: Scraps of Warm and White and Warm and Natural

Thread: Pieced using Gutermann Mara 100 in White and Magenta. Machine embroidery done with Mettler Cotton Machine quilting thread in Magenta. Quilted with Connecting Threads Essential Thread in Magenta.

Binding: Marble Dots from Moda, cut on the bias in 2″ strips. Machine stitched to the front of the quilt, hand stitched to the back

What Was New:

Creating an interactive game in quilt form

Bagging out small quilt pieces with batting included

Quilt 5 / 50

Goal #4 is Finished!

I am linking this quilt up with Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts, Whoop Whoop Friday at Confessions of a Fabric Addict, Sew Cute Tuesday at Blossom Heart Quilts, Let’s Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts, Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation, and Show Off Saturday at Sew Can She. Please stop by to see everyone’s lovely work!