One More Christmas Gift

This is a mug rug for my awesome boss, who makes my work life the best it can possibly be considering it's...you know....work. And I'm not just saying that because she reads this blog!

That's some Philip Jacobs fabric in the centre there - love those blowsy flowers! The back is a bit of that purple fabric with a strip of the batik in the centre.

And with that, ladies and germs, it appears my 2010 projects have come to a close. My Dad arrives on Saturday for a week's visit, and Santa's wrapping workshop has to kick into gear.

I hope to do a 2010 wrap-up post to summarize my first year (!!!) of blogging - my projects, other experiences etc. so stay tuned.

Christmas Gifts - Details

I managed to get outside to take some photos, and I also took some detail shots inside.

Full Frontal (^TMKrista)

And some detail:

I quilted it with turquoise thread, and I am happy with the choice. Something a little bit different without being too out there.

Some process info about Christmas Gifts including a link to the tutorial I used for the pattern can be found here and here.

I will be linking this post up for Fabric Tuesday over at Quilt Story - check it out via the button on my sidebar!

Christmas Gifts is Finished

More or less finished, that is. I have to do a little finicky work on the ties, but let's face it: that could take a while and in the meantime, our Charlie Brown tree is without anything covering the stand.

I'm pleased with how it turned out. I quilted it in a combination of a stipple/meander and loops, and I gotta say I am not in love with that part. I should probably stick to plain meandering from now on. But it's not awful enough to make me dislike the skirt AND IT IS FINISHED so....thumbs up overall.

The weather has been rainy, so no closeups or full-frontal photos yet. Stay tuned!

WIP Wednesday

Looking for the giveaway? Click HERE!

I was a busy little bunny this past week. Being home sick from work helped a bit, but honestly I was feeling too lousy to do all that much. And my little girl had her 3rd birthday over the weekend, which meant party preps. I think she seems pretty pleased, though, don't you?

Enjoying her balloon bouquet while wearing her "3" shirt and Mama's necklace

Anyhoo, I had two WIP goals for this past week:
1. Complete Teacher cup cuffs. Done!


2. Complete Teacher Mug Rugs. Done and done!

Bonus stuff done:
1. Binding sewn on the tree skirt.

WIP Wednesday is a weekly linkup - go check it out!

Fabric Tuesday

Looking for the giveaway? Click HERE!

And now we return to our regularly-scheduled posting....Fabric Tuesday!

Well, I finally stitched down the last of the binding on Miss Chris's mug rug. I'm very happy with how it turned out. The fabric and style is very much "her" and I really hope she likes it. The black outline just inside the binding is actually a flange, and I created a tutorial (with what are quite possibly the world's worst photos) for it if you're interested.

I also finished up a few other projects this week:

A mugrug for Sew Mama Sew giveaway day

Cup Cuffs

The Tree Skirt is thiiiiiiis close to being finished. I just need to attach the binding to the back and make the ties.

Tuesday Fabric Story

A few fabric-related finishes happened for me this past week, which isn't surprising, since we're heading into Christmas-gift crunch time. A crunch of my own making, I will admit. I keep adding stuff onto my to-make list. Luckily, they're all quick projects that I can start and finish in an evening.

Ornament for the VMQG ornament swap. I used the Spool tutorial (.pdf file here) for the second time, and I still love it. I read a tip about using a small piece of batting for stuffing the tail, and I like the effect. Just like the first time I tried making a Spool bird, I had trouble sewing up the end. So I just zig zagged across the raw edge and I think it looks okay. Fabric is from the pajama pants I bought a while back.
 

Embellished t-shirt for a Christmas gift. Still loving that birdie!

Embellished t-neck for a certain someone's 3rd birthday coming up this weekend.

Linking up to Quilt Story for Fabric Tuesday. Even though this post is 100% quilt free!

Scrappy Mug Rug Complete!

Ta Daaaaaaa! To say that I am pleased with how this turned out would be like saying "Vancouver gets a wee bit of rain in the Fall." In other words, I'm really proud of this mug rug.

Once I'd assembled the top, I fretted about how to quilt the geese, and asked for advice. A Flickr comment twigged with me, and I got the idea to connect the points at the base of each goose/triangle, which was brill.i.ant if I do say so myself. Now the circle of geese looks like the wreath I had intended it to! Yay!

After quilting it, I moved on to fretting about the binding. I knew I wanted to use the red and white snowflake fabric (Michael Miller, maybe? I can't remember as usual) for the back. But I had initially thought of doing a red binding, which would have made the back really blah. A white binding would contrast nicely with the back fabric, but would make the front kind of unbalanced with the green frame around the needlework but the wreath floating in white. Cue more fretting.

Then it hit me: a flange! YES!

Hmm. Okay so it's not perfect.

I used Carol's tutorial for the single fold binding, and she's right - it makes for a much cleaner, crisper finish. Thanks Carol!

I'm really happy with this, slightly wonky flange and all - I hope my partner likes it too!

Entered in Quilt Story's Fabric Tuesday link party.

Swappy Goodness

Hooray! My ornaments for the Flickr Trim the Tree Handmade Ornament Swap are done and ready to be mailed. I got lots of great feedback and suggestions for how to hang these, and I ended up with two grommets in each one, with ricrac! EVERYTHING is better with ricrac.

And I am almost done my mugrug for the second Scrappy Mug Rug Swap, also on Flickr.

Just pondering how I will quilt the circle of geese. Maybe a circle through each one? And/or around the outside? Suggestions welcome.

Polka Dot Garden

Welcome, everyone! This is my second time participating in the Blogger's Quilt Festival and I am happy and proud to be giving this quilt its debut in such auspicious company.

 I made this quilt for my sister H who celebrated a milestone birthday this year. It spent much of its life referred to as Polka Dot Sampler until my Mom helped me decide on a name for it. As children, we spent a fair bit of time at James Gardens, a beautiful place full of green and flowers and fish ponds, the latter being an important feature in our family's lore because a very young H fell (or jumped, depending who you ask) into one during a particularly memorable visit. Mom said the colours in the quilt reminded her of James Gardens and the name Polka Dot Garden sprang to mind.

 This lovely measures 58"x58". The polka dot fabrics - all from my stash - were collected over time with no particular project in mind. When I finally got around to thinking about what I was going to make with all those polka dots, a sampler sprang to mind. And serendipitously, Amy announced her Simple Sampler Quilt Along very soon after that. The green solid in the sashing and blocks is Kona Chartreuse - a really fabulously "neutral" colour that seems to go with everything.

For me, choosing a quilting design for a sampler is difficult. I'm not proficient enough of a machine quilter to do something fancy and unique in each block, but an all-over design like stippling didn't seem right so I needed a different idea. The quilting is bubble-style in the sashings, and after much deliberation and discussion with my creative consultant (my husband, who has great design sense), I chose to quilt this from the back following the circles on the backing, adding just a few circles in areas that seemed too empty.

Speaking of the backing, it is a thrifted IKEA duvet cover. The binding was a genius find in the stash - it highlights each colour in the quilt and adds some stripey goodness to a very circular design.

 Thanks for stopping by, and enjoy the eye candy that abounds in the Blogger's Quilt Festival!!

Hello, Other Partner

Hello, Other Partner

I've been having so much fun with the mug rugs that I signed up for another partner so more people could join in.

Here's my mug rug for Partner #2, who likes brights and black and white.

The back shows the quilting nicely, I think (click to see it bigger):

Originally uploaded by felicity.quilts

Ocean Waves Mug Rug complete

Mug Rug #1 complete
Originally uploaded by felicity.quilts

This is the actual mug rug for one of my partners. She said she likes purple and caribbean/turquoise blue.


Here's the other side:

I hope she likes it!

Shoe Wallet

It's not all quilting, quilting, quilting around these here parts you know!

This was part 2 of my husband's birthday gift, part one being a new pair of running shorts. Much better than running around with what amounted to a ziplock bag tucked into his waistband!

For the record, those photos didn't look that out of focus on my computer. Oh, well.

Oooh, Shiny!

Beyond the Sea
Admittedly, I have the world's shortest attention span. I'm so SO easily distracted, it's not for believing.

So what's been distracting me lately? MUGRUGS!

The little fishie mugrug was a design that had been floating around (I'm so punny) in my head/sketchbook for a while. Now I know what it will look like in real life - these super-mini quilts are a terrific way to try out new ideas.

Speaking of new ideas and sketchbooks, here are my scribbled ideas for my partner's mugrug. What, you thought I'd made my partner's already? Pshaw! The three mugrugs I've made so far are practice, sillies!



I'm leaning toward option #3. Or maybe #2. Or maybe both - a reversible mugrug!

Felicity's Epiphany

birdie mugrug in action

Go ahead, say that post title three times fast!

I saw Angela's post with her ticker-tape style mugrug and I had an epiphany.

These cuties are the PERFECT medium for trying out new techniques or blocks or whatever. Huzzah!

Behold, an image that was previously only a sketch on some paper came to life as a scrappy mugrug. I got to try out the scribbly raw edge applique technique Anita shows in this tutorial.

Bonus discovery: finishing your binding by machine goes WAY better if you press the binding to the back before you start stitching. Look at these nice corners -- each one was done on a first go!!

And the stitching looks cute on the back, too!

Fabrics were all scraps from my stash. I used a 30-weight dark brown thread on top and in the bobbin for the stitching.

Getting Back To It

Well hello there! Miss me? I missed posting - more than I thought I would. I think it's because no posting usually means no sewing. Which makes me a sad little panda.

Except when no sewing happens because you're on holidays at a gorgeous lake with wonderful friends. Then, well, it's manageable. Barely.

It's been quite hot here again so I've been avoiding anything that requires an iron. Which rules out a lot, obviously.

I was able to get this little block done for the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild Block Challenge.

We were given the sock monkey charm and a strip of solid white, and we were supposed to frame Sockie in white then do whatever we wanted (with strips) to bring the block to 12.5". I definitely need help improvising. I kind of suck at it. I used mostly strips left over/hanging around from my Sampler project (still behind on that one), and that numbers stuff on the far right is from some older Funky Monkey fabric. Cute!

Yesterday I spent my 20 minutes quilting and got this little guy done. Today I bound it and now it's done. Hooray! I love a finish, no matter how small (18.5"x19.5")...Click to see it bigger.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar Quilt

At long last, I've snapped some pics of The Very Hungry Caterpillar quilt!

This one took a sabbatical in the Land of UFOs while I fretted about how to quilt it. Then I got some great ideas and it languished some more because...well, I truly don't know why. I was still unsure how to quilt it, I think.

I am so glad I got over that hump and just dove in!

The whole quilt, artfully arranged on a chaise longue on our patio

Some close up pics of the quilting detail:

Butterfly with thread painting

I quilted the foods he ate in the solid border

Plus some loops around the fruit and squares around the other foods 

Eponymous Caterpillar + stippling in the polka dots

I like the quilting on this leaf

The backing is a piece of purple fabric and it's quite plain so no pics. I attached the binding by machine, and it looks just okay. I was so eager to get this done that I know I rushed that part but I think it will be more durable, and it doesn't look terrible. I definitely need practice at that technique. I found I was more successful when stitching on top of the binding rather than stitching on the front of the quilt, trying to catch the binding in my seams. Even with pinning and all that. Eh, whatever. I'm happy with the finished product.

And so is my daughter, who refused to be without it for the two hours it would've taken to show it to Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild. Oh, well. There's always next month!