June is Pillow Month

At least for me it is. I've been having themed sewing months lately, and not on purpose. It just happens. In March I made bags. In April I made clothes. May, I don't know that I sewed anything. And June it has been pillows! I finished my liberty pillow and blogged about it HERE. If you follow me on Instagram (IG) then you've seen peeks of two more I'm working on and will be sharing next week (one on Monday for the Kate Spain blog hop - be sure to come back and check it out!) and the other I'm hoping to blog about on Wednesday. :)

That is not all... I also made the hubby a pillow for Father's Day! :) It was a last minute idea and I just went with it. There are some kinks to work out if I were to perfect it, but I actually kind of really like it. :) I think I should make him a quilt to go with it, since he doesn't have one of those yet. Anyway, here it is...

His favorite color is red, and I really love Denyse Schmidt fabrics.
I think they lend themselves to being manly fabrics quite nicely. :)

The pillow finishes at 15 inches square (I think. I didn't measure it after completing it). 

I installed a zipper in it, which I am really loving zippered pillows!!

The back is just a kona blue-grey. I'd have to check to see what color it is.
(Don't mind the yellow marker stain on the couch. The joys of children...)

I didn't have a pillow form for it, so I stuffed a down pillow into it. haha. Good thing those pillows are so squishy! but it makes for a rather hard pillow. I'll get a form one day. :)
I really need to practice up on my stitch in the ditch skills. not awesome.

My sister and her two children came and stayed with us this last week. We had such a great week!! One of my favorite things about them visiting, is that my niece is super crafty and loves to sew! We always sneak in at least one sewing project while she's here. This time I taught her how to quilt and she made a pillow! She even did the free motion quilting all by herself!! She's a natural!

Her and her pillow. I really love it!!
look how well all her points match up!

Close up of her quilting. Awesome for her first time!!

They bought some of my fabric that I wanted to destash and I sent her home with some extra batting. I'm hoping she'll go home and get her quilting on! I can't wait for their next visit. (I'd love to start making quilts with her!)

So all-in-all June has been an awesome month! I am in love with pillows now and can see many more in my future! I was joking with the hubby that since he loves pillows and I love to make handmade gifts, he'll have hundreds of pillows by the time we die. lol. :) I guess we'll be at no loss for comfort! and perhaps have many a pillow fights in our future. :D

Do you tend to have themed sewing months too? Or do you tend to keep it random all the time? I'm wondering what I'll be sewing next month. :)

I hope you're having a great weekend!

 And be sure to come back next week for more pillows!

do.Good Stitches - Candy Land Quilt FINISHED!!

This is my ONE finished item from the Fourth Quarter FAL (that's my original post with all my projects) with Rhonda over at Quilter in the Gap. I am linking it up here in the final link up.

It is finally here! This has been a long time in the making, and well worth it. I am so grateful for all the Harmony girls to helped with this quilt. :) It's taken me WAY to long to finish, and I apologize for that, and I am glad no one got mad at me for being so slow. ;)

If you want to make this quilt, you can find the tutorial for 1-2 blocks here. I definitely want to make this again, and it's been on my list for a long time to make a full pattern of it. Now that it's finished, I REALLY want to make another. I love how it turned out! These are prewash pictures. I get nervous about what quilts will look like after the wash, so I always take before and after pictures in case it looks horrible, which they never do. Anyway, here are some more photos of it:

I did a 1/4" echo quilting around all the strips and really loved how crisp and simple it looked, but the wider spaces definitely needed something. I decided to go with the clamshell design from Angela Walter's book, Free Motion Quilting. I REALLY love how it looks with the quilt. This is the very center.

Some more quilting around the top.

I think this shows the quilting really well. It was hard to get a good shot of this quilt.

I also love the binding on this! I think the light green gives it just the right accent without taking away from all the colors in the quilt. I did one little corner of a darker green to add some contrast (and I was like 5 inches shy of enough of the main binding fabric (it's by Henry Glass, not sure what. The dark green is from the Dear Stella line, a little something I got from Sewing Summit!) :)



It's such a cozy quilt. I can't wait to wash it and send it off. Crossing my fingers that the recipient will really love it!

Make sure to head over to Stitched in Color and check out all the Celebrate Good Stitches! stuff going on! I LOVE looking at all the quilts that everyone has made!

The linky party will be up shortly. Sorry in advance for the blogging overload today.

It happens when it happens, and sometimes that's all at once. ;)

Rainbow Me Happy Quilt

This was one of my Finish-A-Long projects for the third quarter over at Quilter in the Gap! I'm so glad I finished something! My original post for the third quarter is here.

I'm going to share this over at Quilt Story on Tuesday... and possibly more linkies (just check my sidebar).

I'm so happy this quilt is finished! I really enjoyed making it, and at the same time, I had a really hard time making it.

Before I go into the story of it, here are the stats:

Quilt finishes at: 40.5" x 54"

All charms are from the different charm swaps I've participated in

the binding is an old insect binding, I think my mom gave it to me a long time ago.

the back is minky dimple dot - yellow and turquoise.

pieced, quilted and bound by me.

I decided to make this quilt when I found out that a little boy from our old ward was diagnosed with leukemia. What horrible news, I didn't even know how to respond when my friends told me about it. It makes my heart ache to think about it still. Especially now that we are so far away, the only thing I could think of to do was make a quilt. I think partially for me because I had this feeling of helplessness but wanted to do something. The boy is just younger than Jackson's and they were in nursery together. He is the sweetest little boy. 

For some reason I had such an emotional struggle with this quilt from the very beginning. (I know friends and people from that old neighborhood read my blog sometimes, so I hope I don't offend anyone in what I'm going to write, but I feel like I should be honest with my feelings.) The family is very kind and generous and we really enjoy them, they also helped us a lot, and are grateful for that. As can happen sometimes in a ward or church group, you are thrown together with people that  you probably wouldn't be friends with otherwise. There were wonderful people in the ward, and we love and hope to stay friends with all of them, but I just want to be honest and say that there were some people in the ward that we personally felt very awkward around. There was always that "fake frienship" feeling with our interactions (and I'm not saying that this family was one of those). For some reason while making this quilt, I was flooded with the mix of emotions that I have from everyone in that old ward, good and bad, happy and sad. I kept thinking about how when we left we felt some people were glad we were going (though it wasn't as bad as Springville where when someone called me to schedule an appointment with the bishop and I told him we weren't in the ward anymore his reaction was, "GREAT! I'll let him know!". Ok. goodbye to you too.) We did get offers for help and are so grateful for them, but one person called, "someone said you needed help with this... do you really need help? ..." I guess they sounded put out by it. Neil said, "no, don't worry about it" their chipper response, "Awesome! Well, just let us know!" I don't know if that says something about us or them. ?. ;) I don't say this to put anyone down. It's just the fact that we had interactions like that when we left (and I'm not saying that everyone should have been in tears either. We miss our friends, and we're still friends and we all love each other, but it also stinks to know that some people seemed over joyed to be rid of us.) Ok, enough with that.

So making this quilt was a mix of all those emotions. I kept wondering if I should even make the quilt. "Are they going to enjoy it? Will they be grateful for the time and effort I put into it? Will they end up donating it and getting rid of it? Am I stupid for even trying this?" I really struggled with my confidence in making this, and that's never happened like this before. I've never made anything like this before either though, so maybe I'd have these feelings anyway. I don't know. Thinking about the boy is what kept me going with it. It's for him, so who cares what any one else will think right?!

As the quilt came together, I could tell on the days that I was having these struggles, that it really affected the quality of workmanship that went into it. For instance, I basted the minky wrong, which then led to puckers in my quilting. blah. Nothing too serious, but it's frustrating. My quilting isn't amazing either. But I still like it and think it's ok for not having FMQed in a long time. It always amazes me how your feelings or what kind of a day you're having really effects how you sew. Lesson learned: DON'T Quilt if your having an off day! I've met a lot of people that have noticed the same thing. ;)

Onto a happy note, I did enjoy making this. Everything with this quilt had one end goal in mind: that it will be something cheerful and fun for a little boy to look at and enjoy. I picked bright colors, with lots of shapes, textures or pictures. I did a swirly star quilting. I love Hunter's quilt and looking for the stars in it, and thought those would be fun here. I wanted to put a solid, darker/bolder binding on the quilt, but decided on the insect fabric. What boy doesn't enjoy grasshoppers, bees, dragonflies, etc?! Ok, there are butterflies and lady bugs on it too, but those are insects as well, so they can still be boyish. ;)

I hope that sending this off will be a release for me and I will be able to let go of all those negative emotions. And more than that, I hope that it really will be a happy rainbow-y quilt that will brighten this little boys day and help carry him through his months of therapy and treatment.

We love you "T"!
Love, the Bohns.

Made It: Quilted Picnic Blanket

It's finally finished!! And I love it! :) 

I finished the binding Tuesday morning and we went out for a picnic that afternoon. It was great! :)

(these are all taken with my phone, but the quality isn't too bad I guess.)

We even had a show while we ate and got to watch some people cut down trees across the street.

...cool and sad at the same time. I miss them.

Here are a few of my favorite last blocks that I FMQ (free motion quilted).

You can see the rest of my FMQ blocks here.

All in all it ended up going a lot faster than I thought it would. And just in time for the weather to warm up! Now on with the picnics!! :)


Fabric: Woodsy by Moda, some white sashing, and the back is Amy Butler, but I don't remember what color. :)

Made It: Favorite Block

Today is one of those days, ok, more like this week was one of those weeks. It's been a good week and we've had fun, but I definitely am going through some baby blues. Ug. And what makes it worse?! I haven't had any time to sew! (lol. I think that's what's kept me sane so far. ;) ) Anyway, today Neil was so kind to go grocery shopping without me and left me home with two sleeping babies. He told me to take a nap before he left... but no way! I jumped right on my sewing machine and finished up two more blocks of my quilt! :) I really want to finish that thing up like today! (probably won't happen).

I didn't even think of taking a picture of the first block, but the second one made me so happy! I like my other ones, but until this one I didn't have a favorite. It just makes me happy.

I didn't have a plan for it at all, just kind of went with it as I sewed. The quality isn't super, but I like it. Mountains, rainbows, clouds and the sun and sun rays. This would be fun to quilt on a nice bright colorful block! I think it could brighten up anyone's day! :)

Here's the back:

I really love all of the creative freedom that comes with FMQ. I also love this picnic blanket and that it's totally been something I've been able to be totally free with and just do whatever with no expectations. I can't WAIT to use it!!! The minute it's done we are having a picnic. :)

Made It: FMQ (Free Motion Quilting)

A couple of weeks ago I made some HUGE progress on my picnic blanket. I went from like 6 to 16 blocks quilted. :) Did I mention that I returned my new sewing machine and got a better one? I am so glad that I did. It really wasn't so great, and I couldn't be happier with what I have now. I think that just might be why the sewing is going so much faster. Anyway, when it comes to FMQ you often hear that "it's like drawing on paper, except you move the paper instead of the pen." I realized that if that's the case, the possibilities for designs really are endless! I decided on some of my blocks to incorporate more of the designs in the fabric, and some of them I simply traced over. I really like how they are turning out! And let me tell you, it really is so much fun! :)

I took a bunch of pictures of fronts of backs a few weeks ago after I had done a bunch of them, and want to share them with you. :) Enjoy. :)

UPDATE: I actually wrote the above a while ago, and have just been waiting to upload the pictures. Last week I went from like 16 squares quilted to 27, so I have SO many pictures now. I decided to just upload them to flickr and not worry about posting them all here. You can see them by following this link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dbbydesign/sets/72157626915299122/

I tried to pair the pictures of the front with the picture of the back for each square, since the design is harder to see on some blocks.

I still want to share a few favorites and fun ones with you here:

Using some of the design elements in the quilting:

 

(the picture of the front is really hard to see on this one so I didn't post it here.) This one has some potential, I need to better plan where I'm going with it, but I like the squares.

Testing out some text! :)

Here are a few that I simply traced the design:

 

I like how these ones look on the back especially.

 

Then I just have some different simple designs, and a few other weird ones. It's so much fun! I really love all the creative freedom that comes with FMQ! :)

If you try out any of these designs, or come up with some of your own, I'd love to see them! You can share them in the from blank pages... flickr group.


p.s. All of you flickr users, what's the difference between collections and sets? I'm still figuring it all out, but am definitely loving it! It's so much easier to upload my pictures there and then post them in my blog posts! It's a million times faster! (I think it helps that I can do it so easily from iPhoto too). :)

W.i.P. Wednesday #2

<--- Click on the W.i.P. button to see what other people are working on! :)

Well, this last week hasn't been super productive, but it's been good. Here's the run down...

In Progress:
I quilted two more squares on the picnic blanket. It's fun finding different designs to try, and I do feel like my stitch length is getting more consistent. But I am having one problem, and I don't know if it's me or if it's my machine (if it is I need to figure it out so I can return it if I need to. I think I still have some test time left). Anyway, the top looks good, but then when I turn it over, the tension on the back is very inconsistent. Some places it's great, or really tight, and some places it's really loose, even to the point of leaving loops of top thread here and there. Here are some example pictures.

Does anyone know about this? Or have had any experience with this? It seems to not be as bad in the last few squares, but it is still there.

Otherwise, here are my latest two designs. Fun. :)

The pebble design is my favorite so far!

I also skipped ahead and started another project: Temple plaques (I'm almost done - this is a super quick project). We currently have one picture hanging up in our room that has the temple, though you can't really tell - unless you already know.

I LOVE this picture. So fun! :)

But otherwise, I've been wanting to get some pictures hung up for a while now, but just haven't. Sunday I found this site (http://www.ldschurchtemples.com/photographs/) online with hundreds of pictures of different temples. I picked one to hang downstairs, Neil picked one for our room, and we let the boys pick their own pictures. I'll post more on this when they're finished. :)

I did get the center strips made for Mabel's Quilt, but that's about it on that. It seems so busy, so I'm trying to decide if I want to do the sashing which will be a small border inside the larger border white instead of using the Nicey Jane fabric. It might help calm it down a little, but it will definitely make it look a lot different. Uh... decisions. ;) Maybe I'll sew the main border together and get the outside border sewn and then I can have a better picture of what it will look like. I don't know how ya'll do it! (make such amazing quilts with the perfect fabrics). :)

this is before I sewed the strips. I need to iron them and then sew them in. If I do the white sashing I won't sew on the two on the ends. We'll see how it turns out...

Most of my Kona's arrived for the Bottled Rainbow Quilt and I got them washed. I also organized ALL of my scraps. Wow. That was a job, but now I'm ready to find what pieces I can put in the centers of my squares. :) Fun! I'm so excited! I love color, and I think this will be so much fun!



Finished projects:
I did start and finish a bag to keep the train set in. I didn't plan it out very well when I started it, but it turned out alright. I think I changed it three times while I was making it, but it still works fine. Hunter picked out the fabric.

I made big button holes to string the rope through, and Hunter seems to be able to open it easy enough. I made a smaller bag and strung it to the front to keep the little accessories in that they don't usually use, and I hate having all over the place. :)

It is nice to have some smaller projects going on at the same time as some of my bigger projects... helps me feel like I do accomplish something at least. :)

On hold:
lots of things. ;)

This week's stats:
New projects - 2 (Train bag, Temple plaques)
Completed projects - 1 (Train bag)
Currently in progress - 4 (up one since last week)