Crafternoon #5: Christmas Quilt and Fat Quarter Idol

First of all, I entered a fat quarter compilation challenge over at Sew,Mama,Sew! It was so fun to do, and probably the best job in the whole world would be to be in charge of making little packets of corresponding fabric. I wonder how you get to be really good at that.

Here's my entry with the theme of "Fresh:"

Even if I don't win, I just want to make a beach blanket/towel with all those fabrics!

My second crafternoon project today took me 3 months to complete. It's a quilt top I made for my mom for Christmas. I'm writing about it now because she sent it out to be quilted and bound, so now it is officially finished! I'm very excited about that, because if it had been left up to me, she wouldn't have seen a finished quilt until 2015 at the earliest.

I made an Americana quilt because while we were in Tennessee this summer, my mom and I went to a quit shop, and she told me she is always on the lookout for a nice Americana quilt. We found a few at the shop, but they were manufactured, and the "piecing" was printed on the fabric. Not as wonderful as a nice homemade quilt.

It's just a twin size. I only had to unpick 6 of the squares to re-sew them so the points lined up. And there is one "unique" square in there somewhere, see if you can find it. (I really just messed it up.)

And here is the finished product. The back is so fun, the quilting came out beautifully, and I love the binding! 

Crafternoon #3: Scrappy Baby Blanket

For Ann's (Harry's) baby shower, I made a baby blanket following a tutorial from Brittany's aunt. Brittany and I made a blanket together about a year or two ago, and I love it. It's simple to put together and to quilt, which is good since I still don't know how to machine quilt very well.

These pictures were taken before I washed it; the edges of the squares fray after washing, making it scrappy and awesome.

I used fabrics from all sorts of places. The cute embroidered animal squares were from a skirt I got at a church swap meet. The dusty blue is from a skirt all my sisters and I got matching for Matt and Chrissy's wedding. The green is leftover flannel from my t-shirt quilt that my mom and I made during a hurricane several years ago. The plaid squares are from a shirt I got in Portland (?) at the outlet mall for $2. And the dots, zebra, and leaves are leftover from a project for Asia's nephew.

The background is a natural muslin, and the backing and binding are green stripes and polka dots respectively. I love these blankets. I need to wash them all a bit more because they tend to be a little bit stiff. No one wants to cuddle a stiff.

Crafternoon #2: Pinwheels

Yesterday I finally finished making all of the pinwheel blocks for my next quilt project. I love them so much, but they take me a while.

Crafternoon: Mini Quilt

New section on the blog: Crafternoon. My roommates and I used to have crafternoon every week back in the day. One time we just put on a lot of temporary tattoos. Usually, though, our crafts involved paper and glitter and adding things to our walls. It was a lot of fun.

Crafternoon isn't as regular or well-attended these days, but sometimes Ric still comes over and Asia used to, before she moved. Anyway, I've switched to sewing and I really enjoy it. At this point in my life, I am more of a learn-as-you-go sew-er (not sewer! ew!), so it either takes me forever to make something or it is a little haphazard.

When Mae Nontakorn was here the last two weeks, I wanted to make her something to remember her trip to America. And I needed to thank her in a way she could understand for being such a great lady and taking care of Andrew on his mission, us while we were in Thailand, and even us in our apartment here in America! So, I made up a mini quilt based off of this tutorial from the Purl Bee (they have a great mini quilt series!).