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 #4: Glove Bear

I made some friends invite me over this weekend for a crafternoon. I had high hopes for this seemingly simple craft I saw on Pinterest: the glove bear. I have a ton of cute gloves, and I thought it would be fun to whip one up at my friend's house, and of course, everyone there would think I was so cute with my cute glove bear. 

It looks like some kind of hybrid of a dinosaur and a sunburned human. Yuck. Creepy.

Original glove bear via Little Bit Funky, buried somewhere in the archives I suspect, since I never did find an actual tutorial. 

Paint Chip Projects

No, I didn't make any paint chip projects.

Not this:

via Maple and Magnolia via Pinterest

Or this:

via The Crafty Scientist via Pinterest

Or this:

via Papery and Cakery via Pinterest

I should mention that it's wasting the paint companies' money. Crafters all over the world are saving a fortune!

But some of the projects ARE really cute...

Family Reunion #2

Catching up on last summer again.

We traveled to Idaho in July for the Bean family reunion up past Sun Valley. Wow, that part of Idaho is BEAUTIFUL!

We didn't take as many pictures on this trip, but we had a great time with the Beans! (All 70 of them!)

Andrew and Jason took everyone river rafting. It was so fun to see Andrew in his element! He's a great guide. And no one will forget the time he called it when Jason fell off his raft, leaving his passengers floating away without their guide!

Jill taught me how to knit, starting one of my new crafting obsessions.

Jason also took Andrew paragliding. I was crowned the best wife in the world for letting him attempt such a daring feat with such a daring cousin! But all was well and they had a great time.

There was a fun homemade water slide at the ranch, and everyone had fun going down that (except poor McKenna, whose teeth got rattled when they slammed into her brother's head!)

Jamie and baby Avery. So fun to spend time with them before they moved to the Northeast!

And we got to spend a lot of time with cousin Stephanie, visiting from Switzerland! She was so fun.

Thanks again Grandma and Grandpa for such a fun family vacation!

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!).