Baby Quilt Is Started!

Lately I've been purchasing most of my quilting fabric from the Fat Quarter Shop.  I just love the variety that they have, the prices aren't bad and to be quite honest I like being able to look at a bunch of different fabrics without having to wander all over a store carrying bolts with me!  I've bought fabric from there twice now and they ship it pretty quickly and it comes packaged so nice!

I'm making this quilt for my supervisor's baby and was told that his wife prefers greens to the typical blues for a baby boy.  I was having trouble finding the right green and then I found this!

It's perfect for a baby boy!!

This is part of the Backyard Baby collection by Michael Miller.  I found a pattern for a Dutch Windmill block quilt that I'm using.  The book has various prints used for the windmill's but I've decided to only use the print above for all the block on a white background.

There are 4 corner windmills that I'm going to do in a solid green that will also make up the binding and the backing.  Here are all the fabrics together:

I have just started cutting everything and I need to hustle so I can have it finished by March when his baby is due. 

Works In Progress

I am currently working on four different things.  The oldest one I started in June 2010!!! Sad huh? I get bored and sidetracked easily.  Not a good combo when you want to eventually finish something. LOL  I tend to work exclusively on one thing for a couple of weeks and then I'll work on something else for a few weeks, etc.  Eventually I finish but it always seems to take much longer than it should.  It also doesn't help that I work full time and go to school part time, it all interferes with my craft time!! :)

So here is a list of what I have going on right now (from oldest to most recent):

1. Jim Morrison Project
2. Victory Garden Quilt
3. Orchid Dollhouse
4. Baby Quilt

Greenleaf Orchid

I've always had a love for miniatures.  For Christmas one year I got a huge dollhouse and it was just amazing!  My parents made it for me and at the time I didn't appreciate how much time and effort they put into not only building it but also keeping it hidden until Christmas day.

As a teenager I built a small dollhouse and fully decorated it.  I had both of them for years until they were finally sold because they took up so much room.  After seeing some really nice dollhouses on Pinterest (a house by Rik Pierce...freaking amazing!) I decided to buy an inexpensive, small house that me and the kids could work on together.

I ended up with the Orchid by Greenleaf.  It's very small, and the kit was $29 at Hobby Lobby. I plan on adding to this kit and so I'm not sure it will look much like the picture when finished.

Jim Morrison Project - Almost Halfway

I've been working on Jim since June 2010.  He is an immense cross-stitch project that is made up of 23 different colors and will have a total of 38,416 stitches!! I knew that this was going to take me a really long time and honestly I wasn't sure how it would turn out.  But now that I'm almost halfway there I am extremely happy with it!

Here is where I'm at now...

Victory Garden Quilt - Cutting & Piecing

I've decided that I must have ADD when it comes to crafts.  I can't seem to work on just one thing at a time. I function best when I have 4-5 projects going on at once!

So in the last two weeks I've finally finished cutting all 15 fabrics into strips of various sizes.

1932 Wardrobe School Project

Some of you may know that I have a thing for collecting old scrapbooks, especially if they have something to do with fashion. I happened to find another scrapbook that not only has some pictures of what a 7th grade girl would possibly wear in 1933 but it also has swatches of fabric next to each outfit.

I bought the book at an online scrapbook and I wasn't quite sure how many pages it had as there were only a couple of pictures.  I was so excited when it came in the mail because not only does it have quite a few pages, it also has some information about the girl who made the book.

This book was made by a young girl named Valeria Henneous who lived in Erie, Pennsylvania and attended Gridley Jr High. She had sewing class every Monday with Ms. Vernon in Rm 16 and I'm sure this book was one of her assignments for this class.

Finally Finished!

I finally finished the Owl Quilt.  I was joking that I would finish the quilt before her daughter turned 18.  Thankfully she just turned 3 months so I finished in good time!

Sorry the picture is a little wonky.  Overall it was an easy quilt.  If I did it over again I would do the applique's with freezer paper instead of fusible webbing. I think I must be kinda old school because I prefer the look of the freezer paper applique as well as hand quilting.  It took me about 3 months to hand quilt this, but I think it turned out great!

Is Quality Customer Service Dead?

Apparently if you're Ashley Furniture it is.  Take my advice DO NOT BUY FURNITURE FROM THEM!!! Let me tell you what you're in for if you do!

Our kids went to Phoenix to spend a few weeks with my parents for the summer. While they were gone we wanted to redo their rooms.  Our daughter really wanted a daybed, specifically a daybed from Ashley Furniture.  We've always thought that the Ashley Furniture salespeople were really pushy and have never really found anything that we like.  We came kinda close to buying a living room set a few months ago and I'm SO GLAD that we found a better set somewhere else!

Daybed as it looked in the store

Back in early June we went into the Ashley Furniture in Layton, UT and purchased the daybed and a matching media stand / dresser.  My husband paid for it and I don't think he noticed the NO REFUNDS - NO EXCHANGES - NO RETURNS down towards the bottom of the purchase slip he signed.  I certainly didn't notice, and if I had we would not purchased anything from them!!

Bathroom Before & After

Here is our lovely guest bathroom before we really started ripping stuff out.  You can see that Tim has taken off the formica back splash that was glued onto the wall.  We were getting new flooring put in the house and figured it would be best to remodel the bathroom now.

When we bought the house 5 years ago we knew we'd need to replace the flooring fairly soon because the carpet that was in there was super cheap and incredibly worn for being only two years old at the time.  It was one of those things though that we kept putting off due to finances until it was just something we couldn't overlook anymore.

Owl Quilt

A good friend of mine is having a little girl and the baby's room theme is owls.

I found the cutest owl quilt pattern and I'm almost finished with it!  There are 5 different appliqued owl blocks I tried to incorporate as many colors as possible so that it would be bright and pretty much match anything.  I also tried to make each owl in a different color combo.

Here's the basic layout before I pieced it together, not counting the borders.

Even though it takes forever I really love to hand quilt my quilts so I'm hoping to get this finished soon.  My friend's baby girl is due on April 9th so I'm running short on time!!