Fussy Cutting and a New Year

Sorry I was gone for so long but life got hard and complicated. We did manage to give the grands a wonderful Christmas.

The holidays are over and I am more relaxed and ready to work hard in my studio. AKA the dinning room.

I made a lot of the Christmas gifts we gave this year. Of course most will still be very late in the giving.

I think crafting and blogging are like walking and chewing gum at the same time, easy for some and not for others. Maybe you just have to get in a rhythm.

Yesterday I managed to fussy cut pieces for two caps and a quilt.

This fleece started out looking something like this. I wanted the ducks whole on each panel of the cap crowns. The squares are 6 1/2 inches and will be used for a baby quilt.

And I almost finished this cap for grandson little J.

I hope to get more done today. Just keep on working, working, working, gotta keep on working rawhide. Did I just date myself? Ok, that’s even before my time LOL.

First Quilt (part 2) Piecing the Quilt

The quilt top from the kit only had squares of the Mickey Mouse material. I guessed I was supposed to piece them together. I did just that. It looked awful.

It didn’t make sense to take a piece of cloth, cut it into squares, and sew the squares back together. I reasoned it would look better if every other square was different.

I undid all the squares. I just loved doing that. NOT! I decided to use the backing material for the other squares.

I looked in all those books to come up with what size a baby quilt should be. The smallest one was 29 1/2″x 29 1/2″ and the largest 50″ x 60″ so I had a lot of leeway.

The original squares were 8 1/4″. I had to cut them down because I washed the fabric and they had frayed a little. I didn’t want to waste too much so I cut them 7 inch square.

Note: the fabric hadn’t been washed and I always wash what I use. It’s better for your machine and better for humans who come in contact with it.

I used 1/4″ seams. There are four squares across and 6 squares down so 24 squares total.

I would have to say this looks much better.

My First Quilt

I was pushed past my comfort zone! Well maybe I was gently guided.

Two wonderful ladies from my church stopped by two weeks ago. They told me about their work with “Project Linus“. They knew that I liked to sew and asked me if I would help. I told them I had never made a quilt and didn’t know anything about quilting. They assuered me I wouldn’t have any trouble, everything I needed was all in the kits they made up, and all I needed to know was how to sew. LOL
Now I ask you, how could I say no? How hard could it be. It shouldn’t take a lot of time everything was all cut up for me and all I had to do was put it together. They left three kits and departed.
I opened the first kit. Yes, there were top pieces. Yes, there was backing material. Yes, there was even batting. But what wasn’t there were the instructions.

Ok, now what.
It’s a good thing that I had been planning to learn to quilt because I have a few quilting books on my shelves.

This book was so helpful.

It has you work through lessons. After lesson one you have a mugrug of sorts. Ok, mine had some problems.

I learned a lot working through this but I was still left with these kits unmade. So I decided to take it one step at a time.