Three little Pouches :-)

It was a week of relaxed sewing for me. I didn't want to get in to any of my quilting projects. All of a sudden I had the urge to sew pouches.

This time, dealing with zippers (using zipper foot) was the icing on the cake. I made all three pouches super fast!!!!!!





 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I used Riley Blakes fabrics for the pink/purple pouches. Orange fabrics was a fat quarter I had in my stash.

I did another recycling (or up-cycled as some people say) project! My husband's T-shirt was lying around from quite some time and he didn't want to get rid of it. I thought may be he could look at it for some more time if I my son wears it ;-). So I made shorts out of it. Here it is:





 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally Hi from my lovely roses :-). There are so many buds!!!!!!!!!!!



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That's it for this week....Thanks for stopping by. Catch you next week :-).

Jyothi

Linking my post to : 1. http://www.crazymomquilts.blogspot.com/

2. http://confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com/

3. http://http://sewfreshquilts.blogspot.ca/

Rainbow Lone Star and Some Flowers

Finally I had some exciting product came out of rainbow colored fabrics. I mentioned in my last post how I came up with the idea of lone star. Later I went through online tutorials and found this fabulous helpful homemaker blog. I am very bad at following patterns. It makes me feel guilty that I am not using my brain. But my idea of adding all 7 rainbow colors would have made a bigger block and I didn't want that to happen. So I decided to follow the pattern exactly how it was posted. This tutorial was made for 5 fabrics. As I had to incorporate the rainbow colors, I made a strip with purple and blue together. It gave a little weird look but I liked how it came out at the end.

Those Y-seams looked intimidating, but I managed to give it a good finish. Only change I made was adding triangular background fabrics before the square ones. Here is the finished block before quilting.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="640"] Finished block before quilting[/caption]

when it came to quilting, I wanted to do some machine quilting. But didn't have multicolored thread. Somehow I couldn't agree on any colored threads I had in my collection. Finally I came up with the idea of spiral quilting with matching colored threads for each set of colors.

Here is the finished quilt after hand binding:

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="640"] Fabulous Finish!!!!!!!!!!!![/caption]

[caption id="attachment_301" align="alignleft" width="400"] Backside of the quilt[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_311" align="alignleft" width="300"] As usual my models :-)[/caption]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally here are my other babies - some beautiful flowers from my garden to cheer your day :-).



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I planted some tomatoes and seeded some green beans too :-). A cute bunny baby from our neighbor's yard. Excited that summer is here :-)).

Thanks for stopping by. Meet you in my next post. Till then be good :-).

Jyothi

Linking my post to : 1. http://www.crazymomquilts.blogspot.com/

2. http://confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com/

Some WIP and Some Sweet!!!!!!!!!!!

Recently I am obsessed with rainbow colors in a quilt. So last month, when I  saw a very good sale on solids at Joann, l bought half yards of all rainbow colors.  Later I was worrying about the design I am going to with it. Meanwhile I signed up for an art and craft exhibition, which will be held DC and they allow only little wall hangings in that show. So I was focusing some design which could fit in a 15" square. Then came the idea of lone star with rainbow colors in it.

Here is my work-in-progress:





[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="640"] Unstitched halves!!!!!![/caption]

I still haven't decided the background fabric, backing or quilting. Hopefully I can come up with some ideas by the end of next week. Stay tuned!!!!!!

My son turned 7 last Sunday (May 31st). Every year for his birthday, I bake chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and sprinkles. But this time I thought anyway he will be cutting the cake 2 weeks after with his friends at his birthday party. So this time I wanted to celebrated it with simple Indian way by making his favorite sweet. He loves a simple home made sweet made with cracked wheat and it is very easy to prepare. Keeping that in mind I gave him the offer : "why don't we celebrate your birthday the Indian way? I will make your favorite sweet. Go ahead and tell me what should I prepare?". To my dismay, the answer was "how about the diamond sweet made with cashew? If you can't prepare it, we can bring it from the store". He was talking about cashew barfi and I completely forgot that it was his most favorite one :-(. I was little embarrassed to admit that I never had the courage to make that sweet. Being good at making desserts, I always thought that I could never make it. But him being the only person who calls me as "the best mommy in the world", how could I say no?. Finally I told him that I would give it a try and if it doesn't come out well, he should eat some other sweet I made. I looked one online video from khana kazana and it looked pretty clear and I tried it.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="185"] Final Consistency[/caption]



[caption id="" align="alignright" width="251"] Perfect Gift for the Birthday Boy[/caption]



You don't believe how good it came out!!!!!! It was indeed a very perfect looking cashew barfi and my son and husband devoured on it:-). His little sister and me were watching them with surprise!!!!!!! Finally I had to warn both of them that their tummy might get upset. In conclusion, I was very happy how it came out and I pronounced myself as not a bad cook after all :-).

Next week I will share with you my another passion- GARDENING :-)).

Till then be good,

Jyothi

I linked this to:

http://crazymomquilts.blogspot.com/

http://confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot.com/2015/06/can-i-get-whoop-whoop-my-hands2help.html

Finished Table Runner!!!!!!!!!

I apologize for not blogging for a long time. I was sick for almost 10 days and couldn't do much sewing. Somehow without finishing this project I couldn't move on.  Finally ended up finishing the quilting and binding on this table runner!!!!!!!!

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="640"] Front side[/caption]

For the first time I tried hand binding (backside) and boy!!!!!!....it is a lot of work. I usually sneak in to the sewing machine whenever I get 5 or 10 minutes. But hand binding took quite a long time and frequent interruptions didn't help much.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="640"] Backside[/caption]

Originally I planned some fun quilting on this. But some how my sore body didn't cooperate much. So I did some straight line quilting with different colored threads throughout. I am pretty happy how it turned out :-)).

 

As usual, my photo session doesn't end unless these two munchkins show up and run around with my work in their hand :-).



Well..... I got quite a dance show from them :-).

Meanwhile,  I tried some free motion quilting (FMQ) and it turned out okay. It is not as frightening as I thought ;-). I am still not comfortable in creating designs, but pebbles came out nicely. It gave me some courage to try and keep going with the FMQ.



That is it for this week. If you are interested in looking at quilts give yourself some time to look at Melissa's blog. She uploaded wonderful quilt pictures from the quilt show.

Meet you in the next post....till then enjoy the spring!!!!!!!!

Jyothi

Some New and some old projects

Hello there,

It has been a while since I posted here. My kids are getting sick back to back and didn't have much time to sit in front of the computer.

I was busy fixing up my son's pants and some of my dresses. Here is the applique I did for my son's pants.



His pants always rip in the knee part. Rest of the pants will be fine. I thought some animal applique would be more fun than the usual circle or rectangular patches. I assumed I was making a "sheep" until I stitched it up. Later my son said that it looked more like "yak" than the "sheep" :-(. He told everyone that it was yak :-)).  There were totally 4 sheep ;-). Somehow my 2 year old recognized it ....she said sheep right away :-))... what more than I want???;-).



Anyway I was happy that I tried something new. Next time I will come with some nice designs.

Currently I am working on two new projects. One table runner and a jeans picnic quilt. Here is the finished top for the table runner:



I used  "Moda Sewing Box By Gina Jelly Roll" for this project. My original design was different than I came up with at the end. First I planned for a block of four patches and the table top looked very busy with that design. Finally I ended up adding four blocks together to do a bigger block.  The prints in these fabric strips are beautiful and later I felt that I would have used longer strips than cutting them in squares. I always end up learning something new in my sewing process.

I haven't decided what kind of backing and binding fabrics to use. Hopefully I will finish it up next week. I want to do some fun quilting on it for sure.



Here is the stack of my fabric cuttings for the picnic quilt. I am using up my son'd old shorts/pants and our old jeans. This process takes forever...looks like I will keep on cutting even after a month!!!!!!!!!!!! I wish summer doesn't get over by the time I finish the quilt :-)).



That is it from my side now....

Enjoy the beautiful, sunny, springy weather.

Jyothi

Iron Board Cover

From almost a year I am procrastinating this project - making my own Iron Board Cover. Finally I got the urge to do it and two days later we have a brand new cover.

I saw this pattern on Craftsy and started off with V-shaped strips. Then I realized lots of fabric would be wasted with this and stopped following the pattern and went on adding strips and pieces however I pleased :-). That is the beauty of NOT following a pattern :-)).... you can just have fun with your fabrics.

But somehow I needed help with finishing the cover (how to add elastics) and I followed my favorite quilter Melissa @ happy Quilting's tutorial. You can find the link here.

Here is my finished cover:



I had to take the pictures outdoor as it was cloudy.

Somehow this cover reminds me of my old dress I had 14 years ago!!!! may be that's how I came up with these color combinations.

Anyway I hope I will enjoy my pressing time better than I used to and keep on admiring my work. Got to go press some clothes ;-))...

Thanks for stopping by and until next time, be good :-)

Jyothi

Irish Chain Quilt Along Big Finish!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes!!!!!!!!!!! The QAL (Done by Melissa at Happy Quilting)is over and I finished quilting and binding my little wall hanging. Just can't wait to share the finished piece with you :-).

After finishing all the blocks, it was time to put together everything  and somehow I didn't like the look of green  blocks. So replaced these yellow blocks with the green ones.



But again when I compared two pictures it felt like both looked great. But I just went ahead with the yellow ones.



But I didn't want to add the green blocks to the orphan blocks' group. There came the idea of using those for backing. The next moment I was there cutting some more green blocks from the remnants of green fabrics. When I put together all green blocks, it hit me that backing should be bigger than the front :-((.



So I used all of the extra fabrics and there came a beautiful backing. I just loved this and thought of using it as a separate quilt top. But somehow realized only greens would be monotonous and went ahead with my earlier idea of adding all patchwork blocks in the same quilt.

Since I don't do Free Motion Quilting (FMQ), I used walking foot to quilt.It took me almost a week to quilt the entire quilt. I know.....it is high time that I add up all the courage to work on FMQ.  Here is my big finish!!!!!!!!!!!!

I know that quilting isn't perfect. But I loved how it came out at the end. This is the first time I used sticking applique method. Petal works were too stiff and quilting on it didn't make any impressions. Now I know why starch method is better for quilting on it. There is always something to learn from every experience.

Here is the backing after finishing. I just loved those spiral quilting......can't stop looking at it :-)). I know it sounds crazy...but that's what most quilters like!!!!looking at their quilt for the 100th time :-).

Hope you liked my little project from this Quilt Along and see you next time :-)).

Till then be good :-)

Jyothi