The Nifty Foodie's Life

It’s been a while since I sat behind a sewing machine. Even when I would, I’d work on some smaller projects to avoid this project. For some reason, I just wasn’t in the mood to really finish this quilt, even though I really wanted to gift this quilt.  All that was left was to bind this quilt, which isn’t usually a big deal–time wise (since I machine bind). In fact, I’d tell myself every week that a goal was to finish this quilt, but then each night, I’d have an excuse to not deal with it. I notice for a lot of people who quilt, they love the binding process, but for me, I’m always worried about it. I feel like that’s where I make the most mistakes, and after all of the work I put into making a quilt, the last thing I want to do is mess up. Yet, I always do.

I’m sure it’s something that I would only notice, but mistakes just bum me out. They aren’t even huge mistakes…the quilt itself looks great, but the binding (mainly the corners) have a few mistakes.

I ended up making this quilt for my little sister, and originally, it was meant to be a high school graduation gift, but now it’s a VERY belated high school gift (or I could be optimistic and say ridiculously early college graduation gift?).

I had trouble finding the perfect LSU purple and gold mix of fabrics, but I think it came out pretty well (besides the corners of the binding…ugh…one day I’ll learn).

Of course, I couldn’t just give my sister a quilt. I had an excuse to make a pretty package for her. I happen to have a few leftover gable boxes from the wedding planning days, and had some fun with washi tape. I thought it came out pretty darn cute, but I’m biased.

I hope my sister enjoys this quilt through her college life and beyond.

A while ago, I was told that my friend’s sister was having a baby! I was super stoked for my friend and her sister, so I decided to throw together a quilt for the baby. This was going to be a unisex quilt, but since I took my darn time (ha!), I found out the sex of the baby since he was born, well a couple of months ago! (oof, crafter fail!)

The craft bug has been really biting lately, so I took this past weekend to finish this quilt. Whew!

I decided to go with a simple strip quilt, because I really wanted the fabrics to shine here. The main fabric was Giraffe Garden by Michael Miller, and I just purchased some fabrics using the colors in that particular print.

This was my first strip quilt, and I have to say, it comes together rather quickly. It only took me a while to finish this quilt, because we had the big house move, had to unpack everything, the holidays happened, etc. Now that things are slowing down, I can safely say I’m going to be busy in my craft room.

Here’s another view of the fabrics I used. I just love how colorful and bright this quilt is! I hope the baby loves this quilt!

This quilt has been a work in progress since December of last year. It was a project where I ended up cutting the fabric, stashed the blocks away and forgot about it. I have so many projects like this just lying around in my craft room. However, I told myself I can’t tackle anything new until I actually finish some of these sewing projects that have already been cut. We’ll see how that goes.

I also told myself I can’t buy anymore fabric. Ha!

A few months before all of this packing and moving stuff happened, I sat down and got to work on these wonky blocks for this quilt pattern. Stupid me thought I totally memorized ALL of the instructions. Cut a third of the fabric in a wonky, slanted line, move one piece of the stack from the top to the bottom, and then sew back together.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

I tried to cut 27 pieces of fabric all at once with my rotary cutter. What a mess. Don’t do it…trust me. I’m surprised I didn’t slice a finger off!

After I cut/resewed the pieces back together, I referred to the instructions thinking that there’s gotta be a better way. Well, yeah…the instructions said to do this in 3 groups of 9. Dangit!

So, of course this ruined every idea I had of having perfect blocks with 9 different fabrics in them. Oh well.

For the next four cuts, I grouped them in 3 groups of nine and tried my best to make sure that the squares had varying fabrics in them. I don’t think I got one block right. Lesson learned…I really should read instructions better. Ugh..I’m such a rebel!

The more I look at these blocks, though, the more I like them.

They’re much more random looking this way, and I think they came together quite beautifully in this quilt top!

Now, all that’s left is to sandwich the quilt, quilt it all together and sew the binding on! Time to dust off the sewing machine and get this project going again!

I can’t believe it’s been over a month since I’ve updated on here. So much has been going on, which I’ll definitely blog about, but the biggest project lately has been another baby quilt.

My cousin and his wife are expecting their first baby and since they’re waiting to find out the gender, I had to make the quilt for either gender. I can’t tell you how hard it is to find unisex. I know green/yellow, but I wanted to find a cute print to feature on the quilt that screamed “baby”.

I found a few, but ultimately, I went with Michael Miller’s Zoology in Lagoon. Sadly, this line has been discontinued, from what I could see, but I found an Etsy seller who carried the fabric. Another reason why I love Etsy! I also purchased some Hoopla Dot in Lagoon, to add to the quilt and also to bind the quilt with. It worked out perfectly.

I will admit, this is not your standard pastel quilt. I went a little bold here, because I thought it would look a little more fun, and I didn’t want this to look like any ordinary baby quilt. You might recognize the pattern, since I used it before for a baby girl (it’s from Oh, Fransson!).

This time, I cut my own charm pack using the Go! Baby cutter that I splurged on. They have the perfect charm pack sized die.

The rest of the fabrics were purchased at Hancock Fabrics. I wasn’t quite comfortable with ordering online, since I wanted to make sure the colors were pretty similar to the colors in the Zoology fabric, and I think I did pretty well here. Bundling fabrics together isn’t my strong point, but I’m learning.

The back of the quilt is fairly simple. I really loved this gray polka dot fabric, so I wanted to make it the backing fabric, but I also wanted to once again feature the super cute Zoology fabric. Gosh, I love that print!

I also tried something new….machine binding. I had a few hiccups here and there (ahh…learning curve), but I definitely think I’ll bind my quilts this way from now on. It’s a lot quicker this way, and it doesn’t really look that bad on the front side of the fabric. I read multiple tutorials on blogs to get an idea of what I was doing, so if you’re interested in machine quilting, just check out the tutorials out there!

When I first started sewing, I quickly became friends with my local Hobby Lobby. Fabric was adorable, fairly cheap and good quality. I remember walking into Hobby Lobby, asking the lady what bias tape was. I fully expected a roll of tape for fabric. I was that new to sewing,  y’all. The lady was very friendly, helpful and eager to help me find some fun fabrics to make my first projects with. In fact, my first quilt top was nothing but Hobby Lobby fabrics!

I actually avoiding Hobby Lobby for a while, because I’ve quickly found that my fabric stash is pouring out of the basket that I have. While I’d love to have a huge fabric stash, I have to remember that my craft room is also our guest bedroom. I can easily tuck away my fabric basket, but I can’t really tuck away a shelf of fabrics.

However, my birthday was last week. And, well, I got a gift card to Hobby Lobby (thank you BIL’s family) and of course, I had to check out Hobby Lobby to see what they have! Oops…

Well, I spent my gift card way too quickly, but came out with this!

See that fabric on top? Doesn’t that remind you a LOT of Liberty of London?! I know y’all remember when Target had that fantastic line. I couldn’t help but grab up a couple yards of this, which was on sale for about $6/yard! If you like this fabric, it’s part of Hobby Lobby’s Spring line. And yes, I have a project in mind for this fabric. Wahoo!

The fabric below it is in their regular Calico prints, which was also on sale. It looks like it was meant to match the floral print above, no? LOVE these colors! I also bought the bottom two fabrics, because I can hardly find purple fabrics that I like. I love the modern-y prints on both of them, but have no clue what to do with them yet. Typical sewing dilemma.

I also bought my first quilting/sewing magazine.

I’m super stoked about this quilt in the issue. I just love the argyle. LOVE it.

Are y’all addicted to Hobby Lobby like me? What do you love to shop for there?