The Nifty Foodie's Life

It’s hard to believe that I’ve only been sewing for 2 years. I remember when I got my first machine in Christmas of 2008. It was sitting pretty in a box for a while, until my Mom majorly helped me out with the machine on Thanksgiving of 2009. I learned how to thread the sucker and practiced some stitches on an old dish cloth. (Thanks Mom!)

Since then, I’ve been slowly purchasing fabrics. Pretty fabrics. I would end up buying fabric, because it was cute with no project in mind. So of course, I started to see a small stash grow. I had a decent sized IKEA basket where I was storing the fabrics, but unfortunately, that wasn’t enough space. Not nearly enough. It just never looked organized, so I had to do something different.

So, I looked on the Internet to see what others were doing with their fabric, because I know people have MUCH more fabric than I do. That’s where I stumbled on this idea where you wrap fabric around comic book boards. Genius!

How simple is that? When it’s stacked side-by-side, it sort of looks like a little fabric library. I love it!

For the 1/2 yard cuts, I ended up cutting a board in half, to give the fabric something better to wrap around. Then, I ended up placing them in a smaller basket to keep them all together since the shelves on my bookcase are too deep for the 1/2 yard cuts.

I just love that I can easily see all of the fabric that I have and just as easily pull only what I need now!

How do you organize your fabrics?

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!

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?

Man, I can’t help but LOVE Amy sometimes. No, not me. I mean, I do love ME, but really… I ::LOVE:: this Amy a lot, because her fabrics are so great!

A good while back, I took a quilting class in the NOLA area and the project was a simple fat quarter quilt. Thankfully, we got to choose our own fabrics, so when I saw the Amy Butler table in the shop, I went a little nuts. I wanted an Amy Butler quilt!

It took me way too long to choose the 6 fabrics that I wanted on the quilt, though. I’m really really slow when it comes to choosing fabric combinations, because I’m constantly second guessing myself. However, I’m super happy with the results, because I really love turquoise/aqua colors involved.

(I really need to work on taking nicer overall quilt pictures, eh? ::sigh::)

While making this quilt, I found that I totally fell in love with one particular fabric on this quilt.

I love this fabric SO much…so much. I ended up making it the backing and the binding for the quilt, and I bought additional yardage for projects. I’ll be nice and link to it. I just love the grey/taupe background with the aqua and chartreuse. It’s so spring-y and just lovely.

Here’s a picture of the binding against the other fabrics.

So so perfect.

I’m just so happy that this quilt is finally finished. It cheers me up when I stare at it, and since I’m cold in our house all the time (silly hubs), I’m staring at this quilt a lot!

Do any of y’all love Amy Butler fabrics as much as I do?

As a child, my Mom always made sure we ate well. We were always trying new fruits and vegetables, which I admit, has made me the veggie lover that I am today. However, a huge part of me always looked forward to…

Of course, dessert never happened until our dinners were finished. However, now that I’m an adult, I can follow this theory as much as I want.

I know I’m not alone here. ::hides Cadbury egg wrapper::

This was the first pillow cover that I’ve sewn. I really have to admit, it wasn’t bad at all. The most time-intensive part was stitching on the words…not the actual pillow cover!

I ended up submitted this pillow to Sew Mama Sew’s Pillow contest in the Words to Live By category. Cross your fingers for me? Ha!

How many of you think the way I do? Do you find yourself eating a cookie before dinner sometimes?