Melting Pot of Traditional and Modern Flair

Do you think any traditional craft can be modernized?  Maybe there is room for growth in all crafts.  The craft that I learned first, when I was around 8 years old, was cross-stitching.  I was taught by my mom and my aunt so I think I enjoy it so much because I know it runs in the family.  Our Christmas stockings were all cross-stitched by me and they are my favorite thing to pull out each year!  They are so special.  Here are the kids stockings with our elf on the shelf, I can't believe I don't have pictures of them alone.

 Anyway, very traditional patterns, what you think of when you think of cross-stitching, right?  But what about modernizing it.  I have thought it over for awhile, researched a bit on Pinterest and such and I felt adding modern things like graphic style designs and typography might modernize it a bit.  So here are some designs I came up with and finished today.

What do you think?  Can cross-stitching be modernized with designs like those?  I would love to hear your thoughts!

I'm Back, Finally!! With A Tutorial Even!

Wow, not having a computer is rough, but I finally have my power cord back, woohoo!!  I could have kissed the delivery man!

You know, the good thing about not having a computer is I got a lot more sewing done.  I get distracted easily by blogs, email, facebook, and Pinterest.  I can go looking for one thing and before you know it an hour has gone by! How does that happen?  It's like a time warp because I can tell you one hour in a car with two kids does not go by that fast!

Anyway, I have been cranking out projects for The Kilgoris Project and I am making a bunch of totes with handles.  Turning all those handles was a big pain, so I came up with an easy way and I will share it with y'all here!  Do you have any idea how excited I was to figure out that turning handles could make the switch from being the bane of my existence to a 30 second quick fix!

So I am pleased to bring you the Easy Inside Out Tutorial.

Supplies:
Your inside out handle
A safety pin, the bigger the better (Seriously, that's all you need!)

Stick your pin through one side of either end of your handle.

Now stick your pin inside the tube and scrunch up your fabric all the way onto your pin until you can grab the pin on the other side.  So, your pin went all the way through your tube and is coming out the other end.

Go to the end of your scrunched up part and start pulling the fabric over onto itself while you keep hold of your pin.  (You do not want to see close up pictures of my hands, so I didn't practice what I preach here)

Once you get a little bit pulled onto itself the rest slides easily and quickly.

Now just take out your pin and press!

Voila, you have a handle!!  And I could have turned my entire pile of handles in the time it took to write this tutorial.

If you have any questions or anything wasn't clear just let me know!

Oh No!

My computer

power cord broken

be back soon

Sewing For Africa

I have two more weeks to finish sewing projects to donate to sell at the Kilgoris Marketplace to benefit The Kilgoris Project.  TKP is an amazing program that is totally transforming the lives of a community of people living in Kilgoris, Kenya.

My friend from church is one of the major players in this organization and a few months ago she asked if I would sew some things to donate.  She had at least 5 rubbermaid bins of fabric that people had donated to her and a bunch from Africa directly.  I filled up one bin with a bunch of fabric and I have been busy sewing ever since.  I made a bunch of random stuff until I finally figured out what the majority would be.  It turns out that fabric cards are fabulously cute, so I have a ton of those.  Then I made these adorable journal covers too, which I don't have any pictures of yet, oops!

Here are some of the cards I finished this week!

Love these, Amy Butler fabric!






I hope the people who come to shop think they are as cute as I do!! If you are near the Charlotte, NC region and want to check out our local artists please come to the Marketplace. It is going to be November 18th and 19th at Kadi Fit in Cornelius.

I am linking up to Sew and Tell Fridays for the first time today!!

Charity Quilt Blocks

For our first CMQG project, we received fabric from Jay McCarroll's line from Free Spirit.  This was our first guild challenge and we decided to each make two blocks with the fabric we received and then build one or two quilts to donate.  Here are my quilt blocks.





Once the quilts are pieced together and quilted I will show off the finished product!!

Our quilt guild is having a sew-in on Saturday and I'm so excited! Four hours of uninterrupted sewing sounds like heaven!!

Is Quilting Therapeutic?

Pinterest via houzz.com

For me, most of the time, it gives me a bit of tranquility in an otherwise hectic day.  The optimal place for me is laying in the above hammock in a beautiful tropical location.  But, since that only happens once a year (if I'm lucky, and it's only an Atlantic Ocean beach) I have to settle on finding tranquility in the everyday moments.  Sewing can do that for me.  Maybe that sounds crazy to some, but being able to create amazing things out of scraps of fabric really is like therapy. 

Does anyone else feel that way? 

Hyperdrive

When my son said he wanted a Star Wars quilt two thoughts went through my head.

First, "OMG he's getting super addicted to Star Wars and he's only 5!" (Of course I didn't really need to get worried about him being 5 because now my 3 year old is super addicted to Star Wars because of his brother).

Second, "This could be fun, hmmm, what can I pull out of Star Wars that would make an awesome quilt."

At the same time, the Modern Quilt Guild was having one of their project modern challenges and it was to use all solids.

What popped into my head was this:

So, I started drafting some ideas (I prefer pen and paper) and came up with a starburst sketch with a circle in the middle like a black hole.  I had not made very many quilts at the time and it seemed so way out of my skill level, but I figured I would give it a shot.

Here is how it turned out:

I really can't believe I figured out how to do this on my own, I still consider myself a beginner!  I let Little Man pick out the binding since it was his quilt and he chose this cool sparkly star binding.

You can also see my stippled border. In the middle I quilted a spiral and for the rest I just quilted a starburst pattern starting from the center to give that extra feel of speed.

Since I had a bunch of blue scraps sitting around after cutting out all the pieces, I decided to try an improv pieced back.  I like how it turned out, but the front is my fave!

I didn't actually get it done in time to enter the solids challenge, but this quilt is totally loved on by my Star Wars loving boy.  That's what really matters anyway!