Ella's Room

I'm excited to show off Ella's room. Thanks to Pinterest and my sister, Morgan, her room is almost finished!

Above her bed is the letter "E" in a silver frame...

In one corner of her room is this corner shelf my Grandad built. The green vase came from a flower shop when I was in the hospital with Riley. I added the Gerber daisies from Hobby Lobby. I'm also using the shelf a a beginning book shelf. One the second to last shelf are embroidery hoops with fabric in them. The fabric matches all the bedding in the room.

Ella's first book: "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly" by Kate Toms. This book is so cute!

This is Ella's bed. I made the fitted crib sheet from a vintage flat sheet of my Grandmom's. The dust ruffle was made out of vintage sheets as well. And the crib bumper I made out of assorted fabric and white minky.

Ella approves!

Also in the room is a twin bed. My Great-Grandmother purchased it in the 50's. The orange pillow case is an oldie from my Grandmom's house. I made the quilt using mostly half-square triangles.

On the wall above the twin bed is more embroidery hoops with fabric.

In the corner above Ella's bed I hung pom poms and lanterns. My sister, Morgan, helped me make the pom poms and did all the arranging because I am not that talented.

My husband also painted the walls. When we bought the house the entire room was the turquoise blue color.  I could handle the blue, but wanted to tame it just a little, so we painted the top half buttermilk cream and my Grandad and husband added the chair rail.

This is my favorite room in the house! And the bed is so comfortable! I have a few more things I want to add. Hopefully I'll get around to them this summer!

Jaycie

4th of July Quilt

I let my quilt set without any attention for several weeks, maybe months. I wasn’t sure how I wanted to quilt it or how I wanted to bind the quilt. On July 2, I finally figured it out. I was still quilting on July 4 at 6:00 p.m., but I finished nonetheless.

I used fabrics from my Grandmother’s large stash, pillow cases and sheets. I talk about the piecing process here. I pieced and quilted the ENTIRE quilt by hand. I am very happy with the results and have received a lot of positive feedback, which means so much.

My sister, Morgan, and I took Riley and my nephew, Braxton, to watch fireworks at a local lake. We really had the best time and had a nice, patriotic quilt to sit on.

Here is a pretty good photo. I literally haven’t had time to get a picture of just the quilt itself. As soon as I was finished with the binding, we left for the fireworks. It’s pretty big, I haven’t measured it yet. Riley and Braxton had a great time romping all over it.

The above photo is a good shot of part of the binding. I used alternating fabrics for the binding, solid red and blue with white stars. I didn’t have enough of either fabric to use only one, so I kind of used what I had.

Riley approves!

I should also add that I originally wanted this quilt so my family could sit on it and watch the fireworks. Unfortunately, my husband is working out of town so he couldn’t enjoy the festivities with us. Maybe next year!

American Flag Quilt

I have FINALLY finished my quilt top for my American Flag Quilt. I talked about my inspiration process a little over here.

 Excuse the child crawling across the quilt top. I don't know who she is!

I am really happy to have this thing finished! Piecing by hand is very time consuming, so this took several hours over several days. The quilt top takes up ALL of my living room's open space, so it's huge. I am happy it turned out so large. This was the first quilt that I actually calculated measurements. I sketched it out on a piece of paper and everything! A first! Normally I just jump in head first and sometimes my quilts look o.k. and sometimes they don't. So on this quilt, I wanted things to be pretty exact.

All of my planning was pretty much for nothing because I had to tweak a few things. I ended up adding a few blocks to the long stripes. As I was piecing, I was really never sure what I was going to do with the blue area and stars. I had this fabric,

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it's dark blue with off-white stars. So what I think I am going to do is quilt 50 stars in this portion. That's a lot of stars, so we'll see what I end up doing.

Let me know what you all think! I am pretty proud!

4th of July Quilt

About 5 years ago I was the girl who dreamed of having her own family and sitting beneath the fireworks on 4th of July. I wanted the husband and the child. I had these things last year on 4th of July, but Riley wasn't really big enough to stay up that late or watch fireworks. Now that my dream will come to fruition this year, I want the perfect blanket/quilt to sit on. I have been combing the Internet and so far these quilts will serve as my inspiration:

1. A patriotic Union quilt from Patterns From History. This is a very simple quilt, but very beautiful. Of course, my great-great-great Grandfather fought with the Confederates, so he probably wouldn't appreciate me making this exact quilt. It is inspirational, still.

2. If you are interested, check this link out. I never really thought about how to construct a star, but this site lays it out so easily. I can't wait to make a star using this template!

3. A rail fence patriotic quilt. Love this! Rail fences are time consuming, but so pretty on the eye! This pattern is from Marysquilts.blogspot.com.

4. This quilt is from a Quilter's Guild in Austin, Texas. I love this quilt and love that these ladies donate finished quilts to soldiers. This is definitely my favorite patriotic quilt. It's so beautiful and uses many different fabrics.

5. This quilt is so cute! I love the little girls. My Grandmother made a quilt for me with 24 of these little girls in different and coordinating fabrics. This patriotic quilt reminds me of my Grandmom. This quilt pattern can be found here.

6. Lastly, this is my true inspiration. I really love this flag and this county. I feel blessed to wake up each day under this flag. She provides me with freedom.

I plan on starting my 4th of July patriotic quilt this week. I may have to round up a few extra fabrics, mainly whites. I hope to use old sheets and vintage fabrics as well as a few new yards of modern fabric. As always, cutting the pieces out takes the absolute longest, but I will endeavor to persevere. I can't wait to post pictures of my finished quilt!

Pink and Chocolate Brown

So, I quilt. Not always very well, but nonetheless I quilt. I am really bad about piecing a quilt top together and then forgetting about it for several weeks or months. Anyway, this is a little quilt I just finished last night after it laid around for well over a month.

 This is a small quilt, maybe for a baby. It measures 30 inches by 24 inches. I hand pieced and hand quilted this whole quilt, hearts included. The solid pink is an old pillow case and the other fabrics I had left over from other projects (Quilts for Riley!). I'm not sure what the name of the batting is called, something I picked up from Hobby lobby. Binding is definitely the worst part about quilting. I put it off as long as I can. It makes my fingers hurt so bad! The backing is a solid white cotton that has been around for a while too. I think I will start buying plain white sheets to back with. That's what my Grandmother always uses, so we'll see!

I'm really happy with how this turned out. I thought it was going to be a little bigger, but oh well. Not sweating the small stuff today!