Sunday, June 17, 2012

Teacher Gift

Tis the season for year-end teacher gifts.  I've been googling and reading and thinking and deciding... there are lots of cool printables and "punny" ideas out there, but somehow nothing was clicking with me - or with the Munchkin -as being right for his teacher.

I had an apple dishtowel I had picked up at Target to make a tote bag out of - so we finally decided to give her that and fill it with some goodies.  After a trip to the grocery store with a 7 year old whose head is filled with "punny" ideas, and this is what we came up with.
Elementary school and goldfish go together, right?

Nearly bought a can of alphabet soup - until I read the ingredients. Won't give someone something I won't eat myself - and this is healthier!!!
He insisted one of the gifts had to be chocolate.

ok... so Mommy coached him a bit on this one, but I thought they would go nice with the "souper" noodles.
The bag - a tea towel and lined with white fabric with ABC's printed on it.  the handles are made from the excess cut off each side of the bag.
All filled and then he tagged it with a note saying what he liked best about this year.
 RECESS!


Monday, June 11, 2012

Quickies...


Both of these quilts were spur of the moment, quickly conceived, executed and completed projects... both from scraps and both for donations.

The Wise Old Owl quilt was just width-of-fabric strips.  I had less than a yard of the novelty owl fabric, and about the same amount of the teal.  I just kept dipping into my stash and finding strips that would work with the colors in the owl print.  I found a great variegated thread that pulled those colors as well, and just did some easy straight line quilting on this.

owl fabric closeup
The woman who runs our school cafeteria was the winner - and I was so glad I had the time, talent and materials to contribute to this teacher/staff appreciation luncheon.  Now that I know they hold it annually, I will be planning a project for each year the Munchkin will be attending that school.

The second quilt was also a 'quickie' - one week from conception to finish.  My office organizes a charity golf tournament in June, and I had always thought about contributing items to the silent auction, but was not sure what to do.  Lazy Sister Sue had given me some small scraps of three different golf themed fabrics - neither hubby nor I golf, and I was not sure quite what to do with them as they were each 1/4 yard or less.

Last Friday, Amanda Murphy Design posted a tutorial for a fun block.  She did pinwheels in the center but I instantly thought it would work nicely with a focal or novelty fabric, and I set to work.  The golf ball fabrics formed the block centers, the thin strips of golf course fabric formed the frames around the ball fabric, and I filled in with 1 1/2" green patches from my scrap bin and a variety of whites I had on hand. There was not quite enough of the golf course green, so I framed up 2 orange and brown blocks for a little touch of RIT.

Amanda's blog showed a layout with all the blocks going the same direction - and another one that used  mirror image blocks but laid out differently than mine.  to get this layout I alternated every other row with mirror image.  I like the way the "peg" shaped white section alternates facing up or down and they kind of nestle together.

 I finished things up by using up the rest of the golf ball fabric on the back, framing it with the golf tee fabrics to make my pieced backing.  And again, just some straight line quilting with a pale green variegated on the front and ivory on the back to pull it all together.  This one finished at 44x55 for a nice little picnic blanket.



Thursday, June 07, 2012

Garden Bag winners

I got on a roll making bags (17) and I did not need all of them for planting (6) so including the ones I am sending to Jill from LAST year and to my sister Cindy from the year before - I think that leaves me enough to send one to each person who entered.

Mine now have peppers and tomatoes - out of reach of my baby bunnies who ate the ones I planted in the ground...  :-(


 

Friday, June 01, 2012

Best.Investment.Ever

So this week alone I've had the following items through my sewing machine: 2 quilts (or parts thereof), a fabric lunchbag, landscape fabric for potato growing bags, tyvek mailing envelopes for topsy-turvy tomato growing bags, elastic and polarfleece for pirate eye patches, and a repurposed dryer sheet for a lavender sachet. So what are YOU sewing on???