Postage Stamp Quilt Top

Hooray!  I finally finished my postage stamp quilt top!  It looks like it took forever, right?  It did take awhile, but not as long as you might think, because I used Rachel Griffith's (of P.S. I Quilt) great tutorial.  I've got a creamy yellow sheet for backing, and I know exactly how this baby is going to be quilted, so hopefully I'll have a finished picture to show soon.

Special thanks to Chelsea for her help with this picture.  See her shadow there?  Isn't she cute?  :)

Wild Play Quilt Top (Minus border)

Chelsea took this beautiful photo!

This afternoon Chelsea and I got together for a busy day of last minute Christmas shopping, pho-slurping, and quilt... quilting.

I finally finished piecing together the main part of my latest quilt top.  I'm using two charm packs of the Wee Play line from American Jane (which were not easy to track down, by the way!).  I love this line so much, and am sad that it's going the way of the buffalo.  I used the Wild Thing quilt pattern again.  I like the movement of the blocks, and the way you can showcase lots of different prints.  I also used some different whites from the Bella Solids line and Kona.  I wanted the quilt to have a scrappy, vintage look - like the quilt you find in your grandma's atticf, which you find out used to sit on the foot of your mom's bed in kindergarten, which has been pieced and patched over the years.  Or something.

I'm a little stumped about what to use for the border and binding.  I'm thinking maybe some Kona Ash for the border:

Something fairly neutral, I think.  And maybe a pretty red polka-dot for the binding.  If anyone out there has any ideas, I'd love to hear them!!

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

The pumpkin madness continues! Yesterday I also whipped up a double batch of Chelsea's awesome pumpkin chocolate-chip cookies. Here is her super-awesome recipe:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

In a small bowl, mix together:

1 c. sugar

1 c. pumpkin

1/2 c. oil

1 egg

In a large bowl, sift together:

2 c. flour

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. cinnamon

2 tsp. baking powder

Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix gently.

Dissolve together and add to rest of ingredients:

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. milk

1 tsp. vanilla

Fold in:

1 c. chocolate chips

1/2 c. nuts

Stir until combined - do not overmix.

Drop rounded tablespoons onto lightly greased cookie sheet. Bake approximately 10 to 12 minutes. NOTE: Careful not to overcook. Cookies will be soft and moist.

Urban Craft Uprising

This morning Chelsea and I headed down to the Seattle Center for Urban Craft Uprising, a craft show that features independent crafters and small businesses. It was kind of like stepping inside Etsy! We saw lots of really amazing stuff, and although we didn't drop any cash (aside from the donation at the door), we agreed that we both felt inspired to get our own crafty hands active again!

This picture doesn't do justice to this dress. The lace applique work was just amazing.

Deviled eggs! Complete with paprika sprinkles! How cute are these??

We saw TONS of letterpress. I just love letterpress - something about the simplicity of the designs, combined with the richness of the texture. I'd love to learn more about this process.

How cool is this lampshade? This booth had lots of upcycled crafts, like bowls and bracelets made from old vinyl records, jewelry made from soda can tabs, and more lampshades made from safety pins and forks.

I loooooove kokka fabric, and these bears strike me as the perfect use for such whimsical, hip designs.

Again, this photo doesn't do justice. This is a photo of an old abandoned room, which the artist has overlaid with drawings of a mother and her two little boys. Look at how the little boy on the right is peering out through the hole in the wall. I love how reality and fantasy interact here.

This coat has three great things going for it: it's a wool coat, it's orange, and it features poppies. Love!

Finally, here was my favorite seller. This man also specializes in letterpress, but he then mounts the letterpress art onto wood blocks to create wall art pieces.

My very favorite item of the whole show:

While at UCU today, we saw lots of signs for another craft show, to be held in December in Portland:

Crafty Wonderland Super Colossal Holiday Sale!

December 11th + 12th

times TBA

at the Oregon Convention Center

777 NE MLK Jr. Blvd, Exhibit Hall D

See you there! :)

Last Day of Staff Room Duty: Camping Theme

In keeping with our summer theme, for our last big day of staff room duty, Chelsea and I did a camping subtheme. We started with these delicious s'more pops:



These were a huge hit. They're just marshmallows on wooden skewers. Then we melted a couple of giant bars of Hershey's chocolate in the microwave to dip them in, then rolled them in crushed graham crackers. They taste just like s'mores! I think it's pretty key to use Hershey's chocolate though... just any old chocolate wouldn't have that same effect.

We also made these little campfire cupcakes. They're just frosted with green "grass," then we broke pretzel sticks to make the logs and added a squirt of orange frosting with a star tip. Easy peasy!

Day Two of Staff Room Duty: Beach Theme!

Today is day 2 of Chelsea and me on staff room duty at our school. Of course we have a theme (isn't life always better when you have a theme?): Summer. Yesterday we filled the lounge with rainbows, and today the subtheme is the beach. The idea for the beach and shark cupcakes comes from Martha Stewart. The beaches are just orange frosting coated in graham cracker crumbs and topped with a paper parasol.

The sharks are blue frosting with a shark fin cut out of a plastic pocket folder.

I also made these watermelon-slice sugar cookies:

My frosting skills leave a lot to be desired.

And finally, for no good reason, we are putting out this jar of Starburst.

Come back tomorrow to see Day Three: Camping!

Day One of Staff Room Duty: Rainbows!

For the last week of school, Chelsea and I signed up for Staff Room Duty. This usually entails loading the dishwasher, wiping down the countertops, and maybe bringing in a treat one day. Most teachers might do chips and salsa on one of their days.

Well, naturally Chelsea and I always go way overboard. For Halloween week we decked out the lounge in orange and black, made a different creepy treat for each day of the week, and hid plastic hearts in the refrigerator.

So for this week we knew we had set a bar for ourselves. We decided to go with a summer theme. Here's what we did for Monday (subtheme: rainbows):


1. Make a batch of cake batter. Divide into 6 bowls, and use food coloring to dye each bowl a different color.


2. Pour batter into 6 separate cake pans and bake.


3. Layer the cakes, frosting between layers.


4. Make Dr. Seuss proud with a wonky, wobbly, colorful rainbow cake.

5. Frost the whole thing white, so that when it's cut into it's a surprise! I'll post an update picture when this sucker gets cut into. :)

6. Decide that a rainbow cake isn't quite enough. Make rainbow cupcakes too.

7. Admire their beauty. High five each other.

8. Frost and sprinkle. I just love how the white cupcake cups turned semi-transparent, so that you can see the color swirls!

Come back tomorrow for Day Two: Beach Theme!

UPDATE:
Here's a picture of the rainbow cake, when cut into. It turned out even better than we thought!

Baby Quilt Completed

Sunday I finished the baby quilt I've been working on. Remember all my little sandwiches? Well, the next step was to stitch an X through each one, like so:

Now all my little sandwiches would hold together!

Then, I stitched all the sandwiches into strips, then stitched the strips together. I used a half-inch seam allowance, and just let the seams stick out on the back. Here's what the front looked like:

Here's the back:

After topstitching a half-inch border around the whole thing, I started to fringe all of those seams sticking out:

I fringed all the seams in the quilt as well. My hand is so mad at me after all those little cuts! I found hand muscles I didn't know I had.

The last step was to throw the quilt in the wash on a gentle cycle with Woolite, then put it in the dryer. The idea here was to fluff up all of those seams that I fringed. I pulled this little friend out of the lint tray when I was done:

Here's what it looked like when it was all done!

Here's a weird aside:

I started this quilt on a total impulse. I have no kids, and I didn't have anyone in mind to give this to. I just really liked the fabrics and the idea of making a quilt. This alone was strange, because I have had exactly zero interest in quilting my whole life, and now suddenly I must make this quilt?

Anyway, I started it on March 7th. March 10th I learned that a teacher at my school had adopted a baby - she and her husband had been trying to adopt, and the whole thing came together in three days. The baby was a little boy, and he was born on March 7th - the day I started the quilt.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I just feel so strongly that this quilt was meant for this little baby, and it is en route to him as we speak. Obviously, no one threw the parents a baby shower before his arrival, so I don't know how many items like this the baby has right now. The fact that I started a baby boy's quilt with no idea why and then this all just sort of fell into place... well. I happen to think that's pretty darn cool!

Why Should Girl Scouts Have All the Fun?

I had so much fun making my Lucky Merit Badges last week that I decided to go ahead and make some non-holiday-related merit badges for a friend. Let's see if anyone can guess who these are for!

This is the DSLR Merit Badge, awarded to her because she has totally taught herself to take beautiful photos in only a few months! It is also, incidentally, a persistence award. You see, every time she goes anywhere, she takes her camera and shoots pictures. Her husband finds this very annoying and tries to stop her. But she doesn't, and I'm glad! I like seeing her pics.

This is the Creepy Halloween Cupcakes award. Last Halloween this friend and I made goodies for our staff lounge at work. She found so many cute and creepy ideas for baked goods, and we had a blast! The most memorable were some eyeball cupcakes we made. They looked like this:

These are not our cupcakes, although ours did look just like these. Photo courtesy of Samantha's Sweet Treats.

Finally, here is the Yellow House Merit Badge. Given not only to a person who has worked tirelessly to turn a charming house into a ridiculously-charming house, but also to the person who writes one of my favorite blogs, In a Yellow House.

Okay, have you guessed yet?

If you want to make your own merit badges, just follow the tutorial linked in my Lucky Merit Badges post, but instead of stitching on the clover use fabric glue to attach whatever you want. I used fabric glue instead of stitching on these because I had so many very small pieces I wanted to add in felt, like the chimney on the yellow house.

Lucky Merit Badges

Just in time for St. Patrick's Day, I finished these little clover pins from the tutorial at Stitcher Scribbler. They turned out so cute, and they were really simple to make. I think my favorite part is that I learned how to do a good blanket stitch using Futuregirl's wonderful how-to.



Maybe I just have Girl Scouts on my mind because it's cookie season, but these really remind me of merit badges. They were so fun to make that I was thinking it would be fun to make more little felt pins for friends and family, celebrating the things that make them awesome. How cute would one if these pins be with a camera on it, or a Mr. Sketch marker (I'm looking at you, Chels)? A gardening trowel or frisbee for my mom? A reporter's notebook for my husband? The possibilities are endless!

Quilt in Progress

This is nothing I can take credit for - I just wanted to share a few photos of Chelsea's beautiful quilt-in-progress.



Please note that this is her first quilt. Way to go, you quilting kidney work wife!

Sandwich Day

Saturday Chelsea and I got together for another craft day. Both of us got quilt fixins' at the sewing expo, and we were eager to get together for our first ever quilting bee.

For Chelsea, the theme of the day ended up being "I can do it!" - more on her amazing quilt later!

For me, the theme was "sandwiches." Less inspiring.

My quilt is kind of unique. Instead of piecing together the front, then layering it with batting and a backing, each square is layered with all three pieces like a sandwich, then the sandwiches are stitched together.

Step one: cut a whole busload of 7" squares.



108, to be exact.



Step two: cut half a busload of 6" batting squares:



Step three: make little sandwiches. The fabric is the bread. The batting is the meat.



Make 54 of those little suckers:



Step 4: eat a sandwich and call it a day.



Stay tuned for more on this exciting project.