Catching up on a craft I haven’t yet posted about. It’s one more Seahawks cowl which I finished at the end of July. This one uses a stitch called “rank and file”. I will probably give this one to my sister-in-law, Phyllis. I did an I-Cord bind off and continued around the cowl with I-Cord edging.

I gave Leslie a black and white fabric "jelly roll" (only 21 pieces though) for Easter 2016. She had posted a picture of a quilt on Facebook of a cute quilt and I thought she would use the jelly roll to make it. She brought the fabric with her to work on while she was here and had others to help chase Sonja, the tornado, around (thanks Papa and Iris). The quilt is for Sonja. We added a few strips of one more fabric with a little color in it that was from my stash (glad to find something to use it for). She found a different quilt idea that she liked a little better, but they both start out with a jelly-roll-race then added appliques (also fabrics from my stash). The borders and backing required a trip to JoAnns. Thankfully, we found fabrics right away, as we forgot about early closing on Sundays and arrived about 15 minutes before closing. Before Leslie left for home, we had the base quilt, including borders finished up. She had cut and placed all the appliques and cut some flower shapes from the batting to put underneath the applique flowers. She left it here for me to finish. I’m not sure when I will send it to her (or take next time we go visit), but I know she will be surprised that I finished it so quickly. The quilting is a combination of free motion (around the flowers and in the border) and decorative machine stitching down the “ditches”. For the border quilting, I found a continuous line leaf on the internet, printed it out, traced it onto some scraps of water-soluble stabilizer with a frixion pen (in case any ink transferred to the fabric, it could be erased with a touch of the iron), used temporary spray baste and pins to hold them to the borders, free motion quilted following the leaf design, applied the binding, then ran the quilt through a cold water rinse and spin cycle to totally dissolve the stabilizer. Then hung it to dry. The finished size is 37”x 53”.

 

 

When Iris saw this fabric, she decided that we should make a crayon pouch together for her to take her crayons to school in. Matching the pattern to form a very long crayon was just a fun coincidence.



Iris also had a couple of friends who wanted owls like the one I had made her. DD decided she would like to have one too. So we made these ...

 

 

Then we decided they would be a fun project for Iris and her friends to work on together. So DD and I prepared everything so that the girls could hand stitch the bottoms and stuff them up. We made a couple extra for a new born baby and Iris' sister, too.

Crafting is not top priority with DDs and families visiting, but Iris had big ideas of crafting with Mimi. She arrived wearing her "Big Sister" shirt which was a couple sizes too small, yet she wouldn't let her mother pass it on. So on our agenda was to embroider new shirts for her and her "Little Sister". Iris helped select fabrics and thread colors as well as helping with the embroidery machine. She decided that we should each eat one M&M for each step in the process. What a great idea!