A few finishes, a snowblob, and a crawler...

Oh my word.

I thought I was getting a good start on Christmas gifts this year...

I was proud of myself.

By the 1st of the month

I had all necessary supplies purchased, everything cut and prepped,

tutorials tagged, pages of sewing books marked, and pins on Pinterest up the yin-yang.

Everything got stacked neatly in a laundry basket, just waiting to be picked up and

sewn together with love.

But, I think I got a little cocky.

Because now...

I am in complete panic mode.

The good news is that the first Christmas party is 9 days away.

The bad news is that the first Christmas party is 9 days away.

Am I excited?

Heck yeah.

Am I totally stressed?

You know it.

Should I even be blogging right now?

Not a chance.

I just love giving the perfect handmade presents

- maybe a little too much-

because I've actually overflowed into a second basket.

Oh goodness.

I would love to show

all the Christmas presents

I'm working on, but I can't, because that would ruin the surprise for those getting the presents.

DUH!

So instead, I will show other things I made that aren't Christmas presents, like this:

It's my latest finished quilt.

It felt good to finish up a quilt.

I haven't done a quilt in a while, and this one was, well, it was just nice.

I made it for a woman my hubby works with.

I love it.

I think it's perfectly girly and sweet.

I was sick of patchwork, but I had already cut all the squares,

so I turned them all on point.

It was my first time trying that out,

even though I've wanted to for quite some time,

and I dig it.

And I love the stripy binding.

But, I mean, who doesn't love a stripy binding?

I hand-stitched the sweet little name in one of the

less-busy squares

to add an extra little touch of 'special' to the quilt.

***

Here's my November contribution to do.Good stitches' Grace circle.

I took this picture at night,

so the colors are WAY off-

but that's a coral square and a navy square.

We all used this tutorial for the 'hole in the barn door' squares from Mary Catharine's blog. She's really sweet. And talented.

And I'm also using another one of her tutorials for a Christmas present.

But I'm not going to spoil it, so that's all for now.

***

And Willow got invited to her first birthday party

(that wasn't a family member).

So, of course, I decided her friend needed to have a handmade, hand-stitched dolly.

And I made this decision the night before.

At about midnight.

Hence the bad picture taken at said party...

***

We also made a 'snowman' who is actually more like a snowblob.

You need a certain kind of snow for the making of snowpeople, and we just didn't have it.

Note to self: check snow before promising snowman to small child.

So, with that preface, I introduce to you, Carl:

He's basically a pile of snow with a hat, scarf, celery nose, tomato eyes and stick arms.

He's actually quite adorable.

Or, was quite adorable. Carl has since vanished.

Note to self: Warn small child what happens to beloved snowblob when temperature rises.

We had fun in the snow while it lasted...

***

And this little one is getting SO big.

Look who's crawling!

That's all for now because the doctor's office just called to remind me of Ellie's well-visit today, which I completely forgot about,

and now I must go bathe, dress, and get 3 people ready for the public eye in a very short amount of time.

Wish me luck.

Newest Completion...

I love this latest nursery set.

Love. Love. Love.

It kind of makes we want a little boy.

Kinda.

Let's see.

There's mostly Anna Maria Horner Garden Party and Good Folks, some Joel Dewberry Modern Meadow...

... and a little bit of Amy Butler and Laura Gunn in the quilt.

Just a simple patchwork design with a larger outside border.

And then a bright orange binding (JD Nap sack in sunset) to accent everything.

The back of the quilt is also one of my favorites:

I just love those trees.

This back just makes me want to make a quilt front like this!

And here's the hand-stitched label:

Isn't that a cute quote?

The momma picked that one out.

I had a little bit of fun with the colors...

And a quilt roll for good measure!

Quilt stats:

40x50"

machine quilted 1/4" from either side of seams

I used a grey Gutermann thread for the quilting

machine stitched binding

pieced back

So, there you go!

Alli, I hope you love it.

(And if you want to send me a pic with your little man all wrapped up in it when he finally gets here, that would be fantastic.)

If anyone is interested in their own WillowBean Creations Custom Nursery Set

(for boys or girls or surprises)

please check out the nursery set listings in my Etsy Store!

Or email me directly at willowbeanmama@gmail.com.

Happy Friday!

Finishes!

Despite the weirdness, I have been getting quite a bit done around here.

I guess I've gotten used to it :)

The latest completions are a couple of quilts I made for my niece and nephew all the way in Virginia.

(ps: I really miss Virginia.)

For some reason, I always take a lot of pictures of the process of making quilts...

I'm not sure why.

Maybe in the back of my head I want to make a tutorial one day.

Who knows.

But when it comes to finally writing a post about the quilt I finally finished, I never use the process pics.

For all you know, I could be buying quilts elsewhere and saying they're mine!

I assure you, that's not the case.

I have the pics to prove it and from now on I think I will be showing more of them.

Here's some chain-piecing taking place:

(check out my new cutting mat!! I finally got a good one!)

And here are some rows all finished and waiting to be pressed:

Apparently, I skipped quite a few pics between the last one and the next one,

the completely finished quilt.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is probably why I haven't ever written a tutorial to date.

I forget what I'm doing and just sew.

Triston's finished quilt:

I did some straight line quilting on the diagonal to show off the triangles a bit.

1/4" from either side of each seam.

And I extended the quilt with a wide border on 2 sides of the quilt and added a little interest with some "rebel" triangles.

While making the quilt I labeled those 2 pieces my "little rebels", and it stuck.

I think the asymmetry gives the quilt a more modern look.

And it shakes things up a bit.

Which I totally dig.

And, of course, a little hand-stitched label so Triston knows how much I love him :)

It's a nice baby-size quilt at 34x45", machine quilted and machine-stitched binding.

And here's Gabi's quilt:

I started this quilt quite a long time ago, but never got around to finishing it.

Gabi loves everything pink, so when my sister said she needed another quilt, I thought this one would be perfect.

And to make it even more Gabi-ish, I bound it with some pink zebra print fabric.

For the quilting, I used orange and pink thread and went 1/4" away around the outside edges of the squares, twice.

That sounds confusing. I don't know how else to word it.

I doubt you're really that interested anyway, so I'm going to leave it and move on.

Gabi gets a label, of course.

Have to keep it fair.

This quilt is about 51x51", machine quilted and machine-stitched binding.

I've also made some headway on Willow's Dresden Plate quilt top...

but more on that later because I just realized the water has been running in my bathroom for much longer than it takes to wash little hands,

which never ever means anything good.

Happy Weekend!

A Very Special Baby Quilt and Belated Happy Valentine's Day.

I have finished my little girl's baby quilt.

And I am IN LOVE with it.

IN.

LOVE.

It's tied for my favorite with this quilt...the very first quilt I ever made for Willow.

This pretty little number is a string quilt using all the scraps I used to make the Dresden Plates for Willow's new quilt.

I used the paper-piecing method, and there's a pretty good tutorial here.

I modified mine a bit, but who doesn't?

There were 24 string blocks (7" unfinished) and then I used some stashed fabric to make borders around the outside.

(Anna Maria Horner Garden Party, Valori Wells, and some more Anna Maria Horner)

And, as per usual over here lately, I only used scraps and stash fabrics.

I used the same fabric (Ta Dot in Sea) for the center strip in each string block that I am going to use as the background for Willow's twin-size Dresden Plate quilt, so that there will be some similarity between the two quilts since they'll be sharing a room.

And because there's SO many different kinds of fabrics in each one...

I LOVE IT!

And for the back I just used some stashed Anna Maria Horner Garden Party, some Heather Bailey Tiled Primrose from the Pop Garden/Bijoux collection, which I also used for the binding, and some Amy Butler Sandlewood from her Love collection.

As for the quilting, I really wanted to highlight the 'squares' or 'diamonds' that the string blocks made once all put together... I really didn't want to chop them up in any way with quilting lines.

So, I decided to quilt 1/4" on the inside of the center strips that made up each square.

And then the same 1/4" inside for the triangles on the sides and corners.

There ended up being no intersecting quilting lines, which is exactly what I wanted.

I tried to show you what I'm talking about... if you even really care, that is.

I ALMOST FORGOT...

Yesterday was Valentine's Day!

My hubby and I don't really do anything for Valentine's Day.

I know it sounds weird, but I like it like that.

Ok, it's not like we do nothing.

I always make him his mom's recipe no-bake cookies and a super-cheesy, way over the top valentine.

I think he secretly loves them. I really do.

He stares at them for a really long time with silly grin on his face... and that's how I know :)

I decided to put them all in a scrapbook this year so they don't get lost...

I mean, we're talking like 7 years worth of some serious Valentines.

I think they're worth saving... now I just have to find that 'spot' where I put them so that they could be found again.

So far I have found the one from 2009.

That's it.

The search is on.

I liked making Drew's Valentine even more this year because Willow wanted to make one too:

...and it is AWESOME.

I love that she loves to do "projits" with me.

It's like the best thing ever.

And she thinks she's the bomb when I let her use her own glue stick and her own scissors.

All she wanted to do yesterday was make Daddy's "Balentine", ride her bike to the movie store to pick out "Pickle Me" (aka 'Despicable Me'), and then wait for Daddy to get home from work so we could watch the movie in our jammies, with popcorn and macaroni and cheese.

So, that's exactly what we did!

Wow! 10 Days! No Way...

Yeah, so I haven't posted in 10 days, call me a slacker if you want, but I've been a busy little bee. For example I took a sad, lonely, white hutch and turned it into this:

and plopped it right into my kitchen for some MUCH needed counter and storage space. I haven't found knobs that I like yet, so that's why she's knobless...

She was also topless... uh oh! We can't have topless furniture gallivanting around the house, so I had to make her this...

I'm planning on getting together all of my art glass in this teal color and making shelves to display it all above my new fave piece of furniture!

I also finished this baby boy quilt a bit ago but never got the pictures up because my camera decided it wanted a vacation so it pooped out on me...don't worry, I showed it who's boss. It cut it's vacay short :)

I really like this quilt. It's different. I used a lot of my favorite blue and green fabrics for this one, and then added in that Michael Miller guitar print. I'm a fan. I also really like the back of this quilt and the way it looks with the binding...

That simple green fabric is from JoAnn's and I just love it. I bought all they had and I'm almost out :(

I was planning on trying out some organic line quilting on this quilt for the first time, but I don't know if it was my lack of motivation or lack of time or what, but that's not what happened. Instead I just quilted 1/4" on either side of the seams. It looks very nice I think. Here's a close-up:

Also, my dad came to visit this past weekend! Yay! He lives in Virginia, and I hadn't seen them for almost a year. I also got to see my stepmom and stepsister (and meet my niece Gabi for the first time) and my three youngest brothers. It was short, but fun. I wish we would have had more time together. We all got together for a Family Reunion in Saginaw. With the help of some special "lemonade" we all managed to get through it :)

Willow was also very sick this past week. She had super high fevers for a few days, but she's finally back to her crazy self!

Wow, I guess I never realized what happens in a 10 day period...

Aaaalllmooost!

This is finally sandwiched and quilted and the binding is sewn on the front. The only thing left to do is hand stitching the back binding and a label and then this girl is off to Virginia to keep my little niece warm! Love you Gabi!