New Quilt

My mother-in-law has been bugging me to make her a lap quilt since I showed her the first one I finished for Babe Jr. last fall.  Her birthday was coming up and she just wanted something small to take to church, so I decided to make one with a block that is a little more labor intensive that what I've been doing.  It's called a disappearing 4 patch.

I had a vintage sheet that was just big enough to use as the backing and white squares.  It  has little bouquets of flowers with bows, so I was able to coordinate several different colors of fabric leftover from other projects.

I did mostly straight line quilting.  I've been wanting to try out free motion quilting for a while now, so I decided to try some doodly (that's a technical term) flowers in the negative spaces. 

I'm really pleased with it and she was thrilled.  I enjoyed my first taste of FMQ, now I'm trying to come up with some small projects so I can practice.  I'm seeing pot holders and place-mats in the near future.

Project: Bohemian Pillow Cover

Recently I've been selling a few quilts through facebook.  I'm not ready to have a full fledged business and set up an etsy or anything, but I really enjoy the process and an order here and there gives me a little extra cash and is really building my scrap pile.   I don't have any orders currently, so I've been working on a few projects for myself.  I like to bounce around, I currently have 2 scrap quilts started and one in progress as a gift for a family member.

Then, a few days ago as I was blog browsing I ran across this Pillow by Maureen Cracknell Handmade.  I saw if first in the background of a photo on a recent post; and I LOVED IT!  It's one of those things I couldn't get out of my head so I spent some time yesterday going through her blog and Flickr stream until I found the post linked above with better photos of the pillow.  She was inspired by a pillow from West Elm.

Once  got a closer look at it, I immediately got started on my own version.

I went through my scrap bin and pulled out some of my favorites.  The pillow I used is 18", so I cut a 19" square of a neutral fabric then started cutting 1 1/4" strips.  I used the 60 degree mark on my quilt ruler and cut them so that each band is 4 1/2" wide.  Once I figured out my arrangement, I pressed everything nicely.  I wanted to secure them before I stitched them on and I was out of heat'n'bond, so I just used some craft glue.  Once everything was glued, I trimmed my square down to 18 1/2" to make it a little neater.  After giving the glue a little time to dry, I stitched across all of the strips on all 4 sides 1/4" from the edges.

I love it!  It has some of my favorites from Pat Bravo, Amy Butler, and Anna Marie Horner to stuff from the clearance bin at Walmart and cast offs from family members.

Once the front was done, I cut 2 pieces of solid fabric for the back each with one edge hemmed, then overlapped them and pinned in place with right sides facing each other.  Then I was able to sew all the way around without having to use a zipper or leave an opening.  The cover basically works like a pillow sham.  It's very practical.  I think I am going to make more covers this way because they can be removed to wash but don't require cost and effort of adding a zipper. 

Merry Christmas from the Backwoods!

More Christmas Decor

The new stockings are finished.

A vignette on the dresser.

I can't remember where I first saw apothecary jars with snow globe like scenes.  I was at Walmart with a friend and she was picking up a few of the little trees that are set out with the Christmas villages to make some for her house.  They were only about $.75 each so I grabbed a few.  I already had the little town hall ornament, I used batting for the snow.  The basket is just extra ornaments mixed in with the some of the potpourri that it's usually filled with.  I wrapped a few of the balls with yarn to add a little color.  And the owls - aren't they so cute?  I got these for $3.00 each at a local thrift store!  I think they look great with my sort of modern rustic theme, I'll probably find a permanent spot for them after the holidays.

I added a few things to the tree, butterfly ornaments - the wings are made of feathers.  The past 3 years I've decorated my mother-in-law's tree; she gave them to me since they match my tree and hers is all red now.

I've not been able to get a picture of it yet this year that I'm satisfied with.  The photos are hazy in morning light and there's not enough light in the afternoon.  Then cat got in it and pulled some lights loose.  Since I would have to take everything off to fix it, it's going to just have to stay half lit at this point, so my photos are all with lights off.

This year's gift wrap.

I am so happy with how cute our gifts are this year! I picked up a roll of brown shipping paper, the green sheer ribbon, and a few brown gift bags at the Dollar Tree.  That was a whopping total of 5.00 spent.  I had the green foil paper left over from a few years ago.  I've used pine cones and twine, leftover ornaments, and extra ribbon from by scrapbook stash to jazz up a few of the packages.  I stamped names directly on the brown paper this year instead of buying tags, it's gives them a more contemporary look.  I think my biggest splurge here was buying a few packs of matching lime green tissue paper in the birthday aisle, $2.49 for 8 sheets instead of the cheaper multi-packs in the seasonal aisle.

And last but not least, even wrapping supplies can be decorative if you stick them in a pretty container.

It's a Pinterest Christmas

Every year I change up the theme of our Christmas tree.  This year I wanted to do something a bit rustic and focus on some of our cute bird decorations.  I went to Pinterest for some inspiration and was on a roll.  Please excuse the inconsistency of the following photos.  The charger is broken on my computer that has photoshop, so I am currently unable to edit.  Here's a photo of our tree, it's really grainy due to the low light, but I wanted a photo with the tree lights off and no flash so there would be less weird shadowing and you can see some of the ornaments better.

I made the birdhouse topper with reclaimed wood from when an old family home nearby was torn down.  We've used it for several larger outdoor projects, but I just used a few small scraps for this. The pin that inspired my birdhouse topper.

We made several different types of ornaments.  Babe Jr is responsible for the ones made of book pages.

Bird ornament pin.  Flower ornament pin.  If you are a facebook friend, the flower ornaments were the ones being made that led to the CATastrophe.  Smokey ran under her feet and tripped her when she was cleaning up, causing a whole jar of glitter to be spilled in the kitchen floor.  I have swept and mopped several times since then, and yes, there is still glitter stuck to the floor in places.

I made these flowers from jute twine.

Twine flower tutorial pin.

These stars are hot glued then I tied the twine and hot glued it as well to make them stable.

 

Twig star pin. 

I had to move one of the big frames on the wall when we put the tree up, so I decided to switch the art out for something a little more festive.

The pin is actually for chalk board art.  I sketched it lightly on watercolor paper with a pencil, then outlined in pen and erased all the pencil marks.  I  used a green marker to add a little color to the places that needed to completely be filled it.

I'm working on new stockings this year.  This is the first one I finished.

Ruffle stocking pin.

One of the first things I did this season was gather a ton of pine cones.  I made the garland on the tree just by wrapping beading wire around them to hold them together.  But before we even got the big tree out, I made this little tree for the kitchen.

 

Pine cone tree.   I didn't have a cone form, so I just rolled a file folder into a cone, taped it together, and stuffed it with newspaper.  I put newspaper in the pot, too, then used a wooden skewer to hold them together.  I covered the folder with black construction paper so it wouldn't show between the pine cones.  Then I just used a lot of hot glue and started attaching them in rows.  I went through at least 12 glue sticks.

Also in the kitchen, I switched "EAT" for a more seasonally appropriate "NOEL."

This was inspired by a couple of pins, yarn wrapped letters and Noel with wreath.  I used more folders and tape to make the N and the L, then hot glued and wrapped the yarn in place.   I already had the E, and I recovered an old wreath and stuck on some of my pine cones for the O.

I still have a few works in progress and some of the the gifts I'm giving are pinterest projects, so I can't post them online yet.  We've had a lot of fun crafting so far this year.

Smokey loves his pig

A Quick Update

I haven't been here since May, ahhhh!  Real life has been busy and I've neglected my blog.  Here's a quick synopsis of what's been going on.

I planted my garden, then we had a week long power outage in July following a bad windstorm and everything died since I couldn't water it.  We have a well and the pump won't run without electricity.  I should look into adding some sort of hand pump for emergencies. 

We got a new puppy.

Her name is Penny.  I don't have a funny blog nickname for her yet.  We were trying to find a Pyrenees but had no luck.  After a few months of watching local shelters and no success with rescues, a friend on Facebook posted a pic of puppies she had to give away.  The mother was a large docile mixed breed, father unknown.  The puppies were irresistibly cute.

This is her at 3 months.  She's super sweet and a little more hyper than what I expected.  She's not so small anymore.

Penny at 5 months.  She spends most of her time outside now.  I think she has some St. Bernard or Great Pyrenees in her. 

 This is last week.  She'll be 6 months on Dec. 11th. 

We also got a cat.  His name is Smokey (I know, its not very original, but we let Mr. Backwoods name this one.)

I didn't think we'd ever find a house cat that the Terrible Terrier could get along with, but he won us all  over.   He was a stray hanging around at a friend's house and was super friendly.

He doesn't have a blog name yet either.  I might give up on those if we keep adding animals.  I didn't think I was much of a cat person, but this one is pretty entertaining.

He sleeps like this all the time, so weird.

We had several yard sales this summer to raise money to send the cheer squad to camp.  I made enough space in our spare junk room to make it a sort of craft room with a lot of junk.  I started sewing again and got bit by the quilt bug.

I've sold a few things through facebook.  I'm thinking of setting up an Etsy, but that feels like a big commitment.  I'm not sure yet.

We've been working on a lot of craft projects for the holidays, and I don't want to overload facebook with craft pics so I'll probably be posting some here.

Babe Jr. got her braces off.  If I can ever get her in front of my camera again, I'll post some updated pics of her, too.

I'll try not to be a stranger around here, but I can't make any promises. ;)