Mother's Day Quilt

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I finally did it!  I made a quilt!  I love how it turned out but man it was hard!  I have even more respect now for all of the talented quilters out there.  Granted, part of my issue was the time crunch.  I decided to start this the Sunday before Mother's Day.  "Oh sure, I've never made a quilt before.  I'll  just whip one up in a week."  Not my best plan.

Before I get into what I did to make this quilt, let me strongly urge you to go check out Craftsy.  It's kind of awesome!  There are all sorts of video classes that you can take part in.  Many of them are paid classes but they have a couple of Block Of the Month Classes that are free!!!!  I used the 2012 Block of the Month Class taught by Amy Gibson .  While I didn't make the actual blocks, this class was still very helpful to me in learning how to make half square triangles, and how to baste, quilt and bind my quilt.  Go check out Craftsy!  (I have purchased fabric for and plan to make the actual blocks for the quilt taught in this class.)

I wanted to keep the quilt simple so that the hand prints really stood out.  I decided that I would just make half square triangles for the non-hand print blocks.  As previously mentioned, there is a great video on Craftsy about how to make HST.  There is also a great tutorial on In Color Order.

For the hand print blocks, I just traced each grandchild's hand and drew it onto the back of some
Wonder Under and then ironed it onto the wrong side of my fabric and cut it out.  I then peeled the backing off of the Wonder Under hand prints and ironed them onto cream fabric and did a zigzag stitch around the hand to secure it.  I have to admit that stitching around all of those fingers was a bit tricky.  I just went slow.  Finally, I used the embroidery feature on my sewing machine to add all of the grandchildren's names and the year.

Next, I played around with the layout.  First I stitched the blocks together in rows and then I stitched the rows together.

 

Then the fun part, NOT, basting!  Again, I followed the instructions on the Craftsy video.  I did not enjoy this step.  It took forever and then when I went to pick up the quilt many of my pins had not gone through all three layers.  Ugh!

OK, finally time to quilt.  First, I put my walking foot on my sewing machine.  This really helped to feed all of the layers through.  Plus I like that little arm on the walking foot that helps with your line spacing.  I was a bit scared to just wing it so I started by drawing in lines through the center of my blocks. 

 

I sewed over all of my lines first.

Then I filled in the spaces in between.  As you can see, the spacing isn't perfect but once the quilt was completed it wasn't noticeable.  Also, the quilting took more effort than I expected.  Even with the weight of the quilt supported on the table, I really had to PULL it through my machine. 

 

I trimmed up the extra border of batting and backing fabric to make my quilt nice and square.  Then followed the Craftsy video instructions for making and applying the binding.  The only change that I made from the video was to machine sew the binding to the front and then fold it over and hand stitch it on the back.  I am not the best at hand stitching so I wanted it to be on the back.

Here is a picture of the finished quilt prior to throwing it in the wash.  It looks nice but it isn't all nice and "crinkly" yet.

Here are some shots of what it looks like after washing it.  Now it's all nice and "crinkly" and "squishy".  I didn't prewash my fabric.  I also used good quality quilting cottons, Warm and White cotton batting and Aurifl cotton thread so that it would all shrink up uniformly.

Oh and here is a little peek of the backing fabric.

This is Nama opening it on Mother's Day.  She loved it and wants to hang it up.  I told her that she could if she wanted to but that quilts are pieces of art meant to be used and loved.  Either way, I'm glad that she liked it!

 

Happy Quilting and Happy Mother's Day!

 

Brave Birthday Party!

My girls turned 7 last month and they really wanted to have a Brave birthday party.  I did a search on the internet and tons of ideas came up.  I’ll share some of what we did.

First, the girls “needed” to have some Merida birthday dresses.  I found Brave fabric at Joann’s and this cute Merida applique file at Lynnie Pinnie.  I also learned a great tip for making appliques that saves soooo much time and frustration.  Sew your applique onto a piece of felt first and then cut a small border around your applique and sew it onto your dress, shirt, bag, etc.  This also means there won’t be any of that itchy stitching on the inside either!  Yeah!

I just made them some basic t-shirt dresses but I think they are cute!

The most helpful resource was on Disney Family.  All of the following ideas are from this site.

We made the bear paw cookies as well as fruit skewers to look like arrows.

I cut out and laminated these cute Brave charms and the girls strung beads and these charms to make necklaces.

(Source)

I printed out these activity books to go in the party favor bags.

(Source)

I also used these cute Thank Cards.  I made my own invitations but the ones on the Disney site are cute too.

For decorations I made ruffled streamers and tissue paper pompoms. 

For the ruffled streamers tutorial go to MADE. 

The pompoms are very easy.

You will need tissue paper, floral wire or pipe cleaners, fishing line for hanging, and scissors.

Spread out 8-12 sheets of tissue paper and fold it back and forth accordion style.

Cut the corners off of each end to make them rounded.

Pinch it in the center and twist the floral wire or pipe cleaner around it.

Start to pull the sheets apart one at a time.

Keep pulling and fluffing until it looks just right and hang with fishing line.

For activities, we beaded necklaces, made snow cones, put on temporary Brave tattoos, and colored a giant cardboard castle. 

Then it doesn’t hurt to have a sister who just happens to run school enrichment programs as well as super awesome birthday parties.  She planned a whole scavenger hunt with rhyming clues and everything.  The girls were searching for the lost cake. 

My girls took turns reading the clues and then everyone would run to the next location.  At each location my sister had set up different activities that needed to be completed before reading the next clue. 

Some of the activities were:

Archery

A “Horse” relay race

Keep the wisps in the air and try to get them into the witches house

Learn and dance the jig

Everyone had a really great time!  Thanks auntie!

Then they found the cake and we all had cake and ice cream and opened presents.  All of my cake pictures came out blurry but it was really cute so I hope that you can get an idea of it anyway.  It was just from our local grocery store and they did a great job!  Yes there are two sets of Merida decorations on there.  One for each girl of course!

Happy Birthday Girls!

 

Resources:

http://family.go.com/disney/pkg-disney-character-fun/pkg-disney-brave/
http://www.disneydonnakay.com/2012/06/disney-party-boards-brave.html
http://www.birthdayinabox.com/activity-guides/disney-brave-blue-wisp-hunt-brave-party-game.html
http://kidsparties.about.com/od/birthdaypartythemes/tp/Brave-Party-Ideas.htm

Book Club Treats

I hosted book club at my house last night.  It’s always fun getting together but as of yesterday morning I had no idea what I was going to make.  I also knew that I wanted it to be quick to make but still yummy because I would have to do the grocery shopping and cooking with my two boys in tow.  I ended up googling Book Club Appetizers and a ton of recipes popped up. I decided on some fun fall recipes. 

(Please excuse the picture quality as one of my girlfriends had to remind me last minute that I should take some so I snapped a few real quick with my IPhone.  Recipe credits are at the bottom of this post.)

Here’s what I made:

Pumpkin Pie Bites

2 refrigerated ready-to roll pie crusts

8 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup canned pumpkin
3 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
Pumpkin-shaped cookie cutter

Optional
1/2 cup chocolate morsels
vegetable oil
re-sealable plastic bags

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Use a circle cookie cutter or small glass to cut  shapes for each pie crust.
Press dough shapes into a 24 cup mini muffin tray. Apply egg whites from one egg to the top edges of each pie. (I skipped this step)
Mix cream cheese, sugar, canned pumpkin, remaining 2 eggs, vanilla and pumpkin pie spice together until thoroughly combined.
Spoon mixture into each pumpkin-shaped pie crust.
Bake for 12-15 minutes.
Remove pies to cool.

Makes 24 pies. Keep refrigerated.

To decorate, melt chocolate in a heat-proof bowl in the microwave on medium. Heat in 30 second intervals, stirring in between until melted. Add a little vegetable oil to make the chocolate more fluid. Transfer to a re-sealable plastic bag and cut the corner off. Drizzle or draw jack-o-lantern faces on pies.

 

Cream Cheese Toffee Apple Dip

8oz cream cheese

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup white sugar

2 tsp vanilla (Please not that the original recipe says 2Tbs That is way too much!)

1/2 bag of toffee bits

Whip softened cream cheese until smooth. Mix in sugars, vanilla, and toffee bits.  Chill. Serve up with apple slices.

 

Cranberry and White Chocolate Cookies

This is actually a recipe that I have had for a while.  I love it!  I usually makes these at Christmas because of the white and red.

Makes: 30 Cookies Time: 30 minutes

1 cup all-purpose flour

½ tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. salt

1 cup quick-cooking oats

9 Tbs. soft butter

½ cup soft dark brown sugar

½ cup sugar

1 egg

1 tsp. vanilla extract

½ cup dried cranberries

½ cup roughly chopped pecans

¾ cup white chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350°. Measure flour, baking powder, salt and oats into a bowl. Put butter and sugars into another bowl and beat together until creamy. Then beat in egg and vanilla extract.

2. Beat in the flour mixture, then cranberries, pecans and chocolate chips.

3. Roll tablespoonfuls of dough into balls, then place them on your cookie sheet and squish down with a fork. Bake for 15 minutes until cookies are tinged a pale gold. Remove to cool.

Happy Baking!

Recipe Credits are linked with the names below.

Pumpkin Pie Bites

Cream Cheese Toffee Apple Dip

Cranberry and White Chocolate Cookies