Bib Overalls, Coming Up

Have I ever shown you my bibbies?   I love wearing them!   I've been making bib overalls for a few years now, and they are just the most comfortable thing to wear.   No waistband, no tight restrictive feeling when you squat down to garden, lots of pockets to hold.......well, whatever you want to keep on your person.   And the design possibilities are endless.    The pockets can be a different coordinating fabric, and don't even get me started about buttons and other closures!

Well, here, I'll just show you what I mean.....

 I had an entire bolt of this palm tree fabric and was determined to use it rather than buy more fabric (we all know I have enough fabric for the next 10 years!).   I love the bright blue background sky with the greens of the palm fronds against the blue.

 Somewhere in my stash was this brown that worked great for the front hip pockets and then I used a bright blue for the bib pocket.  But first, I inserted a lime green zipper.....just for fun.

The back pockets are also made from the same brown fabric....the green lining didn't exactly match the outside, but you don't see it when the bibbies are on you. 

 These bibbies are  my old favorites.....I think I made these at least 5 years ago.  The cotton is nice and soft from so many washings.   The main fabric has beautiful roses on a soft pink background.  I used a soft pink with red dots on it for the bib pocket, the front hip pockets and the back pockets.   Dark red buttons were the only contrast needed on these bibs.

 These bibs were made just for camping trips.  They're cut off as crops, so, they're cooler to wear. 

And check out the "trailer" print fabric.   When I saw this in the fabric store, well, let's just say it had my name all over it!   The bib pocket is made with the trailer fabric and I added lime green rick-rack at the top.   For these bibbies I used traditional farmer's buckles and rivet  buttons to hold them up.

These bibs were just screaming out for some pink fabric and then I used the same rivet buttons for the side closures.   Lots of top stitching keeps them looking "authentic" and helps them wear after many washings.

So, the next time you wish you had something really comfortable to wear, why not whip up a pair of bib overalls for yourself?

Farmer girl wanna be,
Debbie

The Icing on the Cake

The monster quilt was such a hit with Nate and I had a lot of leftover fabric........so, I decided to make a matching pillowcase to go with the quilt.

And since I had a few more silk triangles already made up, I made sure to put them front and center where he can touch them as much as he would like to.   Don't you just love the little monster hands holding the letters of his name?   Nate looks ready for a nap in this photo....

No time like the present to check out the snuggly quality of the pillowcase,
Grammy

Little Monsters Quilt, Done and Delivered

I know it's been a long while since I posted here.   We had a death in the family, our son joined the U.S. Air Force only to be medically discharged 8 weeks later(much angst involved in that one!), our house sold, our Tin Can Cabin sold and we moved all our belongings to a rental home, my mom took a terrible fall and is still recovering months later from fractures and other issues............and those are just a few of the things we have lived through this last 6 months.  So, I apologize for such a lengthy space in between blogs.

Whew!   But, all is calm now and I'm baaaack.   Here are some pics of the previously much mentioned Monster Quilt, which I somehow got completed despite all our recent craziness.

 I just love the bright colors and all the details in the monsters, the triangle border pieces and the quilting.  The center panel has 12 monsters in amongst the hundreds of varying sized circles.   Surrounding the panel are four different borders and then the large outside border is made up of strips of fabrics sewn together and then cut out as triangles and sewn to a wide white border.   See the small triangles randomly placed around the quilt edges?   More on those in a minute.

 The monsters were so much fun to make.   Choosing fabrics from my stash was a blast as I tried to capture a different personality for each little guy.   Good thing I have lots of stash!

 They all got topstitched in matching threads and their smiles were made using a tight zigzag in black thread.

 Then after the quilt was "sandwiched" with backing and batting, I used "swirly" free motion quilting in between all the circles and monsters.

Here's a close up view of the multiple fabrics required to make up each triangle in the border.   They were blanket stitched down in dark blue thread and then I used white thread to free motion stitch tight swirls in the white relief areas behind the triangles.   Now THAT part took a really long time.  You can see one of the three dimensional triangles I mentioned earlier peeking out of the upper left hand of the photo.

 Jarrad and Dawn, our son and daugher-in-law were really excited to finally see the quilt in its completed state(it's their youngest son, Nate, who is the recipient of the quilt).   Good grief, I've only been talking about finishing this thing for almost a year now!

 This is one of the outer corners with layered circles stitched in spirals to hold the three layers of the quilt together.   A darker bright blue anchors the quilt as the binding around the edges.  And I couldn't believe my luck when I came across this circle fabric in my colors!!!!!    It became the perfect fabric for the back of the quilt.

 Nate likes to fondle soft fabrics to soothe himself as he falls asleep.  So, I used some hand painted silk pieces I had in my stash and created three dimensional triangles and inserted them strategically around the quilt edges.   They are so smooth and soft and he found them right away upon his first inspection of the quilt.  

 

Jarrad had to give the quilt a test run, making certain it was up to standard for Nate before taking it home.  Ha!     I think it passed the test.......

 

 All I can say is that I don't think I have enjoyed making a quilt more than I did this one.   Hats off to the designer, Kellie from Don't Look Now! in Melbourne, Australia for an awesome pattern.   She has quite an imagination, wouldn't you say?

Wait'll you see the quilt I'm going to be working on for myself over the next few months.   It's a real brain teaser.  Until then,
Debbie

Pillowcase of the Month Club

For several years now I've been making pillowcases for our grandbabies to celebrate holidays and special occasions.   And now you can have some, too, by joining the Pillowcase of the Month Club.  Fabrics vary from month to month and if you sign up for the whole year, you will receive a bonus, free birthday pillowcase with your special child's name embroidered on it.  That makes it a baker's dozen!

Here are some samples:

Young Zoe is going to be surprised to see her birthday balloon pillowcase.

Starting at the bottom is St. Patrick's cloverleaves for March, strawberries for June and patriotic stars and stripes for July.

From the bottom to the top we have swimming paraphernalia for August, names of colors spelled out for back to school September, Boo!  for October and acorns for November.

I have so much fun  pulling fabrics for every month and coming up with new ways to celebrate the change of seasons and months.   Our grandbabies can hardly wait to change their pillowcases every month and I think yours will like them too!   If you'd like to join the club, call me @ 727-348-4013 and we'll get you started right away.

Seasonally,
Debbie

Making Progress

Well, the Monster quilt is coming along nicely.  I worked on it for 2 more days and finally the entire quilt top is completed!  Here are some pics that show how the borders were created.

I cut strips of varying widths from all the fabrics left over that were used to make the circles for the center panel.  Then, they were randomly sewed together and the seams pressed all to one side.   I used the template from the instructions to cut triangles.....lots and lots of triangles, from the newly created strip fabric.

The triangles were evenly spaced along the white borders and pinned in place.   Then I stitched them using a blanket stitch on the sewing machine.

Here's a peek at the quilt top with the borders attached.  Whew!  I need to backtrack here for a minute.   Before attaching the wide borders with the triangles, I had to create the narrow borders.  The green one on the left was no problem.   The orange and red one on the right was easy also and just had to have the large blue ric-rac centered onto the red strip.   The short end borders were another story, though.

The top border was a 2" white strip sewn onto a 1" red strip on one side and a 1" orange strip on the other.  Then I had to cut out and apply 20 1" circles on the white strip.

The bottom border consists of 3-1" blue strips sewn with 2-1" strips in between.   Wow, everything about this quilt takes time!   I have to admit, though, that I have really enjoyed making this quilt.   There's something fun about the challenge of a complex quilt that speaks to me.   Now I just have to "sandwich" the quilt with batting and a fabric I found for the backing with, what else, circles all over it!    Quilting it is another matter.  I have absolutely no idea how I'm going to quilt this one.   Wish I had a long arm quilter......sigh......someday, maybe.

Circle crazy,
Debbie

Time to Retire

Just before Christmas, a woman called me and asked if I could have a quilt done by January 4th.  Yikes!   It was Christmas and I had company coming for 10 days.    I told her it would be done and she brought everything over so we could discuss what she wanted the final product to look like.

Here's how everything turned out:

First, here is one of three piles of shirts she brought.

Shirts were first cut and organized into same size piles.

Whew!    Here's the final layout before being sewn together.  36 shirts, jackets and fireman jumpsuits were all incorporated in this quilt.   And, I was also able to add 4 patches and 3 embroideries.

Here is the completed quilt with the fireman border and black binding.   The client cried when she picked up the quilt and she took a pile of my business cards as she left.   The next day after the retirement party, she texted me that her husband was so moved that he cried in front of all his firefighter buddies when she presented the quilt to him........I love what I do for a living!

Very Satisfied,
Debbie

More Monster Quilt

It was months ago when I started to work on a quilt for our youngest grandson.   I got as far as cutting out the monster faces and piecing them together.   But then life got crazy and I had to put the quilt on the back burner.  Well, I have a break from work for clients so I pulled the quilt out again and worked on it last week in earnest.   Here's how far I got....

This quilt has a 39"X60"  center panel that is literally covered with circles.   Tons and tons of circles.   The largest ones I drew out on the back of the fabric and cut out.   But all the circles less than 4" I traced onto Steam A Seam Light II and ironed onto the back of all the fabrics, then cut on the lines to create perfect circles that just needed to be ironed onto the center panel.

I started laying out the medium sized circles after the large monster faces were in place.   Then I filled in with the smaller circles.  Holy cow there were a lot!  I stopped to count them and ended up counting 425!!!  

I thought I would never finish cutting them all out.  

The next job was to iron the ones that had the fusible attached to their back.   That held them in place so I could start the 3 day process of free motion stitching on each and every circle.    Color by color....

Yes, that's a lot of different threads,  isn't it?

Here's a view of the back and the stitching.   After stitching around the larger circles, I cut away the white fabric to eliminate bulk after it's all quilted.

The final step for the inside panel was stitching the mouths of all the monsters.   Now, on to the borders!   Wait'll you see what they're like!   

More to come,
Debbie