Thursday, December 31, 2015

Little Fun Things


Happy New Year!


Winding up the year with a few little projects that I managed to start and finish (!) in 2015.

Layla's quilt

My lovely niece, Molly, had a baby this year.  You might remember the quilts I made for her for her wedding plus a bonus quilt.  Of course, Layla had to have a quilt of her own!  I had ordered a fun charm pack and I found a pattern on the web that I liked a lot, and this was the happy result.  It's modern, not to girly but girly enough, I think.


 The quilting is a simple cross-hatch.  For the back, I used up some charm squares that I ordered by accident (didn't think they'd be baby-themed), framed with a pink princess print.  The squares are different neutral shades, but they didn't exactly "fade" along.  Oh, well.


One of the "baby" prints...


The princess print that I used to size out the back is so cute!


The Toilet Runner

Yes, that's what it is!  My new local quilt shop had a table-runner class, and I thought it would be fun just to get to know the store people and whoever else might show up.  Well, it turned out that I was the only "student" in the class!

I didn't need a table runner (yet), but I had an alternative plan.  My daughter lives in an old house with some "interesting" features, including a cracked-all-over top on the toilet tank.

YUK!
 She's been using old placemats or whatever to cover it up.  Time for a facelift!  I picked out fabrics that coordinated with the tiles in the bath/shower area -- a deep marine blue with goldfish here and here.

The runner was easy -- two pieces of fabric, one narrower than the other.  Sew 'em up, sew across the ends, voila!  The background fabric was a watery blue, almost the exact same as the bath tiles.  The center fabric was orange with pennants. 


But... if the runner was turned around, the pennants suddenly became colorful Christmas trees on mountains!  Fun!

Here's the finished runner.


I stitched down the overlap area with a decorative stitch on my machine...




Ta-da!  The toilet is now actually a nice centerpiece for the bathroom!


Greta's Birth Announcement

One reason that the quilting didn't progress so much this year was that I had other needlework projects going on.  I finally finished the birth announcement cross-stitch for my beautiful granddaughter, Greta, just in time for her first birthday.


And finally...

As the year drew to a close, I found myself behind this car.  Seems like a sign!



Can you see it?  I want to meet this person!


Happy New Year, everyone!