A little bit of quilting

If you read my blog you know that very shortly we will be heading to Norway for some family time, hiking and relaxing (my DH grew in Norway and his family lives there). I haven't started a new quilt since I knew I would be going and didn't want to have a WIP that might turn into a UFO if I lost interest while I was away. Instead I have been working on smaller projects and putting more ideas in my head for when I get home. 

One of the things that I made yesterday was a block for the new Quilting for Kids project on Flickr. This quilt is a boy's I Spy Quilt based on Katie's (swimbikequilt) I Spy 10 Little Things quilt. 

Here is the block that I made ~ very easy peasy!

And while I was rummaging through my stash for boy I Spy fabrics, I found a piece that I thought I could whip up fairly quickly into a small girlie quilt since I needed a project for: FNSI and to meet my personal challenge to sew out of my older stash. Here is what I sewed last night. 

The Sunbonnet Sue cheater fabric was inherited years ago from my mom and was a panel to make a small pillow. Sorry mom, that was never going to happen. The pink with tiny red dots and the muslin was given to me by a friend of a friend whose mother could no longer sew but had a huge inventory of hoarded fabric. Someday I should take a picture of the stack that I received which was only a teeny, tiny bit of the total. But that's for another day.

The purple and green prints are from my stash of 30's fabric. 

I started by cutting out the little panels and framing them with the pink. After putting them together and measuring the length, I figured the width size and then searched my stash to see what I had to coordinate. I sewed the column of Sunbonnet Sue slightly off center and this is how it finished around 11pm before calling it a night. I will probably leave it as a flimsy until I get back from vacation (unless I get antsy to sew something) but I did find a backing fabric from my stash! Not sure what I should do with this quilt. Any ideas for donating it?

Join me here in seeing what others sew this Friday Night. 

Getting ready...

In less than 2 weeks my family and I will be in Norway! We are visiting family and spending 15 days enjoying this beautiful country.  In preparation for our trip, I have made some covers for our passports. 

The fabric is the perfect travel motifs ~ stamps from different countries, passport stamps, and bicycles. The lining is coordinating batiks from my stash.

The passport fits as a book jacket or you could fit it in one side and tuck other travel documents in the other side ~ boarding pass stubs, luggage claim tags, etc.  

Besides bringing baby quilts for our nephews new babies (here and here), I have been making this Young Artist Portfolio for the big sister. 

This pattern is adapted from this tutorial. Her daddy has studied art so I'm hoping that she likes it.

It has plenty of room for a drawing pad, a smaller sketch pad, stickers, markers and pencils. The ruffle detail on the pocket is so cute. I added the elastic holders for the markers. 

But before we leave, we have birthdays to celebrate here. And it is picnic season, so I made these very cute Al Fresco Bowl Covers. 

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They just drape over the bowls of your favorite picnic foods keeping the bugs out. They are weighted at the corners with some bling and they are reversible!

I found these on pinterest and followed the tutorial over at Sew Mama Sew!.

I had the cute watermelon and strawberry fabrics in my stash. Perfect for a summer picnic! I used fusible batting and quilted a simple grid on each. The eyelets at each corner are 2 part eyelets by Dritz (a little hard to find ~ I needed to order on Amazon) and for the bling, I needed to substitute earring fish hooks because I could not find hooks similar to the ones in the tutorial. I just used my long nosed pliers and reshaped them to work. The bling is removable for laundering. 

I have also been keeping up with the BOM with Quilt Story. Only one block a month released the first Monday of the month. Rather than have a particular block to make each month, there is a block technique. You are to incorporate it in your block. The blocks are supposed to be 12" finished but I have decided to make mine half size so my blocks finish at 6". The first block (March) was the nine patch. I decided to keep it simple and do the traditional block. 

The second (April) block was HST.

The third block (May) was hour glass.

and the fourth block (June) was Flying Geese.

I will need to play some catch up for July as I will be away from my sewing room for a while. 

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I also have been playing with Red White and Blue fabrics in anticipation of the upcoming Blog Hop hosted by Jane. Check out the button on my side bar. I will be posting on July 13th just after I get back! It all starts on July 1st!