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!