Snow and our Christmas tree!

I'll make this short and sweet. Here are two pictures of what we have been enjoying!

Teacher Gift: Tapestry by Fig Tree & Co

The teacher that received this quilt is the reason why I made quilts for all the teachers this year. She has been Lily's teacher and has been wonderful. Lily adores her and has progressed so much during this school year that I will be forever indebted to this dedicated and loving teacher. When Lily, Zoe (who had the same teacher last year!) and I were deciding on what fabric to use we unanimously decided that it would need to be pretty with a touch of 'old world'.

When Anorina had a sale on in her online Fabric Buzz store I purchased some Tapestry charm packs and did a happy dance. I love pre cuts!

I stuck to my 9 squares by 12 squares layout and quilted an allover stipple in a matching reddish thread.

I love the back as well as the front. One strip of pieced charm squares set amongst that beautiful muted red and I almost wanted to keep it for myself!

I am so grateful for teachers that are dedicated, patient, kind and loving.

Teacher Gift: Nancy Drew Quilt

I loved reading Nancy Drew books when I was younger. Zoe did a school assignment on an author of her choice earlier in the year and chose to research Mildred Wirt Benson. Did you know that the Nancy Drew novels were written by various writers, all under the pen name Carolyn Keene? Mildred Wirt Benson wrote most of the early volumes.

Even though Zoe is the Nancy Drew fan (it's so lovely to have books that she can read that I don't have to read first to make sure there is nothing inappropriate in them. Not that I would mind reading Nancy Drew!) I made this quilt for Jed's teacher. I used two and a half charm packs (108 squares to make 9 rows by 12 rows). I am pleased to say that it was well received!

Two simple pieced strips using some charm squares made this quilt back a winner for me.

It was while quilting this darling lap quilt (I'd show you some close up shots of the fabric range 'Get A Clue With Nancy Drew' but I have already accidentally deleted photos trying to format this post on my ipad. Luckily I'm not trying to do anything fancy!) that I discovered that my machine loves cheap cotton (that is by no means any reflection on me!). I usually use Aurifil thread but didn't have any in blue. I didn't want to stop my assembly line, so with nothing to lose I whacked the cheapo thread in and - with great delight - quilted away without any problems.

While here in the US I'm hoping to pick up some Isacord polyester thread that Leah Day recommends.

So, are you a Nancy Drew fan? Zoe and I love the earlier editions with the beautiful illustrations.

Teacher Gift: Transport Quilt

This year I decided to make a quilt for each of  my children's teachers. Call me crazy, but I managed to finish them all a couple of days before we left on our trip to the US. As you can see I was not completely crazy and kept the designs simple. I'm calling this one 'Transport' as it was for a teacher with young boys.

I cut out 5" charm squares - 108 of them - and arranged them randomly. I am pleased to say that all fabrics and batting came from my stash.

I quilted it with large loops all over - one of my favourite quilting patterns!

This quilt has a lot of red fabric in it so you might be thinking that it involved a lot of fabric pre-washing. No. That would take a lot of extra time!  I always wash my finished quilts with a few colour catchers and then throw them in the dryer. It works well for me!

Please ignore any formatting quirks - any posts over the next month will be done on my ipad and it always does something funny!

I love the caravan fabric that is part of the pieced back.

Scrap Vomit or Confetti?

Just a quick one as I steal a few moments away from packing. We leave early tomorrow morning for an overseas adventure, which will hopefully include a white Christmas! So do not be alarmed if you don't hear from me for a while - I'll be too busy throwing snowballs with my family and eating fresh pretzels!

I finished Eli's quilt just in time for his birthday and he loves it. That makes me immensely happy. My heart was filled with joy as I watched him roll around in his new quilt.

I made the top using 2.5" squares from a swap, as well as my own uglies from my scrap bins. You could play 'I Spy' with it for hours! I bound the quilt with a dotty fabric and quilted it with a large stipple. I love this quilt - it is very forgiving when it comes to matching up points. In fact, after about 6 blocks of 49 squares, I didn't really bother too hard to match up the points!

For the back I used 5 fat quarters of gnome fabric, bordered each of them with red and surround it all with a Moda grey (I know, very technical details!).

How cute are all these gnomes?

So, would you call this a scrap vomit quilt or a confetti quilt? Or something else?

Teacher Gift : Edible Pencils

A friend sent me a Pinterest link for some fabulous pencils made out of Rolo chocolates. We both decided to make some to give as teacher gifts. Do you think we could find Rolo chocolates anywhere? The only Rolos in sight were the large family blocks. I'm not complaining about the family size (if they were for me to eat!), but they were the wrong shape for pencils.

So we used these delicious things.

My friend did all the work - she made them first! Zoe actually did all the work for ours - I'm terribly good at supervising!

These are the materials and dimensions that we used for each pencil:

Roll of Rolo or Cadbury chocolate
Hershey's Kiss (we got ours from Red Dot Stores in Australia)
Corrugated cardboard, 13cm (5") x 8cm (3 1/8")
Pink cardboard, 2cm (1") x 8cm (3 1/8")

Pink cardboard circles - 2.5cm (1") in diameter
Silver cardboard, 1cm (0.5") x 10cm (4")

You could also use aluminium foil instead of the silver cardboard.

We used double sided sticky tape to attach everything, but I would actually recommend using hot glue for its strength (everything kept popping off, so we had to put lots and lots of sticky tape on it).

Attach the Hershey's Kiss to the end of the Rolo/Cadbury roll

Sticky tape (regular tape is fine!) the pink rectangle of cardboard to the width end of the corrugated cardboard on the inside (wrong side). This makes the eraser part of the pencil.

Roll the corrugated cardboard (with its 'eraser' extension) around the Rolo/Cadbury roll. Hot glue in place.

Attach the strips of silver cardboard over the join where the corrugated cardboard and 'eraser' meet. Hot glue in place.

Hot glue the circular cardboard on the end.

I think these make the perfect teacher gift!

It's Coming!

Since participating in a scrap vomit confetti swap, Eli has been constantly asking for a quilt to be made for him. I haven't told him yet, but I have secretly been putting one together.

It's nearly done. And just in time too - it's his birthday on Monday!