Handmade3D Munny

This spring my first show will be a Munny vinyl toy show at the Skatepark of Tampa on Feb. 27th. When I signed up for this event I was very excited about creating a munny based on fabric. I had all intentions of having my munny for sale at the show. That is no longer accurate. After I created this munny, she is now my munny.

I knew I wanted to create a munny girl. I wanted to use my signature eyes, which I knew I could probably draw on her. But then I thought my work is known for fabric, so why not make the eyes of the same felt I use on my plush dolls. From there I thought why not make a little dress for her. Then I found this awesome fabric that could be a bandanna. Knowing how small this outfit would be, I first made a practice piece from muslin to get the overall shape and size down.Once I had the template, it was time for fabric! I played with a few options, but found this stripe fabric remnant I had left over from a plush. I thought the stripes worked well for a skirt. On the pieces went and then time for the base. My original idea was for her to stand on a spool of thread holding a needle, which connected to the spool. I played with some spools I had, building a couple up, but it didn't look right. I bought the wooden spool off of etsy and filled it with batting and then the chosen thread color. I added her needle and button earrings.
She doesn't have a name yet, but oh is she crafty!

Paintbox Quilt Along - Blocks Complete!

For my first quilt along, I went at it full throttle! In 10 days I completed 80 blocks! Much faster than I had previously anticipated. I thought it would take much longer to make all the blocks, but I used many many scraps and only had to make one trip to Joann's to buy some extra polka dot fabrics. Making the blocks was a lot of fun, next comes the sashing to complete the quilt top. I found a white on white polka dot fabric! It should go nicely.

Blue and Greens and New Idea!

This week I have been super productive. This morning after finishing some details for work I went back to the sewing table! Here are the next 10 paintbox quilt blocks. A couple of greens and introducing the blues!
As I was sewing these quilt blocks, every once in a while I would have a small scrap piece. I have been keeping scraps from the past year in these cute little baskets I got for a $1 a piece at a Joann's sale. Looking at them today I thought those little scraps would be great to make a 2009 scrap crazy quilt. I have no idea how big it will be and what it's end use will be for, but it sounds like a plan to use them up! As you can see in the picture in the back, a thrift store find for fifty cents, Scraps Happen!

Paintbox Quilt Along progress

After a week full of prep class work, and then week 1 of classes, I decided to take a sewing day!

I, the non quilter, have completed ten more blocks for the quilt along. Continuing with my theme of polka dots, I decided to scale down the craziness down a bit. I will be using the main colors of green, blue, and purple so hopefully all the paint blocks will work together later on. So here are the next ten green blocks!

Paintbox Quilt Along

I received a wonderful Christmas present from my mom this past holiday: Layer Cake, Jelly Roll, and Charm Quilts book. I'm trying to get more into quilting and it looks like a great quilting book. Only problem is, I am a bit strapped at the moment to buy some jelly rolls, layer cakes, and charm packs!

So for the time being I found a Quilt Along to participate in. You can find all the information here, at Oh, Fransson blog. It will be a paintbox quilt along. I have decided to use polka dots prints (my favorite) and solids. By posting this information and my first two blocks here I hope to keep this as a resolution and complete it in a time frame. Along with the host, I plan to give myself 10 weeks to complete it. In my terms, til the end of Winter quarter 2010. I have 80 blocks to make, and hope to quilt it in that time frame as well.

Actually scratch that, I have 78 blocks to make. :)

The Choices Bag

I know this bag isn't all that impressive, but today it was a fabulous project. Let me explain the reasoning behind this bag. I am a computer animation instructor and teach using the computer for my day job. The past few weeks I have been on vacation. Two of those weeks were true vacation away from home, visiting family. This past week I have been in uber-work mode, trying to finish everything for the new quarter next week.

This past week I have had so many ideas of things to make for myself and for my shop. But alas with the new quarter on Monday I have had no time to do so. And I'm still not done with all the work! I'm in the final stages of working on prep work for the students.

This afternoon I came up with some ideas for class projects where the student needs to be given something at random. I thought they could choose the topic from a bag. Before I used simple plastic grocery bags. But today I thought since my eyes were going crazy from the monitor and my hands were itching to play with fabric, I would make one!

This bag was extremely quick and easy, under 30 mins. I followed a simple pattern from Amy Butler's InStitches book. It's the pattern for her recipe card holder, but thought it would work perfectly for my task.

I think it says something when you start implementing craft into your day job!

Time to go back to the paying work.

**Update - 1/14/10**
The choices bag went to work this week and added a lot of confusion to the students. Just what I wanted! Giving out random numbers and random topics for them to research and/or create from worked very well. Students became engaged and participated in classes with each other. Will definitely continue it in future classes!

A Handmade Christmas

Since the holiday has passed, I can now show all of the handmade gifts I gave this year!
The first was a pair of hand towels for my mother-in-law. The embroidery worked pretty well on the towel fabric.

The second is a table topper I made for my grandma. It's so big, she might use it for a lap quilt instead!

The third is a table runner I made for my mom. We all laugh that I continue to say I'm not a quilter, but apparently I'm getting better at it.

The angel wall hanging was for my grandma-in-law. She loves angels and this applique was fun to make. Mom made the base and cut out all the pieces, her favorite part. I did the applique and stitching, my favorite part.

The ruler holder was a gift to me from my mom. Let me rephrase that. Back in February '09 my mom and I went to a sewing expo here in Tampa. She bought the pattern for the ruler holder bag and said she would make it for me for Christmas. I opened the box it was in, and withdrew the pattern! We made the bag together over the few days I was there. The embroidery design is from UrbanThreads.

And last are pictures of my flamingo guest bath. The towels I embroidered with my mom while she was here for Thanksgiving. The wall hanging we made over the Christmas break. I love having time off to just sew! This February my mom is coming back to Tampa for us to go to the sewing expo again. Hopefully will get more projects done at that time!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas as well.