Hydrangea Thank You

With a new baby in the house I'm not sure when I'll have time to do more crafting (let alone sleep or house chores!) but I do have a small stash of cards I completed just before our son was born that I never had time to post. Here is one of them!

The lovely hydrangea stamp is from the SU! set Because I Care. I stamped the bloom once onto the card stock panel, and a second time on a scrap piece of card stock. I then fussy cut five small petals from the scrap card stock, adhered a pearl to each center, and attached them to the main bloom with small bits of foam tape. The purple and green banners have been impressed with the Linen & Canvas impression plate.  I also lightly stamped some text from Text Style in the background.

I love how this one turned out, I hope you do too! Thanks for stopping by!

SUPPLIES
Stamps: Because I Care (SU!), Background Basics: Text Style, Fancy Flourishes (PTI)
Paper: Soft Suede, Very Vanilla, Elegant Eggplant, Old Olive (SU!)
Ink: Soft Suede, Sahara Sand, Old Olive, Perfect Plum, Elegant Eggplant (SU!), Antique Linen Distress Ink (Ranger)
Tools: Double Ended Banner die, Linen & Canvas impression plate (PTI), corner rounder punch
Embellishments: Chantilly Crochet Trim (SU!), adhesive pearls

Introducing. . .

Welcome to the world baby boy!

Baby Shower Thank You Note Set

 
Hello! Today I have a set of note cards to share with you.  I made these to give as thank you notes after one of my own baby showers, and I liked them so much I made some extra sets to share in my shop!

The darling polka dot elephants are from the PTI set Sweet Baby, stamped in Old Olive, Marina Mist and Daffodil Delight ink. Very cute for either a boy or girl. The cards are a smaller format and measure 3.5"h x 5"w.

This may be my last post for a while as I'm getting very close to my due date. In the words of my husband, knowing the baby could arrive at any time is like knowing there will be an earthquake this week, but not knowing the exact day. Brace for impact! :)


SUPPLIES
Stamps: Sweet Baby (PTI), Thank You Kindly (SU!)
Paper: Rustic White (PTI)
Ink: Old Olive, Daffodil Delight, Marina Mist, Basic Gray (SU!)

Bassinet Skirt

As I mentioned in my previous post my husband and I are expecting our first baby soon. There is a wonderful old bassinet that has been in my husband's family for years. Every cousin from his generation and every child of those cousins has slept in it, and each precious baby name is recorded on the underside of the bassinet, making it a very special family heirloom. My in-laws brought the bassinet down to our place a few months ago so that our baby could be the next to use it. Along with the bassinet came a lovely skirt and liner that his grandmother handmade for it years ago for her first grandchild. However, the idea of using this heirloom skirt terrified me. I didn't want to be the one to ruin Grandma W.'s antique bassinet skirt!  So, with no prior experience in this sort of sewing project, I decided to make a new one that could get spit up on or have diaper leaks on and be none the worse for wear. We'll use Grandma W.'s skirt for some keepsake pictures, but then change it out for the one I made which can get ruined in good conscience. 

Like I said, I didn't really know what I was doing when I embarked on this ambitious project. I looked up tutorials online and used the original skirt as a sort of template, and winged it from there. When skill or knowledge gave out, "Enthusiasm!" was the battle cry! This tutorial ended up being the most helpful. I won't attempt to tell you what I did, for fear that people that really know how to sew would cringe at my exploits. But above is a picture of the finished bassinet skirt!

The skirt was made from a pretty tan-colored cotton fabric. The inside liner was made from some ivory quilted fabric that resembled the liner from the original skirt. Oh, and I also made the navy bassinet sheet because the mattress was an odd size. But that is another story.

Getting the rounded corners done correctly was the hardest part for me, again because I didn't exactly know what I was doing. It turned out okay, but it isn't as snugly fitted as I could wish. Ah well.

I had enough of the tan fabric left over to make matching ties for the nursery curtains. They were a relief to make after the dangers the skirt. Hurray for straight lines! :)

Baby Denim Rag Quilt

Do you have lingering projects? The kind that you have the best intentions of doing someday and accumulate the supplies for but never quite get around to doing? Unfortunately I have many of those. One such project is a denim rag quilt which I have been meaning to make for years. Toward that end I have been diligently saving all of my old jeans and the old jeans of family members. I have even moved across the country with this pile of old jeans. Finally, last year, I started cutting down the jeans into squares for the patchwork quilt I intended to make. I had also planned on backing it with a pretty flannel print, but when I started looking at fabric stores it seemed flannel was fairly expensive for the size quilt I wanted to make. Yikes! This was supposed to be a thrifty project from recycled jeans! So again the project got put on hold. Finally, thanks to a suggestion by my sister, I ended up buying a flannel sheet set instead. Much cheaper! So now I had my denim squares cut, and my flannel fabric procured. And that is where things stood for quite awhile. 

Well, something happened to refocus my attention and give me a deadline. My husband and I are expecting our first baby! Nothing prompts a flurry of activity like that kind of deadline. Must finish quilt before baby arrives! It also changed the scope of the project. Rather than the full sized quilt I had originally envisioned, it turned into a baby quilt that our little guy can play on. And at long last it is done!!

Here are all of my squares laid out. I didn't have enough of the dark denim to have a complete checkerboard pattern, so there is a border of the lighter denim all the way around. Each cut square measures 6"x6", but was sewn with a 1/2" seam so that the final square size was 5".  The quilt measures 7 rows x 7 rows, so the finished size is approximately 35"x35". Perfect for baby!

Here it is sewn together. After sewing each row together I clipped the seams to encourage fraying in the wash for the classic rag quilt look. It was easier to clip as I went, rather than clipping the entire quilt at the end.

I sewed a 1/2" seam around the entire border to finish it.

And here is the back side with the cozy flannel. Our baby's nursery is done in navy and white, with red accents, so this ended up matching perfectly! Hurray for a completed project! :)

Hello

I have a simple little "hello" card to share today. The telephone image and sentiment are both from PTI's Heart-2-Heart #5 set. This is another of the cards I made over the holidays.

I used WPlus9's pinking squares die to cut the orange mat for the telephone image. Then, in keeping with the pinked edge theme, I used MFT's pinking edge die to cut the top and bottom of the main white panel. I ran a line of stitching along both pinked edges for added interest. A button threaded with orange baker's twine makes a cute dial for the phone. :)

The inside is fairly simple. More pinked top and bottom edges, and again the repeated "hello" sentiment in the same trio of happy colors. :) 

Thanks for spending part of your day with me!


SUPPLIES
Stamps: Heart-2-Heart #4 (PTI)
Paper: Pacific Point, Pumpkin Pie, Whisper White (SU!)
Ink: Pacific Point, Pumpkin Pie (SU!)
Tools: Pinking Edge die (MFT), Pinking Squares die (WPlus9), sewing machine
Embellishments: Subtles Collection buttons, Pear Pizzaz marker (SU!), baker's twine

Howdy

For this card I played with PTI's fun set On the Farm. I love the country look! To create the foreground I used the checkered stamp on Certainly Celery card stock. Who says grass can't be checkered? :) The horse was die cut from black card stock and adhered to the "grass". The sentiment was also stamped in black for balance. The cute little barn was stamped in Crumb Cake ink. I added two brads to the top right corner and wrapped some twine around the panel. The edges of the panel were distressed and the whole thing popped up on a Crumb Cake card base.

And here is the inside! It matches the front, with more green checks and the barn image.  Thanks for stopping by!


SUPPLIES
Stamps: On the Farm (PTI)
Paper: Crumb Cake, Basic Black, Natural White, Certainly Celery (SU!)
Ink: Crumb Cake, Basic Black, Certainly Celery (SU!), Antique Linen Distress Ink (Ranger)
Tools: On the Farm die (PTI)
Embellishments: hemp twine, brads