Summer Projects

This summer has just whizzed by....I'm a little sad about it, but also excited for this school year.  My girls are both excited about being in 3rd and 5th grade...I cannot believe it!!  This week I am working on some decorated clipboards for teacher gifts and getting the girls' stuff all labeled, organized, and packed up.  One of the items I wanted to make for them this year was a personalized pencil pouch.  I love to paper piece, but these little letters were the smallest I had ever made!  The pattern was created by Diane at from blank pages  and can be found on etsy here.  It is very clear and easy to use, but it still took me 3 hours to do all these letters, ahh!  I love how they turned out though!!

Here are the finished pencil pouches!  I didn't want the other fabric to be so busy it took away from the letters.  The girls LOVED them, I'm sure it's because they had their names plastered across the front :o)

Another fun project I have been working on this summer is another EPP project, pattern by Becca at Bryan House Quilts.  I decided to just use a ton of different fabrics, with the low volume for my neutral fabrics.  This picture isn't stellar quality, thank you iPhone,but you get the general idea.

 I need to start using my "real" camera again, but I still have to dump 1500 pics off my memory card, eep!  Guess I know what I will be working on this fall!

Single Girl Table Runner

So, apparently, I am slightly obsessed with this pattern....just a tad!  I have made 3 quilts and now started a table runner.  Since I paper piece the arcs, shrinking the pattern was super easy!  I took my templates that fit on 11"x17" paper and shrunk it 67% to fit on 8 1/2"x11" paper.  I have had a Vintage Modern layer cake hanging around for a while, so I just sliced off a 3" strip from each fabric and went to town!  i think I am going to use Kona Ash for the background.

Here are my completed rings!  The normal size for the rings is about 20" and these measure about 15" - the perfect size for the space on the top of my piano :o)

Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced

Paper Piecing the Single Girl Quilt

I really, really love the Single Girl quilt pattern by Denyse Schmidt....but oh my word, all those pieces are mind numbing.  I was brave enough to buy the pattern and give it a try last summer, but things did not go well, at all.  My seam allowance was horrible, nothing fit right at all.  I was so bummed!!

So I got it in my head that SURELY I could paper piece this pattern!  And let me tell you....this is the way to go!  I didn't want to rip my hair out at any point while putting it together, and I actually think it takes less time to assemble.

I created my paper piecing pattern using a pencil and tracing paper.  I have a roll of tracing paper I got from the teacher supply store a while ago...and it's awesome for paper piecing.

 You need to keep the solid lines a the beginning and ends of each right, and at the tops and bottoms.  Trace around the solid lines and then the dotted lines.  Line up the dotted lines with the next piece in the ring.  Here I have the second ring, I lining up with J, then J lining up with K.

 At the end of the ring, finish tracing with the solid line at the end.

 Here is ring 2, ready for the paper piecing step!  The only issue I have with this method is that the rings are just a little too big to be able to copy on photocopier...so that means you have to create a template for each ring.  But that's still more accurate than cutting all those pieces by hand!

 If you've never paper pieced before, there are some great tutorials online...one of them here.

 Once all 4 rings are finished and pressed, trim and remove the paper.  You need to remove the paper before attaching to the background fabric.  I just followed the directions in the pattern for putting these blocks together.

 I used pins to remember which number each ring was.

 Here they are!!  Rings 1-4.  You can see the number pins in the middle reminding me what rings were which.

Now for the finished product!!  I can't believe how easy this ended up being compared to cutting each piece out one by one~can you tell that I HATE doing that!!  I can't wait to make an entire quilt using this method.  I didn't have to do any trimming up at the end, either...everything just matched up perfectly!  I hope this helps anyone else who feels the same way I do about the Single Girl!

Linking up at Skip to My Lou--Made by You Mondays!