My hubby is working with the boy scouts in our area and had a court of honor tonight.  So I made some cookies for him to take.  I was excited when I thought of the gingerbread scout idea.  But I think they look more like Chewbaca from Star Wars than a boy scout.  Either way, they were both yummy :)

Garden's bounty & Summer Nightgown

I've posted in the past about my gardening failures and how I have a brown thumb.  Most of my gardening efforts since my last post have proved to fall far from what I had hoped.  So I guess that most of my gardening efforts can be categorized more in the exercise category because weeding and planting often makes me sweat and occasionally I'm sore the next morning.

So for Christmas my wonderful Mother-in-law got me a special planter that is supposed to be fool proof.  (It is self-watering and called an Earth box.  Check it out if you are as poor a gardener as I am.)  I thought carefully about what I should plant in it, something easy to grow, I went with beans.  Today we finally picked them...

...washed and cut them...

...and ate them for dinner :)

(I was hoping to can them, but we barely had enough to satisfy 4 people.) 

 Another thing I wanted to share today was this nightgown pattern.  

I can't remember if I have ever posted it before.  My girls LOVE this night gown.  They have these matching ones and then I let them both choose a second fabric from my collection and I made them each a second nightgown from the fabric they picked.

I think that what they love the most about them is that they are

1.  Cute
2. Made of breathable cotton fabric
3. The gathered part at the top is an elastic casing so it is supper easy for them to pull the nightgowns on and off.

HERE-are the instructions

HERE-is the arm hole pattern piece

HERE-are the dimensions for the fabric needed

I keep wanting to make some more with the rest of my extra fabric but I have run out of bias tape and need to buy or make some more so that I can donate some dresses to the website.  But when I finally make them you can be sure I'll post about it again.  Also, I am thinking that I should make a sleeve pattern to go with the dress because my girls want to wear these nightgowns as dresses around town, but I'm a stickler on modesty, so I always make them change.  I think I might try to combine this pattern with the flutter sleeve top I just posted about.  If I come up with something that looks good, I'll share it and make a tutorial on it if I can find the time.
-Busy Bri

I had a left over scrap of the border fabric from Amelia's Butterfly quilt and wanted to do something with it.  I have been wanting to try a summer top pattern that I found online, so I figured I'd finally do it.  The Tutorial is HERE and it is by Candace at Sparkle Power.  

 I think it turned out supper cute, My scrap was just a little too short according to her measurements so I used ribbon to make the elastic casings and to cover the raw edge on the hem and sleeves.  I think it made it supper cute.

Butterfly quilt

I saw this quilt on line last year and fell in love with it.  So I got some blue fabric and started collecting my scraps to make the butterflies.  Sadly, I am not so good at piecing together blocks.  They ended up to be all different sizes and there was no way I was going to be able to sew them into the quilt that I wanted.  I was frustrated that I put so much wasted time into it and money for the fabric.

If anyone is better than I am, here is the link.  The pattern is called Frolic'n Butterflies.

But last Month I came up with a solution where I could salvage a bit of what I lost.  Instead of making a pieced block, I could make an un-pieced block and add the butterfly to the top.  I LOVE how they turned out.  So cute and 3 dimensional.  So fun for a baby to pull on and chew.

I started with a pattern for the butterfly that I made myself.  I guess it is sort of shaped like a cloth diaper.  (But much smaller)  I cut out a front and a back, sewed right sides together with a 1/4" seem allowance, leaving a gap at the bottom.

 Then I clipped the curves and corners, turned it right sides out, and pressed into place.
Next I folded the fabric so it looked like wings and basted them by hand.
After that I took the quilt top to the sewing machine and sewed my butterflies onto the white blocks.
Once I made my quilt sandwich I tied the butterflies with brown yarn to look like the body of the butterfly.

If I had more time I would have liked to have put a brown binding around the edge of the quilt, but with a new baby at home I just didn't have time to go out to the fabric store before it was time to give it away.
The blanket found a new home in the arms of one of my friends out here in New England.  She had a baby just about 1 month after my Toby was born and I took the blanket to her when I went to meet her beautiful new baby.  I hope you like it little Amelia!

I'm so proud of myself today. 

Why you ask?  

Because I de-cloged the bathroom sink all by myself.  

Maybe that is not a big deal to some people, but I've never known how to pull that stopper thing out and clear the drain.  So I you tubed it, it was really easy.  If that has been on your to-do list and never gets done because you don't know how to do it, check out this video.

-Bri

Toby's Blanket

I am done with Toby's Baby Quilt!  I know I said this about the last boy quilt I made, but I think this is my favorite quilt ever.  I love how the blocks sort of play tricks with your eyes so it looks like 1/2 the blocks have a red frame and the other 1/2 of the blocks don't.  

I think that it is perfect for a baby who is due to be born between Memorial Day and the 4th of July.  And I think it will go with a wide variety of bedroom themes like: cowboys, military, all American...

He will get lots of use out of it as a play mat while he's little.  (I never keep my floors clean enough for a baby, so I like to have big blankets to sit my babes on to play with toys before they are mobile.)  And then when he is a little older it will be a perfect bedspread for his toddler bed.  

Another thing that I LOVE about the quilt is that it will always remind me of my baby shower.  The ladies at church wanted to give me a baby shower and I told them that I really didn't need a lot of stuff.  So we tried to come up with an idea of how we could still celebrate the baby's arrival, without people bringing me a bunch of gifts that I would have appreciated but honestly didn't need.  So I figured we could have a quilting circle for the shower.  It was great, especially because actually quilting the quilt is my most hated part of making a quilt.

I made sure to bring the binding I was going to use for the edge of the quilt and passed it around with a washable marker and had everyone sign their name on it.  Then when I went home I embroidered over the names so I can always remember who helped me make the quilt.  I even let my daughters sign their names to it and had them help me with a few stitches.

I got the quilt pattern here and found all my plaid fabric for my star squares at the thrift store.  A boy's long sleeve shirt gave me just enough fabric to make about 6-8 squares from each plaid.  I don't know if I'd go any smaller than a size 5T, but the size 6-12's had enough and they were less expensive than the men's shirts.  So I just searched the racks for red or blue plaids that were cheap and felt like strong fabric.

I'd love to make one of these again.  Who's going to give me an excuse to make one?

Bookmark Gift for Teachers

Today is Gwen's Kindergarten teacher's last day of school because she has surgery on Monday.  So we made up a special gift for her.  We made a bookmark for all the reading she will be doing this summer while she recuperates.  On one side I made some lines on the paper to help Gwen write straight and she wrote 

"Thank You for teaching me to read and write.  Love, Gwen"

Then on the other side I had her color a picture and I printed out a photo of her from the computer.  (The one on the right)  I glued the written page and the picture page to a red piece of paper that I cut to be about bookmark size.  I laminated it and punched a hole in the top.  Then ran a ribbon through the hole.  We will give it to her today with a homemade treat :)

While I was putting it together I realized that it was difficult to erase the lines I made without erasing her letters.  So I found THIS bookmark template online.  It had some extra stuff on the top that I didn't like, so I put a white text box over the stuff I didn't like and then copy and pasted the photo of Gwen into the text box.  (The bookmark on the left)  I will print up a bunch of the lined ones for her to give out to her gym teacher, music teacher, art teacher... and we will hand them out on the last day of school.