Cuteness times two!!!

Have I mentioned how much fun I'm having sewing girly stuff?

I made these 2 little sun dresses

 with matching hats for Sofie  and Evie.

I used Butterick B5017.

I removed those huge flowers after I took these pictures.

It just felt like over-kill.

Sometimes simpler is better.

Those huge flowers will not go to waste.

I will definitely use them on something in the future!

You may have noticed the cute little guy

in the background.

That's my youngest grandson Gabriel :)

He wanted so badly to be in the picture

to model his new hair cut.

Yes....he really is that stinkin adorable!

A Treasure Found :)

The other day my Mom gave me a bag of embroidery floss

and another little bag filled with cardboard quilt templates

of all shapes and sizes.

My Mom lives in a Senior apartment complex

and she has some truly amazing neighbors!

One woman is 90 years old

and doesn't look

a day over 65

and she goes dancing every week

at the Senior Center!

How cool is that?????

These bags of goodies were given to her by Irene.

She is one of my Mom's friends that had lost her eyesight

 to the point that she could no longer quilt or embroider.

In the bottom of the bag of quilting templates

I found this little hand quilted "treasure".

Probably one of the last works of art

this sweet lady worked on.

I just couldn't leave it sitting in a bag somewhere.

So I decided to make it into a

mug rug for her to use and enjoy :)

I used clear mono filament thread

to stitch along the hand stitched lines.

At the time I didn't know

that this dear lady had lost her sight.

My Mom was so happy to see it like this and said

that Irene will be able to "feel" the pattern :)

And she said that Irene has 2 daughters who will love

to have this piece of their Mom's artwork one day as well.

I love it when God brings a plan together like that!

King Arthur's new throne :)

I love my cat,

but I do not love cat hair on my couch.

So yesterday I finally got around to making

a proper Cat Mat for my kitty.

I bought 5/8 of a yard of blue checkered flannel.

It cost me less than $3.00.

I cut it in half and placed the flannel

with the good sides facing each other.

Then I cut 2 pieces of Warm & Natural batting the same size

and placed them under the 2 layers of flannel.

I sewed all the way around the edges with a 5/8" seam

leaving a 5" opening on one side for turning.

When you turn it right side out

 the batting is now sandwiched

between the layers of flannel.

I slip stitched the opening closed.

I did a 5/8" top stitch all the way around the edge and

machine appliqued a heart that I cut out of red fleece.

The finished size is 20" by 25".

The entire process took about 30 minutes.

Super easy.

It took Arthur all of 5 minutes to check it out.....

and decide that he likes it.....

and take a cat nap on it :)

Mission accomplished :)

Friday Night Sew In #11

So here is my work in progress from this Friday night.

I'm almost finished with this little dress for Evie.

I'm also making one for Sofie and

they will have matching hats....of course :)

And since I had so much fun making

the Hometown mug rug for my Mom,

I decided to make one for my daughter as well.

She recently wrote a lovely blog post

about how much she loves her home,

so that inspired me to make

her mug rug with a little house on it.

I added a fun little Sweetwater label

that says "Home Sweet Hometown" :)

Hope you all had a lovely weekend!

I'm so bad at keeping secrets!

If you read my blog on a regular basis

(yes....all 4 or 5 of you)

you'll remember that when Amy and I attended

a recent quilt show,

we joked about making

matching quilted jackets to wear to the next

Quilt Festival with Regena and Denise.

Clearly....that is NEVER going to happen.

But it got me thinking about

some fun personalized cup cozies for us to have.

I ordered these custom labels from Sweetwater.

This cup cozy pattern is my own.

I was planning on making it a free tutorial

but it's not easy peasy

because there is A LOT of pinning

 to get the rick rack just right.

Maybe I'll post the tutorial without the rick rack

in the very near future.

Would anyone be interested?

I was planning on giving these to the girls as a surprise,

but clearly I can't wait until July.

Sorry ladies....

you'll just have to get them early!!!!

All the fabrics I used are from earlier

lines from Sweetwater.

There's so much buzz about "Hometown" and "Reunion"

by Sweetwater, which I also love!

But the older lines are fantastic too!

Here is some fabrics from "Sunkissed".

I see some really cute sun dresses

for Sofie and Evie in the future!

That gray & pink fabric is mine :)

And these are from "Make Life".

And because I hate to pay full price for anything,

I love that I can find these older fabrics

at around 6 bucks a yard on etsy and ebay.

I loves me a good deal!

The fabric is such wonderful quality

and it just makes me want to sew something fun!

I also love that you can find some great

co-ordinating labels on the Sweetwater etsy shop.

This is starting to sound like a commercial.

I promise I don't get anything from Sweetwater.

Scraptastic Tuesday :)

As you can see,

 I'm still trying to use up every tiny morsel

of my Hometown scraps.

This 6" Dresden was supposed to be

 part of a pillow for my living room,

 but I decided to make a mug rug for my Mom instead.

I love to give random gifties.

It makes me happy :)

Hope you're all having a lovely Valentine's Day!!!

February Blessings :)

I have to admit, that I'm not much of a Valentines' Day girl.

Maybe because my birthday is 5 days before,

and my daughter's birthday is 2 days after.

And did I mention that she was born

on our 3rd wedding anniversary?

So with all that going on,

we have enough love to celebrate!

For some reason this cute fabric called out to me

when I was at Joann's the other day.

I fussy cut it into strips and then did

a sort of log cabin block and made this fun mug rug.

I figure that I always do my best to

"Sew in Love" whenever I am making something crafty :)

So it's not necessarily Valentines

and there are hearts and polka dots....nuf said!

For my birthday this year

I asked my Mom, my daughter and my daughter in law

if they would want to join me and we could all go

to Balboa beach for the day.

We packed our lunches and headed over there.

The weather was fantastic.

One of the very few times it wasn't raining

on my birthday.

Gotta love California.

The boys had such a great time in the sand and water!

And my Mom loves any excuse to hang out

with her 6 great-grandchildren!

Little Miss Sofie is 9 months old already!

And little Miss Evie is 7 1/2 months old!

Makes my Nana heart happy to see the boys

playing so nicely together!

I know these little ladies will be

best friends forever too!

The boys were excited to ride the ferry across

to the other side.

David has made this trip many times,

but for the other boys it was their first time :)

What a perfect way to spend my birthday!

And if that wasn't enough,

this little blog of mine was featured in

the "Best of the Web" post

over at Pocketchange Lifestyle Blog!

How fun is that?

They also have a really cool "tips"

section you can check out HERE