Am I in heaven??? No... it's Indiana

I'm at a family reunion at my brother's house this weekend and so I've been a little light on sewing and posting. I'm in heaven though because my sister-in-laws sewing/craft room. It's part of their basement and it's wonderful! A great island to spread your fabric out and so much room, I LOVE IT!

My SIL likes to make clothes for my niece so she has a nice stash. I showed her a pillowcase I made for my daughter and she loved it so I made two matching ones for my niece for her room.

They turned out cute! They're flannel. We've got coupons for JoAnn and the girls and I are staying until Tuesday or Wednesday so I'm sure we'll be making a few trips this week and more sewing will be taking place before I come home... I'll keep you posted.

Let me introduce you to my new friend

Have you met my new friend??? I don't know her name just yet but we met a few days ago and already I like her a lot! She's so versatile, easy to work with, nice to talk too! Here's a picture of her.


I was borrowing my mother-in-law's sewing machine and although it was working just fine for me it was a very basic machine with really no extras. My new machine is completely computerized and so much quieter! Before, my husband couldn't hardly hear the TV or music that was on if I was sewing and now it's no problem! Have I mentioned that I LOVE my husband? On my way out the door to pick out a machine he says to me, "Don't go cheap. Get whatever you want and spend some money." What a guy :) I could have gone well over $1,000 but I didn't even go close to that. I think I got a good price for a good machine and I'm happy. I got it from Winston Sewing Center and it comes with free classes that are really just 1:1 tutorials about the machine.

We're all sick at my house but I did manage to make a pillowcase tonight. It's the one in the picture above. It's my first flannel one as we've got some birthdays this fall to give gifts for! Again... I really need to work on the pants... maybe I'll do that next.

I still haven't found the perfect backing...

I can't decide what to back my coin quilt with... I need to go back to where I found the original fabric and see if I can find something I like. I also haven't decided if I'm going to try to make it bigger somehow.... ugh! Decisions, decisions!

I did find the batting that I'd like to use. From what I've read from other bloggers, this is a good one so I figured I'd give it a try.

While at the fabric store, I also picked up fabric to make a pillowcase and pajama combo for a boy who has a birthday this fall. I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out!

I've also been looking for a quilt-along to join. It's where someone puts together the directions for a quilt and has you do so much per day or week and gets you motivated to make progress. Crazymomquilts just finished one and made mention of doing another one soon... I'm hoping so!

A new type of pillowcase

A week or two ago I made an orange pillowcase for Sarah and I wanted to make her matching pajama pants... here's where I'm at so far.
I used this Instructable to make them. I think I need a pattern to make them well enough to be gifts but these will be fine for a first time try. While the directions are written well, I think I'm novice enough that I need more help than they give :)

My sister, her husband and her 3 boys (9, 9 & almost 12) are in town from the West Coast and they drove. They're spending the month of July here in the Mid-West. They brought travel pillows and my sister asked me to make some pillowcases for them. I've been making bed pillows so these slip covers were new for me but they turned out well. My sister, her husband and boys spent all day today at Fan Fest for the All-Star game today in downtown St. Louis. They were there for over 10 hours so to say the least... they're fans of baseball so these pillow cases seemed appropriate.

I just used a plain white pillow case that my sister had for one of the pillows as a template. To show how much of a novice sewer (is that the right word?) I am, I first cut the cream fabric wrong. My dad always says "measure twice, cut once." Where I went wrong is that I measured wrong... twice! So I had to piece it together to get it to work. I made sure it was pieced on the back and not the front. The first one I actually started sewing was the blue one and you're supposed to sew right sides together... yeah, I forgot about that so I spent some time with my seam ripper. Yep! This is all new to me! I'll get the hang of it eventually!

My first projects

I did take a quick sewing class. I only had 3 classes and it was much more social than a learning experience but I did make a top for Sarah. It looks impressive but the instructor told me step by step what to do so it was pretty easy.
I even did a zipper!!!
I made a dress all on my own for Sarah but it was so easy! It's just a piece of fabric from Joann's with the smocking already done. I just measured it around her, sewed a seam up the back and hemmed around the bottom. I added straps so it wouldn't fall down and that was it!


Well, as easy as it was, I still managed to mess up the bottom... I learned how to do a hem at sewing class yet I failed to do it that way on this dress... I'm going to have to redo the hem...

Two other projects I've done are from patterns and tutorials I've found online. One was a little cubby box. I don't think I cut the inside cardboard big enough and I wasn't as precise with my seam allowances as I've learned to be so it's kind of flimsy but it's still cute.

The tutorial came from crazymomquilts.

Then I did this cute bag from a tutorial at Filminthefridge.


It's pretty easy as long as you don't screw up the handles like I did. Eventually I got it worked out and it's a nice bag.

The last thing I've been into making lately are pillowcases. I don't know why but they're so darn CUTE! Here's just one that I've done. It's for one of Sarah's friends for her birthday. My plan is to make her a pair of matching pajama bottoms to go with it.
The tutorial for the pillow cases is over here.

Finally... here's my new quilt that I've started on.
It's called a stacked coin quilt. I found some full and queen sized white sheets at the Salvation Army store by my house the other day for only $2 each and I'll use one of them for the sashing and backing of this quilt.