Quilten' For My Man

Here it is!  The quilt I whipped up for my hubby for Father's Day ;0}

The pattern was Antelope Canyon by Laurie Shifrin.

I happened across a going-out-of-business sale at one of my favorite quilt stores last summer and scored the quilt kit for a fabulous deal.  I have been pulling this kit out of my UFO pile for small snips of time ever since then, cutting, looking for the pattern in our moving boxes since it was accidentally packed from September 2019-February 2020.  Finally found it, did a happy dance, then waited patiently until it's turn finally came.

It is a pretty simple pattern, only 4 log cabin style blocks.  The biggest recommendation I have for this type of quilt is be sure to square up your blocks all along the way.  When I went to quilt this gorgeous thing the inner part of the "cabin" was a little baggy.  That could have been avoided with a little more consistent squaring up.

Ignore my messy desk.  It always looks that way but you are not supposed to see that.  

I managed to finish sewing the top, but was not able to quilt it by Father's Day.  I did, however, quilt it the Monday after Father's Day and hubs came home to his very own quilt...

and then had to be my quilt model so I could show you pictures.

He is so sweet.  How does he put up with me!!!

Isn't he cute!  I sure love that guy.

It is a good thing he is very tall, because the quilt was VERY TALL.  

Actually it was the other way around...

I had to add an additional boarder because I wanted it to go just under his chin and travel all the way to wrap under his manly feet at night.

There it is!  What a rewarding project!

It did take more time than I thought, but could totally be stitched together at a nice weekend quilting retreat with a little pre-cutting.

Be sure to label all the pieces!!!  

I use post-it notes and label each strip and it was still just a little confusing to follow.  

The shop I bought the quilt kit from was Elaine's Quilt shop.  I believe this particular quilt, using these colors and this arrangement of the 4 blocks, was their addition to the pattern.  They are now part of My Sister's Quilts in Sandy, UT.

Typically these days I use minky on the back of any quilt I can possibly afford to, but my hubby wanted a summer quilt just light enough to keep the air conditioning off his skin.  Instead I used a king-sized top sheet that is heavenly soft to keep him comfy at night.

Now hubby is properly dressed in a sharp looking manly quilt

 every night for his travels to dreamland.  He is worth every stitch!

Crushing On Cars

Know a little boy that is totally crushing on the movie Cars???  Really, what boy isn't.  I had a request for a name sign made out of the cars sign.  I worked on it all morning and finally think I have about as close a replica as I personally can possibly do.  Guess what???  I have a copy for you!

This image is available in my dropbox:

Cars Sign .png

Is is a .png file so you can simply drop the image into any digital scrapbook page or picture and it will not have the white block around the outside.  I added the name using the font Magneto Bold found for free on FontZone.  If you do go to download the font, don't fall for the trick I fell for.  The bigger green download button at the top of the page is NOT to download the font, but some dumb program.  After the hastle of uninstalling the said dumb program, I went back and found the much smaller, over to the right orange download button and got the font I was looking for. 

I typed out the name, ran it through a couple filters to make it dimensional, and BAM!  

Brody's own personalized Cars name sign.

I hope you love it!

Which "U" would You?

Just finished a custom order.  My friend Tammy in Texas ordered three of her son's favorite university football teams in vinyl as a surprise for him.  He has a very large wall in his room where she wanted to put all three.  With such a huge space, Tammy wanted them each around 24" tall.  I have to admit I have never done vinyl on this large of a scale.  Luckily, I think it worked!!!

I had to cut them down to three strips of vinyl, 12x24 each to be able to make them on my machine.  Awe!  ASU!  My own sweet Arizona State.  I miss Arizona A LOT right now!!!  So warm.  I miss my friends like I can't even explain.  Go Sun Devils!!! and dirt devils, and dirty little devils, all of them ;0}

And BU.  Tammy, I don't really know what school this is.  My kids keep naming all sorts of schools that I am pretty sure it is not {hee-hee}. 

I also bought a roll of blue vinyl so I could make Eli BYU in mega size.  Since we are career movers {always moving houses, not careers is what I meant} I think I will cut a board to put the vinyl on first, then we can just move it when we move...again...and again.

So here is my question for you...if you had..say, 20 feet of wall space like Tammy does and you were to paste your favorite schools up for the world to see...Which "U" would YOU do???

Yoda Best DAD!

I made the first part of our Father's Day gift to Dad this year!  

We were walking through Walmart and I saw a Yoda pillow on a shelf.  That was when I had the phrase

"Yoda" Best Dad Ever!

pop into my head.  

Being a huge Star Wars fans, we decided a Star Wars movie night would be our gift to him and the perfect gift to accompany my little play on words.  

I worked up a couple printables just in case anyone else wants them.  I plan to put together a popcorn bowl complete with bowl, pop corn, various toppings, and maybe those cute popcorn containers from the dollar store.  I will have pictures of the completed project, but for now, you can download any of the prints HERE with dropbox.

I have these cards sized for 4x6 photos...

and two like this to be printed up on an 8.5x11" piece of cardstock for a folded card.

Hope you like 'em!  I am pretty sure Dad will ;0]

Minecraft Party Printables

Hello!  I whipped up some Minecraft party elements today and wanted to put them out there for anyone else that wanted them.  

Here is a general birthday sign. 

All of these prints are designed to be sent over to your local copy store and printed up as 11x17 prints, but you can totally do them at home as smaller if you wish.

Eli wanted wrappers for his 2-liter soda pop bottles.  We made the above wraps with the new coke bottles in mind.  They have 3" labels instead of covering the whole bottle.

Fizzy Fish Sauce- Sprite

Pumpkin Extract- Orange Fanta

Diamond Elixir- Blue Hawaiian Punch

and below, 

Potato Brew for Root Beer.

I also made some tent cards for the chips. 

Nacho Corn Crisps- Nacho Doritos

Potato Patties- Potato Chips

Cool Ranch Corn Crisps- Cool Ranch Doritos

Carrot Crunchies- Cheetos 

:0)

You can download the files HERE from dropbox!

Have a great day!

Geek Wear ;0)

My little boy is growing up to be quite the geek.  I love him.  

He is just like his father :0)

Eli is head-over-heals in LOvE with Minecraft, a crazy computer game.  In this game {note I am telling you about it like I know anything, pshaw!}  you stumble around this world made up of square things, smashing square things and looking for gems to purchase MORE square things...

Eli decided he NEEDED a Minecraft tie for church.

You see, I am JUST THAT BORED that I thought it would be a good idea to make one.

Here is a picture of an 8-bit tie Eli found on Amazon for Twenty something dollars.  When we were at the fabric store imagining how I was going to make the tie, I envisioned I would just cut out the tie shape, then line it with bias tape and call it good.  When I finally sat down at my sewing machine to make this...Sunday morning just after Eli asked, "Mom, Where is my Minecraft Tie???"  I decided the bias tape was the wrong way to go :0)  Can you say "La-Zee???"

So, I decided to cut out the green shape from a piece of broadcloth.  Remembering a trick I learned at the quilt store in Mesa, I used a glue stick {YES!  I said glue stick...like Elmers that is for sale for $.20 a stick right now} and rubbed it all over the back of the tie, then simply pressed it onto the piece of doubled-over black broadcloth.  I used the same glue stick to stick the two pieces of black together so they would not slip while I sewed, and zig-zagged a narrow stitch to permanently attach the green to the black.

Once that was done I zig-zagged around the black part, following the green about 1/2" out from the green.  Finally, I cut the black away, careful not to cut into my zigzag stitch.  I ran some FrayCheck along the edge to make double sure there would be no messy edges.  

At this point I stopped, pulled up the tie picture, and noticed that it had a design.  That was when I decided to do theTriple, double-stitched {to make it darker} stripes down the tie.

Cute!

Eli will probably shoot me if he sees this picture on here, but it shows just how proud he is of his tie!  He actually wears it EVERYWHERE!  He wore it to school yesterday and even put it on when we took some Back-To-School pictures last night.  Silly boy!  I am glad he liked his Geek Wear :0D

Sorry Excuse for Some Star Wars Guys!

I am embarrassed to even post these, but I also made these Star Wars Cake Pops for Madison's fundraiser too.  They took me all day long to make the three plates of characters and barely resemble them.  I figure if I can do nothing but let you know you really don't want to try this, then my post was not a waste of time :0)

Here is my R2D2.  I ended up painting on melted chocolate with a paint brush.  Looks lovely, doesn't it.

Vader.  I shaped the Oreo Cake ball into the shape it needed to be, then piped chocolate on to make the ridge in the hat and the eyes and mouth pieces before dipping.  I think I needed to pipe a double layer for those marks to show up better after the pop was dipped in the black chocolate.

Princess Leia  

Dipped the ball into flesh colored almond bark, then stuck two Cheerios, stacked up, in the wet chocolate for each bun.  When that was set I dipped her hair with chocolate almond bark.

Luke

Storm Trooper.  Shaped him a lot like Darth Vader, then dipped in white almond bark and painted on the black.  I had purchased a cake pen to write on the black accents, but it didn't work at all with the waxy surface of the chocolate.  Keep that in mind if you ever consider the torture of making these pops ;0}

C3PO

Again, piped the ridge around his face and the eyes in chocolate on the cake pop before dipping.  Would do a double layer for this guy too if there happens to be a next time.  I used a tan color of almond bark, then brushed on gold pearl glaze for the bronzy look.

Yoda, how I hate to make you :0)  I found a package of lovely spring green candy melts at the cake store that was just about perfect.  I filled a cup and threw in three dark green melts to make it just a bit darker.  I am not sure what to say about him.  He just went bad very quickly :0}  

I guess the consolation is that all three plates sold and were competitively bid on!  So that is good.  I also know that they taste heavenly!!!  Remember, Beauty (or ugliness) is only Skin Deep!

ToolBox Tuesday: Clip-On Tie Hardware

Many months ago...OK, almost a year ago I called up my most favorite ribbon supplier, TheRibbonRetreat of Shelly, Idaho, and asked them if they had any way to order clip-on tie hardware.  They had just recently added clip-on bow tie hardware to their available products and I was really hoping they would be the missing link in the search for clip-on tie clips.

It turns out, THEY WERE the missing link!  Yeah for The Ribbon Retreat!!!

They were super sweet and incredibly patient with me through the entire search.

You can order the clips HERE for only $.95!!!

The Ribbon Retreat is also very reasonable about shipping, not to mention super fast to get your order out the door.  Most times I order from them, the items arrive the same week :0)

It makes me happy just thinking about them. 

So, this is the side that faces out.  

This is the side where all the magic happens.

That post {that doesn't show up well, so I surrounded it with arrows} is the pivotal piece of the whole operation.  Let me show you how it works.

We will be working on a toddler tie today.  Originally when I wanted to make holiday ties a few years back I purchased THIS pattern from YouCanMakeThis.com.  I love that site also.  All the patterns have tons of pictures and are totally downloadable so you don't have to go anywhere to pick them up and you don't have to wait days for them to come in the mail.  

So here is the low-down.  The difference in size between regular tied ties and clip on ties is one size.  That means that if you have a baby tie {tie-on style} it will be the perfect size for a Toddler clip-on tie.  If you have a Toddler tie {again, tie-on style}, it will be perfect for a Children's size.  Children's to Teen, Teen to Adult.  Get the picture?  You can certainly purchase that pattern like I did, or find a free tutorial online.  Or, dare I suggest, go to Goodwill and buy a used tie.  Cut it down to size and grab your clip.  

So, as you can see in the picture above, our infant tie was 18" long.

If we were to find the center of that tie, it would be 9" in from either end of the tie.  Because we want the two ends to be offset, like in the picture below, we need to add one more inch to the front half of the tie.  That means, we need to measure up from the fatter front of the tie to the half-way mark, and then go one more inch.  For larger ties, like for your 12 yr. old, I would probably add 2-3 inches.  

I placed the exact spot, again,10" up on my infant tie, right smack in the center of the front side of the tie clip.  

From here on out we will be calling the spot under my thumb, even though not the exact center point, the middle of the tie.  I need to tell you that so you can understand the instructions later on.

Holding that point, the middle of the tie, on the clip, the front of my tie {fat part} is to the left, the back half of the tie is going to fold under the clip.

I turned the clip backwards to show you what it looks like on the other side.  The corner comes right by the post on the clip.

Take a seam ripper and poked a hole in the fabric, about 1/4" over from the edge of the tie, right in line with the post on the clip.  After we have a small hole poked,  grab sewing scissors and snip that hole just a little bigger on both sides so the fabric will fit right over the post.

There is our little hole, not bigger than 1/4".

It ends up a little hard to see, but there is the white post poking through.

Now that you have that post holding your fabric in place, continue the tail of the tie over the top.

It will look like this.  I show you this just so you can imagine where that back half of the tie needs to go.  You actually need it flopped over the top of the clip, just like it is, but it needs to be under the middle of the tie.   

To make that happen, hold your finger over the fabric on the post, then let go of the middle of the tie.  Once the back end is pulled neatly over the top of the clip...

pick up that middle of the tie portion and pull it in front of the tie end, covering the front of the tie clip again..

Now is the tricky part :0)  Nope, all that wasn't tricky {snicker, snicker}

We now have to get the fat, or front end of the tie under that middle part too.

Pull the front end under the clip, and then pull it up behind the clip.

If you were to turn it over it would look like this.

Mark and poke a hole in this tail just like you did the first.  Go ahead and put the tie down, pick up your scissors, and snip that hole bigger so it will fit on the post too.

Now we need to get "This" under "Here".  You can try to tuck it under the middle of the tie, but I didn't have much luck with that.  Here is what I suggest...

Take the hole you just made off the post, pull the front piece of tie straight out to the side.

Fold it up over the tie like it is supposed to go, but at the last minute, 

tuck it under it's self.  In the picture above, I have the front tie strip folded under and you can see the white arm of the tie clip standing there waiting to be covered.  

From the front it looks a little crazy, but with a little working of the fabric, you will see the miracle in a few more moments, I promise!

Now, after you folded that tie strand under it's self, you will be left with a little loopy area.  That is where you need to tuck the tie clip arm. 

I hope you are not totally lost by this point.  

It looks like a tie, but still a little wonky.  It will get there.  Keep going!

Now that everything is tucked in, I can see my little hole I made. 

Work that fabric over again and again until you are able to work the hole over to the post.

Be sure and turn your tie over occasionally to make sure the tails are lying nicely from the front side.

We did it!  We got the hole back on the post!  Yay!!!!!

Oh, I am so proud of us :0)

Now grab one of those little grommets and shove it on the post.  I use my needle nose plyers to push it down.  That will hold the fabric onto the clip.  Now, if somewhere along the way you accidentally ripped your fabric or something came loose, a tiny bit of FabriTac glue or good old needle and thread to patch things up.  

There you go!  Cute little clip on tie.  

The first one always looks a little goofy, but the more you make the better they will look!

I make these as baby gifts for all the ladies at church.  Now that I have the clip-on hardware I can make ties that are both cute AND easy to put on a squirmy little guy.

Emmalee likes them too :0)  

{do you like how I cropped out her eyes.  They were all weird and blinky and I was too lazy to get the picture again}

What a nice mom!


Here are some of the fabrics I found at SAS Fabric in Phoenix to use for new ties.  Love it!!!   I like a little fatter tie.  Somewhere down the road I will show you my new and improved tie pattern I made myself.

Until then, you can find these tie clips at The Ribbon Retreat.com.