The Girls are Ready to go Shoppinmg

Today I finished the second coat and hat. Now Adina and Eva's dolls can be warm this winter. Next, I have to make Davey's pajamas and maybe a bathrobe if I have enough time. I also ordered two outfits for him from American Girl. He's a Bitty Baby Twin doll.

Gift Sewing

Adina and Eva asked me to make their dolls winter coats for Christmas and make outfits for Davey, Eva's Bitty Baby Twin doll. So far, I've made one coat and hat and have another coat and hat almost finished. All it needs is the handwork, snaps, buttons, and the lining for the crown of the hat. The pattern is an Indigo Junction pattern for an unlined coat and hat. I added the linings. The coat and hat fit nicely and I will make another doll coat for Emily's doll when she is old enough to play with dolls.

Charity Project Completed

One of the quilting groups that I belong to does a charity project for children each Christmas. For this year's project we were to buy a bed pillow and make two pillowcases, one from Christmas fabric and the other from fabric that a child would like. I bought four pillows and made eight pillowcases this week. Especially thrilling for me was that I got this finished two weeks before the due date and that all of the fabric that I needed for this project came from my stash. I didn't have to buy any fabric or thread, just the pillows. I hope that the children like my choices.

More Dear Jane Blocks

The Dear Jane quilt has taken over all of my free time during the day. I seem to gravitate toward these little blocks. I guess that it's the charm of working with little bits of fabric rather than cutting yardage. I also love the challenge of piecing the blocks. Some of them have more than twenty little pieces. At this moment I'm approaching the one hundred block spot, only sixty-nine more blocks to go. Then its on to the triangles around the perimeter. The triangles also have many pieces per triangle. My hope now is to post more regularly. Happy sewing to all!

Dear Jane

Lately, all I want to do is make blocks for my Dear Jane quilt. I love looking at a block and then trying to figure out how to cut and sew the blocks. For the most part, the blocks aren't too difficult. The pieces are small so they do take care to cut them correctly and sew them correctly, also. These are some of the blocks that I've done recently. So far I have almost seventy blocks sewn.

Faberge Shawl

The pattern for this shawl can be gotten on Ravelry. I followed the directions which were

not too difficult and bought the yarn that was suggested, Madelinetosh Light. After looking for yarn in several places, I bought what I needed at WOOLBEARERS in Mt. Holly, New Jersey. The shawl blocked out to the specified size with really very little stretching. I enjoyed making this shawl and am pleased with the results.

Blocks for a friend

Toni, a classmate from the Dear Jane class at Asilomar bought a Dear Jane quilt

kit on the Internet that was sold because the person who originally bought the kit developed Alzheimer's Disease and couldn't finish it. Toni thought that it would be a nice gesture to finish the quilt and give it to the daughter who sold the kit as a memory of her mother. I brought home four pieces of fabric in order to make two blocks for the quilt. One block is completely finished and the other one I hope to finish tomorrow.

Summer dresses for Adina and Eva

About a month ago Adina called me on the phone and asked me if I would make her two dresses, one with short sleeves and the other sleeveless. When I asked her if she wanted pink, she told me that she wanted bright colors. When a kindergartener asks for something special, who could refuse, certainly not me. Off to JoAnn's I went and purchased two pieces of Tooty Fruity fabric and another piece with white polka dots on a green background that would coordinate with both prints. This fabric is great for Children's clothes because it can go in the washer and dryer and be worn without an iron touching it. Before I even started the two dresses I saw a friend of my daughter's who said that her mother was making t-shirt dresses for her granddaughters. I thought that that was a great idea and purchased two t-shirts, bought more fabric and made two t-shirt dresses, one for Adina and one for Eva. Adina wound up getting three new dresses and Eva got just one but she can also wear the other two dresses when Adina isn't wearing them. Now that the dresses are finished, the dress factory will be closed until the Fall. It is back to my quilts until then.

A week of Dear Jane sewing

I was fortunate to get into Brenda Papadakis' class at Asilomar in California. While there I learned lots of tricks for doing blocks and met some interesting people. Brenda was a wonderful teacher, very patient and knowledgeable. I came home with a few more finished blocks and about six unfinished blocks that I'm slowly working to complete. The new Empty Spools catalog of classes at Asilomar came out last week and I'm already thinking about what class or classes I'd like to take in 2015

. The facility is beautiful and the classes are so inspirational.

Fairies

Several weeks ago I bought Salley Mavor's Felt Wee Folk book and made this fairy. She wasn't difficult to make once I realized how small she is, two and a half inches tall. Since I started making dolls, I've done lots of practice doll faces so that it was fairly easy to paint theses wooden 16 mm beads. I placed several of them on a pipe cleaner to make it easier to hold them, a tip from Salle. Her tunic top was made from a pattern in the book and embroidered with a single strand of floss. The stitches I used were buttonhole and lazy daisy. Her skirt was made from silk flower petals and so were her wings. All this started when Adina saw a display of fairies at the library. This fairy garden was borrowed from a friend of Adina's. Tomorrow I am going with the fairy garden and the Pinkalicios Fairy House book to Adina's kindergarten class for Show and Tell and Storyline. In a few weeks we plan to go to a class at a nearby farm and make our own fairy garden.

Calendar Quilt Blocks

The reindeer block was the first one

that I completed. Yesterday the lower block was finished. Now I'm planning to do the block that will be on the left side of these blocks. The top part of the block is relatively simple with just three evergreen trees. The bottom part of the block will take longer because it has several flowers made up of many petals. My hope is that once all of the blocks are sewn together they will make up a cohesive picture. As you can see from these blocks, I've tried to use the same fabric in more than one block.

pgf

Corduroy Dresses

About a month ago,Erlisa asked me if I could make matching dresses for Eva and Adina to wear to a baby shower that we were all invited to attend. McCall's patterns had just added two adorable patterns, one for a dress and one for a jumper. Needless to say, I bought both of them and made the jumper pattern for Adina and used the dress pattern to make the matching dresses. I followed the dress pattern with a few exceptions. Instead of the flat contrast piece at the hemline, I made a ruffle to coordinate with the ruffle on the bodice. I made ties to pull in the dresses in the back rather than the grosgrain ribbon bows at the sides. The dresses were easy to make and I was pleased with the results. Everyone at the shower thought that the girls looked adorable.

The difficult part was finding corduroy fabrics that coordinated with each other in pink and another color. I finally bought these fabrics at: www.fabric.com.

Meet Emily Ann and Molly

Today I finished the sewing and embroidery on Emily Ann, the large doll, and Molly. The pattern and instructions came from a book by Terese Cato. Believe it or not, all of the fabric came from my stash of fabrics. The circle pattern is one of my favorites and I think that I'll have to try and buy more of it. Making doll shoes was a first for me. It was not difficult. Next time I will do the embellishment on them before they are completely sewn together. That will make the job easier.

Cardinal Block

One of my goals for 2014 is to finish some of my projects. The cardinal block was a class project started at a class at Mare's Bears in November of 2012. The class was part of a five day Baltimore Album workshop. The cardinal block was taught by Emily Martin. She introduced me to off-site applique. That is where you copy the pattern on to Pellon, applique on to that and when you're finished, applique the piece, cardinal, flowers, on to the background fabric. I liked the technique because I thought you had more control when sewing tiny pieces. The bird's legs are embroidered rather than using ultra-suede that Emily gave us.

Doll clothes for Eva's and Adina's new 18" American Girl Dolls

I started making these outfits after

the first week in December and finished sewing the snaps on the nightgown this afternoon. I have done other things in between and even went to stay with the kiddies twice this month. My plan was to make more clothes but I go tired of doing this. The next time I get in the doll clothes mood, I'm going to make bathrobes for the dolls and maybe even winter coats.