Bright Baby Summer Shirts

This is one of my favorite styles from McCalls (pattern 6781).  So light and comfy, but enough detail to be interesting.  A few tweaks here and there, and I am loving how it turned out.  

By serging the arm holes and turning them under, I was able to omit the sleeves. 

I used one of my old t-shirts to make the front and back yoke.  I have a stash of ruined clothing with interesting prints in my fabric collection and this particular holey, Old Navy t-shirt just worked great with the bold floral cotton.  And I trimmed it out with pom-pom fringe, because everything is better with pom-poms,

Because I used a knit for the yoke, I didn't need to put in the zipper called for in the pattern, and that makes me like it even better!

Scrapalicious Crazy Quilt

Cleaning out my fabric stash this week I decided I have far too many beautiful scraps, that I couldn't want to throw out but didn't want taking up any more real estate in my little laundry/sewing combo room.  A crazy quilt that a friend has been working on for some time and another dear friend who's expecting her third girl, gave me the inspiration to make this lovely.

My first attempt at a quilt like this and it was really gratifying to not worry about a pattern or size or precision and just go at it.

I backed it with a vintage sheet and quilted it with all the lovely decorative stitches that are rarely touched on my machine.

More Embellished Tea Towels

Here are a few more embellished tea towels I did for some friends' birthdays.  

Nothing really fancy, but they did the trick. 

I should have ironed them a little better before I took pictures. 

 One friend's husband makes his own delicious BBQ sauce and, since his name is Dan, they call it Dan-D-Q sauce.  I think this would be kind of funny.

Printable Proclamation Poster

Say that ten times fast!

I was asked to do the crafts for our stake's girls' camp again this year.  It was so much fun.  What could be better than searching Pinterest for ideas and crafting supply shopping sprees at Michaels?  The stake Young Women's President asked that one of the crafts be a framed Proclamation to the World on the Family, so each girl would have a copy.  Wanting to do something with a little more pep than the beige church issued poster, I took highlights from each paragraph and made my own.  

Here's what I came up with and I thought I'd share.  Feel free to save, print and share these posters.  They look best printed as an 8x10 photo.  I only ask that you use these for personal use and not for profit.

If you have trouble saving them, leave me a message with your email address and I'll send you a file directly.

Enjoy!

Becca

Pillow Case Apliques

Personalize an ordinary pillow case with fabric appliqué.  All you need is a supply of fabric scraps,  Wonder Under or some other two sided iron on interfacing type stuff and a zig zag stitch.  Pattern can be made from your own kindergarten style designs or clip art, coloring pages or other graphic. 

 My goal this year is to make one for each of the 15 oldest grandchildren.   So far I have crafted 5, only 10 more to go!

 When I print up a graphic from the computer I print two.  One I cut up into pieces to make the shapes I need for each different layer or piece of fabric.  The other one serves as a reference for how to assemble my fabric pieces.

 I think it is easier to layer smaller pieces over larger ones.  For example, the center of the flowers is layered over the petal piece.  The petal details on the pink flowers are stitched but the flower is a single piece like the yellow one.  Those are not individual petal pieces.  The butterfly wings have a smaller layer over the larger one in contrasting fabrics.  The antennae are simply zigzag stitching.

 These orcas are made up of a single layer of black with smaller white pieces layered over them.