Happy Easter!

Here is the obligatory Easter egg basket I made this year. I should have made more than one but I didn't. This is it. One egg fits perfectly but 2 will probably end up being crammed in there.


ingredients:
white cardstock: neenah
peach cardstock: bazzill
basket cut file: For Peep's Sake Baskets cut project
eggs and chicken in nest image: For Peep's Sake graphic set (colors altered using photoshop)

See ya later, Google reader

I'm sure everyone has heard the devastating news about Google reader. I actually am devastated, sort of. I use it daily to surf blogs using the next button. I don't like reading blogs IN reader though so a lot of the alternatives aren't working for me. I finally decided to try out bloglovin and it's as close as I can find so far (they have a newer/older button instead of next). Until the last possible minute I'm going to stick with Google reader-all the while I'll be hoping they change their mind about discontinuing it-but if anyone is interested in following my blog in bloglovin here's a link-just click on the little button below (or the big one in my sidebar):

thank you :)

Paper pieced utensils-a test block

Kristy from the Quiet Play blog let me test this cute paper pieced block for her. She has the sweetest retro (and other) paper piecing patterns in her Craftsy store. I had a lot of fun making this, and actually made two, but this one turned out the best. Paper piecing is fun and there are so many cute designs available. I love how it turned out, and I may have to get a few of the companion blocks and make something for my kitchen wall. These fabrics are all from my stash (which is one thing I love about paper piecing-I can use up scraps on them)

A Simple Thanks

These are the cards I made for Christmas thank-yous. I wanted to keep it simple but still kinda nice, know what I mean? So I decided an embossing folder and a cut out shape would be perfect.



ingredients:
cardstock: Bazzill (blue) and Neenah (white)
embossing folder: unknown
"thanks" shape: Silhouette store

Hogs and Kisses

Happy Valentine's Day! These are the treats that my daughter and I made for her dance classmates. Easy peasy this year-I waited until the last minute, as usual, so I needed something quick. These were quick. I just used Jin's idea for bag toppers and this tutorial. This graphic is great to use with Hershey Kisses, and since we are farmers, it couldn't be more perfect!



Ingredients:
Hogs and Kisses Paper Pack
Hogs and Kisses Graphic Set
Neenah white card stock
Clear envelopes trimmed to about 5" long
Silhouette

Happy Birthday, Girlfriend

***I wanted to answer a couple of the questions in the comments. I definitely used a pattern for the pillow. The signature is my actual signature though. I wrote it and scanned it and had a stamp made of it. So for this, I stamped it and then stitched over the stamping. The pillow didn't take long. I probably worked on it for about 5 days but only a couple hours a day. This includes starting it and changing my mind on the colors and starting over. It took me longer to find all of the fabrics I wanted to use. The original pattern was in the July/August 2007 issue of Quiltmaker magazine. They don't sell that issue anymore, but a very helpful commenter left a link to this site which is selling the pattern: Silver Linings Quilting. Thanks, Regina!! And thanks for everyone else's comments too. I appreciate each and every one. :) ***

I have a friend from high school who recently had a birthday. When we were in HS we were close but had a falling out (we laugh about it now). Shortly after HS we made up and became practically inseparable. Now we live 2000 miles apart and thanks to facebook, can keep in touch easily. She recently lost her dog so I decided to make her this cute paper pieced puppy pillow that I saw in a magazine a while back. She has had a rough time of it lately, so I was happy to send her something to lift her spirits. Here's the pillow:



Here is the back. I used this tutorial to put the zipper on it. When you use a full pillow form like I did, the front seems like it looks better with a zipped back and I liked the look of a hidden zipper. The tutorial was very easy to follow.



I decided to embroider my name on the back. I used my usual name stamp to stamp the image, and then just did a simple backstitch to embroider it.



Here is a simple card I made for her. I knew she would probably get it late (although she got it later than I was hoping) so the inside says "oops! It's a hare past your birthday". I didn't think to take a picture of the inside.


ingredients:
Stampin' Up Birthday Banter stamp set
Stampin' Up Cloud embossing folder
Copic Markers
EK Success border punch
Kraft cardstock: Stampin' Up
White cardstock: Neenah Paper
Green Cardstock: Bazzill

Winter runner

This started out as a Christmas runner. But I didn't get it done in time and Christmas has come and gone, so I'm calling it a winter runner. It's not super Christmassy anyway. I used the Emerson Street Table Topper tutorial at the Moda Bake Shop, only I substituted a couple of plain blocks on each long side and I also shortened it some, since my table isn't all that long. Warning-if you ever try this tutorial, there have been corrections made on the blog post that were NOT made on the pdf file. Therefore, mine is also a slightly different width. The fabric is Colorful Christmas from Riley Blake.





Pictured below is the back, which is pieced from the leftovers. The binding is also pieced from leftovers. I did use bias binding, but because of the corner pinwheel blocks I decided to make mitered corners instead of my usual rounded ones. But even with mitering, I think it is so much easier with bias binding.
 

For the label, I decided to use a tutorial from Jaybird Quilts to incorporate my label into the back. It was much easier and since I was already piecing the back anyway, it was not any extra work. I didn't have to worry about remembering to sew the label on while binding or after finishing it. I loved this method. It's hard to see it, but on the picture above, the label is right by the top left corner of the green fabric. Here is a close-up.