Christmas stockings for grandkids.

Liam just turned one year on December 14th.

Anastasia was born October 11, 2014.

Cloth Diaper Wet Bag

My fabulous daughter has decided to use cloth diapers.  Rather than using a diaper pail she asked me to make her an extra large wet bag, big enough to fit two days of soiled diapers.  What is a wet bag? Well it's a waterproof zippered bag that gets washed in the laundry.  This tutorial along with several others provide excellent instructions to do-it-yourself.  I used outdoor fabric (100% polyester) for the outside and PUL (polyurethane laminated fabric) for the liner.  Both of these fabrics are waterproof.

Two zippered pouches, a pleaded smaller one for baby clothes

 and a large PUL lined one for soiled diapers.

 The handles have two plastic snaps.

The outdoor patio fabric frays, so all the raw edges were serged.  This was a an easy fun project.  I will be making smaller ones for diaper bags to carry soiled clothes or swimming bags for wet towels.

Dear Readers, have you ever made a wet bag?

Fitted Sheets for Play Pen - Tutorial

Since the arrival of grandchildren, much of my sewing has shifted from quilting to making baby items. I have made insulated baby curtains, receiving blankets, burp clothes, bum wipes, bibs, quilts, fitted crib sheets and recently (yesterday) fitted play pen sheets.  I had a pattern for crib sheets but could not find one for a play pen anywhere.  Hence this tutorial.

Required materials for one fitted sheet:

• 1-1/3 yards of washed, dried and ironed flannel fabric
• two 18 inch pieces of 3/8" elastic
• thread

Tools:

• iron
• sewing machine
• serger (optional)
• two safety pins one small and one large

Directions:

• Fold the fabric in half and then quarters.
• Cut the fabric on the open edges to 23" by 16.5"  if using a sewing machine without a serger cut the fabric (23.5" by 17") half an inch bigger to fold under the raw edge when hemming. 
• Cut out a 3" by 3" square in the raw edge corner.  Unfold the fabric and pin the corners with right sides together.

Stitch all four corners together with 1/2" to 5/8" seam allowance. Serge the seam allowance or zig-zag the seam allowance after stitching it shut.

Knot the corner thread tale. 

Serge the entire raw edge of the sheet.  Or fold the edge over 1/2", iron into place, tuck the raw edge over 1/4" then hem entire sheet.

Mark with a straight pin 8" away from the corner seam on the long sides of the sheet.

 This will be the starting point of the casing for the elastic.

Fold over half an inch and stitch leaving about a 2" opening to insert the elastic.

 

Now comes the fun part.  Pin one end of the elastic with small safety pin and the other end with the large safety pin.

Insert the small pin into the casing and thread it around the short end of the sheet.

Pull the little safety pin out.  Gather the fabric tighter in the middle of the casing and pin the elastic in place at both casing openings with straight pins.  Remove the safety pins, stitch the elastic ends and then stitch the casing ends closed.  Repeat on other end of sheet and its finished.

Standard padded bottom that came with the play pen.

This sheet is big enough for a thicker mattress, which I made for my play pen using 2" of upholstery foam and outdoor waterproof patio fabric.

Dear readers, if you use this tutorial please let me know if it was user friendly.  Happy stitching all.

Wedding Guest Book Quilt - photo tutorial part two "Quilting"

 The quilt back is a 100% polyester velveteen blanket.

With right sides together the blanket was folded in quarters to find the middle.  The centre was marked with safety pins and then white chalk.

With a quilt that is too big for the table, start with the middle section, lay the quilt back out flat and clamp or tape it in place on all four sides of the table.  There is no quilt batting in this quilt.  When using a cotton quilt backing with batting and quilt top, the cotton back is stretched taut before the batting is laid out flat on top of it.

Match the centre back with centre quilt top.

Start in the middle,  smooth out the quilt top to the outside edges so it is laying completely flat and wrinkle free. 

 

Pin baste quilt top to bottom beginning in the middle.  This quilt was pin basted every six inches.

After the entire middle section is pinned, move the quilt forward or backward to smooth out and clamp the next section.  I did the bottom third second then the top section last.

 

Heart shaped leaves were free motion quilted in the 12 inch centre block with white thread.

I used a Schmitz 80 titanium quilting needle.  On the vintage napkin some of the brown fuzz from the backing pulled through the needle holes, this should disappear when the quilt is washed.

The quilt design looks lovely on the backside because the stitches are hidden by the plush.

Two entwined hearts were quilted on all the blank purple squares.

All the free motion quilting was done with a Pfaff Dynamic Spring Motion 6D foot.

I cut out hearts from card stock paper, then traced the hearts on the quilt top with an ink pen.

I quilted a one spiral in the centre of each nine patch.

 Back side.

The six inch text blocks and the pink squares are not quilted. The outside border is heart shaped leaves.

I follow Dara's tutorial to make binding.  Instead of hand stitching the binding back in place, I machine stitch using a 3 stitch zig-zag on the front side.

Gotta love those mitred corners.

   Lily snuck into the photos.  

 Folded

Packed and ready to go home.

This was truly a labour of love.