Applique Monkey Quilt

This is my first attempt at making a quilt, granted it is only an appliqued quilt which in my mind is much easier than what I think of as a more traditional quilt made by sewing little pieces of fabric together but I did quilt it which was huge for me. Stippling/quilting (not sure what the proper terminology is) is one of the things that I think makes a quilt a quilt and while my stippling was not perfect and definitely needs work, it was fun to do and it made me want to do more and improve.

For the monkey I free handed a drawing of a monkey hanging  from a tree branch and then cut  the drawing up into pieces for a pattern. I like the over all design of the quilt but looking at it now that it is finished, I wish I would have made the tree branch span across the entire quilt because as it is now, it just looks like the tree branch is floating in mid air which is a little weird.

The backing of the quilt is very cute, it is a bunch of little monkeys in different positions, with the words little monkey repeating. For the quilt top, I used a soft yellow with little white polka dots which are hard to see in the picture. It is all bound with a yellow and white striped fabric.

I am quite please with the quilt and it gave me the confidence I need to try my hand at a "real" quilt. I am thinking it will be a stacked coin quilt for my daughter. Wish me luck, especially since it will be a twin size quilt (this monkey quilt is a crib size) and I am going to try to quilt it myself.

Sailor Pants with a Cherry on Top

Spring has finally arrived here in Oregon, we hit 70 degrees today and I am so happy to feel the warmth from the sun again. One thing that the warm weather made perfectly clear is that my daughter has grown a lot since last summer and is in dire need of spring/summer clothes. Being the frugal mama that I am, I decided to make her a few things using up some of my fabric stash.

Note to self: remember to iron before taking pictures to share with the world

First up was a pair of sailor pants that I absolutely love!  I used a wonderful tutorial that I found over at Me Sew Crazy to make these sailor pants. The tutorial is really great and very easy to follow, I'm thinking I may use this method to make a pair for myself. Don't tell anyone but I used a sheet that I picked up dirt cheap at Target a few months ago to make these pants. Actually do tell someone, sheets are a great frugal tip when it comes to sewing, I use them all the time. I just make sure to buy 400 thread count or higher so that the clothes I make with them aren't scratchy. Target quite often has them on sale for 4 or 5 dollars for a flat twin sheet and you get a lot of fabric for that price. With this sheet alone, I have made myself a bathing suit cover-up, these sailor pants and I have enough left to make a dress for my daughter, I will post that when I get it done.

For the shirt, I used an existing plain white t-shirt in my daughter's closet that had a stain on the front. I cut out a rectangle of cute cherry fabric that I had left over from a skirt I made her a few years ago and appliqued on a couple of large cherries, that I free hand cut out of scraps. I then took the entire rectangle and appliqued it right over the stains on the t-shirt, good as new and pretty darn cute. The only complaint I have is, I wish I had remembered to back the shirt with a little bit of stabilizer because as I was sewing the applique onto the t-shirt, the fabric of the t-shirt pulled quite a bit and caused it to pucker quite a bit. Oh well lesson learned, at least I didn't learn this lesson on a new shirt.