I Spy Quilt

Last week I had dinner with college friends and saw a picture of a baby gift called an 'I Spy' quilt. I had never heard of one, but the number of search results I found online made me wonder why I hadn't. For those of you who don't know, the quilts take their name from the children's guessing game, 'I Spy With My Little Eye'. The quilt fabric is chosen for the pictures that children will be able to find when asked. I decided to make one for my 18-month-old grandson and went through my fabric stash to find suitable fabric. I needed 80 different pictures, so I added some finds from ebay, JoAnn's, and Walmart to what I already had.

I decided to make a four patch quilt where the 4 inch fabric squares are arranged in groups of 4. I spent an inordinate amount of time arranging and rearranging the pieces until I was mostly satisfied with the color and object placement.

To make the squares pop I used yellow sashing and machine pieced the top. I had a new light blue fleece blanket from Ikea that I wanted to use as backing. I wondered if others had had success using fleece and omitting the batting and found lots of discussions about the pros and cons of this combination. The biggest con seemed to be the stretch of the fleece, but I decided to take a chance. After all, I wasn't creating a masterpiece; I just wanted a cuddly blanket that would be fun to play with.

I attached the top to the back by putting right sides together and sewing around three and a half sides, leaving about a 9-inch opening to turn it right side out. I then machine quilted it by stitching in the ditch and was pleased to only experience minor puckering on the back.

I added the phrase "I SPY" in the center row and his name and date in the lower corner.

I hope he has fun spying!

Odds and Ends

These recent cards are quite similar because I love using these soft colors and fun watercolor stamping technique. The floral stamps were inked with Distress inks and markers and then spritzed with water. When the images are stamped on watercolor paper the effect looks like impressionistic painting. The bottom card has seam binding that was inked, sprayed with water, scrunched up, and then dried with a heat gun and used as a shabby chic ribbon over a wider voile ribbon..

Last night when I was adding photos to Pinterest, I found many great ideas that I wanted to try today. The first is a tag that was inked with Concord Grape and Vintage Photo Distress inks. I dry embossed the tag with a collage embossing folder and then I sanded the raised areas to remove the ink. I wish the colors were more intense but it still is useable. I intend to add embellishments later.

I found this next tag online and loved the effect of first stamping an untreated tag with script, heat embossing floral images in random locations, and stamping one or two images using Adirondack archival black ink. I made the larger one first but realized it was too big for the card I was making so had to make a smaller one to fit and ended up making two more.

I hope that these colors aren't too drab for a get well card! The card base is brown kraft card stock. The outside has a collage of dictionary pages and tissue script paper inked with Vintage Photo under the tag, sentiment, and glimmer misted butterfly.

coordinating tag on the the inside

My last project today was to assemble a duplicate of a tag I recently gave to a friend. All four stamps in the Tim Holtz Air Travel set were used and I tied some more dyed seam binding to it.

Victorian Card

Just a quick post to show a birthday card I recently made. I have a friend who loves Victorian style who had birthday coming up. Inspired by the Victorian Easter postcards I used for my Easter cards, the first and easiest thing was to do a Google search for Victorian birthday postcards. I narrowed the image choices down to these two, one for the cover and the other for the inside sentiment, and printed them on cream cardstock.

All that was left was to choose the papers and embellishments to create this Victorian-look card.

inside

Jewelry

In my last post I mentioned the Craig Bachman warehouse sale I went to recently.  I found a few things there that I thought I could use as parts for jewelry.  The gold chain with amber leaves is about 4 feet long and cost about $1.25.  Last year I bought the same chain but in silver with clear leaves.  The wire multi-bangle bracelet from India cost a buck, and I had plans to possibly cut out a few bangles to use in other projects.  The original purpose of the black and clear beads on silver rings ($2.50) is unclear, but I thought I could get 2 or 3 bracelets out of it.

Today I separated a few bangles and took about a 6-inch section of chain to see what I could do.

I cut one of the bangles in half, strung some beads on it, and closed off each end with a loop.

Here I used darker beads on the half bangle. I added some metal charms, keys, etc. to the chain between the amber leaves and used a split ring to attach the chain to one end of the bangle half. I added a lobster claw clasp to the other end of the chain to fasten to the other end of the bangle.

Here's the bracelet I made from the cluster of black and clear beads. It's quite lightweight and sassy!

I have accumulated quite a collection of metal charms and embellishments. A month or so ago Michaels had a clearance on their jewelry clearance items which took 70% off the clearance price (that was a lot of clearances in one sentence!).  Most of the items, which initially cost $4-5,  ended up costing about .50 a package. (When I got home I discovered 5 or 6 items hadn't been discounted correctly, but it wasn't worth the time and gas to go back and complain:) Here's a sample of what I got. It was the one and only time I've ever seen them discount their clearance items; the next time I went back the prices had returned to the regular clearance prices.

I love grungy, rustic looking costume jewelry as evidenced by some other pieces I've made, such as this necklace. I saw a similar one in Holland, MI that had a $65 price tag on it.  I'm sure it was higher quality, but the idea is the same.

Sorry for the blurry photo, but you get the idea.

The photo charm of my husband on the necklace above was made using Tim Holtz acrylic charms. Unfortunately I had printed the photo on a laser jet printer, and it smudged and ran when I added the adhesive. These charms are fun to make.  All you need is a photo, acrylic charm, and Glossy Accents.

When we were cleaning out my mother-in-law's things I kept some of her old costume jewelry to re-purpose. There was an old, grungy charm bracelet that I used as the base for this vintage looking one. Using a Graphic45 sheet of 1920's bathing beauties (some of the same girls I used in my Tags posting), I cut out some faces, glued them to the charm pieces, then attached them and a few other goodies to the grungy charm bracelet. These girls make me smile!

My craft room is now a mess, but I think I'll make some more jewelry before I clean it all up!