Dining Room Decorating

I love the farmhouse rustic style that is very popular right now, especially if you live in the country! Last Christmas, my present from the husband was a farmhouse table and I love its old charm. Almost any table runner looks great on it especially vintage inspired ones. We recently bought a hutch that was finished to match our dining table because I needed a space to hide all of my daughters' schoolwork because we homeschool and the dining room is also our schoolroom! I had these plastic totes laying out full of schoolwork that were somewhat functional but ugly and out of place. Here is a picture of the new hutch!

I originally had a wall of pictures from my husbands and I's travels but had to remove some to put the new hutch in and the pictures that were left didn't quiet match the look of the dining room anymore so I took them down and put them elsewhere. (Here is what it looked like at first...)

To fill some of the empty space I used a rustic wood frame from that I found for a few bucks at an antique store, that originally had a paper picture in it that wasn't very pretty, and replaced that with a quilted table topper I made to fit the frame. I used the scrappy strawberry block from Lori Holt's Farm Girl Vintage book and filled in the rest of the space with a cream fabric. I free motioned quilted vines on the strawberry topper to go with the strawberry motif. 

I love the strawberry, although I originally thought of making an apple block or a barn block for this frame, but the strawberry worked great. 

Here is what the dining room looks like now. 

Happy Fall Ya'll! Pumpkins and apples galore!

Fall Table Runner

SO, I finally bought not so long ago The Farm Girl Vintage quilt book by Lori Holt and I love it!! So many fun projects and quilts in it. I made a fall table runner for my dining room table using the maple leaf block and the pumpkin block from her book.

These blocks are so much fun to make let me tell you! You can search on Instagram for hours with these block names as hashtags and find the coolest pictures! It is so neat to see how many different outcomes this quilt can look like with all of the different fabric choices. It really is awesome! 

 Here is one small 6 inch maple leaf block. I combined four together with one inch sashing to make one block. I did this again so i would have matching ends on my runner and then decided to put a pumpkin in the middle because i wanted all the fall colors in my runner.

 It is 3 12" blocks put in a row with sashing in between and on the outside, 1.5 inch sashing in ivory and then a 2.5 inch outside border around the entire runner.

I love quilting runners and table toppers because they are so easy to quilt on my home machine. I free motion some pumpkins and pumpkin patch vines to make it even more fall themed. I love the way it all went together! 

Here is close up of the quilting, not perfect but you get the gist. Pumpkin-y fun! Vines are pretty easy when doing free motion and pretty fun to just swirl around wherever you please. 

This is the finished project minus binding!  I love the way it turned out. I ended up outlining the pumpkin and leaves and did not free motion on them, except for a few pumpkin lines on the pumpkin. I binded the runner with the white/ivory fabric. 

This is the only picture i have of it with the binding. My daughters are devouring some pizza in this picture, but that is where the runner stays until it is christmas time and the christmas runner will take its place!

(A picture from Christmas last year.) 

These are currently my only two main runners for now but maybe i will have one for all the holidays as the years go on! 

The runner was simple! I hope you are inspired to make one! They are fun!

~Jaclyn 

Somerset Log Cabin Quilt Top Completed!

I have not posted on the blog in awhile so I thought I would take the time to make a quick post to show the completed log cabin quilt top using the Somerset Jelly Roll and Ivory Fabric. I love Fig Tree Fabrics and this quilt came out beautiful! I think with the right quilting it could be a very unique quilt, especially if colored thread (maybe red or orange!) was used in a neat design on the ivory fabric! Im not sure if i will quilt it myself or get it professionally done. Queen quilts are a lot of work on a small home machine!

This is a picture of it without a border. I decided on an orange border.

I used the same orange poppy fabric from the Somerset line of fabric that is on this Mama Hen Block for my border. (I am currently working on farm girl vintage quilts by Lori Holt! Really fun projects in her book!) 

Its hard to take a picture around here without two little girls or a cat or dog in them and keeping animals off my projects is a near impossible task.

But in the end i decided to make all the blocks face the same way and I like the way it turned out. It will be a lovely quilt to have on my bed when it is quilted one day!

Hope everybody is having a happy Friday!! God Bless!!

~Jaclyn

Somerset Ivory Log Cabin Quilt Progress

So I bought a Somerset Jelly Roll by Fig Tree and Co. for Moda quite sometime ago and have been slowly working on these blocks. Using red centers and 2.5 inch white ivory fabric on one side and the 2.5 somerset strips on the other side. I have about 18 blocks done. If I make 2 more i should be done! With a border it will make a good side quilt, full/queen most likely.

4 in each row and then make 5 rows will make a good size quilt. Just have to decide how i want my layout! Thats the hard and fun part. Its still a work in progress just wanted to show it so far. Love fig tree fabrics! I like having neutral furniture with the bedding/pillows as the pop of color and with all those red, greens, and oranges you can't go wrong! The colors are gorgeous and beautiful enough to brighten any room. 

That's all for now. I'll show more when there is more to show!

Dresden Plate Placemats

Newest project that I have just completed are placemats that match my current table runner made from a lovely fabric line by 3 sisters for Moda called Vin du Jour. It's an older line not in print anymore far as I know but I found it at a quilting shop in fat eighths and was very excited!! (It was one of my birthday presents, a girl can't have too much fabric!)

(That puppy of mine seems to always sneak into the pictures!)

Here I was cutting out the templates. Pick 3 fabrics and cut 3 dresden points of each. There are templates you can buy or make one yourself out of cardboard. This one is roughly 3.5 inch sides, by 1.5 inch points.

After all the cutting is done you get to sew them all together to make the plate and then you can either hand whip stitch them onto a backing fabric or you could fold and iron the outside edges under and machine stitch around them onto a backing as well. Basting spray would be good for this as well. I ended up hand sewing them but basting spray may have saved me tons of time. I just don't have any handy and haven't worked with it very much. You can choose the size of your place mat. I ended up with placemats around 11x12 or 11x13 inches but started with a fat quarter. I pin basted the dresden plates to a backing and free motioned flowers and vines and leaves around them. Then made my own 2.5 inch binding from the remaining fabric from the fat quarter so it would match each placemat exactly. It took me about 3 days to make 6 because of all the hand sewing I

did. This could be quicker with some basting spray, I'm sure of it!

 Binding in progress....

 I used different colored fat quarters, so none of them matched exactly but I like the eclectic way it comes together, it personalizes them in a way.

Glad the project is done!

Still have plenty of Vin Du Jour fabric so I saw a Fat Quarter Shop tutorial on the Fat Eight Frenzy and decided to make a lap quilt using this pattern. Fat Eighth Frenzy Pattern

The great thing about this pattern is you get two quilts for the price of one. Have only made the first one but the triangles are waiting for me to make the next one. 

I like the way it turned out. Just needs to be quilted and will be an excellent quilt to snuggle up with on the couch watching a movie! :) Thanks for reading! Have a great day quilting away. 

New Projects for the New Home

Here is the dining room. I am currently turning it into a gallery of sorts. The wall on the right you can't see has family photos filling it in a gallery type of way and the wall to the left is going to have small photos (framed) filling that wall from all our travels. Lots of Italy and Ireland photos to hang up! We still have not decided on a light fixture yet. Right now all in the house are just boring builder grade and the dining room has 3 holes to put lights in and two were flourescents we took down because I hate that kind of lighting. So they are still waiting patiently for us to decide what to do, but we did order white plantation shutters for the dining room from blinds.com. Wont come in until end of next month. Will be excited to have those! For my bedroom I wanted it to have a cozy feeling and we currently have no pictures hung in there so I decided to make quilt blocks that I could frame and hang. I bought a mini charm pack of Atelier by 3 Sisters from Missouri Star Quilt Co. and made this one block so far...

The bear paw block! Love the fabric and the traditional block. Im thinking of using the remaining fabric squares to make a few leaves as the other block to frame. Haven't decided yet.

Took a trip to Homegoods today to buy a step stool for my daughters to use in the bathroom to wash there little hands and brush their teeth. I found a collapsible one that i can put away when not in use which was perfect. I also saw this couch pillow and loved it so i snagged it. If you see something you like there you better get it because it may not be there the next day. Well my couch pillows didn't match it at all... (you can see the blue pillow in the corner.) So I decided to make my own pillows. Super easy project with a charm pack! 

So one pillow took 16 5inch charm squares. I laid it out the way I liked then sewed each row, then sewed all the rows together. After that I took a solid fat quarter, (thanks to my mother i have a whole stash of solid quarters, was an awesome birthday present) and I sewed right sides together, pillow front I just made to the fat quarter (long side going up and down) and sewed 3 sides together, leaving the bottom open. Then you stick in your pillow form, (or in my case old couch pillow) and you will stitch the bottom shut by hand (which I still need to do.) You can use the same stitch you do when hand binding a quilt. If you are really crafty you could sew a zipper onto the bottom for a washable cover but I didn't go through all that trouble. 

I will have to make more of these!! So quick and easy! Fast projects are the best. By the way, the fabric is called Persimmon by Basic Grey for Moda. I love Moda!

Log Cabin Quilt Complete

Yay! This curved log cabin quilt I've been working on for months is finally complete! Such satisfaction when I see a project I've been working on for so long in its final form. I love the way the Eclectic Elements fabric came together. From far away the curved log cabin looks very digital.

I'm not sure if you can see the free motion quilting that is on the black part. It's loops of a sort, I recently discovered some awesome stencils from Jo-Ann's Fabric, this is my first time using them on a quilt. If I free motion I always just practice my shape and go for it, but that doesn't always work out. My freehand drawing isn't so good, especially for certain shapes and I love that I could just stencil these on with a chalk pencil and just follow that. Came out great that way. 

Here's a picture of the backing. Music notes were all over the place which made piecing the backing super easy. Can't even tell where it was put together. Love that. (Notice my babies enjoying the quilt and giving it some cuddles and love before its boxed up for it to make its way to a wedding in June. Finished in plenty of time to say phew...)

I straight line stitched the border for effect and practicality and used black thread on the pink fabric and used pink thread on the black parts to coordinate it all. 

I also finished a small crib quilt for my soon to be niece that is due in August for my brother-in-law. So glad both gifts are done. Means I can work on my million other projects in mind.. always thinking...

My favorite thing to free motion is swirls because i love the end result and its one of the few designs I'm fairly good at, (compared to other shapes I've tried!) I have a pastel jelly roll so i paired that with a pretty floral charm pack I had and then this window type quilt was born! Very girly for the new soon-to-be niece! Thanks for stopping by! More projects to post soon....

Finally moved!

The hubs and I are officially homeowners and have officially moved! Great to have the majority of everything done and set up, just have a plethora of pictures to figure out where to hang and fix up the windows with blinds or shutters eventually. I really want plantation shutters for my kitchen and living room and wood or faux wood blinds for the rest. They are costly tho! It will take some time. Tension rods and curtains are making due for the moment.. But I'm happy to say my kitchen is finished and with the new counter tops looks much more modern! (That said, the only flooring in our new home we didn't update was the kitchen tile, which isn't my favorite but is staying for now. I will lay down lovely rugs for now..)

 

I love one compartment sinks and how big and modern they look! Love the way my kitchen turned out! We also have a gas stove and I love it too. Cooks food efficiently and quickly!

We picked this single mount faucet by Moen that pulls down and matches the rest of the stainless steel appliances in our kitchen. 

Here's a picture we took after the hubs put in some under cabinet led lighting we got from Ikea! My Mother's Day present was a weekend in Orlando to do some shopping, primarily at Ikea. Our house is smaller than our rental was so we needed some storage solutions and Ikea has so many! 

Got this Hemnes 8-drawer dresser from Ikea too which I love! I needed a dresser badly and couldn't find any at thrift shops for the right price or that I loved that I could fix up with some lovely chalk paint by Annie Sloan. So this dresser fit the bill and is perfect for our space. The tv is now right on top. Would have liked a mirror on the wall but space is limited and you do what you got to do. Small spaces can be a challenge but I love our little home and the fact that we were forced to downsize on furniture and everything else. It is freeing in a way to diminish the junk that one accumulates over time just naturally even. I had a bag of quilting scraps that had sat in my closet for a couple years unused that had grown to be the size of a big trash bag, finally got rid of it and I now know exactly what I have and feel much more organized. Let go of the old! It frees up space and clutter and excess which can be great to do now and again, minimizing can feel wonderful! So.. go spring clean, give away (one mans junk is another mans treasure), or throw out the unused. You may feel lighter. :)

Curved Log Cabin Quilt

We are in the middle of a near future move... not sure when its happening, maybe in two weeks, maybe longer. Have things to finish at our new home before we can move into it. This has caused my sewing room to be in chaos with boxes everywhere... trying to finish a wedding present, a full sized log cabin quilt, in time for the wedding in June. Hopefully we will move sooner rather than later so i can finish it in time! I am stitching in the ditch, but still have a long way to go. This picture above is when i was pinning the quilt sandwich together. The primary fabric line I used on this quilt was Eclectic Elements 2 by Tim Holtz which i love. Has a beautiful map fabric and roses and postcards... all kinds of random items that come together beautifully. Love the colors. I picked pink as the log cabin centers because it complemented the colors in the rest of the fabric. I like the way pink and black go together as well. They are a good pair.

 

Started stitching in the ditch around the log cabin curves. Takes lots of time. Much completed but much still has to be done. 

Here is a peak at the backing which is all music notes... matches the front and thought the sheet music look was really neat.

And here are some photos of the beginning process that took place when i first started this quilt top...

 Ignore the pile of toys in the corner..

 

Again, If you would like the tutorial I got it from the wonderful Jenny Doan from Missouri Star Quilt Co. Love there tutorials!!! Curved Log Cabin by Missouri Star Quilt Co.  

I will post more photos when it is finally complete! Hopefully sooner rather than later. 

~Jaclyn