Slumber Party Quiet Book Page Tutorial for Riley Blake Cutting Corners

I did a tutorial for Riley Blake Cutting Corners: The Slumber Party Quiet Book Page. It's super cute, and made with flannel! I hope you like it!

Head on over to the Riley Blake Cutting Corners website to see my tutorial for the Flannel Self-Binding Blanket. I love giving these blankets as gifts. They are practical, but also very cute!!!

Happy New Year!

More Owls!

I seriously love this free owl pattern!

 

I posted about this cute little guy 2 weeks ago, and now I have more to share!

  

I whipped up several more owls, but sadly only got a picture of these to show you.

 

This Hot Pink and Navy owl was shipped off to my high school friend, whose wife is expecting a baby.  To make this owl a little more 'girly' I cut out little eyelashes in the hot pink felt backing of the eyes.  

 And I was just dying for an excuse to use Riley Blake's new Rainbow Dot fabric, which is how this owl came into being.

Again, thank you to Emily for the sharing your tutorial with us!

Owl Tutorial

Fabrics:

Riley Blake Black Medium Chevron

Michael Miller Zap

Riley Blake Hot Pink Medium Chevron

Children at Play Navy Dot to Dot

Riley Blake Medium Rainbow Dots

Riley Blake Small Red Dots 

What to Give Baby #4?

My brother and his wife recently welcomed baby #4 to their family - a beautiful baby boy!  The question for me became "what do I give when they're already stocked with clothes, blankets and all other baby fixins"? 

That's when a came across a tutorial for this adorable little owl.  Bingo!  

However, I couldn't send this little guy off alone.

So I found a tutorial for this cute little pair of matching shoes to go with it!

Baby Lucas has siblings who are crazy about super heroes, so I used Michael Miller's Zap fabric for the top of the shoes and for the back of this cute little owl.

I varied from the original owl tutorial just a little by adding three layers to the eyes instead of two.  I also left out the little felt feet because I thought they would get worn out too quickly.  And lastly, I sewed up a small muslin pouch filled with rice and lavender, and inserted it into the base of the owl to give him weight and to add a nice, soothing scent.

And this was only the beginning....

I couldn't just sew up one pair of those adorable little shoes, especially when they make such good use of all those little scraps I can't throw away....

Ahhhh!  So darn cute!  If I didn't have more pressing projects to be working on, I might have gone on sewing these little guys forever!

Be sure to check out these fabulous tutorials and thank you to all of the wonderful bloggers out there who generously share their talents with complete strangers.  Gracias!

 

Owl Tutorial by Emily at Ashby Family Blog

Baby Shoes Tutorial by Joanna at Stardust Shoes

Fabrics:

Riley Blake Black Medium Chevron

Riley Blake Red Dots

Michael Miller Zap

Michael Miller Red Lunch Box

Riley Blake Hot Pink Medium Chevron

Michael Miller Thar She Blows

Children at Play Navy Dot to Dot 

Seaside Blue Bikini

Fly a Kite Orange Floral

Dress Up Days Grape Chevron

Michael Miller Spa Scallop

Riley Blake Gray Medium Dots

Children at Play Coral Dot to Dot

Calculating Fabric Requirements for a Rag Quilt

"How much fabric do I need to make a rag quilt?" 

I get asked that question a lot, so here's your answer!

You will need the following information:
1.    What size of squares are you going to cut?

2.    How many different fabrics are you going to use?

3.    How large do you want the quilt to be?

4.    How wide is your fabric?

For our example, here are our answers:

1.  What size of squares are you going to cut? 6-inch 
      (This is a pretty standard size. If you use bigger squares, the project will be easier 
      and go faster.)
2.  How many different fabrics are you going to use? three fabrics
3.  How large do you want the quilt to be? 35” x 40”
4.  How wide is your fabric? 43”

Now for the calculation!

Step 1: How many squares will you need?

Due to seam allowances, the finished quilt will have squares that are one inch smaller than what you cut. For example, since we are cutting 6-inch squares, the finished quilt will show 5-inch squares. The additional one inch is in the fringe.

Our finished quilt is 35” x 40”. That means it will have 7 squares in each row, and it will have 8 rows.

Figuring out the number of squares needed for your quilt.

There are 56 squares total (7*8=56). However, we also need the same number of squares for the back of the quilt. So our total number of squares is 56*2=112.

(Note: if you are using batting as the middle layer in your quilt, you will need to cut 56 squares of batting. Make them 5" squares so they won't show in the fringe.)

Step 2: How many squares of each print will you need?

Draw a picture of your quilt and label where you will use each fabric. I chose a very simple design for this example, but you be as creative as you want. Then count up the number of squares for each print. Don’t forget to multiply by 2 for the back of the quilt.

Calculating the number of squares needed for each fabric used.

 Step 3: How much fabric will you need?

Now you need to figure out how many squares you can get out of the width of your fabric.

Our fabric is 43” wide, and we are cutting 6” squares. That means we can cut 7 squares out of the width of fabric.

In other words, for every 6” cut of our fabric, we can get 7 squares. 

We need 38 squares of each print, so we need seven 6” strips of each of our fabrics. That is 42” of each of the three fabrics.

There you have it!

Do you have additional rag quilt questions? Leave a comment!

Pee Pee Tee Pee Guest Post

I posted a tutorial for these cute little Pee Pee Tee Pees over at Riley Blake Designs Cutting Corners blog.  They are super easy to make and take just a few minutes!  Check out the tutorial with printable instructions HERE.

 

Recycle Old Jeans into Adorable Bibs

Don't throw away old jeans! Kristena from thimbly things gives a tutorial for absolutely adorable denim bibs. She used denim and ribbon on the front, and cotton on the back. She also used decorative stitching to give it that much more cuteness! I love how they turned out.


[photo courtesy of thimbly things]



[photo courtesy of thimbly things]