The ADHD is REALLY Coming Out...

I'm all over the place now, with what I am making...Guess I'm trying to find my niche...but then again, I've been like that all my life...Took up decorative tole painting, macrame, made memory quilts and wall hangings from actual photographs...When my mom was in her eighties, I made her a memory quilt transferring many many family photos onto percale squares, then bordering the quilt with burgundy strips. It was awesome, but what was even more surprising to me, as I look back on it, I didn't have any instructions on how to make a quilt itself. I just sort of pieced it together and it came together. I think about that now, and I wonder how it did come together!? 

Then again, I am making a tee shirt quilt for my daughter, and other than a few directions on how to make tee shirts into quilt squares, I'm putting this together totally willy nilly and without any instructions. I did buy a couple of books to try and help me, and went on the internet to get some help, but nothing seemed to fit my vision of how I wanted it to look and I found the directions confusing. BUT--there's a LOT of help out there if you are thinking about making a tee shirt quilt. Mine is coming together ok.....Here's the front...Four squares across, and five squares down. Each tee shirt portion is from a 12" square, because that's the biggest square ruler I happened to have on hand. They probably should have been cut to 14" squares, as the twelve inch size made it difficult to get all the logo on the square in some cases. The sashing strips are 1 3/4" after seams were sewn. 

And here's the back...pieced in three sections with the polka dot part running down the middle. 

I love the lizard print! The tee shirts are many of her running race tee shirts for the past few years. It's costing me about about 75.00 for a bigger than lap size, but smaller than twin size to make. I used quality quilt fabrics and LOTS of iron on stabilizer fabric for the tee shirts.

I have no idea if I pieced the back together properly, or if this was the kosher thing to do, but I pieced the back in three sections, because the quilt ended up being bigger than I thought, and the fabric width wouldn't work for only having two sections. And I might add, I am NOT a math person, so measuring and cutting accurately is NOT one of my strengths. Most of my little quilt things like table toppers and wall hangings with little squares never come out straight and consistent. So I really bit off quite the big project in trying to figure this out. 

The hardest part of all, will be the quilting of the fabric. I was going to have it done professionally, until I found out that they needed a certain width all around the quilt to hold it in a quilting machine. And of course, I trimmed the quilt too close all around, so I can't use the quilt shop's quilting services! I think I will just hand quilt it in circles, like running around in circles, haha....That will take me awhile! She comes back from her tour of duty in the spring, so I have a little time....

Now that I digressed from my original start of saying the ADHD is going full time, back to what else I'm delving into....Hand embroidered stuff....A needle book.....Made from beautiful quality felt. What a difference good fabric makes! This is a blend of wool and rayon felt. It's much thicker, and will not pill and fuzz as easily as the cheap stuff from Michael's and Hobby Lobby which is made from recycled plastic and that you can see through if you hold it up to the light. The pattern is from Larissa Holland at MMMCrafts. I love love love her patterns! The felt is from Benzie on Etsy, and there is another shop that has 100% wool felt, which I would love to try, and that shop is Felt on the Fly.

Here's another view...

Then I made a little mini duffel zippered pouch key ring...Going to make in several colors and put them in my Etsy shop, JeanBeanGifts.

And then I decided to make some earrings with Swarovski pearls, "two peas in a pod" earrings, these are also in my Etsy shop.

I think I'm going to make a necklace to match....And then, maybe some bird eggs in a nest...Oh, boy...I'm on a roll now, just thinking about this stuff gets me all excited.....Gotta go get crafting again...See ya later!