Saturday, September 27, 2014

Fabric Bunting

Okay!  It's been a loooonnnnggggg time.  My bad.  But I bring you....ta da!  Sewn Fabric Bunting!  Make it festive and fun, and in this case, for a baby's room!

Here we have a lovely selection of woodsy prints.  Chevrons, to owls, dots foxes.  Adorable!  And soooo easy to make.  It's not often that I start AND finish a project in one day.  But this only took watching 2 episodes of The Office to get put together!  Granted, I do have an awesome husband who loves cutting fabric that was helping me... :)

Fabric Bunting

Materials

5 Fat Quarters (or however many different patterns you would like)
1 Package of Bias Tape
Thread

Basic Tools
Pinking Shears (scalloped edge used here)
Rotary Cutter
Cutting Mat
Cutting Grid (6" x 24")
Sewing Machine

Directions

  1. Wash and iron your fabric.
  2. Laying your fat quarter length wise, use your cutting grid to cut a 6" strip.
  3. Again, using your cutting grid, cut equilateral (60°) triangles.  I used THIS tutorial, and do not think I could explain it any better!  You will need four triangles of each fabric.
  4. Time to sew!  Place two triangles with wrong sides together.  (I used matching triangles, but you could make it fun and different for a reversible bunting!).  Sew two sides of the fabric together with 1/2" seam allowance, leaving the top section open.  Do so for all 10 triangles.
  5. Use the pinking shears to trim up the edges.
  6. Arrange the order of your triangles!
  7. Unwrap the bias tape and iron.
  8. Fold the bias tape in half to find the middle, and place triangle #6 into the bias tape.  Pin through the bias tape and fabric at each edge of the triangle.  
  9. Place the triangles tip to tip within the bias tape, pinning each time.
  10. Sew the length of the bias tape where the triangles begin, with your sewing 1/4" from the bottom of the bias tape.
  11. Ta da!  This goes super quick, and now I want to make a ton of them!  Good luck :)


Saturday, June 15, 2013

Chocolate Strawberry Pie

So, I love Pinterest, maybe too much, just like so many folks out there...So I was cruising around and found this oh-so-delicious looking pie.  The recipe looks good and all, but I wanted a little more.  So I came up with an oreo crust, chocolate ganache, strawberry, chocolate pudding pie, pulling the oreo crust recipe from here, and the ganache recipe from here.  With all said and done, it turned out DELICIOUS, but I would make some tweaks (check out my follow up at the end!)

Chocolate Strawberry Pie

Ingredients

Crust:
22 (~ 2 1/2 cups crushed) Oreos
4 Tbs unsalted butter (melted)
3 oz. bittersweet bakers chocolate
1/2 c. heavy whipping cream
Strawberries (1 lb. would be sufficient)
1 small box chocolate pudding
milk (follow box directions)

Directions

Crust:  Place Oreo's (minus the filling) in a food processor, process until nice and fine.  Remove to a bowl and add melted butter.  Mix thoroughly and place in pie plate.  Refrigerate until firm.

Bottom Layer with Ganache: Wash strawberries and cut in half.  Set aside.  Warm heavy whipping cream in a small saucepan.  As that heats, chop bakers chocolate into fine pieces.  Place chocolate in a bowl, topped with warmed heavy cream and whisk until smooth.  Once smooth, pour ganache into crust, placing cut strawberries on bottom as full as you can.

Pudding: Mix pudding as directed and pour into pie plate.  Top with remaining strawberries!

Follow Up

No doubt this was DELICIOUS.  However, the crust was super crumbly.  4 Tbs did not seem like enough butter, but I did not increase it.  Next time I definitely will, maybe even to 6 Tbs.  The ganache layer was great, but not very separate from the pudding and hard to discern.  It might be good to let it set up before pouring the pudding in.  And then lastly, the pudding was great, I would like something that is a bit more set up.  But overall, you can't go wrong with this!

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Baby Quilt!



The quilts I have made before consist of two sheets put together with batting in between and then tied together.  So this was a new adventure for me!  I keep wanting to sew clothing, but it seems a little daunting.  A quilt was a little safer.

I was shopping around trying to find fabric, and after a couple of hours I finally found what I wanted to use!  A cute zoo print, with a golden yellow, turquoise and white polka dot, with a multi-colored striped backing.


I have been searching and searching, finding cute quilt tutorials, and right as soon as I thought I had one, I found the right one!  A cute, simple pattern.  So here we go!

Supplies:

Warm & White Cotton Batting 34"x45"
1.5 yards backing fabric
1 yard Main fabric (zoo animals)
1/4 yard second fabric (golden yellow)
1/4 yard third fabric (turquoise with white polka dots)
cutting mat
rotary cutter
clear cutting ruler
scissors
curved safety pins
thread (I used dark brown Gutermann)

1.  Figure out the size that you want!  After washing (don't forget to pre-wash all fabric and batting!), my batting ended up being 34"x47" (I don't know why it was larger, maybe it got stretched while drying), so I wanted my quilt to be the same size.  I wanted the yellow to be 6" wide (cut 6.5" allowing for seam allowance), turquoise to be 5" (5.5" with seam allowance), and 24" for zoo animals (24.5").

2.  Cut your pieces!  I have trouble making a nice square of fabric, so I found some help about how to true up a piece of fabric and to cut nice strips.  Check out the video that I found!  I cut 2 pieces of yellow that were 6.5" wide and not cutting a length.  2 pieces of turquoise that were 5.5", and one piece of zoo print that was 24.5"

3.  Sew your pieces together!  I started from the middle out.  Pinning right sides together of the zoo print with the turquoise, using 1/4" seam allowance.  Once those were done, I pinned the right sides of turquoise and yellow together and sewed the same.

4.  I then laid my finished top down with the batting on top and cut the top to size.  I also ended up having a couple of inches of batting hanging over the top so I trimmed that also.

5.  Cut backing to size!  I trued up my fabric and cut the ends to be true.  Then I laid the backing down with the batting on top, 2" away from 2 sides and cut the other sides.  I left 2" hanging over on each side so they could be folded over for the binding.  So my backing size was about 38"x51" (I didn't measure it...)

6.  Lay the top and pin it with curved quilting safety pins.  For the binding, I used a variety of different sites to help me.  I used this for the basic of what I wanted to do (a fold over binding), then this to help with the mitered edges.  This was a great website that had a list of a ton of different helps for finishing a quilt!

So!  I folded each side over 1", then folded it over the quilt and pinned.  At the corners, after folding it, I unfolded it, and, 1" away from the corner, I cut the fabric at a 45° angle.  I then folded one edge over to create a triangle, then folded it over on top of the quilt.  I am sure there is a much better way to do this, but being my first quilt, I just went with it!  There wasn't a ton of bulk at the corner, so I figured it would be okay.

7.  Sew around the edge with a 1/8" seam at the inside of the blanket.  Once gone around, go back and sew the mitered corners.

8.  To hold it together, I decided to sew a grid instead of tying it.  I sewed 6" grids. sewing in the seam (stitch in the ditch) of the yellow to turquoise, and turquoise to zoo animal, and then grids on the zoo animals.


 And all done!  I finished this in one day!  I was surprised with myself.  And honestly, I wasted time so I am sure this could have been done way quicker.  Oh well :)