Crappy In-Laws, Rainy Weather, and Crafts

Hello everyone! I am having a really crappy day and I thought blogging about a couple of crafts I have done might make me feel better. First off I will start with an apron I made out of two 20" cloth napkins. I first saw this site a while ago and wanted to make an apron like she did. https://www.craftstylish.com/item/3661/make-one-adorable-apron-from-two-colorful-napkins

Unfortunately I couldn't find napkins as cute as she did.

 This is what I found instead. Two 20" green stripe napkins and a matching ribbon I liked. First press your napkins so they aren't too wrinkled.

  

For the top of the apron press two pleats running vertically down the napkin. Make sure they are even on both sides and measure against your chest to make sure the width of the top of the apron is comfortable. You don't want the bottom of the apron to be pleated so make sure the pleats gradually widen out.
 Next sew your pleats into place. It is hard to tell in the picture but I stitched just a little inside the edge of the pleat all the way to the bottom. I stopped about 2" from the bottom of the napkin.

 Now you want to measure where you want the strings to tie and the pockets to start. I made my apron as long as it would go and stitched the second apron to the very edge of the bottom of the first.  I stitched as close to the edge on the backside since that part will be exposed. The front seam will be covered with the ribbon.  This is a picture of the front.

 

Measure how long you want your apron strings to be and cut your ribbon to that length. Then pin the ribbon into place and stitch along the top and bottom of the ribbon.
 When your ribbon is in place fold the bottom half of the apron up to form the pockets. Line up the edges so they are even and sew along the two open ends.






I made two evenly sized pockets by sewing one seam straight down the middle. You could add more pockets if you wanted.

Lastly, measure how long you want your top strap to be and cut your ribbon to length. I tucked the ends of the ribbon into the pleats and sewed one seam straight across the whole front.  Your apron is now complete.





Allow me to finish by saying I hate the new format for posting photos to our blog.  This short post was a huge headache to get organized.  I hope you enjoyed this.  My apron is lovely and I may give it as a gift.  I already own about 6 aprons so I really don't need another.  I was going to post another craft I did, but I think I will stop here for now.  Hope your day is going better than mine.

Happy New Year everyone!! I know that I am a month late-better late than never right? I hope that the holidays were enjoyable. Did we all make good resolutions for the new year? I know that I made quite the long list of things that I would like to accomplish- Fingers crossed that I do at least half of them :0) My biggest wishes for this year are to stay smoke free, to blog/craft more and to get back into school. Heres to hoping for the best.
Anywho,

I was digging through old pictures and I came across this and wanted to share:
These are my two older sons. They are so cute and it seems like it wasn't that long ago. They grow up so fast. They are both teenagers now in high school and driving. Hopefully I can keep the 10 year old young for at least a little longer.

Figured that I might as well complete the family :0) Here is a photo of my husband and I together. I am rarely in photos-I prefer to be the one taking them.
2011 was a great year, I hope that 2012 is even better!
Have a GREAT year!
Lesley

How to bind a quilt

Good morning! I sincerely apologize for not posting sooner. I have no excuses, except laziness. I have good news though. I finally finished the quilt I was working on so I can post about quilt binding.

First - We need to sew all the 2 1/2" binding strips together to make one REALLY long strip. Now there are two ways to do this. I sew the strips together at a diagonal so the binding is smoother. If you sew the strips with a vertical seam then there is a bump in the binding where the seams are. I will show you are picture of what I mean a little further down. After sewing your strips together, trim your excess fabric leaving a 1/4" seam allowance.

Before you trim your seams, open up your strips and make sure you sewed in the right direction. You should have a straight strip. Now you get to press.

Press your seams open and your strip in half lengthwise.

Now that I have pressed my strip in half I can show your how the diagonal seam is better. If I had of sewn a vertical seam then it would have made two seams on top of each other. When I sew the binding to the quilt then that would have left a bump for my machine to sew through. Just trust me - this is better.

Now that our binding is finished (or before, it really doesn't matter) you want to trim your quilt to make sure it is "square". I measured 3 1/2" from my blocks and trimmed all the way around. Next you start pinning your binding to your quilt. Match up the unfinished edges and pin until just before the corner. Make sure you leave a long tail. This will be used at the end. Mine is about 12" long. Mark 1/4" before the corner. You will sew the binding to the quilt up to this point.

You stop sewing 1/4" from the corner like shown. After you have stopped at the corner pull your quilt out of the machine a little so you have some working room.

Now, I got a little ahead of myself when I was sewing the corners so don't let my pictures confuse you. Fold your binding strip straight up like shown. Be careful to keep the raw edge line straight. Finger press the fold and hold it. Then fold the flap down, again keeping your raw edges straight.

Put it back into your machine and turn the corner, then measure 1/4" from the edge and start sewing. This will leave you with a flap at the corner. Keep going all the way around the quilt until you come close to the "tail" you have left. Make sure your leave about 12" between your starting stitch and your ending stitch. You can leave a little more if you like. You want to make sure you have enough room to pull the binding away so you can sew the ends closed.

Once you have neared the end lay out your "tail" and fold the end up like shown. If your tail is too close to your ending stitch or it overlaps then you can trim it shorter. Just make sure you have enough of your binding to finish the quilt. Lay the ending binding across your folded end and pin into place. You will be sewing a diagonal stitch here to secure your ends.

Stitch your binding ends together like so. After they are stitched lay everything flat to make sure your don't have any excess binding and to make sure your seam was sewn in the correct direction. When everything lays properly you can trim your excess fabric leaving 1/4" seam allowance. Finger press the seam open and finish sewing the binding to the quilt.

Now that your binding is attached you don't need your machine any more. The rest is hand sewn while sitting on the sofa watching some good T.V. Fold the binding around to the back of the quilt covering the seam and hand stitch into place. I am not sure what this stitch is called, sorry. Just be careful that you don't go all the way through the quilt. You just want to go through the first layer of fabric.

When you get to your corner you want to fold the fabric so you have a nice, neat corner. Finger press the fabric like shown. You can pin it if necessary, but you want to make sure the fabric lines up nicely. You also want to make sure the front of the corner and the back of the corner are folded the same direction.

Hand stitch up and down both sides of the corner to hold your fabric in place and continue around the rest of your quilt. Now you have finished a whole quilt!

This was a long drawn out process and I apologize. Usually you can have a quilt finished in a few days. If you remember back to the quilt I made for my living room, that one took a day and a half. It was a very easy layout. Looking back it probably would have been a better quilting tutorial.

Happy Holidays!! I hope that everyone had a great Thanksgiving. Ours was really nice-lots of good food. So good in fact I think that I may have gained a few pounds.
Now it is time to get into the Christmas spirit :0) We put our Christmas decorations up the Sunday after Thanksgiving. My 10 year old was wanting to get all of our Christmas stuff out and up. I wasn't really feeling it but I am so happy that he pushed because now it really feels like Christmas in our house. Since we have lived in our new house we put up two trees every year, a big one and a small one. I bought new ornaments this year, which was a nice change. We have been using the same ornaments that we have had since the older boys were small.
Here is the big tree with all new ornaments.

And here is the small one with some of the older ornaments on it.

I think that they both turned out really pretty. I am sure that the boys wish that there were presents under it. I am the worst about waiting until the last minute. But in my defense they are horrible about telling me what they want and sticking with it.

My husband and I went to Ft.Worth last weekend for a mini get away. I took pictures as we were driving down the road. These give me a headache when I look at them but I think that they look really cool and I like them. I love the motion blur in each of them.

We walked around downtown and I took lots of pictures, one of my most favorite things to do.

There was such pretty Christmas Decorations. I wish that I had this tree in my yard :0)

Here is my sweetie looking down from the parking garage that we parked in.

We had such a good time. We had a nice dinner and enjoyed each others company. It was amazing to get to go out and have a conversation without having kids constantly trying to interupt. We do not do it nearly enough.

I hope that everyone is enjoying the holiday season. Have a great week :0)

Lesley

Happy Monday!! The holidays are fast approaching. I find it so hard to believe how fast this year has flown by. My oldest will be a senior in high school before I know what is happening. Why is it the older we get the faster time goes? You always wake to the realization that time is steady moving forward regardless of what you do and how slow you try to do it.
Wanting to spend time with my kiddos and not wanting to go anywhere-I decided to go outside with the sidewalk chalk. We had so much fun doing this and I was really impressed with the creativity that each one of them used.

The first one is mine, second is my oldest son, the middle son and then my youngest son.

I wanted really dark bold colors so I dug out my pastels to go with the chalk. Now that I think about it probably not the best of ideas-It might not be so easy to get the pastels cleaned up. Well-atleast it is pretty :0)

I found these pictures online at http://thepioneerwoman.com/homeandgarden/. They are way too cute-I want to make them so BAD or atleast something like them. But knowing me I probably never will. I always find or come up with great ideas but lately I have had no follow through.

I hope everyone has a GREAT week :0)
Lesley