Baby Shoes - How To

My new friend Kiley just had a baby girl. This presented me with the perfect excuse to make MORE baby shoes! These shoes are so cute and not too hard or time consuming to make. Hopefully this blog will help. If not, I know that "My Girl Friend's Quilt Shop" has a real pattern, with real instructions...

I cut out two long rectangular pieces of coordination fabric and ironed them. (Remember, a good seamstress always irons and trims her threads!) The fabric only need be as tall as one shoe pattern and wide enough to fit the four pieces of the pattern.

This next part is a very fancy skill...or not. Using spray adhesive (I like the 3M Super 77 brand) you glue those suckers together with a thin piece of batting in between. This time I used a left over scrap of 100 % cotton batting from a quilt I just finished. A lot of the time though, I just use thin scraps of left over fleece!( You can find great pieces in the remnant baskets at JoAnn's.)

Allow the glue to dry some before diving into your machine quilting. I use a darning foot and just stick it on my regular Maytag sewing machine.

Time to quilt! If you are new at this you can Google images of panto-grams to get you started. Then you can trace or transfer the patterns onto your fabric with disappearing ink. I just like to wing it though. Sometimes it is just fun to let loose and just go for it! This is a simple stipple pattern.

A view of the reverse after quilting.

This is my little homemade pattern. This will yield one shoe. (You will probably want two *wink*) It is inspired from Martha Stewart's felt baby shoes pattern on her website. You can print a copy there if you would like and make it larger or smaller depending on what size you need. I'm sure however you could just make one by yourself that would work just fine.

Next, CUT. This time I used my new pinking sheers. So very fun! The little strip cut out from the pattern on the left will be your strap. You will now want to sew a top stitch around the border of your strap AND the inside rectangular shape of the shoe. Use about 1/8 seam allowance. This will keep the layers together and edges from fraying.

Oh, look how darling!

With the right-sides together, sew a line down the back. (Since I want the shoes to be red, I'm doing the sewing on the white side so my seams will be on the inside when I am done).

Carefully place the sole of the shoe together with the base. Now would be a good time to pin to keep everything aligned. Carefully sew the two pieces together around the outside edge of the sole using a 1/8" seam allowance again. (You are now using your regular sewing foot, not the darning foot.) Remember, we are still working on the "wrong" side of our fabric. Since I want the white fabric to be visible when the shoe is worn, I'm sewing with the red side of the sole out. Don't worry if you have to un-pick, you are working with a widdle-tiny, adorable baby shoe! ;)

Turn it right-side out. Top stitch one side of your strap on with an "X". On the opposite side attach a snap. You can buy the snaps and this handy tool all in one simple kit for less than $10.00 at JoAnn's and then just buy more snaps as you need them. Have your hammer ready, read the instructions, and get your snap on.

And the final step is to add your embellishment. Sometimes I do bows, this time I'm using a simple cloth flower and a brad. What ever you choose, be sure to attach it securely, remember this is for a baby. You can also buy brads and a little brad tool very inexpensively at JoAnn's all together in a kit.

I hope this is helpful and not too confusing. Happy sewing my friends!

Postage Stamp Quilt

Every year my Grandparents send a little money to buy books for the boys for Christmas. I LOVE shopping for their books, and it is something I look forward to each December. She also sends a little gift money for me, but without instructions on how to use it. Last Christmas I had a GREAT idea. I went on line and bought myself this jelly roll of moda fabric and had it sent to my parent's house for Christmas. On the order their was a place to leave a message for the receiver. I had myself a little fun and wrote myself a note something like this:
"Dear Karin, You are such a great grand-daughter. We love you so much! Keep Sewing! Merry Christmas. Love, Grandma and Grandpa Andersen. " Hee Hee!
When my mom got the package and saw the note and what I had done she transferred the message to a real card and wrapped up the gift and set it under the tree. Christmas morning I got to open my gift and ooohh, aaaww at all the pretty fabric. I had already found the pattern I wanted to do: the Postage Stamp Quilt on modabakeshop.blogspot.com, and it made for one fun Christmas morning.

Sooo, I finally started my quilt in October. (It's been a busy year!)

It was fun to unroll the fabric and start pairing colors together.

I had the top pieced in a couple of days. It took me a few weeks to get back to quilting it. Once I did it didn't take too long from there. It then took one day to machine quilt, and two days for the hand binding.

And the end result: AWESOME if I say so myself!

I decided to use a "double bubble" pattern for the quilting. It was pretty easy to maneuver the fabric with my darning foot to get the effect.

Undecided on if I like the front or back the best.

Such happy colors! The fabric collection is called "Fresh Cotton" by Moda.

It's perfect for snuggling too!

Christmas Advent Quilt

I am very excited to see this project completed. Though I feel like it may never actually be all the way done. I'm still searching for a few more perfect embellishments for it, so it may not be fully completed EVER.

This is my Nativity Advent Calendar that I started last fall with my good friend and quilting buddy Jenni. (Who will be moving to AZ soon... sniffle, sniffle.) We used her pattern for the letters and characters and then her sisters layout for the actual quilt / creche.

How did I make this? Well, we started by making our characters. We traced all the pieces onto different scraps of fabric and then using wonder-under (it's like t-shirt iron on material) we were able to put them together like little puzzles. We then ironed our completed people onto black felt.

The quilt took a day to purchase fabric, cut, and piece. (Not bad I'd say!) The quilting of it was the fun part though. I'm learning how to machine quilt and just recently bought a darning foot. Yeah for free-motion! It was very fun to sew in curly Qs and even the words "Silent Night Holy Night" into some of the border.

I hope this will be something my boys will look forward to pulling out each December. All of the people will be hanging from the row of buttons on the bottom (which I sewed on all by hand of course!) Each day we will place a character onto the nativity and on Christmas Eve we will put on the baby Jesus.

We had an advent calendar growing up that I still love to this day and I really wanted something like that for my family. My mom will tell you that this one is a bit more complex and time consuming. I suppose she is right. (She always is!) But, I really have enjoyed this project, every step! It was a great learning experience. I made my first button hole, learned how to applique, and discovered the fabulous-ness of machine quilting! This was a great project!

I'm going to really miss Jenni when she moves. She has been my go to girl for a long time and not just for sewing, though I think she has taught me just about everything I know. She has been an example to me of a wonderful Mom and I really look up to her. I will think of her every Christmas for years to come when I see this quilt on the wall.