Valerean

Just in case you needed a smile today, Oliver's mom sent me these pics of Oliver's second first birthday party at his great-grandmother's house: Yep. It's good to be a year old. :)

His mom sent me these pics:

Something a little happier today -- Oliver and his dad opening my birthday gifts for him last month:

Oliver's Mom sent these pics to me: Yep. He's too cute for words now.

Happy Birthday to my amazing grandson, Oliver, and a look back at the last twelve months. It's been one hell of a year, baby.

I don't have a photo of this yet, but as of yesterday Oliver is walking. So until I do you'll just have to put up with another happy high chair pic. :)

Oliver's mom sent us this the other day: I'm not the old lady who thinks every picture of her grandbaby is adorable, you know. Really.

I'm off to spend the day with this handsome dude. See you tomorrow.

These are all the little projects I made from the scraps leftover from Oliver's birthday quilt: Little gift card holder, made from shreds and strips and a piece of Velcro I salvaged from another scrap bag. The buttons dressed it up a bit. Another doggie dish mat, using up most of the remaining strips. Every strip, shred and bit left in the bag went to make this rectangular piece, which will probably become a tote (still thinking about it.) Proof: no more scraps! Ha. This was definitely a fun way to recycle leftover fabric, and it taught me that if you really want to, you can find a way to use every single bit.

I had these strips leftover from Oliver's birthday quilt (I switched them out with strips of the white-on-white print as an experiment), and I needed another/smaller gift tote for his birthday, so I decided to use these to make it: Since they weren't quite long enough to make into a tote, I added a row of scrap blocks on the ends: After adding some of the leftover backing fabric to both ends (this will be the top of the tote) I batted and pinned it to a piece of scrap muslin: I did an outline stitch for the blocks, but quilted colliding circles on the white top fabric: Here's the finished tote:

I've been trying to figure out how to use the fabric scraps I have that are too narrow to sew, and found a video on using up even the tiniest scraps that inspired me to give it a try. I tweaked her idea a bit by layering my strips on top of a piece of scrap muslin and lightweight Pellon fusible web, as the latter is the only fusible I have on hand. After ironing, I top-stitched the strips on the machine with a zigzag stitch: It worked, so I trimmed the block and turned it into a mug rug with some scrap batting and another piece of muslin To hold everything in place I added more top-stitching, using a straight stitch: It's a sturdy little piece, and definitely an easy way to use even the littlest bits of fabric. My one concern was that it's probably not going to survive the washing machine or the dryer, which would make it a bad technique to use for a quilt. So I put it through both, and here's how it looks after the wash and dry: The raw edges of the ...

After making the gift tote for Oliver's birthday quilt, here are the scraps I have left: I choose some of the selvage pieces and chain stitched them together in a long strip: I kept sewing the strip to itself and cutting it ala Valerie Nesbitt's strip method until I had a block of patchwork, which I framed with strips of the backing fabric: With scraps of muslin and some batting I turned that into this placemat-size piece. Can you guess what it will be? Here's one I made from scraps of another quilt project: Doggie dish mat! Ha.