Dresden Table Runners

 

My sister’s birthday is in November so I thought I’d make her a table runner. Her kitchen is decorated in black, white and red and it was pretty fun shopping for fabrics for her runner.  I fell in love with these dresden plate table runners (here and here) earlier this year and decided that I was going to have to make one sometime soon.

 

 

The large dresden in the center was cut at 5” and the smaller dresden’s on the sides were cut at 4”.

This was the first time, in probably forever, that I actually felt it was a good thing to do chain stitching. :)

 

I had a hard time deciding what color of thread to do the fmq in but I think white turned out to be the best.

 

I love the backing fabric, too!

Do any of you get carried away while cutting things out and cut more than you actually needed?  Well, I did this time and cut out one more large dresden, so I made a small square table runner out of it.

I thought it turned out pretty cute!

I LOVE this red on black print!

 

She loved her gifts! I was so glad. Sometimes it’s hard receiving homemade gifts since it may not exactly be something you really like, but you can feel obligated to keep and display since it was given to you. I told her that’s how I felt about it and that if she didn’t really, really like it that she should give it to someone else. I didn’t want her saying, “Oh no! Myra is coming over! I better get those table runners out!”  : )  But, she seemed to really like them, so that was fun.

 

Santa’s little helper…

I got a bee in my bonnet the other day and decided to make matching fleece pajama pants for myself and my daughter for Christmas. While I was at the store, I decided my two younger boys would probably like to have some, too, so I bought more fabric.  I was sure that my husband and two older sons would NOT be interested in matching fleece jammies so I didn’t even think more about them.

 

Well, long story short, later that day I got to thinking that I had better be safe and ask my older men-folk just to be sure. I was right about one older son and No, he does not want a pair for himself.  However, the other older son said that he would! But, he would like them to be fleece SHORTS, as in, basketball length shorts. Whatever! Then, my husband shocked me and said that he would like a pair of jammie pants, too. WHO KNEW! Good thing I asked!

 

So, back to the store I went and purchased more of this adorable red fleece fabric. Thank goodness it was 50% off and the patterns were only a dollar!

 

AND, since I’m gonna be making so many pairs of jammie pants, I decided it was high time to get my serger out of storage and get it serviced so I can use that puppy on the jammies!  So, I did! Woohoo! I’m so excited to get that serger up and running! My sweet mom gave it to me y-e-a-r-s ago and I have used it once about 8-10 years ago.  I’m so happy to have it going again. I plan to keep it in my sewing room as a regular piece of equipment!

 

These are going to be CUTE!

Sharing the love of quilting…

Today a very special young lady came to my house to begin learning how to quilt.  She is such a sweetheart and is very eager to learn. Last week I showed her some pictures of quilts that would be good beginner quilts and she chose to make a chevron twin bedspread.

When I took her to the fabric store to pick out her fabrics, you would have thought she had died and gone to fabric heaven!  So many lovely fabrics to choose from! She’s a lady who knows what she likes so she was easily drawn to her fabric choices.

She told me a couple of days later that she had dreamed about her fabric. A true quilter indeed!

 

Here are her cute little 5” squares.

 

Her first little chevron! She was so excited!!

 

 

And here’s the darling girl herself. How fun it is to pass on such a joy as quilting!  

Fandango!!!

Tonight was our Liberty Girls Family Fandango!!!

Wow! What a night! It was so fabulous! We had delicious food, terrific company, and amazing performers!!!

Don’t our little Josefina dresses look adorable on them!

 

Each of our Liberty Girls moms brought a dish that would have been typical of mid 1800’s New Mexico. We had Carne Adovada (meat marinated in red chile sauce, yum!), refried beans, flour and corn tortillas, Quelites (cooked spinach), Calabacitas (yellow and green squash with corn). For dessert we had hot chocolate and bizcochitos (yummy cookies).

 

And the girls brought their 18” dolls dressed up in their Josefina outfits too! Cute!

Here’s all the girls waiting for the performance to start.

 

We were then treated by an amazing group of young dancers called “Viva Mexico!” They were SO great! WOW! These kids did such a lovely job doing their dances.  So adorable. And their costumes were beautiful!

When these girls came out in these lovely skirts, my first thought was “Hmmm… I think I know what my daughter is going to ask me to sew for her after this!” And you know what? She did! She wants a skirt like the pink one on the right. : )

These dancers were so adorable!

I need a faster camera to catch the action better!

 

This picture is of all the dancers and all of our Liberty Girls.

I’m on the left with the teacher of this group. And yes, I made myself a Josefina outfit, too!

What a great evening!!!

 

After it was over, my daughter ran into her room and put on this long circle skirt I had made for last year because it was the closest thing she had to the kind the dancers had. She danced and danced to the music…

Yes, she loves to dance and is in dancing lessons. : )

Liberty Girls Retreat

My daughter and I went to the annual Liberty Girls Retreat on Thursday and it was wonderful!!! There were girls there from many different Liberty Girls Chapters.  They were highlighting the Kaya series of the American Girl books (mid 1700’s American Indian,) by learning about and doing crafts and activities based on that time period.

 

They got to do traditional face painting…

 

…make cornhusk dolls…

 

See a real teepee and sit inside of it while learning about what life would be like living in one…

 

A sweet woman from the Navajo tribe from Arizona came and talked about weaving, caring for babies… she sang them songs in Navajo… let them taste homemade beef jerky and dried berries… She was wonderful!

 

And they had some amazing traditional dancing for us to watch. So neat!!!

We had a great day!

 

And now for the fabric-y part of this post…

I was at the fabric store yesterday, intending to buy just one certain fat quarter that I needed… they didn’t have the certain fat quarter that I needed… but in the meantime I saw this gorgeous layer cake from the Merry Medley line. So lovely! ** I – just – had – to – get – it. **  You know how it goes. I guess I’ll just add it to my gonna-make-someday list. : )

 

And I finally totally finished my daughter’s birthday dress by sewing and putting on that cute bow on the waist band. Adorable!

My little girl is growing up!

My daughter is turning 7 years old, and she is my baby!!!  I can’t believe I’m on the second half of my time of raising kids!

Time sure flies when you’re having fun!

I sewed a new dress for her birthday, but since we had lots of family in town for a family wedding this weekend, I thought I’d give it to her early so she could wear it to the reception.

 

She is so tall and skinny, it’s hard finding dresses that would be long enough for her at the store.  I made this one plenty long so it will fit her for a few more months – I hope!

She wasn’t a flower girl for the wedding but she was lucky enough to get to have a little bouquet of flowers to keep.

Here’s big brother showing off his manliness, to the delight of one little girl!

And if you didn’t notice it in the first picture, she quickly initiated this dress as she tripped and fell and smudged her skirt.  So, it had to be washed right away so it would be ready for church today. : )

Myra

Color Catchers Save the Day!

I sewed four Josefina skirts (one is even for me!) and decided to give them a wash with a Color Catcher to see how much red dye would come out of the fabric… Boy was I in for a surprise!!!

As you can see, the first washing was really bad, like almost as red as the fabric itself! Then the 2nd washing was a lot less, but I was surprised to see the 3rd and 4th washings look pretty much the same as each other. I could have washed them a fifth time but I was done with washing them.

 

Thankfully, the Color Catchers worked well enough to keep that cute white eyelet trim White!

 

Myra