Drawstring Gift Bag

The last Saturday in January I had an LQS Day event at the shop. We had a short bolt sale. Afterwards we had some bolts left over so we have been getting creative with ways to use them.

One of the left over sale bolts was this Merrily fabric. The animal is fat quarter size. So I designed this lined drawstring gift bag using the animals. Shown is the moose. The others are a polar bear, a deer and a penguin. We kitted up the animal with coordinating fabrics, twill tape for the drawstring and a pattern. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out!

My family has used only fabric gift bags for several years now. I have made them in several sizes. It makes Christmas morning clean-up much easier! And there is very little trash to throw away. Birthdays are easy too. It is a great way to use novelty prints that you bought because they are so cute but you don't know what else to do with.

Untitled :: A Finish

This one took far too long to finish, but I'm excited to finally have it finished!

Click here to read my last post about this project. I started this in 2012. I finished quilting it in 2017 and then it got lost in my sewing room. I recently spent 3 hours cleaning in my sewing room and found this under a pile of other stuff. So I picked a binding fabric from my stash and "got 'er done." This project was inspired by the backing fabric. I didn't take a photo of the back when I finished this but if you click here you can see a photo of the backing fabric from a past post.

In shop news, we are getting ready to celebrate our 4th anniversary at the end of this month. It is hard to believe that I have been a shop owner for four years, but it is true. 

Mountain Vista Quilt

This one is both personal and shop sewing. Bonus points for me!

These fabrics arrived in my shop recently and this is the pattern I purchased to go with them. We have kitted it up but also have the individual fabrics and panel for sale. Yes, the center is a panel!

The quilt will finish at 59" by 68.5" The binding fabric is the darker red used for the half-square triangles in the outer pieced border. This will look lovely hanging in my dining room once the shop is finished with the sample and it's quilted up.

Homegrown Progress

In 2018 I participated in Sue Spargo's BOM Homegrown. I'm still working on getting it quilted but I'm making good progress.

There are 27 houses surrounding the center tree block. I've quilted the center block plus 22 houses thus far. I'm quilting by hand using the seed stitch. 

In shop news, here is a link to the latest newsletter if you are interested: Alamosa Quilt Company Newsletter. Our Local Quilt Shop Day Event on Saturday went well. And we will be taking sign-ups for the 2nd Saturday Sampler Club through the end of February.

First Post in Far Too Long

I'm hoping to do better this year at posting here at least once a week. I'll be experimenting with post formats to see what will work best for me. So ... here goes!

What have I been working on?

I have a customer/friend who loves to make bags as much as I do. She received several bag patterns for Christmas and brought them in to show them to me. She wants me to teach her how to make all of the bags she received patterns for and asked me which one I wanted to make first. I chose this one. It turned out pretty nice if I do say so myself!

The pattern is called Chelsea Bag. It is an older pattern from V and Co. Unfortunately I couldn't find any printed patterns for me to order for my shop, but you can still buy the pattern directly from V and Co. as a PDF download.

It is a fairly simple tote style bag. The interesting and complicated part is the folded fabric front pocket. That did take a while to make and involved a lot of marking and pinning to get things to line up. Worth it though!

What's new in my shop?

Click here to read the latest shop newsletter

The 2nd Saturday Sampler shown in the newsletter is open to everyone. All the details are in the newsletter. If you want to sign up give the shop a call (719) 937-2555. We'll be taking sign ups for a few more weeks, until the end of February.

Bohemian Bird Pattern

I made my first Bohemian Bird several years ago. Long before owning a quilt shop was even on my radar.

When I opened my shop I needed things to display and on a whim hung up my little Bohemian Birds. I only had two at the time. When I started carrying Sue Spargo merchandise I made a third. Then the requests for the pattern began.

I started working on a pattern a few months ago. I realized that in order to write a good pattern I needed to make another one. Here she is:

I have named them all thus far. Her name is Isabella. The pattern is currently being tested by a few friends. As soon as I get their feedback I will make the pattern available for purchase. If you are interested in a copy of the pattern, leave a comment. Make sure that your comment includes an active email address so I can contact you when the pattern is available.

These little birds finish at 10" by 10". Besides a small wall hanging, you could make these into a pillow, notebook cover, bag or anything else you can dream up. The pattern will sell for $10.99 and will only be available through my shop, Alamosa Quilt Company. The shop does not yet have an online store as I am only one person and just don't have the infrastructure required to run a brick and mortar shop and an online shop, and do a good job with both, at the moment. It is on the list to open an online shop, but I'm just not there yet.

Aunt Sue's Cross Stitch Quilt :: A Finish

This one is going in the mail today back to it's owner so now I can share it with you.

So ... here is the story: My aunt's MIL passed away a couple months ago. She was a quilter. Like most of us, she had several unfinished projects. My aunt, who doesn't sew at all, asked if I would finish a few of them as they were for her girls (my cousins). Those quilts were already to the finished top stage. They only needed quilting, binding and a label. I had my local long arm quilter do the quilting. All I did was bind and label them.

Then she included a bag of 31 of these cross-stitched blocks and asked me to put them together into a quilt. When squared up these blocks finish at about 16.5", so they are pretty big. And as you probably know, there is no easy way to put 31 identical blocks into a quilt. My original plan was to put 30 of them on the front, with the other on the back. However, with sashing and borders that quilt would have been HUGE! Too big to even be quilted by my long arm quilter! So on to plan B. I ended up making two quilts from the blocks. The smaller of the two is shown above using 9 of the blocks. It is 66.5" by 66.5". The other quilt is exactly the same, except it uses 20 of the blocks. It is still pretty big, too big to fit well on my fence for photography. 

The remaining two blocks I'm just returning to my aunt. I was going to border them and have them quilted but they are stained. I decided not to fool with trying to wash unfinished blocks to see if I could get the stains out.

Honestly, when I first saw these blocks I was not inspired. In fact, I made a big *SIGH* and just shook my head. Now that the two quilts with these blocks are finished, I love them! These are not my style at all, but they are so sweet and pretty all the same.