I did a lot this week! But there is still tons more!

All I can say is what the title up above has declared.  We got so many things done last week and that is one of the reasons why I haven't been able to post anything.  So as of last Monday we made it our goal to finish a few of the projects we had started some time ago.  The first was making a set of Halloween fabric pumpkins.   We did some Fall ones last time as you can see below but we wanted so spooky ones too!

We had some of this fancy Halloween fabric leftover from last year so we thought we'd put it to good use.  You will have to forgive my pics, they aren't the greatest with this camera.

Fancy Shmancy!

By the time we were done all the pumpkins had stems and were happy as can be!

As I said before Gracie loves to name everything so she named this one Trudy.  I don't know where she got the name but then again she's like that.  She named our freshwater crab Crabby Martin, go figure. 

The second thing on our list was to finish our Halloween quilt that we started last month.  I had this thought to a gathered patchwork quilt so it would be nice and fluffy.  So I know this isn't usually done but I got my serger out serged the sucker.  I set my machine to gather it and sewed all my patchwork squares together.  I added a border, free motioned quilted around the border and did X's through the middle of the patchwork squares.  This is what I got!

Pretty cute! My son absolutely adores it.

I don't know if you can see it but in the corner I wrote Boo.  I did trick or treat in one, Spooky in another and last but not least Happy Halloween.  I wanted to try a fold over binding because I had never done that before and this was going to be our quilt so I wasn't too worried about how it was going to look in the end.  It's backed in a flannel backing and I couldn't figure out how to do the mitered corners this way so I gave up and and made it as tidy as I could.  All in all I like it but I would rather do my regular borders in the end.

As if that wasn't enough for us we decided now was the time to purchase 11 pounds of pears and can them for the winter.  My local grocery store had them on sale for only $.39 cents a pound, who could resist!  We got to peeling, coring, and wedging, I think by that evening my hands felt like I had been crocheting non stop for hours.  Needless to say we are now set for the winter.

We also had a little bit of time to make some refrigerator magnets, which Gracie really enjoyed helping with.  I'm not going to tell you too much about them because I want to write up a little tutorial on them for those who would like to make some.  But here is a sneak peak!

Gracie loves doing what ever I am doing. I can't wait until she is old enough to learn how to sew!

Last but not least, our house.  I finally got the house dusted, vacuumed, swept, mopped, sorted, recycled, and decorated.  I also have to thank my dear hubby Ryan for rug doctoring our living room and dining area, it really needed it!  I'm not going to show you that one because who needs to see us in our grubbies trying to overhaul a dirty house.  Let's just say we are good to go for a couple of weeks!  Tune in later because I want to show you how to make those nifty fabric button magnets.  They make great stocking stuffers!

Thank you and Good night to all!

The pumpkins are coming! The pumpkins are coming!

Good Evening Everybody!

My post today is kind of a mix of yesterday and today. We spent our free time making fabric pumpkins. Gracie and I spent Monday raking through the garage for out fall decorations and we came up with an interesting fact. I don't have any fall decorations! I have Halloween decorations but only one little brown felted fabric pumpkin.

See.  He doesn't look too impressive sitting there next to Gilbert the Mummy.  As you come to get to know us you will learn that Gracie has to name everything, it's just something she loves to do.  Anyway, my lack of festive fall decor was eating at me and on a budget, making something was the way to go.  I scoured the web and found this lovely tutorial on how to make fabric pumpkins, it was fun at first sight!  I found the tutorial on a blog by Danielle Thompson and here is the link to her Fabric Pumpkin Tutorial.
http://thompsonfamily.typepad.com/thompson_familylife/2009/11/fabric-pumpkin-tutorial.html

Gracie and I dug out our fall fabric scraps, bought some new fabric and hunted around the backyard for the small branches and twigs.  Gracie with her super positive pumpkin crafting attitude and me armed with my trusty glue gun, we came up with this...

Gracie was in charge of putting the stems in place.  She was a very proud little miss!

We made as many as we could with all the fabric we had and I am almost tempted to dig for some more.  In the end we wound up with our very own fabric pumpkin patch!  I think I have some sage green corduroy stashed away and I would love to see how that would look.  I am also curious to see how big we could actually make one.

Now I am going to have to lure them away from her so I can decorate with them.  Chances are I will find them all in her bed at bedtime tonight.

After our really fun pumpkin making fever we went on to bigger things, and I mean bigger.  Get a load of this sucker!

17" inches long and it probably weighed about 4-5 lbs.

Friends, meet dinner!  Dinner, meet friends!  This was our dinner plan tonight, a 17" long zucchini.  This was given to me by my good friend Dorie from work, she has the most talented green thumb I have ever seen.  I've seen her coax a Dalia grow bigger than Gracie's head!  She gave me this when after she had learned that we love zucchini.  She thought we could do something great with it, and we did!  We hollowed it out and stuffed it with sausage, cheese, breadcrumbs, mushrooms, onion, and red bell pepper.  The outcome, very Delicious!

370 degrees and 45 minutes later, it was supper time!  While it was baking it gave me some time to put my Halloween decorations up and ponder over the thought whether or not I needed to make some Halloween fabric pumpkins.  I think the decision was yes!  So another charming day and cheers to a full belly!

Good Night!

I'm a Winner! In more ways than one!

Good Afternoon All!

So there has been a lot of things going on this week and one of them happened last Wednesday so I wanted to blog about it.  I was named a winner on Madame Samm's Wantobe Quilter Giveaway.  I won a 10 square from Amanda Murphy's collection call Veranda, I'm so excited!  Madame Samm has a blog called Sew We Quilt, you can find her here http://www.sewwequilt.com.  If I can ever figure it out, I will put her button on my page.  She is currently have a wonderful giveaway every weekday for both wantobe quilters and experienced quilters.  Every day she has a guest quilter on who shows us neat and really helpful tips, tricks, patterns, and tutorials to help us all learn a thing or two.  So if you are a new quilter you should hop on over and check it out. 

Here is the 10 Square that I won!  I am still in shock! Photo Provided by Sew We Quilt!

Now part of Madame Samm's giveaway is that if you are a wantobe quilter you have to get a sponsor to enter.  Don't worry if you don't know of anybody because she has provided an entire list of sponsors ready to help you out.  The other half of the deal is that your sponsor wins if you win, so there are a lot of lovely sponsors ready to help you out!  My sponsor is Angie with Summerfield Quilts, she is a wonderful quilter and multi-crafter, like me.  Like I said before, I am just not happy doing one thing at a time.  You can visit her blog at http://sfquilts.blogspot.com.   Speaking of Angie, she is the other great thing that happened this last week.  Not only do I envy her for getting her sewing room cleaned up, she was brave enough to start a Christmas Fabric Charm Swap.  I am still new at all this so I had to read about it so see what it was all about.  A charm swap is when a certain amount of people buy designated fabric and mail it to the person in charge, that person then divides up the fabric evenly and mails it back to everyone.  In our case it's 56 people and 2 different yards of Christmas fabric cut up into 5" x 5" squares, so in the end we will each get 112 different 5" x 5" squares.  Pretty nifty hugh. Here is a photo of the two beautiful fabrics I chose.  They are both 21 Days of Christmas by Kate Spain from Moda.

So all in all that was some of the great things that happened to me last week!  I hope this week to come will bring more good news and happiness!

I am Official!!!

Woo Hoo!  I have taken care of my two sickie boy/girl twins, said a breif hello to my hubby, worked all night and now it's official.  Or rather I should say I am official!  It's 11:39pm now lets go to bed!

Just Kidding!

You didn't think I would start this and just leave it with a couple of sentences did you.  If I was a smart woman who had to get up in the morning to usher my son to school then yes, I would go to bed.  I however, am not one of those women so I want to talk about it.  For those of you who have not heard of me I am Elayne.  Wife to my wonderful and tolerant husband, Ryan.  Stay at home mom to my four year old boy/girl twins, Willie and Gracie.  And, I am really loved and supported by my family and friends.  I am a serious crafter.  I crochet, barely knit, light on the scrapbooking, heavy on the kiddie crafts, in love with baking and one heck of a wizard at the sewing machine.  You better believe I am loving every moment of it. 

Being a stay at home mom, my inner sewing diva took wings and flew.  I sewed pettiskirts to help cover bills when the kids were born and that is when all my talents came forth.  You can check me out on Flickr.com and search twinstitches to see me/my creations!  From pettiskirts I moved on into childrens boutique clothes.  I am not one of those people that follow clothing patterns easily so some  of my designs I made up.  They were logically put together and simple.  I thought about selling my patterns for awhile but I had one sized child in front of me and had no idea how to make them multi-sized.  Now I have a four year old daughter here who I practically have to bribe to get her in a dress so I am taking a break from making clothes.  My new passion, is quilting.  I think working evenings in a fabric store probably had something to do with it but hey, it's a wonderful way to express ones-self.  Recently I have found this wonderful website and I have met a few really nice friends who share my passion for sewing, so I thought I would start this blog.  I hate to leave you with a cliff hanger but, I did just hit the 12:03am mark and I should probably get to bed.  No worries, I promise to tell you all more tomorrow!

As I tell my babies, sleep tight and don't let the bed bugs bite!