Desire to Inspire Project 5 - Travel Packing Bags

(If you're looking for today's BOMs Away, it's HERE.)



"Miss Kitty's Colors" met a lot of needs for me - the quilt for Emma, a gift for Jaycee, a civics project for Marissa and me, some thank you minis I'll share soon, and these bags for more Christmas gifts.

Extended family have a fun cruise coming up, so some handy packing bags to keep shoes off clothes or undies all together in the big suitcase or whatever folks want them for were just the ticket for handmade items.

These are not lined, and I basically used this Tutorial at A Spoonful of Sugar, changing the sizes to fit the person or the fabric left-overs. They were very easy to batch-sew!

The pink is left over from Kitty Titty Power, all the rest of the fabrics are from "Miss Kitty's Colors"

So easy, that I decided to make some for Dad and Barbara, who love to travel. I couldn't see Dad using a Kitty bag, though, so I did pull fun nautical prints from my stash for him.  :)

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Take a look at the other projects I worked up from the "Miss Kitty's Colors" collection. If you might be interested in taking on the Henry Glass challenge, their information is included here. Don't let it intimidate you - I am just a normal private quilter, and I also had a much longer deadline than the usual 3 weeks, so I went a little crazy with my work.  :)   

#1 - "Love from Above for Emma" - original design
#2 - Jaycee's messenger bag
#3 - "Kitty Titty Power" with ruler tip 
#4 - Miss Kitty Winter Receiver
#5 - Travel packing bags  (you are here)
#6 - "Kitty Shuffle" - original with tutorial
#7 - "Soft Kitty, Warm Kitty" - original with tutorial
#8 - Selvages - with tutorial

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I'll be linking up at:

Fabric Tuesday

Can I get a Whoop! Whoop!

Link-a-Finish Friday

TGIFF, which is at Quokka Quilts this week

 (main site here)

Bloggers' Quilt Festival - "Love from Above for Emma" (Desire to Inspire pieces 1 & 2)

"Love from Above for Emma" 

designed and made by Lynette Caulkins

36 x 43 inches

cotton fabrics, Hobbs poly batting

free-motion quilted on a domestic Husqvarna Sapphire 875Q

Entered into the Small Quilts category of the 

Fall 2015 Blogger's Quilt Festival

Greetings! Those who have followed me for a while know that I have been finishing several projects over the years that my cousin had been working on when she died. Her physical heart gave out way too young, and she never saw the grandkids that she would have doted on shamelessly. My favorite photo of her is from way back in 1989, on my wedding day.

Well, I've also taken on the goal to make a quilt for each of her grandkids for her.

When her first granddaughter was born, I used a guild challenge to make a little quilt for Jaycee in Kelly’s memory. 

As you can see, "Hugs and Kisses from Above" had charm blocks along the bottom with appliqued XO’s tumbling down in front of some vertical mint waves. It connoted the idea of our loved ones continuing to be with us after passing over to the next existence.

I’ve felt bad the past year or so, because I never made a baby quilt for her sister, who is now two years old. So when the Henry Glass company sent me a bundle of “Miss Kitty’s Colors” by Marie Cole to use for my turn in their “Desire to Inspire” program, I opened that package and immediately knew the first item would be a quilt for Emma.

I wanted this to be similar in design, but with its own overall look. The super-cute block-based feature fabric in the collection was perfect for cutting steps out along the bottom, and being a collection of kitty-oriented prints with florals and stripes included, I had the idea to put a fun black cat romping after a ball of yarn. 

Shopping my stash for a good background had yielded a long-ago purchase of softly speckled light blue that played nice with the collection, so that was an extra addition. (Amusingly, that fabric just happened to be a Henry Glass fabric as well.) 

Kids love having their name on things, I’ve found, so I appliqued "Emma" at the top, giving it some strong blanket stitching like Kelly was fond of using. 

I used the quilting to include the idea of the wavy mint streamers and the XO’s that had been appliqued on her sister's quilt. I was really happy at how it tied the two different designs together in the concept of Kelly's love for them raining down from Heaven.

I paired the top with some pink Kona solid I had on hand and some Hobbs poly batting. 

And one of the paw-print selections from "Miss Kitty's Colors" made a perfect binding. Isn't that cute?

Since you just can’t send a gift out of the blue to one young child and not send something for a sibling, the second item I made from the collection was a cute child’s messenger tote for her sister, complete with her name appliqued, as well. I used this tutorial at the blog "Zaaberry": Kid's Messenger Bag Tutorial. Every fabric here comes from the collection.

I did choose to place her name inside the flap for child safety reasons. That also left the front flap free for the great feature fabric. I can picture Jaycee happily using this when they go to the library, or toting valuables around the house. 

Can't wait to put these in the mail this week!

And my real-live black cat, Navarre - ?  He approves.  :)

Finish Report :D Baby English 1.0 w/Book Set

Another finish that I'm so in love with.  :D

Baby English 1.0
40" x 40"

This quilt is for my youngest sister, who's about to have her first baby. It's one of this year's rare not-UFO/NETY projects. I knew I wanted to do a mix-and-white chevron or diamond HST layout so I could play with some cool Free-Motion Quilting in the white bands.I also needed to stick to stash during this UFO/stash-busting year. Plus, there is ZERO fabric budget for at least another 4 months of wallet tightness. Moving and then unexpected attorney costs will do that!

So, in my stash I found yards and yards of this fun Owl and the Pussycat fabric. Grabbed some blues to play with it, grabbed that shrinking Kona-snow bolt I'd bought on a super-sale a couple years ago, and went to work.

My inspiration was this chevron quilt made by Kathy at Tamarack Shack, who was totally cool with me mimicking the quilting.

But then I wanted to make my fmq coordinate with the novelty print, which has these bead-looking strands and the sailboat-on-the-sea thing going. (Mastering the spirals fill will have to wait.)  So I did rows of pearls against the blue bands to make those pop out more and put wave-evoking spirals down the centers. I free-hand marked those somewhat, because I couldn't stitch them out with consistent spacing otherwise. I did use cotton thread (that's the 50wt Aurifil there), which pulls minky fluff through from the back. You can see the blue pops in the stitches. But in this particular case, it had an enhancing effect, so I didn't use poly thread to get away from that. (I don't want this effect on the current FMQ work, which also has a minky back, so I'm using a poly thread there. More on that in a couple weeks.)

I just love the dimensionality created by the simple single-line quilting down the blues. You can kind of see here how they pop out so well:

The batting is a thin poly, but it's coupled with a minky back, which adds to the puff. It's about the same as the puff you'd get with a thick poly and a normal quilter's cotton back. I am always completely enchanted with the quilting on a minky back!

I had enough of the blue plaid left to use that for the binding. Turned out great!

As I was cutting the blues, I thought "I really need to try to use more of this print!" (There's this *crazy* yardage of it - something like 8 altogether. No clue what I was thinking. I must have picked it up at a yard sale or something.)  So I decided to make a tote to go with the quilt.  

And then, of course, I needed to get the book to go *in* the tote to go with the quilt. And I found a hard copy with cover art that goes with the fabric so perfectly!  

I used Poppyseed Fabric's tutorial here. Tweaked it a little to incorporate some of the left-over HST's, which I'd made using the 8-at-once method that Lynn describes here. So fast!!!

Now I'm just waiting for a name to do the label, and then this set will sail off to Texas.  :D

(Selma says: "Hi! Whatcha doin'?!"

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Linking up at

Michelle's "Let's Make Baby Quilts!"

Thearica's "It's a Saturday Sharing Day!"

TGIFF

Can I get a Whoop! Whoop!

Link-a-Finish Friday