Quilts

So it's finally here. If you hadn't noticed I had been procrastinating for awhile but I have finally stopped procrastinating and taken a catalog of all the quilts I have made to date and am going to share them with you now.
So here they are:

This one was my first ever "real" quilt that I made. I had made a small rag quilt previous to this one but on this one I did all the cutting, sewing and quilting myself. I even put on the binding myself which I might add I completely hate. Some say they find it relaxing, I say it's just plain annoying, I'm definitely not a hand sewer but you have to learn it first to find out if you dislike.
As well this one is 3 different star blocks and my arrangement of them.
This here is "Serenity's Path". This one is my first designed quilt. I was sick one day with a fever and was napping, or I should say was trying to nap but I couldn't sleep because this kept coming into my head. Therefore the only course of action was to grab a sketch book and start drawing and writing my ideas down. This was the end product. I did the sewing of the top and one flower, my mom did the rest. Like I said I hate hand sewing. And lastly a woman known for her long arm quilting in the guild quilted it for me.
"Cypress Lake"
This is another quilt I designed. I was out one day with my mom looking at fabric when we came across the panel in the center. I went from there. I'm one of those people who usually buys a fabric first and makes the quilt after.
"Coffee Lounge"
Yet another quilt I designed. Like I said I usually see a fabric first and make a quilt from there. And when I see that fabric it usually doesn't go with a pattern I already have. On this fabric I saw the dark chocolate swirls and instantly thought of rich, dark coffee and chocolate. I also already had fabric with coffee beans, some coffee related words and, unrelated but in the quilt, wine corks. Therefore I started designing and went through my mother's stash to get the rest of the colours. This is what I made. It is not finished but rather just the top. And on this one my mom refused to do the applique, she said "If you want it on the quilt you'll have to do it yourself". Of course the steam was an essential part of the quilt therefore against my will I appliqued them on. I grumbled the whole time.

Here are the comfort quilts I have done so far. Comfort Quilts is something the guild my mom belongs to... and probably other guilds do...does for sick people in the hospital, or fire victims and the like. As well they also do Quilts of Valor and those go to the families of fallen soldiers. I haven't done one of those yet but I have tons of fabric and I plan on make atleast one before the summer is through. If only I'd stop procrastinating.
Comfort Quilts"

This one is not from a book but it wasn't that hard either. I saw a bunch of bright colours in my fabric bins and thought stain glass window. Unfortunately I ran out of black and seeing as the fabrics were donated I said to myself not a big deal there has to be another dark colour in here for the border and there was. Overall I am quite happy with this quilt, it just makes you wanna smile.This one again is not from a pattern but someone had left behind about 15 5x5 squares from a quilt they had started but didn't finish, and since there wasn't enough squares to make another border for the above stated quilt and frankly I wsan't going to try and make more I thought this would be a cool idea and just cut out a bunch of squares. I think by far this is the one I have gotten most compliments on out of the comfort quilts. And after saying I would never make another one again my best friend said she liked it and I heard my self say in response "I'll make you one, but you'll have to come to pick out the colour". As my Momma always says "never say never".
This here is my first ever comfort quilt. Up to this point (and no the quilts on here are clearly not in the order I made them) I had only been layering the quilts when I would go to help, but one day they wanted everyone to take a quilt so we made a bundle up of 5 colours and the challenge was not to bring any scraps back. Nobody wanted this bundle so I said I would take it. I actually really like the pattern but I hated putting it together. The pattern, which is from one of the many quilting magazines that we own, has you cut things out bigger than the final piece and also it was just a very tedious quilt to make. But overall I like it.

After I made my oriental quilt the girls from the guild really wanted me to make one for comfort quilts. So this is what I ended up designing. I would definitely say this is my favourite part:
I had some of the crane fabric left over from the large block I had cut and this is all my mind kept going back to when I was think about what to do with it.As well I would like to tell you this is not what I originally had planned for the oriental quilt but I just didn't have the heart to cut some of the fabric to make my design work. So instead I made it a series of panels and I think it turned out well.
This is one of the tops I did in in the last few days. It was actually really easy because the centre is actually a panel. Therefore all I did was put borders on it.So this quilt is another one of the comfort quilts I really like. But I can't take all the credit. Remember those 15 blocks I told you about well that centre square is the quilt that it came from. When I saw it I didn't understand why someone would abandon it but it was ok. I decided to use it like a panel and put 4 borders on it.

That is the last of my quilts to date. I do have 2 more already cut out just waiting to be sewn and what not. As well I have a giant list of about 15 other quilts I saw inside some of the quick sew magazines by McCall that I would eventually like to do, either for myself with other colours or for comfort quilts. And also like I said I want to make atleast one quilt of valor before the summer is through and my time is taken away. Lastly I also, if I can ever get started, am making myself another quilt that I designed called "Beast's Rose". Hopefully I'll start it in the next few days and can show it to you here.

Have a wonderful day and keep crafting.
-Photo Alley

Amigurumi

Well hello everyone it's been about a month. I know I've gotten lazy but this heat is getting to me. Right excuses, however I am sure everyone is feeling this heat lately. It's been in the 30's plus another 10 degrees because of the humidity. It's torture, pure and utter torture. I'm not a fan of hot heat and there fore I stay in side as much as possible. I tried going to the beach on one of these horrible 40 degree days, it was not relaxing, in the water was too cold and out of the water was too hot. I think we lasted a few hours running back and forth between our towels and knee deep water. But enough about that back to crafts.
I haven't been watching much theatre lately. I was hoping to see a black lights show in my hometown but when I found out about it in the paper there was only a day left and I was heading out of town that day. I was very disappointed. I had seen the show a few years ago shortly after they started performing it and loved it but I'll just have to hope it is back next year. This play is done in black light with puppets and all the actors are people with disabilities. The show is both wonderful for children and adults. Like I said I thoroughly enjoyed it the first time I saw it and I'm hoping to see it again.
Maybe some time this month I'll be able to go out and see some theatre.
As well I thought that today you might want to see some of the amigurumi patterns you can either find in books or on the net. I have searched both internet and bought a few books to make the ones I've made. As well I've created a few myself. Enjoy.

This guy I created myself from an image I found from this woman who's book I bought. She had tons of patterns in the book but there was a guy like this on her blog about how to back comb, but of course there was no pattern for him, so with my minimal information on how to crochet I created this guy. And I love him. One day I'll make tons more in multiple colors.

So here you see the fuzzy pink guy again and the one on his left is a koala bear from the book of that woman I was tell you about. Her blog is Roxy Craft. As well I found the blue bunny online as a free pattern. I also absolutely loved creating him.
Now these Three are from the book by Roxy Craft and this is where my obsession started. My sister had a baby girl a year ago and being in school I had to save my pennies so I thought to myself what is a cost efficient way to get her a present. And that's when it hit me while I was in the school store. The amigurumi book. I thought perfect, I can make her something again. For her first toy from me I had created plush baby blocks so this time I thought why not stuffed animals. I did originally have an idea to create a whole farm group of animals and maybe some zoo ones too but after making the pig, I thought uh no. Now maybe I will when she is older.

As I was at school to relax and calm down during stressful times I would crochet so I found a jelly fish online and when I made him I liked him but I thought he would have been smaller (He's the green one). As well I thought that his legs should have been farther in his body like a real jelly fish. Therefore I created the blue on in the back ground. His legs are attached within his body.
I then thought why not make some nintendo guys. I started searching the net for mario brother free patterns and ninja turtles as well as any other video game related character. This was my attempt at a ninja turtle with the wrong colours. He as well is a lot bigger then I thought, I'm still working on making a smaller version of him in the right colours.
Lastly I wanted a cell phone case and I wanted to represent my love of the original nintendo gamer. Therefore I started on this with some help from my knitting book. Yes knitting not crochetting. Anyways this is the first attempt and one day I will refine it so that it actually says nintendo and things like start and stop.

Have a wonderful day.
-Photo Alley