My group

Here are some pictures of our sew and tell from my Material Girls Idaho meeting yesterday.

Rachel's quilt.

Rachel's granddaughter's outfit. Rachel made the skirt and purse.

Maurene's charity quilt that we helped piece at our last meeting.

Jeanie's gift for her little kids in her Sunday School class.

Carolanna's quilt.

Another Carolanna quilt.

Carolanna's cherry quilt.

Close-up of the cherry quilt.

Another of Carolanna's quilts. She caught up on all her unfinished quilt tops this month that needed quilting.

Mary's quilt.

Another raw edge quilt by Mary.

My blocks I received from my flickr online bee group.

Sweets and Sleeps

Last night I found this cute little basket on my doorstep. The card said, "Hope your summer is going great. Here are some jams to sweeten things up. love, your secret sister."

Homemade jams!!! There's apricot, red grape, peach and blackberry. I feel so lucky. These will be treasured and enjoyed.

And look how cute this fabric is that was inside the basket. Fun summery popsicle fabric. Hmmm, a table topper idea is coming to me.

Last week we had our good friends from Argentina staying with us. They came up for a whirlwind tour of the United States. It was so fun having them here and sharing some of Idaho with them. I made this pillow case for their daughter, Mara.

Mara is 15 and is learning English, so I made this from fabric that has young women values written on it. These are the values the teenage girls in our church learn to live by. Mara immediately recognized the words and loved the pillowcase.

Free Motion Quilting Project

I've been spending a few days watching Leah Day's youtube videos showing her techniques using her home sewing machine for machine quilting. She's amazing and her tutorials are detailed and easy to follow. I've particularly loved her Free Motion Quilting Project where she has 365 quilting designs. I try doodling on my own and can only come up with like 7 designs and they look vaguely similar to each other. So finding Leah Day has been exciting for me.

I love how this one looks. It's called Spaghetti and Meatballs and it's day #96/365.
Here's one that I've practiced. We have lots of bamboo in our backyard and knowing bamboo I'm sure we'll have lots more in the years to come. This one is #71/365.

The design above is called Spiral Tree and it's number 60/365. It looks fairly easy and do-able for me.
I love this one called double pebble and it's day 22/365. I've always loved the pebble look, but this double pebble gives an interesting twist.

Usually when I get ready to quilt my quilt, I get stuck trying to figure out what design to use, how to do it and where to place it. I even have a few sandwiched quilts all ready to go, but I just can't think of how to quilt them. Most of the time I just fall back on good old stippling. It's my go-to quilting design. I'm now practicing several of Leah's designs and techniques so I'll be ready for my next quilt. Have fun looking through all her videos, designs, etc. I think you'll get just as inspired as I have. Whether you use your home machine or a large quilting machine, these designs are for everyone. Thanks Leah for sharing your creativity and talent.

Pillowcase Dresses

Last month while attending a humanitarian service work day, I noticed a table with a pile of cute little dresses. After asking around, I found out these were pillowcase dresses made to send to Africa. Each one was so unique and darling. Each one was actually made from a pillowcase. Many of them had an existing trim on the bottom and some even used additional fabric to add a pocket on the front.

I explained that I knew these dresses would be loved and needed because of the stories I've heard from my oldest son who is in Uganda for the summer doing a public health internship. I was asked if I would be able to get these dresses and several more over to Africa where my son could hand them out personally. Originally these dresses were going to be shipped to a business in New York where they would then be shipped off to Africa, but how fun for everyone involved if they could be personally handed out, photos taken, etc. I thought it was a great idea.

Last week I shipped them off to where several more intern students were getting ready to take off for Uganda this week. My son and others in his group are anxious to get the dresses and hand deliver them. He said he could think of so many little villages where these dresses will be a great blessing to many little girls.

All in all, there were 76 dresses sent. I can't wait to see pictures and I'll be sure to post them. I'm just the shipper of the dresses, but I'm so excited. My daughters and I want to make several more to send over and they are so easy!

Here is a great tutorial showing how to make these pillowcase dresses and here's another. This is just a small portion of the ones I shipped.