Crafts and Beer

So I went over to our neighbors house for dinner the other night and she asked me a question that kind of took me by surprise, “have you sewn anything lately?”. So I thought about it and, no, I hadn’t sewn anything in MONTHS! Which I understand may not sound like that long for most people, but thats an eternity for me. So I decided that my sewing draught was officially over and began construction on a new quilt. I had made one for our bed a few months ago, but I wanted to make one to have on the couch for curling up and watching TV. We have no real color scheme in our living room right now besides having a lot of wood furniture and a gray wall. I decided greens and blues were going to be the pallet and then I wanted a gray back to the quilt.

So here is the finished couch quilt!

Front of the couch quilt

Back of the couch quilt

With the back of the quilt, I didn’t want it to be just one solid boring color, so I took the scraps from the sashes of patterns on the front and sewed them together to break up the gray. The quilts finished size is about 52″ x 62″ and is perfect for covering up while sitting on the couch.

After finishing this quilt, I still had a bunch of the fabric left and decided to make a smaller version of the quilt. I used green on the back instead of the gray and it is only about 49″ x 40″ finished size. Here is the remnant quilt so far, I still need to do the final quilting and binding.

Remnant Quilt

Remnant Quilt Back

So my mother in law a few years ago got me into cross stitching. Its always been one of those things that is just something I can do mindlessly and took very little concentration. After taking a very long break from it, I recently decided that I wanted to get started again with it. Not really having a place in my house for an alphabet sampler or a cross stitched angel, I went searching for fun, modern cross stitch patterns that I could actually use! After very little searching, I found two great shops on Etsy that have some great patterns and kits. SewingSeed and Andwabisabi have super cute and really modern usable patterns. I recently purchased the chubby gnome pattern and have all sorts of ideas for him!

photo from SewingSeed on Etsy

photo from andwabisabi on etsy

I also decided that I was going to try making my own creation. So I was searching online for something that would be fun to make and I came across a lot of pixel art projects, and from there, decided that the only logical thing to make on black cross stitch canvas would be PacMan! I’ve been using metallic thread, which I have a huge love for, but it is really making me cranky. It constantly gets knotted up and tangled, and is so difficult to thread on the needle. But its going to look RAD when it is done, so I can deal with the frustration. I think I might make a space invaders one too and put them next to each other in my sitting area.

The start of my PacMan cross stitch

Cross stitching is such an easy craft and requires very very little to get started. And with all of the fun patterns out there, it is really a craft you should get into. Already a cross stitcher? What are some of the things you use your cross stitching for?

So as most of you can tell from my posts and photos, I really like to take classic crafts, but make them usable for me, which means that they have to look cool. I love mid century and danish modern, which is very much a simplistic and clean look, so I found a quilt pattern that I adore. Oh, Fransson! blog has some absolutely beautiful, clean, modern quilt patterns and even step by step instructions if you have never quilted before. I used her 12+2=Q quilt pattern, which in the tutorial, she used sheets for the front and back. While many quilters won’t use sheets for their quilts, and if you are going to get your quilt professionally quilted, they won’t touch it if you have, I think it is a very practical and inexpensive way to get a large solid section of color. Since I do the finishing quilting at home, I didn’t worry about it.

I had gotten a bunch of fat quarters at  Joann a few years ago, and they have literally been collecting dust in my cabinet. I figured what better time than now to use them, and went and purchased a couple of sheets from Ikea for the front and back and got to town on my quilt. I actually screwed up putting the pieces together, when you cut all of the fat quarters down, you end up with 3″ ends to the pieces and I was keeping them to put on the back. Well, I used them on the front instead, because I forgot that was what they were for, so I ended up using the largest size panels on the back instead. Its still not complete, my machine had to be repaired in the middle of the project, but here it is all put together and most of the finishing quilting done to it. I can’t wait to start on my next one!

12+2=Q quilt

12+2=Q quilt back

Hello! And yes, I am still alive! We got a new dog in April and I have been consumed by being a new “mom”. We adopted a retired Greyhound named Brett and have been loving every minute of it. He is so affectionate, calm, collected and entertaining. If anyone is looking into getting a new family pet, please, please, please, consider adoption first. There are so many absolutely wonderful animals that need homes. Purebred’s, babies, mutts and adults, and there is a rescue for practically every breed of animal. I also highly recommend looking into adopting a Greyhound. We went through the Greyhound Adoption Center here in San Diego and they are absolutely amazing. The love and care that they give to all of their animals, and the joy they have when they find good homes is inspiring, humbling and just simply amazing. I get teary eyed even thinking about how great they are. Nothing feels better than giving an in need animal a new home.

Brett (anomyces)

Brett (anomyces)

So, onto the crafts and beer! I can’t even begin to tell you about all of the amazing beers that I have been drinking lately, but here is a shot. I tried all three commercially available Chimays. And I know what you’re thinking, a craft beer geek like me and I haven’t had Chimay! I just always skipped over it, I always meant to try it, but never got around to it. My favorite it the red label, the complexity and the smoothness was perfect. I have had New Belgium Eric’s Ale from their Lips of Faith series. It is exactly like it says on the lable “This is a sour beer for people who don’t like sours, and it is a fruit beer for people who don’t like fruit beers”. I LOVE!!! sours and this beer was great. It wasn’t such a vinegary sour that I have been drinking of late so it is much easier to drink, this would be great for a person just starting out in sour beers. It had notes of peaches, followed by the tartness and then the slight barnyard funk associated with a brett spiked beer. Loved this one! Karl Strauss 21st anniversary ale was another intense and wonderful beer. It was aged with zinfandel grape juice giving it a beautiful rich brownish red color and a flavor profile that completely covers the 10% alcohol. The grapes don’t give it a ton of grape flavor, but they do give it a nice richness and malty appeal. The list goes on, but those are the beers that stand out the most to me right now. Oh Yeah! Our absolutely wonderful friend Taylor (@theartofbeer on twitter) recently found a new job, and what better way to celebrate this than with 30 of your good friends and about 100 bottles of rare, hard to find, EPIC beers! In the line up, some key players were Black Tuesday from The Bruery, Brooklyn Black Ops, some phenomenal home brews, Tactical Nuclear Penguin from Brew Dog, a wide range of ales from Stone Brewing co. from vertical epics to anniversary ales, Lost Abbey Red Poppey, Angels Share and Duck Duck Gueze, Churchill’s Finest hour, a very limited release that Lost Abbey brewed and aged for Churchill’s Pub for their grand ‘re’ opening and oh yeah, we had Samuel Adams Utopias, which I will say was one of the greatest beers of my life.

And now for the crafts. I have been getting a lot of orders for my tie dyed onsies lately ( a lot of baby makin’ must be going on!). So that has been keeping me busy. Also, I recently went up and visited some family in Bakersfield and they have been getting really into quilting. So I though I would give it a shot. I’ve tried it before and failed miserably, but I like to think I’ve gained some patience lately and thought I would try again. I was told about this wonderful foundation call “Downy Quilts for Kids“.  You go to their website, sign up and give them your address and everything, then in about a week, you get a kit of fabric, all precut, and directions. The only thing you need to do is put the quilt together, get it quilted, and send it back. The quilts all go to children’s hospitals to brighten a child’s day. I though this was such a great idea and something that I could completely get behind, especially since I didn’t have to cut out all of the fabric. So I got everything in the mail last week and am starting to put it together now, but here are some preliminary photos of the fabric and the first few stitches. On a side note, my sewing machine is completely messed up and bunching up all of the bobbin stitches on the underside of my sewing, so now I have to take it in and get it serviced :( If anyone has any thoughts or suggestions, I would love to hear them! I cleaned the shuttle, changed the bobbin, changed the thread, re-threaded the entire thing, changed the needle, twice, and still, it jams up on me constantly. Oh well, nothing a good beer can’t fix!

Quilts for Kids

Quilts for Kids

Well its good to be back and I will continue posting images of my epic journey into quilting. Cheers and happy crafting!

So here is a really easy craft for you all today. Fabric wall art. You don’t even need to know how to sew. All you need to be able to do is cut fabric and handle a hammer, or staple gun if your brave. Ikea sells these great frames that are 19″ x 19″ and are meant for covering with fabric to make great wall art. They also have a beautiful array of neat modern fabrics. But if they don’t have the pattern you want, you could always go to your favorite fabric store and get a design that matches your home.

After assembling the frame, which consists of 4 pieces of wood and 4 screws, you cut your fabric down to size, which if you are using the ikea frame, is 23″ x 23″. I chose a fabric that had a really large pattern on it so I needed to cut the fabric so that the pattern would line up how I wanted it to and cut the square around that. Center the frame on the fabric and starting at one end, fold the fabric up over the side of the frame and put a nail, or staple, in the center of the fabric on that side. Then work your way across the frame so you are working on the opposite side you were just on and so on. You start with just one nail in each side and then work out from there. When you get to the end, you can do a gallery fold on the fabric so that you don’t have the folded corners coming up around the frame, but I screwed up on mine and didn’t quite get that effect. If you don’t get the Ikea frame, this could easily be made from 2×2 pieces of pine or balsa wood attached together into a square.

These are really versatile frames too. If you have large walls like I do, you can attach multiple frames together and cover with a large print fabric. And if you were wondering what kind of delicious beer I was enjoying while working on this quick easy project, it was a Rodenbach. I absolutely love this beer, it is a great flemish sour ale that has been barrel aged and blended. The fruity notes, the beautiful red brown color and the minimal carbonation all come together and make this beer great for any time of day or year. I always have a bunch of these on hand at home so that I can enjoy it whenever. If you are new to sour ales, this is a great one to start with. It is a very mild sour and has more of a fruit taste than vinegary.

Well here is a picture of my fabric wall art, cheers!

Yellow sunburst fabric wall art