Project: Baby Quilt

So my good friend, coworker, and evil twin, Erinn Carty, is expecting a mysterious baby within the coming weeks. I say mysterious because she's not found out the sex, so whether the world is about to be blessed with a new baby boy or girl is a mystery to all! In my recent crafting spree and since I'm taking this quilting class, I thought a quilt would be the perfect gift for Baby. Now I had considered waiting until Baby is born to make the quilt, but a mid-November birthday means this baby is going to need a warm quilt ASAP. So I dug through my trusty ol' craft box and found this set of lovely fabric squares I'd bought a year or so ago on Etsy. I found a simple pattern to follow using squares I've learned in quilting class, and voila. I went to Hancock Fabrics tonight and bought a nice khaki Kona Cotton as the filler fabric.
 
Here's the beginning. I'll update as I go...

Inspiration photo

Scattered 5 inch squares

I then pressed the neutral squares to the printed fabric

Action shot of the ironing

Okay, here's where I get a little crafty. I don't have my 
1/4 inch foot yet  and I don't trust myself to eyeball a 1/4 inch seam. 
So I drew my line down the diagonal and then measured 1/8 in. on each 
side for my seams to make the half-square triangles

After stitching the seams. 
My cheating method of drawing the lines helped a lot!

First two I finished and squared off. 
The quilt will be comprised of 80 squares just like this.

Project: Curling Iron Cover

Okay so this isn't the first project I've done EVER. But I did this tonight and I've got quite a few other projects lined up so I decided it was time to create a blog that actually had a purpose. And that purpose is (drum roll please)... I shall share my projects.

Anyway - I got the idea to make my own curling iron holder after my last trip to see Beaufriend and I really wanted to curl my hair the morning I was to leave, but I couldn't because I didn't want to throw a hot curling iron into my suitcase. After that traumatic experience (flat hair to have lunch with BF's mom, sigh) I scoured the internet for suitable holders. I couldn't find any I really liked. Vera Bradley has a cute one, but that stuff is highly overpriced and overrated IMO.

So the search then continued to find an easy to follow guide to making my own. And TA-DA, I found these simple step-by-step instructions to make my very own Quilted Curling Iron Cover. Since I'm kind of spastic and impatient, I didn't quite take pictures all along the way as I should have. I'll get better though, I promise!

I eyeballed the size of my curling iron to decide how big of a rectangle to cut.

I then pinned the fabric to the batting to secure it for machine basting and quilting.

 This is where I got spastic and forgot to take pictures of a few steps. I then quilted the fabric and proceeded to trim the edges leaving less than 1/8 in. past the seam.

This is the heat resistant part. I cut a piece of Ironing Board Cover to match in size my quilted fabric and batting.

My sandwich of quilted fabric, batting and ironing board cover

Closeup of my quilting. This was my first attempt at actually quilting. I'm just warming up for the big show in my quilting class.

I then pinned the bias tape I made myself to the iron board cover side. I pinned it so that the outer edge of the bias tape matched up with the outer edge of my sandwich.

After somewhat of a struggle with those corners, this is my finished product.

Showing off the heat resistant inner lining.

Okay for reference, this is my 1 1/4 inch Hot Tools curling iron and it fits comfortably!

Okay I'll say it, I freaking hated sewing those corners. They really messed me up. If I make another one, I may edit this design to have corners, not rounded edges.

I'll work on posting about my quilting class so that I can update here as I finish the last 5 weeks of it.