Stitchy Projects

 I had some fun projects to sew for my grandkids in June. 

My granddaughters went on an Alaskan cruise with their mom's family in June. Maybe because we have long winters...there are many great quilt shops in Alaska. One of my DIL's cousins is a quilter so somehow all my granddaughters where in this amazing quilt shop in Skagway, Quilt Alaska, that has a ton of fantastic eye candy. 

I have ordered from Quilts Alaska several times. They have the best customer service. Emails answered quickly and packages shipped on the same day ordered. FYI, Skagway is a town that sprang up during the gold rush. 

I actually got a phone call from my son while they were all in the shop asking me if they could pick up something for me. I should have been better prepared...I knew there would be many quilt shops along the way where the cruise ship docked. There is a wonderful Alaska shop hop going on this summer but I decided not to partake this year...I already have several shop-hop tops I need to quilt. And the kits are always available that are designed by this year's artist.

With the help of my DIL's cousin, we decided the girls should pick out pillow case kits and doll kuspuk kits.

 Kuspuks are native Alaskans' version of a hoodie. In the warmer months the women make them in colorful cotton prints and often add trims.

Cuteness overload!

I'm missing a photo of one...it's at my granddaughter's house...on one of her favorite dolls. 

I made a third kuspuk from fabrics and rick rack in my stash for my youngest granddaughter who will be getting her American Girl doll at Christmas.

You know I love batiks...and I absolutely love Alaskan batiks. We have very talented quilters who work with Hoffman fabrics to come up with new batik prints every year. I had not seen the latest designs until I saw the pillowcase sets. I love them all so much! The all-blue pillow case is actually made from my stash of last year's batik release which is for my grandson who was not on the cruise...but he needed one too.

While everyone was away on the cruise, I  took a fun class on making Hemingway bags. I have enjoyed seeing others making them on blogs and Instagram and taking a class means I would get it done!

I had several pieces of quilted Soft and Stable leftover from bag projects that were perfect for this class.

Bonus...we made a mini bag from the scraps of the bag. 

I had enough fabric to make four bags of this fun quilt shop hop fabric.

My last stitchy finish to share is my latest Bucilla Advent Calendar.

My oldest granddaughter asked me how many advent kits I was going to make!!! I have one more advent kit in my stash...so I guess one more.

This kit is from 2011, "Must Be Santa Advent Calendar." 

This kit was very oddly constructed and I made a major change. The backing for the pockets was a piece of white interfacing...yuck! So I used red felt to sew to the bottom of the top section which I then stitched the pockets onto. The made red piece of felt long enough to back the bottom burgundy triangle piece. 

The kit included a piece of polyester quilt batting which I did use. I covered everything with yet another piece of red felt.

To hang it, I made a simple loop and secured it on the backside. This method of hanging has worked great for me over the years.

The set of 24 ornaments for the stocking were pretty simple.

Two of each design.

Someday I would like to make a pouch to store the  ornaments...

maybe a Hemingway bag in Christmas fabric!