Pinwheel throw pillows

Hey everyone!

So yesterday I had great intentions to start a pinwheel quilt, but then I decided I did not want to do that right now and wanted to use the squares for a smaller project. Yes I really don't plan ahead all too well. :) So I made these two pillow covers for my pillow forms. I wanted something new and bright and cheery for me room. Here is the result. I found this lovely blog yesterday as well called psiquilt and it has great inspiration! She is a great quilter and gave me the idea for the pin wheel squares. I am really loving quilting lately! :)

 The above one is made from the main fabric of an old skirt my sister had made me a while ago. It was too small, so I cut it up for reminding me of memories in this pillow. All the pin wheels are made of scraps from other projects as well to remind me of the past.

The above ones main fabric is made of an old dress I never wore from the thrift store. I love the boldness of the print against the bright pin wheel squares.

Have a lovely monday!

In Christ,
Rebecca

I love our Nikon!

hey everyone!

We received our new nikon camera in the mail yesterday after much anticipation and depravity of a camera these past 2 months or so! I can't believe the quality pictures this camera takes! My old camera was a sony cyber shot and I loved it, but it was 4 years old and not the best. But it was great until it was lost. Now our family can do lots of photos and this camera is so much bigger than the old one we definately won't lose it!

I finished my civil war star quilt last month and now I can finally post pictures! We used it the last reenactment and I now am using it on my bed at home. I am so proud of it and I will be using it Lord willing till it wears out. Maybe even my grandchildren will get to use it. You see I want it to last for generations. These days people don't sew quilts, but I plan to sew many and pray they will hold memories for each new generation.

 Yes one of our cats named Oscor really loves the new quilt! :)

 Bethany has been teaching me how to knit and I am loving it! I don't know why I ever thought it was so scary or hard, but now I am knitting a knubia, which is a scarf for civil war reenacting for myself. Its made out of thread weight wool yarn I bought from a sulter at the Ceder Creek reenactment last weekend.

 The quilt! I am so excited to be able to share the finished product with you all! I am loving all the random scraps from dresses and other projects all in this quilt.

Every single start is quilted around the perimeter of each star and around the boarder of the quilt I quilted stars. It was a lot of fun and lots of time invested into this quilt, but it was well worth it. You can read about the construction of this quilt in these previous posts below. here and here and here are the older posts about how I started my quilt and what steps you have to do in order to complete a quilt by hand. It was so much fun and a great learning experience. And of course the scrap bin does not even seem as though a dent was made! :)

have a lovely rest of your day! I am off to cut out a baby quilt for a friend and start sewing the squares together, then its off to Joann to get some supplies for some modern clothing for my family.

In Christ,
Rebecca

The star quilt boarder progress

Hello everyone! I started a start quilt last June and posted the progress of the basting of the quilt here.

I started the boarder of my quilt while watching Bleak House with my mother and sister. Its a great movie by the way based off of Dickens novel. I wanted to share what progress I have made. I finished all the middle, which is all the squares with stars being hand quilted in July. But I started saturday quilting the boarder. I made a stencil shaped to the exact dimensions of the stars in the squares of the quilt. I used the stencil as my template for tracing with pencil to quilt the star shape all the way around the boarder. Here is my progress of only three in the corner. But you can see what I have been up to this way. I will post a picture of it finished soon.

The corner above where I have stitching.
You can see one star above done.



All three of the stars in the corner above. It took me a little over half of the whole 5 episodes of the movie to do. I guess about an hour and a half. I love quilting. I used to hate it, but now I enjoy having my hands do something during movies or chatting with friends.

Below my little place to read each evening in bed and quilt as well. I have finished Stepping Heavenward by Elizabeth Prentiss, When You Rise Up by R.C Sproul Jr. (its about homeschooling and why its a great thing to do as Christians), John Calvin and His Passion for the Majesty of God by John Piper( would recommend this one because it tells you about calvins life and about the misunderstanding some have of this theologian.), A City On A Hill by Ryken,

and Persuasion by Jane Austen, as well as starting lots of new books. I read all of these over July and beginnging of August. For me this is a lot of reading. I have recently been reading The Utmost for His Highest and love it! It was a graduation gift from wonderful friends. I have also been reading Set-Apart femininity by Lesley Ludy and it was also a gift for graduation. I also have been reading Already Gone by ken Ham and its really interesting. Its statistics about why young people are leaving the church and ways to stop this from happening in the next generation. I am also still reading my favorite books to read to for fun Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. I am also finishing up The reasonableness of Christianity by John Locke. Its quite interesting. I got to see an original copy of this work in its originial form in the Library of Congress two weeks ago. As well as many of other originals such as Jeffersons library, some of his first drafts of the declaration. Some of John Adams journals. It was amazing!

I love reading and I have more time this summer in between things. Hopefully I can still read once school starts mid september. Oh and I am excited as I got my first email from my college plus mentor yesterday! The Lord is bringing it all together for my schooling for this new year. I am scared and excited!

God bless,

Rebecca

One of my latest projects-Star quilt

Hi everyone!

Busyness is going on around here! My family just finished helping the Brown clan with their first ladies tea and listening to them talk about the reforming of the church and families across America. They came to Washington D.C. as their first stop to tell about what the Lord is doing in churches and families in America. It was an encouraging event tuesday night! Do pray for them as they travel. You can read more about their road trip over here at their website the Family integrated church page.

Remember when I posted here that I was working on a new civil war star reproduction quilt, well today I basted my quilt. I have been working on this quilt for about one month now. Now it is ready to be hand quilted by myself and my sister in time for the Gettysburg 4th of July celebration living history event next month. I pray that the Lord will bless us with another quilt in time.

The top while I was basting it in our living room.

There I am in the corner finishing the last few basting stitches. I used scraps for all the stars and a brown plaid for the boarder as well as a cream reproduction pattern for the squares in between the stars. Cotten batting in the middle, as we did not want to be too hot with wool for July. We will just pile all of our wool blankets on top of the quilts come october at the Ceder Creek living history event. I am so excited to start quilting Lord willing this evening after some more reading for school and baking is done.

God is good! I am so glad to have gotten my first reproduction quilt this far along already!

Off I go to read about the american revolution.

In Christ,

Rebecca

Civil War Star Quilt and 1812 shoes

Hello everyone!


Well you may be wondering what I have been doing to be so busy not to post as much as I usually try to do. My sister has helped me into a new endeavor of sewing a civil war reproduction quilt! I have helped her cut out quilts before and sewn some blocks for her quilts and quilts we have with friends for friends. But I have never made a whole civil war quilt by myself. I am finishing up the lap quilt that was my first quilt that I posted about here. I am putting the binding on today and then it will be able to be used on my bed. I am excited to finish my first quilt I have sewn on my own! The measurements for the star blocks. I have to cut out 42 blocks for the top and then I was 42 solid printed blocks that will alternate between the stars. Here are a few variations of the stars below.

I love the brightly colored prints! We have lots of printed and woven colored scraps from garments we have made for civil war living history events, as well as many
many white scraps from modern to civil war and 1812 living history. We use white for everything! So its great to get rid of the bins and bins of white scraps! We are not so abundant in the reproduction printed fabrics though. So I am trying to use them wisely!

Here are a whole bunch of sets I cut out on monday before I sewed them up into their stars.

You can also see our rotary cutter and our wonderful cutting surface we bought at wally world (walmart). :) I love our cutting board.

And a suprise!!!! My present from my parents for my birthday arrived today! A pair of 1812 ladies walking shoes! We will not be doing living history at Fort McHenry after all. With graduating and all the other civil war events and other things going on it was too much for our family. But I will still be able to wear them Lord willing we do living history at the Fort next year. I love them anyway! they fit wonderfully and Robert Lands work is beautiful! I also own 2 pairs of 1860s boots for civil war living history from him and they so comfortable and accurate. He always strives for accuracy and quality.

Have a wonderful friday and weekend!

God bless,

Rebecca Ann

Latest Projects

Hello everyone!

I thought I would share some of my latest sewing projects. I am not much of a seamstress as most of you know! But I am starting to love it and wanting to be able to sewing clothing for myself and my family now. It is such a practical skill! So I sewed up a night gown for a dear friends birthday last week. I purchased the fabric at walmart a long while ago, but I loved it and its her favorite color! Blue!!

I used my favorite and one and only night gown pattern! But I made up the sleeves! I cut out the long sleeve and shortened it to be 3 quarter sleeves and I love the way that turned out! She loved it when I gave it to her on saturday! I am happy with it as well! My sister Beth did the button holes on the machine for me though, the machine hates me when it comes to button holes! Don't ask me why!!!

There it is before I wrapped it up and all!

My favorite part of making it was the gathers at the top of each sleeve! I love that effect!!

On saturday we celebrated my friend Jennifers birthday and I wore another scarf I had made on friday in about 15 minutes!!! I was able to go to Joanne on thursday after my choir class at PHC and I was so happy to find the end of a bolt of this beautiful flowy fabric!

Here is the scarf below with the rest of my fabric finds! I love the purple and the blue combo of the flowers in the scarf material! It was fun to wear going on nature trails at a lovely park with my sister, father, and friend Jennifer.

I also bought that wonderful cotten heavier weight fabric and the yellow floral for a night gown. Yes another winter night gown for next winter!!! :) It was only 4 dollars a yard and I could not resist. The purple scarf fabric was only about 5 dollars for the whole yard and the blue fabric was 12 dollars for all 2 yards of that 60 inch wide fabric. I plan to use the blue patterned fabric for a gored circle skirt! I love love love it! Light blue is my favorite color!!

I have also been working on my first quilt that I ever cut out and I never finished. My great grandmother helped me get started with sewing when my sister and I were only about 9 and 10 years old. So sewing was not totally foreign to me because of her and my sister. Now I love quilting!! My sister has been teaching me more and I am loving it. I am almost done quilting this quilt top! I will post pictures once I can get around to finishing it while watching John Adams mini series with my family later this week. Its a great little lap quilt perfect for sewing in the car or while watching a movie. :) A close up of the beautiful flannel for a new night gown next year! I also love yellow!!

The vintage pattern my sister has and is willing to let me borrow to make my light blue circle skirt!!! I am so exciting to possibly cut it out later this week once I get more school done and a shirt dress mock up complete!

Now this is a spring project I hope to get around to! But I do not know when. I love this red floral and can't wait to make it into this thrifted pattern my sister found a few years ago. I plan to make the one that is second from the left.

This silk fabric above I have made a great belt out of this striped silk already for civil war accessory with my striped dress, but I want to make that pointed belt I told you all about here. I also have a bow that I wear often with my day dress as well. So I want to make a belt that looks like the one in this picture below in time for the Fourth of July celebration in Gettysburg this summer.

So Lord willing I can get that done sometime soon!

The dress at the bottom left corner is the shirt dress mock up I am planning on working in the coming weeks. I have the mock up cut out and ready to be made and messed with to get it to fit me well. So Lord willing I can show you all that soon! I am using the fabric for my fashion fabric below! Its from walmart from a few years ago and I just love the light blue and purple! Of course my favorite color combo! can you tell!?

I can't wait to dig into this project!!! Its been on my list for spring/summer for my modern wardrobe for a while now!

God bless and no I will not have these projects in the works all of them right away! But its fun to dream and figure out what I will be sewing in the future months!

In Christ,

Rebecca

Harper's ferry reenactment and quilting

Yesterday my family and I went in the snow to the harper's ferry reenactment. The snow was beautiful!! My family and I and some other family friends were the boarders in an old boarding house in the town. This was our impression for the day. We told the spectators about how the union army had taken over the confederate town and how the army officers were staying in our boarding house. It was a lot of fun and my sister and I were able to hand quilt a good bit of a quilt my mother, sister, and I had sewn togeather.

This picture below is me in the snow after the reenactment at our house. I was tired and it was dark. Sorry these are so dark. Had to get one picture of my full outerwear and everything. I felt like Jo or Meg from Little Women. Now I know what it is like to tromp through the snow in a hoop and all those petticoats and even have a snow ball fight!! lol It was tons of fun!

We worked on this quilt in the up stairs parlor of the old house. It was lovely, except for the draft that was coming from the bacony doors behind us in these pictures.

This is a variation of the Ohio Star. My sister will be posting pictures when it is finished on her blog. For now here is a glimspe of our day at the boarding house. I only got these three pictures on my own camera. But some friends of mine that were with us got pictures that they will be sending me sometime soon. So don't worry more pictures soon! :)

In Christ,

Rebecca