Muppin

When we painted our living room last year, I wondered if it was a good idea to paint it so dark, but that’s my aesthetic. In the end, I love the dark blue walls and black fireplace surround. The previous look was so…. country looking. It may have been my thing before, but in this new life with Charlie, we just wanted something different.

So when it came to take some “lifestyle” shots of my newest quilt using our Skull English Paper Piecing pieces, I knew that blue wall would come in handy.

I’m not a photographer, but I have been trying to work on getting better photos of my quilts. I thought this one came out so nice. And I got to use my quilt ladder from the upstairs hallway!

In 2021, our 10 year running quilt retreat in January went on hiatus. In March of this same year, the retreat center folded due to being closed for over a year due to the Pandemic. The organizers of my favorite getaway said that they were unable to keep the tradition going and would not seek a new location. This was sooooo hard to hear, since this retreat was ostensibly the only sewing I do truly for myself all year.

My friend Amy of Purple Pineapple Studio said that she and her mom run a retreat in Door County WI each year and did I want to go? DID I WANT TO GO???? You bet I did.

I brought three projects and really only worked on two, but I did REALLY enjoy getting away and sewing for myself (which also happened to be for the business)! I can’t show you yet what it is, but I am sew excited to show you soon!!

It’s time for the annual Christmas tree decorating, and this year we had Dad’s help.

Things around here are busy, and I totally forgot to buy Christmas cards. I wanted to have some made with the family picture on it, but I’m sure it’s pretty late in the year to do that.

At the top is the adorable pic I wanted to use on the card!

I’ve added some new dates to my calendar, which I would hope to see some of you in 2022!

Wow. It’s been more than a while, really. But that’s life in the Pandemic, as they say.

Things during the pandemic have been hard. Real hard. But I expect everyone can say that.

I got this adorable sewing themed Advent Calendar, and thought it would be fun to share it with you as I open it.

Day one is a travel kit! A good omen perhaps for traveling more in 2022? Let’s hope so!

If you want to join us on blogging these next 31 days, join us here!

This winter, Dad dropped off a bag of shirts, and asked for a t-shirt quilt. I had been asking him to give me shirts to do this with for a while now, and I had thought he’d do it with the vast amounts of Hard Rock Cafe shirts I have bought him over the years from all of my travels. Instead he surprised me with a bag of Harley Davidson t shirts! After deciding this was going to be his Father’s Day present, these shirts sat in the bag until I was ready to cut them up.

The only other t shirt quilt I made was done “Quilt as you go” in strips. That was so easy to manage under my machine I decided that was how I would tackle this one.

The first thing to do was to cut the fronts and backs out, and separate them into piles based on the width of the graphics. I ended up with a pile of 15 inches wide shirts, a 13 inches wide pile, and a 11 inch wide pile. There were also three “pocket” emblems that I just included where there were fewer shirts.

There were enough shirts in the 15 inch pile to make two strips in this quilt. After trimming the shirts down to the right sizes, I put them up on my design wall and started to measure the spaces between the shirts so I could add my “spacer” fabrics. I have a whole lot of flame fabric. Like a real lot of it. So I just pulled the car flames from my collection. Then I sewed the strips together. The goal was to make each strip the same length, so if I had to remove fabric, I wanted to take it out of the spacer fabric, than cut it off of a shirt.

At this point, I needed to add the sashing that would be the strips between the “quilt as you go” but not the strips holding the panels together.

Now is when you quilt the quilt! I made a little video of me quilting the strips together on my Instagram… It was easy to do with only the width of the strips to worry about!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Cheryl Sleboda (@muppindotcom)

Now, you have to sew the strips together.

This is accomplished with a 1 inch strip sewn to each side of the strip. With a 1/4 inch seam, you then end up with the raw edges of the strips butted up against each other, and enclosed in the sashing. Sew another 1 inch strip to the back and then hand sew it down. This is a great tutorial on how to do this technique as blocks. I just did the rows instead of blocks… And of course, it needed orange binding!

Anyway, Dad is happy with the quilt, he’s said he’s already used it. And I am happy to make them, as long as they are as easy as this one!