Fleece Blankets with a Twist

Awhile back I was on vacation in a very small town and found myself checking out the local wares in the general store.  When I say general store that is exactly what it is.  It has a small amount of all those things you didn't know you just had to have until you see them all together in one store.  For me, I ended up falling in love with this cozy fleece and Sherpa blanket.  It was so soft and so cuddly I just had to have it.  After awhile I started feeling a little like Linus because it always seemed to be with me.

Soon the weather started to improve and I didn't have much of a need for a warm and snugly fleece blanket.  I didn't think about it again until I was trying to figure out what gifts to give my bridesmaids and attendants.  I had thought a beautiful quilt would be an awesome gift but with only a couple months to the wedding I knew they wouldn't get done.  But the blanket thought was in my head.  I was wondering around Joann Fabrics and saw that they had all their flannel and fleece on sale for a really good price and the blanket immediately popped back into my head.

Christmas Paper Wreath

In my effort to try to do more seasonal decorating I found this beautiful paper wreath cut file from MyScrapChick.com and new I had to do something with it.  Each year on Christmas Eve from as far back as I can remember my dad has read us "Twas the Night Before Christmas".  When I saw that's what was on the tags I purchased immediately.  Of course, as it goes with all my projects,  I started this two days before Christmas.  Needless to say it wasn't finished in time.

Christmas Stockings Four Years in the Making!

This project started about 4 years ago as I was perusing some beautiful charm packs at a quaint little shop at the Minnesota State Fair.  I wasn't exactly sure what I planned to do with them at the time but had to have them.  It was the Aspen frost line by Moda.

Fast forward 4 years and I had the brilliant idea of making stockings for the family.  After pinning a bunch of patterns I finally settled on a Craftsy Stocking Pattern found here.  I used the tutorial from Sewlikemymom to actually put the stockings together.  This required slight modifications on the cuff but was easy to figure out.

Quilting Stencils

Hopscotch from Super Simple Quilts with Alex Anderson & Liz
Aneloski

About three years ago I decided to start quilting.  My very first project was a small baby quilt for my niece.  I wasn't sure if she was going to be a niece or nephew so I went with a gender neutral blanket made out of different colors of polka dot fabric.  One thing I learned right away with this project is that they weren't kidding when they said 1/4in seam.  By the time all was said and done I was able to make this quilt come together but it took some finagling.  I was very proud of how the first one turned out but didn't do much actual quilting on this.

Since then I have made three more baby quilts and currently am working on my first large quilt.  One thing I learned was the importance of knowing where I was going when quilting.  I bought a couple pre-made stencils to help with this but they didn't seem to fit the way I wanted them to.

I decided to use my Silhouette Cameo to cut out a stencil that I could re-size. I found a stencil image I liked and imported it into the Silhouette Studio Software program.