WIP Wednesday

Sewing here has been mostly plowing through small projects to complete Christmas presents.  I've been especially fond of making journal covers.  They make great teacher gifts, and being a teacher myself, I have lots of those to give out! I used this All People Quilt tutorial for the bottom two journals (country chic to mom, the other one to Jonah's first grade teacher).  I was browsing through Stitched in Color and found this tutorial based on the All People Quilt one, with some modifications. I made the top three using that tutorial, with some additions - it's very easy to improvise on these journals, it's so much fun!

 

This one is for Miss Jill, our sons' amazing baby sitter.  She's been a part of our family since Jonah (my oldest) has been 4 months old.  She was an undergraduate then, and now after getting her MEd in Early Childhood, she's has gone back to grad school for social work! Almost done! I wanted to use fabrics that evoke playfulness, and the kids throwing paper airplanes did the trick.  I used Wonder Under to secure the heart and the 'J', and then stitched in place all around.

Can you tell how much Nate loves her? The boys argue about who gets to marry her when they get to be grownups.

 Talula is the art teacher where I work and she is also a working artist - check out her etsy shop! I wanted to do something fun and funky for her! I strip-pieced a few fun fabrics to a much larger size than the journal requires s) and then sliced at gentle angles, resewed and trimmed it down to the right size for the journal (final cut is at 29.5 x 12 inches).  Next time, I'll do two sets of strip pieces and stack and shuffle, so I get the same effect without as much fabric waste.  But I can always play with scraps, right?

Jonah's first grade teacher is pretty stylish, so I wanted to do something fun, but not too loud, so she can use it anywhere. Plus, I don't know her very well, so I wanted to play it safe with the fabric choices.

This one is for Mom, also a teacher, who loves lists and can always use a notebook, and loves country chic style!

 

 This one posed a bit of a problem. I teach science and other fun things at an after-school program, and the director is a gymnastics expert.  The fabric was a great fit, but I miscalculated the placement of the applique star and T.  

 I needed to balance things out, so I dragged out trim that I thought would match. I had ricrac, ribbon and leftover binding strips.

 I went with the binding strips, created a tube and top-stitched it down - and it saved the day, and added a nice sporty stripe! She is very sporty, so happy accident!

 Here's the WIP (work in progress) section of this post - I have a brother who loves to brew his own beer, so I got this fabric with beery goodness...cut it into charm squares (5 inches) and then...pfft...no inspiration! What do I do for him? Thank you to Freshly Pieced for hosting these WIP Wednesdays! This work is only beginning its progress...so it needs a kick in the pants!