Peppermint Cream Cheese Frosting

For our church Christmas party I was in charge of bringing a dessert.  I had some Andes candy cane bits that I wanted to use somehow, so I decided on mini chocolate cupcakes with a peppermint frosting.  My approach to frosting tends to be "mix some things together until it tastes good".  Sometimes this results in making WAY too much frosting in my effort to get it just right, but this time around it actually came together really well in easy measurements that I can actually remember :)

This frosting is nice because it has subtle flavours, isn't too sweet, and holds a piping shape well.  If you want a stronger peppermint flavour or a thicker frosting, just add a little extra extract and sugar! It makes enough to generously frost 24 regular sized cupcakes, 48 mini ones, a 9x13 cake, or a double layer 9" round cake (so basically, one box cake mix :)

Peppermint Cream Cheese Frosting

• 1/2 cup butter (softened)
• 8oz cream cheese (softened)
• 3-4 cups icing sugar
• 1-2 tsp peppermint extract
• 1-2 tsp clear vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp salt

Whip butter, cream cheese, 3 cups icing sugar, 1 tsp peppermint, 1 tsp vanilla, and 1/2 tsp salt.  Add additional extracts to taste, and additional icing sugar to adjust consistency as needed.  

Geometric baby quilts

This weekend I finished up the quilt tops that I made last weekend! All three are now posted in my etsy shop, as well!

Geometric star baby quilt:

 This one is just little, at 30x30".  It's a great size for a car seat, tummy time, or just snuggling.  I used the blues and oranges from the Birds and Berries line.

Star block patterns are pretty common. This one is just a bunch of full squares and half triangles.  I just drew out the plan on some graph paper, then assembled! Very easy with a charm pack!

Herringbone crib quilt:

I've seen a ton of similar quilts on pinterest over the past year, so I figured I'd try my hand at it.   I just cut some big parallelograms and assembled.  It could easily be done using half triangles, too, but this method was faster for me.  I backed it with this adorable orange and white bird fabric that I've had in my stash for at least a year.

 Black and white "plus sign" quilt:

This is another quilt that I have seen around on pinterest.  I like the clean, crisp lines of it!  I backed it with a minty blue flannel rather than my usual plain cotton, so it's extra snuggly.

 I think that I'd like to add the herringbone and plus sign quilt layouts to my custom quilt listings (once I reopen the custom quilt option after baby is born :).  They're so easy to customize just by changing the colours, and resizing wouldn't be a problem at all.  I already have some sweet colour combos and slight modifications in mind to try!

All Them Scraps

When I get a custom quilt order I'll usually order a bit extra so that I can get another quilt out of it.  If the person wants a lot of different fabrics I'll end up with even more extra because most websites have minimum orders of 1/4-1/2 yard.  If the fabric is on sale or discontinued, you might even have to buy a yard.  But I don't really mind, because I can grow my stash and play around with some layouts!

The Timber Leaf and Scrappy Patchwork quilts that I posted the other day had quite a lot of leftover fabric.  I was able to get four more quilts out of it!  I still have some extra of a few of the prints, too, which I' can use for a future project.

All four of these quilts are currently for sale in my etsy shop!

For the arrow quilt, I ended up leaving off one row of blocks from the custom ordered one, so I had extra arrows to use.  So I whipped up a few more to make this little crib quilt:

A perk of the arrow pattern is that with an extra row of stitching on some of the blocks you can get a TON of half square triangles that you would otherwise throw away.  Instead, I put this scrappy chevron quilt together:

For the scrappy patchwork quilt I had a ton of extra little squares.  This was one of those fabric orders that I had to buy WAY more than I needed due to minimum quantities.  But it worked out, because I put together this star/nine patch:

...and this fun plus sign baby quilt!

Go check them out in my etsy shop!  I'm also still accepting custom orders for Christmas-- but not for long, so go look quick if you want to make that deadline!

Final Countdown Quilts

I normally sew sitting on the floor  With a growing pregnant belly it has been getting really difficult! I've since had to migrate to the living room coffee table to sew. Here are a few of the latest custom orders that I've finished, and the last ones I have been able to do in my usual floor position-- and probably among the last ones I'll do before baby comes!

Get a Clue, Nancy Drew!

The gal who ordered this quilt had already purchased some of the Nancy Drew fabric by Moda.  She sent me a picture of a quilt she saw and liked, and from there I put together my own pattern for this one.

Image via Moda

What a fun fabric collection!  Here is the original picture I was sent that inspired the finished design:

And here's my very technical drawing of the proposed design:

It was fun using this fabric with a custom pattern, and the girl was thrilled with the result!

Scrappy Patchwork

This is one of the simplest quilts for me to make.  There is little cutting and no piecing!  You can really just zip it together in a few hours.  It also has a unique scrappy look to it since the squares have raw edges.

I wish that I had gotten a better closeup of this one! The fabrics the customer picked out were from several different lines, but worked super well together.  One of them was flannel instead of quilting cotton, so there was an extra texture in it.  I ended up ordering extra fabric so I have another quilt top in the works with it.  I'll take better pictures of that one :)

Timber Leaf Arrow

I've noticed this fabric line before, and I love it!  I was pretty stoked to get to make a quilt with it!

Here's the entire line:

Via Stash Fabrics

The customer had just picked out a few that she wanted.  It was super hard to find them, since the line has been out for a while.  After seeing them in person, I wish that I had used them sooner! I'd probably make more quilts with it for myself!

Folding Chair Upgrade

Sam has been using this plain, worn out folding chair as a computer chair for three years.  Besides it being ugly, I haven't had a good excuse to replace it since it works just fine.  But I finally got around to fixing it up a bit! I can't believe that I didn't do it sooner! It was easy and cheap, and made a big difference.

First I just unscrewed the fabric pieces/plastic and cleaned the metal base.  I did a few coats of super strong black spray paint that is made to adhere well to metal.  I then wrapped/glued a cute canvas weight fabric around the old fabric pieces and reattached.  Easy!

Much better, don't you think?

Ombre Chevron Baby Quilt

I loved making this crib size quilt!  For one thing, it was a really nice break from the monster king quilts I've had a ton of orders for.  It's such an easy pattern to do-- especially when you use rectangles instead of triangles.  The lady I made it for loved it, and sent me a picture of it in her nursery:

It's hard to tell in the pictures, but there are actually four shades of pink (the two darkest ones are a bit different).  But either way, I think that it's pretty cute!  My next "just for fun" quilt might just have to be another one of these, but with blue or grey!

Herringbone Quilts in Two Ways

I love a good herringbone.  To me, it's like a more timeless chevron.  Here are two herringbone quilts that I've made that put a little bit of a twist on the classic herringbone.

Scrappy Herringbone

I started making this quilt to use on our bed, and as much as I loved the fabric line, I just changed my mind on keeping it.  I made it into a short twin instead, and kept some of the extra pieces to use for a second baby quilt.  Rather than being uniform thicknesses, the pieces are random.  I've since sold this quilt in my etsy shop.

Broken Herringbone

I love all of the white space on this quilt.  For one thing, I love how it looks-- but it also really cuts down on time (you don't have to worry about specific piecing placement) and money (single cut discount coupons)!