Category Archives: Holiday

December 17, 2011 · 10:31 pm

Reverse Appliqued Snowflake Table Runner

Here is a reverse-appliqued table runner I made for my house for the winter.

Shown here on a bench because my table is a disaster.

To make this start with a piece of your main fabric (mine was a duponi silk in grey/silver). Back it with Wonder-Under (a double-sided fusible interfacing that is paper-backed so you can fuse one side at a time). On the Wonder-Under, draw your snowflake shapes and then cut them out with sharp scissors.

Remove the paper backing. Carefully place the main fabric on top of your accent fabric (both fabrics have right-side-up. You are fusing the right side of the accent fabric to the back side of the main fabric). Iron to fuse.

Next I sewed a backing fabric on to the runner. I placed my backing fabric on top of the runner, right-sides of my backing fabric touching right-sides of the main fabric. I sewed all the way around, leaving a gap to turn the runner right-side out. I did not include batting, but you could if you wanted a thicker runner.

Once it was right-side out, I did a quilted stippling design.

Yay! I have to say I really love this one.

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Filed under Holiday, Quilting, Techniques, Tutorial

· 10:22 pm

“Quilted” Ornaments

I have an addiction. I can barely stop myself from quitting everything else and just dedicating myself 100% to making these “quilted” ornaments all day long, every day.

Here’s the tutorial.

These are no-sew and SO FUN. These are my hexies (in that they are addictive hand-work projects that you take everywhere you go).

The "right" side and the "wrong" side of a piece of duponi silk. Some of the ornaments I embellished with the furry selvage edge of the fabric...

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December 9, 2011 · 1:07 pm

Swoon Pillows in Green!

As I mentioned before, a lot of what’s been going on around here is top secret Santa work, but I did manage to make time to create these two Swoon pillows in shades of green.

Not my most precise work… lots of the points are a little murky. But I really love the colors! I like using apple green in Christmas decor. It looks great with both evergreen and all shades of red and maroon. Now if only I could set aside enough time to make my swoon quilt to really set off the living room. Oh well!

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Filed under Holiday, Pillow

November 26, 2011 · 9:23 pm

Reindeer Pillows

The blog might get a little dead for a couple of weeks here at howtobejenna. Too many of my upcoming projects are Christmas gifts!

I did make these pillows (there are two of them) recently for a housewarming present and they have already been gifted. All you can see is the pillow case, resting on a green pillow, because the gift recipient has already received pillow forms from me in a past present.

It’s a reverse-applique embracing frayed edges for texture. I’m VERY inspired by the work of THIS ARTIST. So cool – definitely a technique I’ll be working on.

I should have snipped some of the unruly threads before I took this picture, but… you know….

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Filed under Holiday, Pillow

November 18, 2011 · 2:38 pm

Halloween Quilt – Right on time!

Woops! This quilt would have ideally been finished a month ago. Whatever, I have all of my future Halloween seasons to enjoy this blanket.

The tree is needle-turn appliqued onto a strip-pieced quilt.

I made a variety of… challenging choices when it came to this project. For one, this was a LOT of needle-turning, but I needed the practice.

For another, I chose to do a sort of scribbly pebble quilting which I have never tried before. Something about quilting circles really stuck on me. I think I was thinking about cauldron bubbles…

Anyway the quilting wasn’t perfect and of course it was much more time and thread-consuming than a simple stiple. However, after this quilt came out of the wash I was immediately elated with my efforts.

Ok so making the tree piece was a little tricky. I found a clip-art image of a spooky tree I liked, made a couple of alterations using photo-shopping software, and printed it out as large as I could. Then I drew a one inch grid on top of the image. I wanted my tree to be pretty big so I made a ratio of 1:5 and made each one inch square on my grid equal a 5 inch square on my gigantic pattern paper made out of taped together grocery bags. I think originally I had planned on doing a 1:6inch ratio (hence the numbers on my grid sheet below), but ended up thinking that’d be too big…

Can’t wait to pull this out next year and every year after!

Side note: Just a minute before I took this quilt outside to photograph I realized that I had turned the oven on to cook dinner, but had forgotten to empty the oven of all of the messy kitchen appliances I hid inside in a desperate quick-cleaning attempt. So I melted my rice-cooker steamer basket. C’est la vie when you’re Jenna.

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Filed under Holiday, Quilting

November 7, 2011 · 6:10 pm

Costume Party is Over

Time to kick everyone out gracefully, sweep up the cupcake crumbs, collect the empties and pour myself a glass of wine. The costume party is over and Halloween is behind us once again.

A link to all of the tutorials can be found by clicking on the COSTUME PARTY tab located near the top of this page, right there next to ABOUT.

Thanks for following along! I’ll bring this up again next year, if I’m still at this, and maybe I’ll even have some more ideas! xoxo

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October 27, 2011 · 1:38 pm

Dinosaur Hoodie Costume

Here is our most complicated costume yet! It’s not too difficult to construct (the tail can be a little tricky), but there are quite a few components…

We’ll start with a hooded sweatshirt and add to those:

Eyes
Tail
Teeth
Tummy Detail
Stripes

and also….

Mittens with claws
Spats with claws

Read on for tips and instructions!

Continue reading →

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Filed under Clothes, Crafts, Holiday

October 25, 2011 · 12:07 am

Goldfish Costume

Okay today we’re tackling a more complicated costume. A goldfish!

These are the components you can add to a hooded sweatshirt to make the costume:

Eyes
Lips
Tulle Fin
Scales

Read on for instructions on how to make each component:

Continue reading →

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Filed under Clothes, Crafts, Holiday

October 24, 2011 · 3:42 pm

Bat costume

Here is a very easy to construct Bat costume that would work for either kids of adults.

Take a long-sleeved black shirt and gather these measurements…

Then using those measurements, cut out a wing shape out of black fleece or felt. Cut out two layers of fabric for each wing. I did this by lining up one edge of my wing pattern on the fold of a piece of fabric.

Make sure one of your wings points to the left and the other to the right.

I sew the two layers together (right sides together), leaving a gap to turn the unit right-side out.

Lay the wing over the edges of your shirt and pin in place. Make sure you tuck the seam allowances of the gap inside the wing. Sew all around the wing, attaching the unit to the shirt and closing the gap in the wing.

Then add some decorative quilting to the wing; two straight lines going on a diagonal to the points looks nice and very wing-like.

For a funny finishing touch, why not add a bat mask (sized for children)? You could also do ears on a headband or a stocking cap.

BTW this was my model, Libby, discovering her bat costume package in the mail. This expression is priceless and great motivation for making costumes!

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October 20, 2011 · 11:49 pm

Unicorn Costume

Here’s a cute little unicorn costume that can be made out of a hooded sweatshirt and scaled to fit either kids or adults.

The components of this costume are:

Horn
Mane
Heart Appliqué (optional)

Horn:

For the horn I actually used THIS PATTERN for a small stuffed Christmas tree and scaled it down to about 60% on my printer so it would be proportional to a small baby’s head. Attach to the hoodie using your best blind-stitch.

Mane:

Do a running stitch sewing together the four layers of tulle. Knot the beginning, but don't knot-off or cut the thread at the other end.

After you pull your tulle together and the length = x, then you can knot-off your baste stitch thread.

After you cut the slit into the hood, fold the raw edges under.

Sandwich the layers of tulle between the folded-over edges of the hooded sweatshirt. Top-stitch to hold the tulle into place and to close the slit in the hoodie.