It is quarter 2 Tutorial Week time!  During the year, each of the Finish-A-Long hosts will be giving you guys a free tutorial.  How cool is that?  Every day this week visit the scheduled hosts blog and enjoy.  Hopefully you will learn some new skills or fine tune some existing ones.  Here is this week's schedule:

Tuesday -Sarah of Sew Me
Wednesday - Karen of Capitola Quilter
Thursday - Felicity of Felicity Quilts
Friday - Izzy of Dizzy Quilts

Head on over (right now) and visit Karen of Capitola Quilter, she is sharing a really clever tutorial on how to make a framed accent panel that you can use for a ton of applications.  You can find her tutorial HERE.

It's the last week to finish up items on the Finish Along list and I'm in a mad dash to knock a few more off the list.  These are two tooth fairy pillows I made for my two boys, they are based on the tooth pillow that my mom made me when I was little.  I took her pattern and made my own funny faces and now they are all set.  My oldest has already lost a few teeth, but he wore out the first pillow I made him so he needed a new one.  My middle child is on the cusp of his first ones being loose so he will get his once he loses one.

The front is just white Kona quilting cotton with the eyes, mouth and tooth from scraps, sewn down with a satin stitch.  The back is a small wale corduroy I had scraps of and it worked perfect for these.  The pocket on the back is plenty big enough for dollar bills or coins and could hold all their baby teeth at once, but let's pray that doesn't happen.  I embroidered their names to the left of the pocket so they would know which one was theirs.  I blurred part of their names, so no you aren't crazy, it does look weird.

The first one I stuffed I used Polyfil that I had on hand and I used it all up on one (thank goodness I was so tired of storing that.)  Not wanting to buy more I used my cotton batting scraps to stuff the second one.  I tore up the batting and in essence made fiberfill.  It is definitely more dense and a little more lumpy but my kids don't care and recycling for the win.

This is my third finish this quarter and was number two on my second quarter list found HERE.  You still have time to finish up your projects and link up so get cracking!

Hello!  Here we are at the half way point of the year, can you believe it?  Well believe it, because it's time to link up those finishes!  You can find all the rules, sponsors and the link up below.  And no, you didn't miss anything, the winners have not been posted for the first quarter, but never fear they will be announced at the same time as the quarter 2 winners.  Trust me, we will be giving out those prizes from our fabulous sponsors.

If you have any problems or need help, don't hesitate to contact me.  One more thing, can I ask you a little favor?  Please take the time to visit some of the other link ups and share the love.  You love comments, right?  Well so does everyone, and even if you only visit the link ups before and after yours, then everyone would get more visitors and that would be lovely wouldn't it?  Alright, go link up and I can't wait to read about all your finishes.

My second finish for the second quarter of the 2017 Finish Along was technically finished first, but who is counting (obviously me, haha.)  This was my daughter's Easter dress (though when she wore it for Easter I didn't have the pockets on it yet.)   I used a cut of an Aneela Hoey print for the body of the dress and a Painter's Palette Solid (Orchid) for the trim.  I had that little lace trim in my stash, which I think added a little something extra.  I debated about the pockets that were part of the pattern, and in the end drafted my own little kitty head and hand embroidered the faces.

You can see the pockets better below.  I think they turned out adorable and totally Kawaii, which I love.  One of the cats is winking because I became tired of doing the satin stitch eyes, great solution wasn't it.  Sometimes I'm so lazy.

The image above is how I finished the seams inside, just serged (or is it surged?) the edges to keep things tidy and from raveling as much.

Below you can see another example of my clothes labeling system with the numbers from the selvedges.  This time I needed an 18, and since most prints don't have 18 colors, I created an 18 by sewing together the one and eight, turning under the edges and then stitching it to the facing.  So this dress is sized 18 months.  My daughter is tall so it is a wee bit short, so now she wears it with shorts underneath.

The straps were created from bias tape that I made from the Painter's Palette Solid, made me wish I had some of those bias tape tools, though it was easy enough to create myself.

So, I mentioned something about a story about PDF's didn't I?  Well when it was time to pick a pattern for the Easter dress, I knew right away I wanted to make the Persimmon Dress by Mouse House Creations.  I love everything about this pattern, the pleats, the details, all so cute.  Nothing was wrong with the PDF, the instructions were great.

I already owned this pattern so all I had to do was print it out and read the directions.  Here in lies the problem.  Late last year our old computer died on us and as much as that stinks it wasn't a big deal because it was old and I had been regularly backing everything up onto an external hard drive, or so I thought.  I opened up the PDF pattern file on the external hard drive to discover that not only was it not there, neither was 90% of the patterns I had purchased through the past two years.  Yep, what the heck?  I still don't know what happened in regards to that, either the back ups had failed or maybe I forgot to copy that one folder.  Who knows.

So now what, because I don't want to purchase it again.  Some websites let you log in and download it again, thankfully this was the majority of them as I kept all the emails and details of the downloads.  But there were a few that I just couldn't access anymore, either the company wasn't in existence anymore or the download wasn't available.  Insert sad face.  So I decided to just ask the designers flat out if they would send it to me.  What did I have to lose?  I had the receipt in email form and explained what happened.

I contacted Hayley of Mouse House Creations and she was on a trip and replied immediately that when she got home she would email it to me and she did.  How great is that, honestly.  In the end all of those independent designers I have contacted have in fact emailed me the files I had purchased.  Which is pretty great and says a lot about our little sewing/quilting community.

Moral of the story?  Back up your files people, in not just one spot, but two.  It has taken me an entire weekend of emails and sorting and downloading to get back my files and sadly there are about 10% that I won't be able to get back, lost forever on a dead computer.

Second moral of the story?  Not only is our sewing/quilting community awesome, reach out and ask, I have come to realize that all of these designers are super helpful and friendly and they want you to make their patterns just as much as you want to make them.  So I'll end with a big thank you to Hayley of Mouse House Creations, for not only sending me the file but for creating such a great dress pattern. "Insert Smiley Face, Insert Clapping Hands, Insert Fireworks!"

You guys are in luck, I've included a rare shot of my daughter in her dress on Easter.  I just had to, it was so cute on her.  I usually don't post photos of my children so I must be in a good mood.

The second quarter link up will open in a few days and when it does I'll be linking up this dress as it was project number five from my list found HERE.  I hope you will be joining us with some of your finished projects.

The second quarter of the year is quickly coming to a close and I figured I better get to blogging a few of my finishes, and yes I have finishes.  Yippie!  This is the Summer Picnic Dress, a free pattern by The Cottage Mama.  I used some Bonnie and Camille yardage that I had on hand (from Knotted Thread's Etsy shop) though I can't remember which fabric line.  I think it turned out pretty darn sweet.

Based on my little girl's measurements I decided to make a size 3, which in the end, ended up being a bit too large.  Oh well, I'll save it for next year.  I had a small scrap of that crocheted lace that worked as the perfect little trim between the yolk and body of the dress.  This was a really quick sew and I finished it up in just a few days of sewing on and off.

I used my serger to finish the seams for a neat and tidy look, except for that one little seam on the ruffle I forgot.  I just used my pinking shears to finish that edge and moved on.  It will hold up just as well in the end.

I discovered a little trick that I now use in my kids clothes to label the size.  I use the numbers from the selvedge.  I find a number that corresponds to the size, cut it a little larger all the way around, iron in the raw edges and stitch it onto the inside facing.  Yes, it is just a basic number but most people that deal with little kids clothes will be able to figure out it is a 3T or close to it.  I thought this was a clever solution and free.

This was my first finish of my Quarter 2 Finish Along list, found HERE, it was number six on my list.  The Quarter 2 finishes link up will open next week so you still have time to finish up those projects!