Today is the day, I'm up in the Paintbrush Studios Mad for Solids March Madness 2018 bracket.  What does this mean?  Time to vote for me (or my competitor, that's ok too) but only one of us will move on to the next round.  There are 16 players, each choosing their own 8 fabrics and color story and in the end there will only be 1 winner.  It's all in good fun, so no worries.

You can vote on the Inspired by Fabric blog, Facebook page and Instagram.  One vote per platform per person, so you can have up to three votes.

Above is a photo of my bundle, and now it's time for me to share my title and inspiration:

Glory of the 80's
Inspired by my childhood in the 1980's, all the great things that I loved, flamingos, Sanrio, Little Twin Star, plastic charms, stickers, boom boxes, Strawberry Shortcake and Care Bears.  Taking all those memories and updating the color palette into something a little more modern and totally 2018.

All of these vintage 1980's items are my personal treasures from my childhood.  I was born in 1980 so I experienced the whole decade!  I can honestly say I still love these items, especially my Sanrio and Little Twin Star items, it's all so cute and little.  Love that flamingo pen too though I will say most of his tail feathers have rotted off. LOL

What do you think?  Did I succeed in capturing my memories in fabric form?  I hope so, I love it.  These fabrics will have to become a 1980's inspired quilt.

I dug out all my treasures and had to decide what to include with my fabric pictures, but I thought it would be fun to share some of my other treasures.  The photo below is all stationary, pens and stickers.  Who remembers the Snorks?  Some of those stickers are plush, some fuzzy, some holographic, but all from the 80's.  That grape pen totally smells like grapes still today.

The photo below is just a small sample of the hoards of sticker sheets I still have.  This collection totally represents the 80's to me.  That Muppet Babies sheet smells like bananas, are we sensing a theme here?  My kids have recently become obsessed with Duck Tales, and would love those stickers, but hands off, you aren't playing with these.  Did I mention hoarder?  I think so.

I hope you enjoyed my collection and if you have a moment, take a wee bit of time and go vote!  Thank-you!  I also want to thank the wonderful people over at Paintbrush Studios for asking me to participate again this year and for making such great solids.  If you haven't worked with them, I really recommend it, great hand and a ton of colors.  What's not to love about that?

I have been invited for a second year to participate in the Paintbrush Studios Mad For Solids 2018 game or playoffs if you will.  This is honestly the only type of March Madness that I care about.  As a participant I chose eight fabrics from their impressive collection of 168 colors and created my own "color story" if you will.  There are a total of 16 participants that have been randomly drawn and placed into a bracket.  Starting on Sunday, 3/18/18 at 6 pm CST you will be able to vote on the Inspired by Fabric blog, Facebook and Instagram.  Each day there will be a new "face off" of sorts until it eventually narrows down to just one winner.  This is completely for fun and honestly most of us participants are friends, which is really great.  You have the chance to win fabric just by voting, so win win!  All the details and all the color palette's of the Sweet 16 can be seen HERE.

The color palette I have chosen can be seen above, and I'll tell you all about it next week when it is my day for voting (Saturday, March 24, 2018.)  If you want the inside scoop ahead of time you can visit the Inspired by Fabric blog and read all about it.

I do hope you decide to play along, I think it is fun and only takes a second to vote, so why not?

March is my month to choose a prompt for my fellow bee-mates and after seeing a Spoonflower design challenge a little over a month ago, I knew instantly what I wanted to do.  Honestly I had never even heard of Kilim, so after seeing that Spoonflower challenge, I did some research and below is the basics of what I learned and then following is my prompt. 

Curious to play along?  Read through all the way to the bottom for more details.

Thanks for hanging in there to the end.  Curious to play along?  Using my prompt, create a quilt block for yourself to keep, then post a photo on Instagram using the hashtag #inspiredbybeesewcial and if you want me to see it quickly, tag me in the photo @Marci_Girl.  We would love for you to join us, this month or any month.  These monthly prompts are a great way to play around with improv, learn new skills and have fun sewing!  Hope you join us!

You know how you have the best intentions for a week and then things go awry, well that is my last week and why I'm posting my list for the first quarter on the last day to link up!  And yes, still time to link up and you can find that post HERE.  Worked out great for me that this year the Finish-A-Long has longer link-up dates, giving us all more time to participate.

Since the first of the year I've been thinking about my list and debating on what to include this first quarter, it's hard sometimes.  I know a lot of you include your entire list, but my list is crazy person (which I am) long (think 35-40 ongoing projects) and I like to narrow it down to a small list each quarter that I think I can actually finish or at least work on.  Sometimes I struggle to make the list because I'm not sure what I want to work on or how much time I really will have to sew.  This quarter hopefully will be the end to our year long house addition (FINGERS CROSSED!) Once the addition is done, I'll have a small sewing space which will involve a lot of moving and organizing to make the space work the best and most efficiently for me. I'm wanting to take my time and do this right so the rest of the year can just be spent sewing and enjoying this new addition.  So you can see my dilemma this quarter as I'm not sure I'll even have a chance to really sew.  I'll make a list anyway with high hopes of finishing at least  a few things, so here we go.

1.  Bee Sewcial Flowers Quilt - I'm not sure if this one will turn into a finished quilt but I would love to at least get started and do some embroidery on the blocks and at least start hatching out a good solid plan for these wonderful blocks.

2.  Ladies Waterfall Raglan - Carried over from last year, I want to make at least one top for myself in this pattern.  Now to find what I did with the printed out pattern...

3.  City Sampler Quilt - Carried over from EVERY SINGLE QUARTER last year I will finish this quilt this year!  Now that our addition is almost done our bed will need a nice finished quilt on it and since this one was made with that intention, then it's time to get it done and put it to use.  I just have to quilt the background as each of the "blocks" are already quilted.

4.  Bee Sewcial Triangle Quilt - The top is together and I'm just working on the back, would love to get quilting on this one.

5.  Bonnie & Camille Scrappy Log Cabin Quilt - This one is another for our bed, so it will be queen sized.  Right now it is just blocks, but I know how I want to lay them out and I have all the supplies.

6.  Once Upon A Time Cross Stitch - Not sure this one has ever been on my list, it's been a WIP for about 4 years now, I've been stitching on and off, but this last year I really committed and worked on it a little almost every single day.  My goal was to be finished by the time our addition was done and I'm really close to meeting that goal.  So I'll be plugging away on this one to be able to hang it on my daughter's wall when her room is done.

There it is, my list of 6 projects.  I'll be thrilled to finish 2-3 of them, so wish me luck.  I wanted to say a quick Thank-you to all of you playing along this year, it really means a lot to me have you join us for the first quarter of the year and hope that you will join us for the entire year once you see how great it is to finish up those WIPs!

You can find the Quarter 4 finishes link up HERE, it is open and you still have time to finish some things and link up!

When it was time to make my fourth quarter list, I decided to have just 4 projects as I knew the holidays were coming and wouldn't have a ton of time to sew, though I did need to finish at least two of the four, which I am happy to say that I did accomplish.

My first finish this quarter was the Moana costume for my daughter and I blogged all about it HERE.  This was a Halloween costume and play costume for the future so I needed to get it done first.  Happy to report she loved it and it is finished!

My second and third finishes for the quarter were to sew up these flannel and cotton Christmas pajamas for my boys.  Finished the week before Christmas and gifted Christmas day, both boys were thrilled to have new pajamas.  The blue penguin set is long sleeved and long pants, size 4/5 and made entirely from scraps that were gifted to me.  Also everything from buttons to elastic was from my existing stash.  Yippie!  The crazy red/green/every color under the rainbow set is a size 10/12 and long sleeved and long pants.  The pants fabric was also scraps gifted to me that I had to get really creative with cutting out and piecing.  The top was a cotton print I bought on black Friday at JoAnn's.  Now they are on constant rotation at night and I'm thrilled to have finished them in time.

The BeeSewcial Triangle quilt totally got worked on and is a finished top right now.  I just have to finish up the backing, then I can baste and quilt.  I was happy to have at least made progress on it.

The hot pink knit top is still in the state it was when I took that photo.  It would have been made this quarter except for the fact that I somehow misplaced the pattern for it, so now I have to search.  I'm not reprinting it because it was already cut out and taped together and I'm not doing that again.

Statistics:
2 Complete
1 Progress Made
1 Untouched

Two out of four is pretty good for me and seemed to be the theme for this year, which I am happy with.  I'm hoping you all had a great holiday season and are enjoying the new year.  I'm thrilled to say that the Finish-A-Long will be continuing next year, it will remain Global with 7 other hosts plus myself, and the first link up will open right after the Q4 finishes linky closes.  Start working on those lists and I truly hope you will join in this next year.

This was the stage I was at when I made my fourth quarter Finish-A-Long list.  Fabric purchased and tassels made.  I also had purchased the necklace to make the look complete.

The top was a simple tube top that I wanted to add straps to and I knew I wanted it adjustable so she could wear it as play clothes for years to come.  In the end I used the Made for Mermaids pattern, Alyssa Top, Tunic, Dress & Maxi.  Though I changed a lot, I was able to use the basic pattern/measurements to figure out how big to make this top for my daughter.   I gathered the back with elastic that has button holes in it (what is that stuff called) and added buttons to the sides and now it is completely adjustable and will expand quite large.  I also added buttonholes to the long straps and buttons to the back and now the straps are adjustable too.  I had some trim in my stash that matched the crochet thread perfectly and I sewed it to the front of the top to mimic the detail that was in the outfit from the movie.  I was pleased as punch.

The skirt however was a different story and was just really a lot of trial and error as I didn't use any sort of pattern.  I measured my little girl's waist and how long the skirt should be.  The top layer or sand colored fabric had to do this funky wrap around effect and then the bottom "straw" layer was more of a traditional skirt.  I used the same technique as the top and had the back gathered using that same elastic with buttonholes, so this skirt expands quite a bit.  I made it longer than I would have liked to accommodate her getting taller throughout the years.

As far as all that trim goes, and I know it looks complicated, it really wasn't.  I went to Hobby Lobby in hopes of finding some sort of pre-made trim that would work and was about to leave empty handed when I walked past the floral ribbon section.  They had this crocheted flat 3" ribbon/trim that I realized I could fold and then sew to create the triangles, which is exactly what I did and it worked even better than I imagined.  I then attached all those tassels I had previously made.  The zig-zag trim on the top layer was some random crochet-like thread that came in a bundle so I just used the entire bundle and pinned and then sewed straight lines right on top of the trim.  I sewed two lines on the top and bottom to hold it in place, it isn't perfect but creates that hand made look.  For the large "flowers" I just drew a design on paper and then used a fusible webbing on the back of a Kona cotton, fused it in place and then stitched 1/4" away from the edge (I wanted fraying) to permanently hold it on.  It took a lot of manipulating and trying to figure it out, but in the end I think it turned out fantastic.

Here is the finished costume.  What do you think?  I love it and so does my daughter.  I was really happy with how close it looks to the original but without being an exact copy.

Below you can see my little model.  Since my little girl has very little hair we added a "wig" to mimic Moana's flowing locks and she wore it for the photos and then ripped that fake hair off her head.  It totally looked like a rat's nest. HAHA.

This was my first finish of my fourth quarter list, which can be found HERE.  I'm hoping to have one more finished by Christmas (those Christmas pajamas) so I better get cracking.

You guys still have plenty of time to finish stuff up before the last link up of the year opens December 31st.  I hope you will have some finishes to link up.

Merry Christmas and I hope you all have a wonderful and safe Holiday season!
Marci