{New Paper Box Quilt Co. Items Up For Sale}

Well, the Paper Box Quilt Co. staff (me and sometimes my mom) has been busy busy sewing and creating the last couple months.  People are having babies and parties and PBQC is right there to help celebrate!  I just listed some new items in my shop today so head over and check it out!



LOTS of garland!  These are SO fun and festive.  Perfect for parties, picnics, weddings, nurseries and photo shoots!  What would/do you use yours for?

This weekend my sister-in-law and I attempted a one year photo shoot of my niece, Ellie, and while we DID get some pictures, she was NOT a fan of this set up.  I however, loved it and took the opportunity to get some shop pictures while it was out.

NEON fabric garland

HOT PINK mini bunting

SCRAP fabric garland

and a couple new MINI quilts, Summer Citrus and Ellie.

All of the garlands are available by the food in pretty much any length you can imagine, so please feel free to contact me if you need a longer length then I have listed.

Anyway, I hope your summer is going fabulously!  We, at the Lathroum house, are ready for FALL! :)

OH and don't forget to visit me on Instagram, InsideThePaperBox.  You can follow along as I make all the fun new PBQC items!

xoxo

{Bloglovin}

<a href="http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/3566927/?claim=2n5hf6vcwap">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>

Lets see what it's about! ;)

{Win a Paper Box Quilt Co. baby quilt at Lay Baby Lay!}

If you are following my Instagram stream, then you have probably seen this quilt.  Well, today is your lucky day, because Joni is GIVING IT AWAY on her blog LayBabyLay.  I have been a fan of her blog since she started it.  She always has such fabulous design boards for decorating your little ones rooms.  If you haven't been reading it, please do head over and check out her ideas.  Just beautiful.  She has taken this quilt and designed a whole inspiration board around it for you, and she has paired this quilt with such awesome stuff, that I want to win it!!  So go.  Hurry.  Tell her hi and enter for your chance to win a Paper Box Quilt Co. quilt for your home.

Thanks Joni!

{Sewing Summit, 2013}

Tickets went on sale this week!  Who's going?!?!  I sure am.  I MAY have been stalking the registration page on the Sewing Summit website all morning and my ticket MAY have been purchased at about 11:02am (they went on sale at 11am)  But I'm totally cool about it.  Not overly excited.  (Eeeeeeek!)   I can't wait to meet and sew with so many people in this online sewing community that I've never met in person.  Also, this will be my first time leaving my little boy overnight/for longer than just the day.  Right now, I'm good with it.  I might be a nervous wreck when it's time to leave.

Who else is going??

{I'm Back! And with a How-To}

Oh hi!  So, I may have forgotten how to blog and this post might have taken me about a week to write. No really.  (correction: original post took me a week, then it vanished into thin air so I'm on week 2, writing this post again.  See.  Forgot how to blog) ;)



Things are always busy.  That's just the way it is.  I let my blog get away from me, BUT the good news is that I've done a lot of cool stuff lately, so I'll have plenty to share soon.  First up is a little how-to for sewing together triangles.  I've seen some really cute triangle quilts lately so I decided I needed to make one myself.  I was so annoyed at how much trouble I was having sewing these together.  I mean, I was sewing triangles, not parallelograms or trapezoids.  Triangles.  So I asked my stitchy friends on Instagram for a little help and I'm going to share what I discovered worked best for me.  There's really no trick or shortcut to it, just patience.

First things, first, I used the ruler below to cut my triangles.  You get 4.5" equilateral triangles.  I tried using the 60 degree lines on my straight cutting ruler, but this worked better for me and I found it at my local quilt shop.  The directions say to cut 4.5" x WOF strips, then line up your fabric strips on the triangle portion of the ruler.  You can cut 5 triangles at a time, more if you layer your fabric.  If you're using this ruler, you'll get triangles with 2 sharp points and one flat point.  That will be important when you're matching up your pieces.  Once you have all of your triangles cut, lay them out just how you want to sew them together.  For mine, I just went with a random layout.

Stack up your first row IN ORDER that you will be sewing it.  I actually laid them out again right next to my machine just so there would be no placement issues while I was sewing.

Let's sew the first two triangles together.  Stack them right sides together making sure to match your sharp points and flat points like below and sew them together using a 1/4" seam.

"Tip" #1: Press your seams OPEN AS YOU GO trying not to stretch those bias edges.  You want to sew, press, sew, press, sew, press and so on.  I'm a big fan of chain piecing then pressing like a million pieces at once (or recruiting my mom to press a million pieces for me) ;)  "Tip" #2: Don't try to chain piece these.  I started off chain piecing and it just didn't work.  I also almost always press seams to the side, but for this, definitely press open!  If you're a strict to-the-side presser, try doing these open, you'll find that you will get much nicer points and your pieces will be easier to match up.  So, press seams open, don't chain piece.

Move on to your next triangle, sewing and pressing the same as the first set, making sure to line up your flat and sharp points and pressing your seams open again.  Continue sewing all your triangles into rows.

"Tip" #3: Trim your points.  Once I had all my rows sewn together, I went through and trimmed the little points off from the "intersections".  I thought it would help reduce bulk right where I wanted my fabric to lay flat and my points to be pointy.  You can see three little points in the seam below, just chop those off. (but be careful not to chop into the seams of course)

To sew your rows you just want to line up your seams/points really well.  Here's "tip" #4: pin. pin. pin. I am so guilty of never pinning.  Ever.  Don't skip it here!  These triangles really got me out of my comfort zone and had me pinning like crazy.  Line up each point and put a pin right in your seams.  For some of my points I was a bit OCD and spent a little extra time matching the points.  If you take your pin and stick it through the tip of the point on the top and bottom layers, wiggle it together a little then pin it flat you'll have those points matching even if you didn't get a perfect 1/4" seam allowance at every point.  (that's a lot of pinning points right?  Let me know if it doesn't make any sense).  Press seams open.

You can see above how sharp the points turned out and how nicely they matched up.  Like I said, there's really no trick to this (as I discovered the hard way).  You just have to be patient and don't try to find a shortcut.  I took a picture of my sewing area so you could see that I pushed my ironing board as close to my machine as I could get it since I had to press after every piece.   I'm so used to "batch" quilting that this was really strange.  Aaaaand I might be a little bit lazy.

So, if you ever wanted to try piecing triangles, go for it!  Be sure to post pictures or share them on Instagram and let me know how these tips worked for you!  See you soon. (hopefully)

XOXO

{Heart Oven Mitt Tutorial by Dresden}

Today I bring you a sweet Valentiney tutorial from guest blogger Dresden, of www.dresdencarrie.com Enjoy!

This heart oven mitt is so cute! The little half hearts are perfect to slip your hands in and grab anything hot. This would make an adorable Valentine's gift with a bag of chocolate chips or any baking supply.



Materials needed:

-2 fat quarters (or scraps, the heart isn't too large)

-heart pattern (found here)
-batting, Insul-Bright is best and can be found at any sewing store
-trim (if desired, pom pom trim is adorable on these!)
-sewing supplies

Steps:

1. Cut:

    2 large hearts on the fold of fabric

    1 large heart on the fold of batting (I used Insul-Bright because it's heat resistant) 

    2 small heart halves

    3 strips of fabric or bias tape pieces about 10 inches long

2. Attach bias tape & trim to straight edge of the heart halves

3. If using a strip of fabric make a loop for hanging by folding fabric in half twice and stitching along edge length wise

4. Make a sandwich in this order:

    batting

    front large heart face up (green heart in picture)

    half hearts placed like they are shown in the finished mitt face up

    loop for hanging (fold in half and pin near top of heart)

    back large heart face down

5. Sew around edge and leave a gap open for turning

6. Turn right side out through gap

7. Hand stitch closed

Happy Valentine's Day!! Be sure to check out my blog! www.dresdencarrie.com

Thanks for having me Jessie!

Thanks so much Carrie!

If anyone else is interested in doing a guest post on my little blog, please let me know. It's been pretty busy over here preparing to move, so I'd love to have you! (If anyone wants to do a post on meal planning/healthy(easy) eating I need an intervention so please email me!) ;).

xoxo

{Happy New Year}

Wow! Over a month this time?! Well, the holidays kind of turn my brain to mush and lots of things get forgotten. We have been doing lots of cool things over here though! First up, we closed on a house just a couple days before Christmas. It's a dream home! I couldn't be more excited to move in. We have selected some of the paint colors and have already started painting all the inside walls, so we will be moving in slowly, making sure everything is ready and perfect before we have to be out of our apartment in March.

Christmas was wonderful! (And exhausting) we just got back yesterday from a trip to Maryland to visit my husbands family. It was quite a whirlwind. It's still a bit of a blur.

And of course, up until the VERY last minute, I was finishing gifts and projects, packing, painting, moving, mothering, cleaning (not really), baking, wrapping, shipping, shopping, decorating. You know, typical holiday stuff. Now it's time to take it all down, be thankful that Christmas doubles as a deadline so you feel like you got a few things marked off your to-do list, and get back to the normal life pace, whatever that is for you.

I'm going to get working on a couple things that maybe should have hit that Christmas/deadline, do some painting in the new house this weekend, pack a few boxes as I go, get working on a new private swap and also on a pretty awesome giveaway opportunity (more on that one later).

OH and my New Year resolution is to ORGANIZE! There should be a place for everything in the new house and I'm planning to make it so organized you'll hate me when I'm done. I'm talking labels, containers, shelves, closet systems, folders, stickers, racks,.... A. Place. For. Everything. Hold me to it, would ya? What's your resolution?

xoxo

Ps. Is it possible to move your images when blogging from an iPad?? Anyone have tips on that? :-D

{Insta-lately}

I've got nothing new planned to post right now but I wanted to check in and say hi! If you follow me on Instagram you might know that my husband and I are in the process of buying a house here in Texas (yay) so the past couple weeks have been filled with house hunting, offers and counter offers, Thanksgiving, stocking making, home inspections, quilt finishing, baby raising, house keeping (minimal house keeping. Minimal.), holiday decorating, Christmas shopping, travel planning... Etc. etc. etc. so little time for blogging. I recently saw a fellow blogger with blogposts and plans scheduled and written out on her to-do list and another with like 10 pre-written posts ready to go for future dates. This is where I would love to be with my blogging. That would just be such a wonderful place. I'm really going to aim for better organization in 2013. Maybe it will start with our new home. We are outgrowing our apartment so maybe our new house will have a nice place for everything. I'm getting the chance to clean out, de-clutter, simplify and start fresh and I'm hoping its the jump start I need to work on my organization and schedule. (Motivation too maybe?) I'm only getting this chance one more time (hopefully) so I don't want to mess it up. It's also the opportunity to pick some fabulous paint colors and new furniture pieces to make our new house cozy and that's really exciting! Any local DFW readers have any fab furniture/decorating places they like to shop? Any non local readers have favorite online decorating sites? Shops? What's your very favorite paint color? Favorite rug? Design blog? Budget friendly design/DIY ideas? Pins? Start throwing out some ideas for me! I'm not wasting this chance to explore my options and really make our future home perfect for our family. I have every intention of sharing our progress in my new organized life ;) here on my blog as well. (Throwing that out there so maybe ill be held accountable... ) Thanks for the help! Here are some recent Instagram images for you because I don't want to leave this post picture-less. xoxo

{Paper Box Quilt Co. Stockings!}

I'm not sure if you know this, but the holidays are coming.  FAST!  Thanksgiving is in about 2 weeks and then Christmas is practically like a couple days later.  I don't know about you, but I am THRILLED about the thought of getting my decorations out!

So, lets get ready!  I am making stockings.  Custom stockings actually, any color you want because, lets be serious, all colors are festive when there are twinkle lights involved.  (and adding turquoise makes everything awesome, don't you think?)  Listings are up in my shop so go get them!  And hurry because there's a limited quantity and only like a day until Christmas! ;)

Yippie,... Holiday decorating! :)

{Pillow Talk Swap}

I was able to get into the Pillow Talk Swap for round 9, going on right now.  I made the pillow above for my partner using the spiderweb block tutorial over at Sew Mama Sew.  It was SO easy and I really enjoyed learning & making a new block.  I hope my swap partner loves it!!

Are any of my readers participating in the PTS9 swap??

{Star Ornament Tutorial}

First, thanks to everyone that entered my little giveaway!  I am hoping to get a few sets of coasters made up for the shop, so stay tuned if you were wanting to get one but didn't win.

Second, I have received some fabulous Instagram feedback on an ornament that I made recently and several requests for a tutorial.  So,... without further ado, my very first TUTORIAL!  I would like to start of by saying that I did, in fact, find the idea for this fabric star ornament on Pinterest.  However, when I clicked through to find the tutorial it was in another language.  I relied on the pictures to put the star together, but it was a bit of a challenge.  SO, I'm putting together something for all my English speaking friends to try out too.  (here is the original tutorial)

You will need:

- (4) strips of fabric, measuring 3.5" x 12"

- Fabric Glue

- A large eye tapestry needle
-12"-15" of 1/8' ribbon

- Beads (optional)

Start with choosing your four prints.  Cut them to measure 3.5"x12".

Iron all your pieces in half to crease.  Then iron each side into the center to meet at your crease.  Fold in half and iron again to get a nice, smooth strip measuring approximately 7/8"x12".  (this is essentially a double fold binding strip)

Another little bit of ironing, fold your strip lengthwise so that the top half of your strip is about 2" shorter that the bottom half and iron to crease.

Let's weave our pieces together.  With your short ends facing UP, overlap each piece one at a time as shown in the pictures above.  For your last piece, overlap the previous piece you added, then slip both ends through your first strip as shown in the last picture above.

Wiggle, pull and tighten your fabric strips until your piece looks like the picture above.

Turn your piece over so the long ends are now on top.  Starting in one corner, fold your strip over your piece (image 1).  Move along to the next strip and fold over (image 2).  Continue with the 3rd piece.  On your fourth piece, pull it through the fold you created with your first strip fold (image 3).

You should have a woven piece that looks like this with all your strip ends measuring approximately the same length.

Making the points: Using one of your strips on the "top" of your piece (you should be able to determine this better when looking at your own piece) fold it to the back at an angle and back to the front at another angle (image 1 above).  Fold your point in half to create your finished point.  You now need to slide the end of your strip into the fold you created as shown above in picture 2.  You will have a tiny bit of excess fabric peeking through in the center, don't worry, we'll fix that later.

Skip your "back" strip, and continue making points in the same way around the front of your star.  You will create 4 points on this side, every other strip. (above)  Turn your star over and do the exact same thing on that side.  I had to loosen my strips a bit to pull pieces through other pieces, then I just tightened them all back up.

At this point I hope this is all making sense, ;) and, you should have an actual STAR!  Yeah!

So let's trim up those ugly ends.  Looking at pictures 1 & 2 above, I actually pulled each point further through GENTLY in order to trim the ends enough to hide inside my star.  Be careful not to pull your point all the way out, just enough to trim it up.  Then pull it back to resemble your point, being VERY CAREFUL again, not to pull it all the way out.  Just wiggle it gently until it takes its shape back.  Do this with all the ends that are showing in the center of your star.  

I totally cranked the steam on my iron and ironed the heck out of my star once all my ends were trimmed.  I just wanted a crisp, flat perfectly pointy star.  :)

I'm pretty sure the tutorial I used stopped here, but I was kind of worried about my star falling apart after years of use, or that it would take about 3 seconds for my one year old to rip it to shreds.  I decided to make mine a little more durable.  I had this tube of liquid stitch, fabric glue and it worked perfectly.  I put a small bead of glue in as many spaces as I could.  Don't get crazy and squeeze glue all over so it's oozing out of every corner.  Just dab a little wherever you think it will help to keep your star from coming apart.

On the original tutorial, she used a nifty punch thing that chopped a hole through all layers of the folded fabric in order to hang your star.  I didn't have that punch thing on hand, so I had to come up with another hanging method.  I used 1/8" satin ribbon and a tapestry needle to thread it down through the top of the star, out the bottom, back up the other side and out the top where you started.  You now have your two ends of ribbon coming out the top.  You can finish it off from here however you like.  I tied a knot, added a decorative bead, tied the ends together and trimmed them up even.

Now, you have this super cute, super easy, super inexpensive star ornament to hand out to all your friends and family this holiday!  My brothers, their wives, me & Tom exchange surprise handmade ornaments so I was testing some for this year and this was one of my favorites.  I plan to tie these to packages, hang some on my windows.  Basically, just put them everywhere because, well, they're just adorable.

Please, please, PLEASE contact me with any questions you may have about putting this together.  I'm not entirely sure all my steps are completely clear and since this is my first tutorial, it may just be all gibberish.  Also, please link me up with your stars or tag me on Instagram (Insidethepaperbox) so I can see what you come up with.

See you soon!  xoxo