Easter Cards

I hope you all had a wonderful, blessed Easter.  We went to church in the morning, which was a fantastic service, and then Phil, the big boys and I took a two hour bike ride in the afternoon before dinner.  Now that its nice out (hopefully winter is REALLY over) and we can go on family bike rides, I am hoping it will help me drop some of the weight that crept on too easily while I sit at a desk all day long at work.  Unfortunately, reading, quilting and cross stitching don't count as aerobic exercise.

To help celebrate Easter, I wanted to send cards to family and a few friends.  My card making process starts with perusing the cardstock in the Oasis to see what would work.  I found half a pack of a beautiful yellow and an assortment of pink and green scraps.  Perfect.

I looked through my stamp sets trying to find something that would work for Easter.  Nothing really stuck my fancy, so I headed to JoAnn's and Michael's.  (They are right down the street from each other, which makes it convenient when on a crafty run)  I couldn't find any stamps or stickers that would work, but I did come home with 15 yards of fabric!   (More on that in another post)

Back to my stamp sets I went, and selected one I got years ago from Stampin' Up. While not typical Easter fare like a bunny, basket, or eggs, there two good possibilities in the set.

So here are all of the paper materials, a set of markers, an eyelet border punch, and an oval shape maker from Creative Memories with two different blades.




First, I cut the yellow paper in half to make two cards per sheet.  Then I used the eyelet punch on the right side of just the front of the card.

Next, I cut the pink scraps to fit the length of the card and using the matching ink (I think they were both Perfect Pink) I stamped the flower shape. so that it gave the pink paper a subtle pattern.  Then I cut a white oval with the blue blade and the green paper with the green blade, so that the green would make a nice frame for the white. 

For the stamp, I tested both the butterfly and the flower.  The flower filled the oval space better and gave more of an opportunity for color.  I used the thick end of the markers to color the stamp and then stamped each white oval. It seemed a little blank still, so I made a border of dots with the fine side of the pink marker. 

Here's how it all came together:

For the sentiment inside, I printed out the first and fourth verses of my favorite hymn, "Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee":

Joyful Joyful we adore thee,

God of glory, Lord of love,

Hearts unfold like flowers before thee, 

Opening to the sun above.

Melt the clouds of sin and sadness;

Drive the dark of doubt away.

Giver of immortal gladness,

Fill us with the light of day!

Mortals join the happy chorus

Which the morning stars began;

Love divine is reigning o'er us,

Binding all within its span.

Ever singing, march we onward,

Victors in the midst of strife;

Joyful music leads us sunward,

In the triumph song of life!

I have loved this hymn since I was a child, partly because you can't help but sing it at the top of your lungs.  I think that singing Henry J. van Dyke's words and Beethoven's beautiful music are the perfect way we can celebrate Easter every day and shout the Good News: 

He is Risen!

He is Risen Indeed!

Happy Easter, my friends.

Sam's Football Quilt - In Progress

You must have thought that I dropped off the face of the blogging earth.  I'm still here.  I could blame Nora Roberts for the second installment in "The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy" as reading it certainly distracted me for a few days.  (Now I have to wait until November to find out how they vanquish the evil wizard). I have been working hard on a few projects since I last posted, but some projects take longer than others and sort of evolve as you go.

Sam's football quilt is a good example.

Sam will be 13 in June.  It's hard to believe that my sweet baby is now 5'9" (with no sign of stopping).  Obviously the baby quilt I made for him 13 years ago isn't going to cut it any more.  (This is the big guy holding it.)

He is a HUGE football fan and a walking encyclopedia of football facts and statistics. Making him a quilt with a football theme was an obvious choice.  I started gathering fabric with football prints, (nothing that was specific to a team) and greens and browns to complement the theme fabric.

The quilt pattern I choose was actually a baby quilt from Winter 2011 issue of Quilts and More.  The original pattern was a square, but I planned to make it 4 blocks by 8 blocks instead to make it longer.  I also made it wider by changing a two square block into a four square block.

When I was done with all the blocks and laid them out on the floor, it still didn't seem wide enough for the big guy. Also, the greens and browns worked like camouflage and blended together.  Using white sashing solved both problems, by setting the blocks apart and making the quilt wider and long enough that I decided to go with seven rows of blocks rather than eight.






The quilt still didn't seem wide enough though.  I gathered up the scraps and sewed a quick border alternating the green and brown prints.  The border will go down each side. (I'm still working on this part)

Now I am happy with the size the quilt will be and soon I'll head to JoAnn's for some batting.  Sam already chose a sports themed flannel for the back (I have to make sure that I have enough of it now that I added to the width!).  I am planning on machine quilting it with a diamond pattern (no squiggly lines for me yet!) although I might hand stitch a football in the center of the larger blocks.

I am sure that this will be a quilt Sam can use for a long time.  Once this one is done, I can move on to the other quilts on the UFO list.  There's Jamie's, Peaches', Maria's, a couple of baby quilts... well you get the idea.