Mother Day's

Happy Mother's Day to all you mommies (including you pet mommies)!

I had been knitting a lot lately so I wanted to sew a little for all the mommies in my life.  There was an adorable pattern I found on Pinterest that I had been eyeing and finally bought it off Etsy.  Totally worth it.  The best part? I didn't know anything about paper piecing and the woman who created the pattern had FREE videos on how to do paper piecing. Amazing, right? Super easy to follow as well.

My mom's gift was easy - horses.  Fawn and Jerry are the horses that I grew up with and they're still kicking (literally - they knocked Dad's dog Luca upside the head a couple months ago when he wouldn't leave them be).  

Here's Jerry, the one-eyed wonder.

Fawn's coat isn't looking too hot here, but you get a better view of Jerry's head poking out.

Since the pattern gave me two angle options, I made Jerry one way and Fawn another. Even though Jerry's a gelding, they're in love and it's adorable.  You can't put them in separate pastures or Jerry jumps over the fence to be with her.  So, I had to do two.

I'm finding that I'm not good with paper piecing and doing it the traditional way. I don't stitch to the paper... ever. I should practice but doing it the correct way, but for these pillows I cut out the big chunks and folded the paper and eyeballed the stitching. I bet all you real quilters are cringing at the thought of me doing it that way, but it worked.... sort of.

On Fawn's you can see that it didn't work out with the right eye and ear.  But the rest was pretty good.

The right eye/side is driving me nuts. But she's super cute.

On Jerry's I made a lot more cuts on the chunks before stitching them together to make sure it was even angles, etc.  It worked better.

Jerry only has one eye so it's supposed to look like this on him. But his is SO much batter!

Looking back on the horse pattern I should have added a tail. But ehhhh. I still LOVE this pattern. I might make another set for others.

Super cute. Love this pattern!

Mom in law was a bit different.  She doesn't have a specific animal that she goes "EEEEE" over (maybe cats... but not like me, obviously I'm the Queen of Crazy Cat Lady Town) but I wanted to have pillows for her that would make Dad in law happy too.  So I looked back at the sewing machine cover I made and made a pillow version of it.  The hubby seemed to think that would be the best option for them and their home.

On the left pillow I stitched Orion, minus his bow.  On the right are the dippers.

Big and Little Dipper.

Orion looks better here.

My Grandmother loves quilting items. All times.  She used to go to Lancaster, PA and buy the prettiest quilts and hang them on her wall, put them on all her beds, and give them to us.  I blame her for my original interest in quilts and mom in law for my love of attempting to make them.  When I was looking through the Etsy shop for the Peeping Horse, there was a Peeping Duck pattern. Sold - I knew she'd like them.

I made four ducks total.  One was a practice set and I took them for our couch and the better ones I gave to her.  I did the first one as the male mallard, but I wanted the second one to be different.  After Googling a couple pictures, I finally decided that I could use a cheetah type fabric to mimic the feather pattern of the female mallard.

This is my practice duck. The nostril is killing me. She's hooked on quack. =D

I love how the female mallard is taller than the male.  These were the better two. Sigh. Need to practice more with paper piecing!

Thoughts? Hope your Mother's Day is a great one!