12 Days of Jennifer Paganelli Inspiration

I am excited to be Day 10 of 12 days of inspiration by Jennifer Paganelli! Seriously, we could go on forever on how Jennifer and her fabrics inspire us! Pictured above is my JP stash & I could come up with so many combinations using her fabrics. It's so distracting! I met Jennifer online through Flickr, I think. She had commented on something I made that had bits of her fabrics in it and I was blown away at her kindness. I soon discovered that her style was my style and we were fast friends. I love how she loves to mix color and pattern and everything she does is happy & colorful.

I designed my sewing room around her fabrics. Wait, that picture doesn't look lived in! See below for a true, working sewing room!

Anyway, you can see how much Jennifer inspires me. She is kind and generous to everyone and so supportive to the handmade community, I am truly amazed! For my inspiration piece, I decided I wanted to feature something I've been making lately. Mug rugs are not new items, but I really love finding colorful & artistic mugs and designing mugs rugs to match. They make great gifts as I don't think they have to match a person's home. They are a stand alone gift!  Here are some mugs I purchased from Anthropologie

and one from Cost Plus

And here are the mug rugs I made to match them

I used a West Indies print called Matilda and bordered it with Claudia and then Jane and made a binding out of Sally. All I need to do is pop some Starbucks Via packets or some tea bags and I have a cute gift set.

For this one I used Claudia in the center and then did a log cabin style around it in Dana, Maggie, Danielle, Matt's Tux, Nikki, Matilda and Velentina. The binding is Luca. I love how most of the fabric names are people's names! I still have 2 more mugs to match up, and I'm looking forward to it since there is only 7 days until Christmas! Yikes! The mug rugs take about a half hour if you're using scraps. The center square is approximately 3" & then I add 1 1/2 to 2 1/2" strips until I think it's done, around 8-9" finished size. Here is the list of bloggers and the days that they posted or will post:

December 09 Sew Pretty Dresses
December 10 Sweeter Than Cupcakes
December 11 Sweet Baby Jamie
December 12 Hickity Pickity  Handmade Dress Haven
December 13 Tabbo Designs 100 Billion Stars
December 14 Heavenlelgh Blessings Boutique
December 15 Scientific Seamstress
December 16 Sweet Baby Jamie
December 17 Hold It Right There
December 18 Sew Fun By Monique
December 19 Small Town Girls Clothier Marie Madeline Studio
December 20 Granny B's Clothesline Lilac Lane by Melissa Stramel

West Indies Gum Drop Pillow

I love all those 'poufs' that I see popping up everywhere, so I decided to try Amy Butler's Gum Drop pillow pattern and make one to match Holly's room. Truth be told, this was cut out months ago and last night we decided to finish! Yay! One to check of my WIP list! The pattern was really pretty easy. The hardest part was ironing open the curved seams, but it doesn't have to be 'perfect'. Holly was helping me make it until she burnt her finger while ironing~ bummer! The pattern piece calls for cutting it out on the fold for each piece, so instead I made a full size pattern from interfacing, so that made the cutting out quicker. I'm really happy with the way it turned out and may make some for my family room. We can always use extra seating. I used the largest size, 24" and it's pretty big! Jennifer Paganelli West Indies fabrics were used~ Chandler & Luca in Brandy were used. You can find them here

June Song Quilt

A few months ago I was contacted by Lothian to make a custom quilt for her. She told me a few fabrics she loved and I pulled from my stash to create the quilt pictured. Alexander Henry's June Song fabric was the jumping off point for the colors. I used lots of coordinates from Jennifer Paganelli as well as Lizzy House (love all her pearl bracelet prints), Lecien, Josephine Kimberling, Valori Wells & the Daisy is from Riley Blake. I had the daisies with red center on hand and couldn't find yardage for the binding, but found the same print without the red center. It looks so pretty for the binding

I wish it showed up better, but I straight line quilted this with a variegated fuchsia thread from Aurifil which looks especially beautiful on the back against the black fabric. I hope Lothian loves it as much as I do!

Quilt from Recycled Crib Bedding

The best of Jennifer Paganelli fabrics

Marie in blue from West Indies

random patchwork twin size

patchwork sham to match

I was given an exciting opportunity recently to take a crib skirt from a previously made (not by me) crib set and make it into a quilt. Amanda contacted me because she had seen my work on Jennifer Paganelli's blog (thank you, Jennifer!) and thought I might be interested in taking on this project. I said, 'yes, yes, yes!!!!' couldn't wait! The print from the skirt is Nicole in blue from a discontinued line called Mod Girls. There was also a fitted sheet in the Eliza Stripe that she wanted to incorporate, but since I had some that was brand new, we decided to use my stash for that.  I pulled from my extensive JP stash to get all the colors from the main print including Bell Bottoms, Flower Power, Pretty Please, So St Croix, Poodle,  Queen Street, and West Indies. The backing is Marie from West Indies and the binding & sham ruffle is the Eliza Stripe. I free motion quilted in Aurifil thread using a variegated fuchsia thread in a scroll pattern. I hope Amanda and her daughter enjoy it as  much as I enjoyed making it for them! 

West Indies Blankie

Had to play with my West Indies stack and came up with this baby blanket. Its almost like instant gratification with this size. The brown Chandler damask will be seen all over my home shortly. Just love that one! As you can see West Indies blends well with Jennifer's other fabric lines~ great for a fan like me! :) This one will be in the shop shortly.

West Indies!!!

I was supposed to get my West Indies from UPS on Friday & it didn't come. On Monday about 8pm he showed up with my box. Our usual delivery time is around 2pm. Boy that was a long wait! Holly really wanted to tweak her room to reflect the fact that she's a teenager now & the Chandler print in brandy looked like a fit. Her Shabby Chic quilt from Target has a dark plum-y color in it that has been hard to match. It turns out that it is perfect. I'm glad Holly has an eye for color. The main difference between her and I is that she has to have an exact match & she doesn't like things busy! :) I'm always trying to coax her into pushing the envelope in her room & she won't have it! I am thrilled, as usual with West Indies! The colors are deep & saturated and have endless combinations with her other lines. I put a couple 'outsiders' here and there, but mostly having practically every fabric line she has makes it look eclectic enough! So far I've seen fabric.com , sewlovefabrics , quilthome and sewmamasew with West Indies.