Le Challenge - "Maritime"

The Le Challenge for this last month was "Maritime", I really think Lucy and Nat are like on some kind of brain wave length with me, because each month the new challenge is something that I have wanted to do and this just gives me the kick in the "you know what" to get it done.

Her shirt says Maritime, I did NOT make this, she is acting like a pirate.

I have been on a big kick with Maritime stuff and I did  4 (3 sewing related) finishes this last 30 days, really I am not kidding you!
My favorite, although it isn't perfect, but it is for my little girl, was her birthday dress.

 I did some smocking for the top, you can find my tutorial here, and then the bottom is just an easy French Seam and the shoulder straps are up-cycled t-shirt strips wrapped up like a braid.

A montage, she was entertaining some tourist from Asia and they couldn't stop taking her picture.  Playing with her hat, a little hat dancing and then she was done.

The fabrics are Out to Sea, by Sarah Jane, the top smocking part is in Seaweed in Bloom and the bottom is Sail Away in Bloom.  I got the inspiration from this photo.

source

I hope my little girl looks happier in her dress, what do you think, if not then you have to check out her birthday dress dance and the GIVEAWAY going on.
I think she is pretty, the dress needs work and maybe I will make another one with Sarah Jane's new "Let's Pretend" fabric line.

Thirsty after entertaining the tourist and eating chocolate ice-cream.

Second project, okay it came first, I finished it on May 20th, my Anchor's Aweigh Quilt, very very proud of this one, it is my first quilt.

I even got it finished in time to enter it in the Blogger's Quilt Festival.

3rd Project, I made a wall hanging maritime thing with my leftover scraps and the selvedges of the Salt Water and dress fabrics.

I entered this little puppy into the Ellison Lane Mini Quilt Challenge going on, it is going to hang in the kids room, along with the pillow I have made for them and the quilt.  I need to make curtains (didn't get it done this month) and paint the room.

The tail moves, in front or in back, what do you think looks better?

And the 4th none sewing project, Cardboard Boats, these crates are what we collect the grapes in to make homemade wine and ouzo.   They make great ways to coral the kids toys, the bottom ones are filled with toys and then the kids climb into the top ones to watch TV or just push each other around.  It is a quick clean solution.

 And we are acting like Pirates, in order to do this photo shoot I had to "bribe" the kids, they wanted to play with the tape I used to put these together, so I told them they would have to do a photo shoot first.  The things we do to get pictures up on our blogs, lol.

A lot of grr..ing and rr..ing going on.

I did make Pirate eye mask out of felt

but they didn't want to wear them

you win some battles and lose others.