The bad news is I get these ideas a lot. The great news is that this one turned out alright. And it was for a fantastic cause--the FIRST niece in my family. Yes--5 nephews later, the Sullivans get a niece. Hear the heavens opening and the angels rejoicing? You betcha.

Yes, I thought it was a good idea for me, a complete sewing novice, to try my hand at a big cross quilt. The idea came from the ever-fabulous Rachel Denbow's Modern Patchwork e-course (which you can and SHOULD purchase here).

In the e-course, she teaches you how to make a cross quilt but as a doll quilt, so it only entails 9 squares of these cross patches. Somehow in my head I thought, hey! I could adapt this to be a big quilt for my new niece! It'll be EASY!

I guess it would be easy to someone more versed in quilting, but for a non-perfectionist, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants sewer like me, it ended up being kind of difficult. And by kind of, I mean maybe a lot.

Just kidding. I guess it wasn't that difficult. I just kept going through the tedious process of cutting the tiny little 2" x 6" strips, sewing them together, and sweating my guts out in my hot sewing room only to find that I had half a blanket. And then doing it again and finding I only had 3/4 of a blanket. And finally--3 cut-and-sew processes later--I had a quilt!

I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. I used all vintage sheets to make the patches and a vintage baby blanket for the back. It's far from perfect, but I put my heart and soul in it. Hopefully baby Sullivan will cherish it.

There are uneven patches, crooked lines, a horrible bias taping job, but all in all, I think I've never loved anything I've sewed so much. My brother Ryan and sister-in-law Abi mean the world to me, and I hope their little baby girl will love it, too.

All sentimental muck aside, let's talk about how awesome Abi is, right? She is kind of like a movie star only better. And I think she's going to have a little movie star model baby, too. Don't tell, but together, Abi and I are going to make the baby think she really lives in the 50s. She might be confused once school starts, but she'll adapt. Kids are resilient like that.

Happy Monday! And thanks for letting me share my sentimental project with all of you. Are you a quilter? If you are then I admire you with every ounce of admiration in America. Quilting is TOUGH!

PS--If you haven't checked out Rachel's e-courses yet, you must! She is absolutely amazing. I can't say enough good things about her Modern Patchwork class. Take it! You'll love it!

While you can do anything you want with fotoflexer, I'll run you through making a simple little sassed up photo using some of my clipart.

1. Go to fotoflexer.com and click on Upload Photo.

2. You'll see a nice little photo uploading box here that allows you to upload photos either from your computer or from all those lovely photo sharing websites we love so much. Choose whatever photo you want to start with and upload away.

3. Once your photo is uploaded, you'll see it in this editor screen. From here you can do whatever you want to your current photo--add effects, text, etc. Cool, but where does the clipart come in?

4. Once you're ready to add other elements, click the Load Other Photo button located at the top left. Navigate to wherever your clipart is saved, choose which one you want, and upload it. Bam! You've got your other element on your fotoflexer canvas. Just reposition your two elements until they're just how you want them. For me, I have this picture of me and this wood photo frame.

5. Guess what? That's kind of all there is to it. Just keep adding all the elements you want until you're happy with your little piece of blog art.

Some tips for maneuvering items:

• If you want a certain element to go over another element, right click the element and select "push backard" or "pull forward."
• If you want to rotate something a little bit to give it that funky tilty look, click the little blue rotate arrow and move left or right.

• To add text, click on the "Decorate" tab from all the tabs at the top. You can even select GLITTERY text! But that's kind of only if you want to be really 1999 internet. Just sayin.
• Another note on text: when you add it, you'll need to select the "transparent" check box to get rid of that white background.
• You can move two things at once by selecting one element, holding Shift, and selecting another element. Convenient!

6. Once you've got your loveliness just how you want it, click save! It will let you save your file as a .jpg or a .png. (You'll want a .png if you need to keep a transparent background. Saving as a .jpg will add a white background.)

There you have it! What do you think? Easy enough? If you have any questions whatsoever, let me know in the comments! I'd love to help. And don't forget to download all the free clipart I have for you right here. Enjoy!

And if you'd like something a little more robust than Fotoflexer, try GIMP! It's a free Photoshop-like program. It's mostly for PC users, but I think there's a way for Mac peeps to get it, too.

Woo hoo! I'm excited to see what you guys do with all of this. If you use some of the clipart, link me! I'd love to do a post featuring all of your pretty blogs. Thanks so much for reading and downloading this stuff. I love doing it and hope you are all enjoying it. Now go and live it up!

Anyway, here are some free floral/stripe banners for your blog! These are a continuation of last week's freebies. I just felt like we needed some floral lovin' in our lives. (I also used these Photoshop backgrounds for the banners. So pretty!)

Click here to download these 7 pretty banners!

Enjoy! Also, I have a big question for all of you lovelies. Are you all Photoshop users? What other programs are using to work with clipart like this?

Would a tutorial on how to use some free programs out there be helpful? What free programs are you interested in?

Let me know and I'll post a tut next Wednesday! And as always, if you have any requests for clipart freebies I'm all ears.

Lates, champs!

I've been diligently pedaling away with Chico Dusty this week getting things ready for some serious Monocled Lop shenanigans.

Want to see some sneak peeks? I'm just so excited. I can't really contain it, you know? If Emily and I had it our way we'd just learn how to become wizards so we could magically whip this up with some magical mystical words and open up shop tomorrow. Until we unlock the secrets of wizardry, here are some sneak peeks of what we've been up to!

Yes indeed things are cookin' over here. Royal also likes to help, but his help more often than not turns into kitten shenanigans. Any sewing cat ladies out there I'm sure can understand.

What are your plans for the weekend? Exciting things I hope? I'll be partying hard up in Idaho (ha! that's a funny joke) and then coming back home for some fathers day foolishness. My dad is pretty much the coolest.

Happy weekend!

The only thing was, this $1 wunderkind was in straight up muumuu land.

But the pattern was too adorable to pass up, and I knew that with a little vision and some good lovin' this muumuu could be something pretty great for summer. A take in here and a snip and hem there and bam. I had myself a new $1 sun dress!

The material is incredibly light and comfortable, so I wanted to keep the styling casual.  A cardi for the freezing office and my corduroy mustard Toms were just the ticket for a warm and casual day at the office. Or a completely failed jump shot.

Not bad for $1, right? I swear there is nothing better than a good restyle. And it only took me 20 minutes! My sewing prowess is slowly but surely improving.

To see my other restyles from Project Restyle, click here!

Someone else had some awesome luck thrifting and restyling--Karen from the lovely Zazazu found this killer light fixture for a mere $2.98! Yes! She added a nice coat of red paint and put that baby in her kitchen.

Restyling is where it's at. Karen also has a gorgeous Etsy shop with some incredible vintage lovelies, so head on over and check it out!
What did you find thrifting this week? If you found an incredible thrifted find for $5 or less, send it here and I'll feature it next week!

I'm trying to think if this really stands as my greatest sewing feat to date......yes. I think it does. Maybe it's because it was 3 yards of fabric. Or maybe I feel that way because the bodice was awful. But no--I actually think I say this because it was silk.

Word to the wise (or at least the sewing novices)...steer clear of the silk.

But if you REALLY want to sew a silk maxi dress, then you should do it. Because I did. And here it is. And I LOVE it. L-O-V-E.

I bought this pattern a bit ago knowing I needed a maxi for summer. And of course I had to wait and find the perfect fabric for said maxi because, well, it's A LOT of fabric, so it needs to be pretty awesome. But it also had to be cheap because it was 3 yards.

I have a rule about sewing clothing--if it's going to be more expensive than buying it at a store, it probably isn't worth it for me. At this point in my sewing career, anyway. So once I found this incredible feather silk for $3 a yard, I was all over it.

I took this baby out for a test run when we went to the Living Traditions fair last week. It was 76 degrees and this dress was a DREAM to wear. And let's be real. If you don't own a maxi dress yet, GET ONE. You will not regret it.

I love the colors of this fabric. And the feather pattern that perfectly matches my feather necklace. Love when that happens.

So there you have it. My first maxi dress and my favorite sewing project to date. It looks simple, but that bodice. And that silk. Again--please reconsider any silk projects in your near future.

It should be noted that this dress was only possible due to my incredible sewing teacher, Miriam. She runs an outstanding blog called Mad Mim, so head on over and give her some love. Her DIYs are to die for.

What are you working on? Any sewers out there? I need to get more daring and sew with more patterns on my own outside of lessons. Am I the only one terrified of making this big sewing leap?

Well, here I am. Back from probably the greatest weekend of my life in Portland where Emily and I thrifted and vintage shopped until our feet reached critical mass and forced us to eat fro yo and people watch.

Anyway, I'm still not out of vacation mode yet. In fact, there's a mountainous pile of laundry sitting at home and a million vintage dresses to alter, but for now, I'll leave you with a little sewing project I finished last week.

It's been awhile since the last "Amy Sews!" post. I have been sewing--in fact, I sewed a glorious maxi dress two weeks ago, but I've yet to figure out how to style it, so...hang tight on that one.

You all know how much I love Rachel Denbow's Modern Patchwork class. Really. It's just so amazing. All the projects are gloriously adorable and easy to finish in one sitting.

Case in point, this chevron apron.

It's chevron, it's reversible, it's perfect. I kind of want to make one for everyone I know.

I used blue gingham that I got for $1/yd and a vintage sheet I thrifted forever ago. There's no end to what you can do with a vintage sheet.

I think today I will try and tackle a pattern I've been meaning to get to. What have you sewed recently?

The story behind this one is that I have a little problem when I sew: I get very, VERY frustrated. And that's an understatement. So I got to thinking the other day that I needed a little Tim Gunn sagacity in my craft room to keep me calm and cool while I hack my way through sewing with patterns. Thus, these free Tim Gunn printables/posters.

Just click on either image to download the pdf! They're both 8.5"x11" and should be high-res for printing.

Maybe you're cool as a cucumber when you sew, but if you're anything like me, these will be a welcome addition to the chaos of the craftroom. Enjoy!

In an effort toward that direction, here are 8 free photo frames I've created that you are free to use! As always, click here to download a zipped file of .pngs that you can use however you see fit.

You can use these to spruce up any old photo. Like this, for example:

or this!

Plenty to concoct with that creatively brain of yours! So go forth and frame, fellow bloggers.

If you have a request for a freebie you'd like to see, email me and let me know! I'm always looking for ideas.

And just out of curiosity, how many of you use Photoshop? What about Picnik? Gimp? Just wondering so I can make sure to make things accessible to everyone!

This week's freebie features a set of 16 pretty pretty starburst elements that you can use anywhere and everywhere! As always these are free and open for you to use however you see fit. Credit is appreciated but not required.

Click here to download the .zip of all 16 starbursts. Each one is saved as an individual .png.

Wee! I hope you like them. These are all lovingly designed by me. The chewbacca fur one there in the bottom left corner MIGHT be my favorite. Next to all of the delicious velvet ones. Still completely on a velvet kick!

You can use these little starbursts as a little extra sum'n sum'n on any little picture. Or you could use them as blog buttons or pretty much anything your creative heart desires!

Let me know what you think! And if you're a fan of these freebies from me, what would you like to see next? Photo borders? Corner elements? More tape strips? Let's hear your suggestions!

And in case you missed the other freebies, here are all the links!

• free tape strips
• free blog dividers
• free happy little banners