Here are a bunch of fun galaxy inspired creations or projects that totally have that fun space and stars feel! Marissa here from Rae Gun Ramblings.
I've just been through my crazy Happy Harry Potter series and once again this year's projects were all super fun. I'll be doing a huge wrap up this week but here are a few of my favorite projects.
Whether you like Harry Potter or not these caramel chocolate pretzel wands are crazy delicious and a super easy addition to any party.
I made these super fun Harry Potter I Spy Bags (both an actual bag and a play pouch version). Bonus for Harry Potter fans that I made little wizarding trinkets as the things you find!
This Free MATH Paper Piecing Pattern makes a great Mini Quilt or Throw Pillow or could be added into a larger quilt. I tend to collect math and science themed fabrics, and this was a great way to show some of them off. With Pi-Day coming up soon, I really wanted to do some Math-Geek sewing.
Many thanks to RJR Fabrics for providing me with a bundle of their Geekery Fabrics by Sue Marsh to play with. And thanks as always to Fairfield World for providing me with batting and compensating me for this post. This pattern was designed using EQ7. All opinions, ideas, patterns, and enthusiasm are 100% my own. This post contains affiliate links.
Our oldest daughter has never really liked math despite being reasonably good at it. We pressured her a bit to join math team last year. (As in...you want us to drive you to volleyball games every weekend...then you'll do math team at lunch.) Thanks to her wonderful math teacher/coach last year, she signed up more willingly this year, and now thanks to two years with some excellent math teachers/coaches, she says math is her favorite class. It makes this math-loving-mama super happy.
So when math team ended this year, we wanted to do something special for her teacher...so we whipped up a little math mini-quilt. It could also make for a great quilted pillow. We wanted it to be small enough she could display it in her classroom where she has another quilt hanging.
If you're just starting out with foundation paper piecing, this is a GREAT pattern for beginners...nice big pieces and not very many of them...and each block is a single pattern piece. I've got two sizes for you to choose from. I used the 9.5 inch blocks which just requires you to tape the paper pieces together to make the paper big enough. Or if you don't want to hassle with that, you can use the 7.5 blocks that print out on a single piece of paper.
If you're not already familiar with paper-piecing there are lots of simple tutorials online to help with the process. I like this tutorial.
Here's what you'll need to make your own:
Fat Quarter Bundle of Geekery by Sue Marsh for RJR Fabrics. I used By the Numbers in Black, Scientifically Speaking in Black, Atoms in Red, Atoms in Green, Atoms in Blue, and Germ * Amoebas in Yellow for my blocks.
5/8 yard backing fabric (SCIENTIFICALLY SPEAKING - MULTI ALBUS)
Pattern pieces each have a 1/4 inch seam allowance. They're in PDF form. When you go to print them be sure that your printer is set to print them ACTUAL SIZE.
Paper- Piecing Patterns are always mirror-imaged...so when you print them, they will looked "flipped" from how the block appear in my quilt.
To round out the gift we also slipped in our favorite Math Book. Despite the title, This is NOT a Math Book really IS a math book, but it's also a really neat art book that shows connections between art and math and doodling and has some fun activities.
(Below is a sneak peek my sister-in-law from Bond with Books put together.)
I LOVE discovering fun science and math fabrics...and texty fabrics and so when I discovered this Chemistry novelty line by Becky Marie Designs for Riley Blake I knew I needed to make them into a quilt. We went for a black and gold motif since those are our school colors and my husband could use it on the wall in his classroom. Thanks to Riley Blake Fabrics for sending me the fabrics and to Fairfield World for providing batting and compensating me for this project. All ideas, opinions, and enthusiasm are 100% my own. This post contains affiliate links.
And my kids' enthusiasm all their own too!
They say the family that does chemistry together...stays together...
Father's Day gifts can be hard, because the best gifts for dad's cater to their particular interests and hobbies. In our family, that means gifts to support dad's astronomy hobby. (Note: I work for Fairfield on an ongoing basis and they provide me with free products, but I was NOT compensated for this post. All opinions and ideas are 100% my own.)
Eric's interest in astronomy has been growing for several years and now he's acquired almost as many telescopes as I have sewing machines (not all our own though. He has a couple on loan.) He's a high school science teacher, so he runs an astronomy club and has been sharing his love of astronomy with friends and neighbors too.
It's been fun to see our kids get hooked on the heavens.
One of them came with a cover for the lense, but not a cover for the whole telescope. Of course we don't leave it outside, but best for the telescope to have something to protect it from dust, moisture, and extreme temperatures.
So I put my quilting skills to good use and made him a cover.
I didn't do a full tutorial because I made several measuring errors and it got put together piece-meal each telescope is different, so yours will have different measurements.
Here's what you'll want to include if you decide to make your own.
(At the time I made this there were the best materials. Fairfield has since come out with Aluminor which can take the place of the everything except the cute fabric...although it looks cool enough, you could actually just make one with aluminor which includes the shield liner, solarize, and a filler all in one.)
And if you're thinking of making your own, you'll want to measure the distance around your telescope at the widest point and add a few inches...we'll call this your diameter. You'll basically be making a small quilt with this width and the other dimension the depth of your telescope and then sewing it into a circle. Bind the lower edge of your cover the way you would for a quilt. For the circle at the top, you'll need to cut a piece with the same diameter (distance around) that we just used, and add a 1/2 inch seam allowance all the way around. Sew the main cover piece to your top circle with a 1/2 inch seam allowance. Sew your cover closed along the side.
Share your love of chemistry and STEM this Valentine's Day with these Easy Geeky Valentine's Art Canvases.
If you think geek as much as I do, you're going to love these are a must make. My husband and I both majored in chemistry in collage and became chemistry teachers, so chemistry references are right up our alley, so I was really excited when Riley Blake sent me some of this fun chemistry fabric a few months ago. (It's called Novelty by Becky Marie Designs for Riley Blake). Fairfield World provided me with the Oly-Fun™ and Poly-Fil® and compensated me for this post, but all ideas and opinions are my own. This post also contains affiliate links for your convenience in locating supplies.
I also got a new Silhouette Cameo for Christmas (thanks in-laws!) and I finally got brave enough to try it out. Even if you don't have a Silhouette, you can still make this super easy I {Heart} U Canvas without a cutter.
And an extra bonus of this project was I got to go into my husband's classroom and play with all the fun chemistry glassware.
As chemistry teachers we tend to like poking fun at "chemistry" pictures in pop-culture that most of the time they just put colored water into glassware for effect rather than showing "real" chemical in use for an actual experiment...but I might have been guilty myself of just adding red food coloring to water. Oops!
Quite possibly the only thing more fun than playing with oversided Erylenmeyer flasks is playing with the teeny tiny glassware. I do sometimes miss the lab...but maybe not quite enough to return to teaching.
Anyway, you can share your own love of Chemistry this Valentine's Day with this ea
Materials:
We made these awesome giant book cushions for the reading corner in our elementary school library.
A huge thank you to Fairfield for making these cushions possible. They provided me with the foam and batting and compensated me for writing this post. All opinions and ideas are my own.
The kids love them, and I hope they get the elementary kids excited about science and exploring more non-fiction books.
I've just been through my crazy Happy Harry Potter series and once again this year's projects were all super fun. I'll be doing a huge wrap up this week but here are a few of my favorite projects.
