Rainbow Brite Mesh Bag

The hardest part of this project was deciding what fabrics to use. My daughter had this precious Rainbow Brite fabric and asked me to make her a mesh project bag using it. Rainbow Brite was a favorite of hers as a child in the second half of the 1980's. The names of the main characters are in the diagram below. She had dolls for every character, plus the horse, as well as the bad guys, Murky Dismal and Lurky. She also collected all the small sprites, courtesy of my maternal indulgences for a first child. The bad guys and the sprites, except for Twink, are not in the fabric.

The pattern I chose was from ByAnnie and needed only three fat quarters. The Rainbow Brite fabric was the first fat quarter. Selecting the other two fat quarters would be a piece of cake, right? Wrong! I created total chaos in my sewing room, auditioning fabric for the other two fat quarters, one for the lining and one for the binding.

These are all the fabrics I rejected for the lining. Although the background of the focus fabric is pink, more pink-heavy prints did not seem to be right, and each distracted from the feature print. Although, I was sorely tempted by the pink polka dot. A rainbow stripe would be a better coordinating option, but an all-pastel blend did not go with the primary tones especially in the dress of the main character Rainbow Brite or the mane of the horse Starlite.

 

Don't laugh, but what I finally selected as best for the lining was a non-busy royal blue swirl fabric that picked up the blue in the feature fabric. I did indeed choose a rainbow stripe for the binding, but it had no brown, no black, and minimal pastels. It did include pink, but did not feature pink predominantly. 

When it came time to pick the color of the mesh, I opted for a crisp blue that fortified the swirl. Pink or yellow mesh, when laid over the blue fabric, seemed to lose its punch and instead read as a wimpy purple or green.

My final decision to make was the zipper color. White would have called attention the Starlite but it was too plain. Yellow was too strong for Canary Yellow. I liked the green to call attention to Patty O' Green.

Here is the bag a various stages. It finished at 11"H x 16"W. The padded, quilted back shows off the feature fabric best. I spaced the quilting lines so as to minimize their interference with the characters faces. The front is made up of the zipper, the mesh, and the bottom border. I made the border fabric a ½" taller and the mesh a ½" shorter so I could maximize the character faces when I fussy cut the bottom border.

The bias binding and the handle, were both cut from the stripes. The binding is on the bias, so the stripes on the diagonal add a touch of interest. For the striped handle, I noted which way to cut the stripes so they ran across the handle rather than along it.

Here is the completed bag, back and front views, finishing with a closeup of the back. Buddy Blue on the right and Indigo on the left got cropped from the closeup view; but, at least Rainbow Brite's horse Starlite and her sprite Twink are there.

I came across this cute story that cites some background information about  the world of Rainbow Brite. The gender twist is a modern day unanticipated avante garde viewpoint, but the article is fun to read and reminisce, anyway. For those interested, here are the other characters not represented in the fabric. Hmm, I wonder if my daughter's Rainbow Brite experiences led to her love of all the colors involved in quilting. 

And for my daughter, here are two YouTube links to all those songs she loved on her Rainbow Brite LP Record; the entire album or each song on an individual track.

April Bunnies and Carrots

The theme for the whimsical Pieceful Patchwork banner for April from Shabby Fabrics is Bunnies and Carrots. The colors just shout spring with the lilac and pink and I like the detail of the mini bunnies on the fabric for the bunnies' ears. I was careful to fussy cut that fabric so all the teeny-tiny bunnies were upright. As usual, I cut out the fabric and organized it in my tray with Alphabitties and Clover Wonder Clips. I made up the two bunny heads first.

Then I assembled the two carrot blocks. The clear greens and bright oranges for the carrots are super happy choices. The instructions for the angled carrots were quite clever and clear. They were not paper pieced.

The fabric for the sashing and border also smiled at me... the pastel plaid, a just-right yellow (not too loud and not too pale), and the saturated teal. I will add the bunnies' eyes after quilting.

Here is the quilt sandwich ready for FMQ. My labels and binding are ready to be attached after quilting. It is time to ponder the motifs/pattern I will use for the stitching.

January Snowmen and Snowflakes Completed

The assembly and piecing for this wall hanging is described in my post for 1/31/26. This post is about the quilting and finishing. Like a fine wine, a quilt needs to age before its destined FMQ pattern reveals itself. For this banner the snowflake blocks were immediately obvious to me. I quilted the snowflakes first with radiating parallel diagonal channels. Later I went back and stitched cross bars across the spokes of the snowflake where the color changed between light and dark in the Nordic stripe. The snowman blocks were harder for me to decide.

Not wanting to interfere with the background print on the snowman, at first, I did simple loops like a lower case script e, think the pattern would complement the writing. But my loops were uneven, looked sloppy, and did not give the effect I wanted. I stopped after two rows and picked out the mess. I then quilted the background behind the snowmen with scallops using my Handiquilter ruler to represent hills of snow, like the moguls on a ski slope. I added rows of snowflakes on his collar and hat. I straight-stitched around the nose, mouth, and eyes to provide some anchoring points, but left the rest of the face non-quilted.

The outside navy snowflake border gave me the most trouble deciding what to do. I tried a fairly open meander, tracing a path around the snowflakes. I sewed about 6" and did not like it. I fooled myself into thinking maybe it would look better when I did more. I meandered around all four sides in a loose path tracing around the snowflakes. Compared to my other neat, controlled FMQ selections, it looked far beyond the euphemism "organic"; it was simply untidy, messy, and ugly. I actually spent over three hours painstakingly picking out all those stitches in that border. I used the 3" half circle of my clamshell ruler to add more precise stitching in the borders and was much happier with the results. I filled in the four corners with ordinary circles. I call them the snowballs in keeping with the January theme. 

The backing fabric is a darker colorway of the background fabric on the snowmen. I find the deep navy version more striking and the words easier to read. The cursive carefree writing is quite jolly with phrases such as "Winter wonderland", "frozen flurries", "Magical moments Together", "Snowflakes", "sledding", and "hot cocoa". 

One label on a back corner reflects my initials DIC and the year of completion as 2026. The month January is for the theme of the wall hanging and not specifically the month I finished it. The other label on the opposite back corner reflects the descriptive, although not very imaginative, name of the quilt as Snowmen and Snowflakes. Up at the top is a narrow hanging sleeve for a wire quilt display hanger I bought to rotate for use with each of the twelve banners.

Here is the completed Snowmen and Snowflakes, hung up on the wall beside the entrance to my sewing room. This chosen spot is not as visible to house visitors, but it gives me a little pang of pleasure to see it daily. It is low enough to swap out monthly. This is my fourth banner completed in this Shabby Fabric series. Each finishes 31" x 31". So far I have completed Roses and Pansies for May (9/11/25), Strawberries for June (9/6/25), and Bees and Sunflowers for August (9/21/25). Bunnies and Carrots for April is pieced but not yet quilted.

VAN the Wooble

Those Woobles commercials are positively everywhere! Before these amigurumi crochet kits became so prolific though, my grandson Isaiah in Oklahoma developed a strong liking for them. The first one I made for him was a pink Strawberry the Axolotl, seen in my post dated 1/22/24. I also made him a green Creeper from the Minecraft game, seen in my post for 10/15/25. This past Christmas Isaiah researched the Wooble website and told me his five top choices. VAN was the  highest on his list and so I crocheted it for him.

The kits are a bit pricey but the contents and the excellent instructional videos are well worth it. The yarn is heavy enough so the working gage is large enough to see, and learn, especially for old grandma eyes. Neither does the yarn split, making it great for beginner and seasoned crocheters as well. I also love the special touch of a custom crochet hook with an easy grip handle with images dedicated to the figure being crocheted. The hook is shown in the foreground of the following image. Since I placed an order around Christmas time, the kit also came with a gift bag for giving. My grandson is going to be excited about this extra surprise. The back of the bag specifically says THE WOOBLES.

So much does Isaiah like the Woobles, he asked if he could learn to crochet. His mom enrolled him in a local class and he intently worked away, focusing hard to learn. I suspect watching a Wooble video would be even better and help him more.

Van is super cute, though I cannot explain the appeal. The two hemispheres were a cinch to make. The two-tone horn was a challenge. It was pretty small, made separately, and then sewn on. With this itty bitty horn, I learned a handy skill, how and when to change colors in a single crochet or an increase when working with two colors at once. Instructions were even detailed enough that I knew between which rows and how many stitches between points to embroider the facial features. 

Isaiah is 10½ years old, so I have a limited amount of time before he reaches those hard-to-please teen years. I have more of these kits to crochet for Isaiah. I plan to get to them quickly, before he loses interest. I need to indulge his wishes soon, while he still has them. Kids change so fast!

Background

In writing this post I began to realize the appeal of VAN. VAN is a guardian space robot from the planet BT. He acts as a protector of BT21, 24/7. Per the BT 21 planet characters website:

Hailing from Planet BT, Prince TATA dreams to spread love across the galaxy. Deciding that destiny is at hand, TATA summons guardian robot VAN to prepare for an interstellar journey to Earth. Shortly after arrival, the Prince concludes that the most effective means to win over the hearts of earthlings is to become a super, no... something much more ambitious. A UNIVERSTAR.

Other characters per that same website appear in the next image.  Gee, I wonder if a request will be rolling in for Grandma to crochet these other characters. BT is the planet. The suffix 21 stands for 21st century. This universe of characters is an offshoot of South Korean LineFriends. The Woobles recommended order of difficulty is: KOYA, RJ, SHOOKY, MANG, CHIMMY, TATA, COOKY, VAN, so apparently I did the hardest first.

I still have a backlog of Woobles to crochet from Isaiah's Christmas requests, so the characters of the BT21 planet and any associated galaxy will just have to wait.

January Snowmen and Snowflakes

The January Pieceful Patchwork banner kit from Shabby Fabrics featured two jaunty snowmen who sport top hats with coal eyes and a carrot nose along with two snowflakes that are simpler to assembly than their intricate demeanor would imply. For some inexplicable reason, I have a soft spot for fabrics with words, so I am pleased with the snowmen background. When I cut out the fabric from this kit, I paid little attention to fabric print details. When I pieced the snowmen, I did make sure the writing faced the same direction, but I did not fussy cut anything in particular. 

I used my Melamine Trays, Alphabitties and Clover Wonder Clips to organize the cut pieces for the snowmen and snowflakes.

Adding the carrot and coal facial features was very easy. They were pre-cut by a laser and had a pre-fused backing. They punched out easily from the sheet they were on. After using a light box to help establish the positioning, I ironed on the features seamlessly. Per the advice on the instructional video, I waited to add appliqué stitching on the carrot nose and on the coal eyes and mouth until after the surrounding background pieces had been added. Waiting avoided the chance that the appliqué could distort the face piece. I was careful to use a narrow satin stitch width and a not too-too small stitch length and both faces remained smooth and did not pucker.

After assembling the snowflakes I did note that the nordic stripe print happened to fall centered in some spokes and not centered in others. Had I noticed this earlier I would have fussy cut that print. The kits from Shabby Fabrics are generous in their fabrics, allowing for occasional mistakes, so there was sufficient fabric to have fussy cut. I just did not notice until the snowflakes were assembled. Here the two snowflakes are side by side. The one on the left has centered stars on the horizontal spokes and on the lower vertical spoke, but the upper vertical spoke has non-centered stars. The reverse is true of the snowflake on the right, centered on only one spoke and non-centered on the other three spokes. It occurred to me I could switch the two top halves and have each snowflake be self-consistent.

I unstitched the two top halves and interchanged them; here are the two revised snowflakes. Each is axisymmetric unto itself but they are different from each other. Anyway, isn't it theorized that no two snowflakes are exactly alike?

Here is the January banner assembled and sandwiched with sashing and borders. Next up is the FMQ. I had inspiration for the snowflakes but I am still contemplating FMQ on the snowmen.

Velvet Christmas Stocking

Yes, it is after Christmas but sometimes when I set aside seasonal items to pursue at a more appropriate time of year, I forget about them or can't remember where I've put them. This kit was for a Christmas stocking with coordinating ornaments created by French designer odille bailloeul.

I love the brilliant colors and the very gypsy-like vibe of the work of this designer. I first learned about odile bailloeoul at the Road2CA show I attended in January of 2018. She has an online boutique of her own but I have bought her designs also from Renaissance Ribbons. One of the ribbons she designed shows a gypsy caravan wagon and I wonder if this is the an homage to a colorful, vivacious, flamboyant gypsy background. The moniker "gypsy" can be construed in a negative sense, such as in the song made famous by Cher; but I take only the best feelings of joyfulness and gay abandon from the gypsy-associated symbol. Gypsy to me means happy, fun-loving, and free-spirited. 

 

This kit is made from a heavy 100% polyester velvet, luxurious to the touch and striking for the eyes. It whipped up quickly. I admit, I also feel a bit smug that the directions were in French and I still could follow them. The self-cuff at the top came from a clever way to double and fold over the edge. The shocking lime fringe was added afterward. The ball detail at the pointy toe makes me giggle.