sshhhhhhh! i'm cheating on my sewing projects.........with knitting.

I'm currently knitting a simple mitten pattern, in some of the prettiest yarn ever.  I tried two other patterns with cables and texture, but they just didn't work with this yarn. 

This solid color, smooth yarn is a departure for me.  I usually pick a heather yarn, or a tweedy yarn or variegated.  I like nubby and thick/thin yarns.  And I usually wear something  in a muted tone.

But these bright green mittens will be for ME!

So, anyway, my sewing machine may feel neglected for a bit.  

In the meantime, mitten puppets with double point needles area fun way to entertain a toddler.

Warmer Days Ahead

I have a collection of vintage sheet fabric.  I pick them up at thrift stores and then cut them up for sewing projects.  I love picking ones with sunny, bright colors. 

This quilt is roughly 40 x 40" and will be a baby quilt for donation.

I had so many scraps already cut up that I just arranged pieces and sewed it 

all together in a day. Getting it basted and quilted will take me much longer, 

but I just had to share a peek (or two) of my work in progress.

The sunny fabrics sure were fun after shoveling all of that snow this week!

Fifteen!!

The bee blocks keep drifting in to my mailbox this month. I've been finishing them and sewing them together into my quilt top. I'm up to 15 blocks, and 8 of them are from the bee.  What do you think so far?

My turn again!

It is my month in the It's Sew Easy Bee-ing Green Bee.  The blocks are trickling in to my mailbox and also steadily making their way off of my machine.

I cut about a billion strings to mail off to the Green Bee participants. And then I cut another billion more for me. I made the three blocks below. For each block I tried harder and harder to group colors to make them look less balanced as a block so that the whole quilt would have some variations and interest. 

Last week,  I received my first block from bee member, Sharon, or neshamamama. (The tape with the name is only temporary until the quilt top is finished.)

Then I used some sniglet scraps to make some strings and I made this block.

And here is how the first seven look together.

I swear that I tried to make an ugly block just to see if it would work in the final quilt.  With these fabrics, it just doesn't seem possible.  I'm so, so, so pleased with how it is turning out.  The final quilt will have at least 30 blocks, so I'll try not to bore you again with a block-by-block update.  I can't make any promises, though.

New Year Catch Up

Do you ever feel like the calendar keeps moving faster than you do?  I'm the kind of person that likes a certain amount of time to be quiet and reflect--especially at the end of one year and beginning of the next.  Instead, the calendar is over two weeks ahead of where I am mentally.  Quiet reflection time is hard to come by these days.  Henry has around 250 words now and is very interested in asserting his opinion (usually "no") and he's also busy running and trying to jump).  When I feel surrounded by daily to-do list items, it is hard to take a deep breath and look at the big picture.  Every night I'm going to bed after midnight even when I feel like it should only be 10:00pm.

Hmmm....   Rereading that last sentence makes me wonder if I need to catch up on some sleep first.  And take some deep breaths. 

In the meantime, know that I'm grateful for this space to express myself and for the opportunity to hear from you.  I treasure the comments and feedback here.  I'll leave you with my favorite image of the holiday season.  This is Henry "helping" with the cookie baking. 

Barely coming up for air...

I'm *still* in the throes of holiday crafting.  Yes, the holiday was yesterday, but I don't see my family until next weekend---so their gifts aren't done yet.  I can tell you that if I manage to finish them all, it would be a post-holiday miracle.

Anyway, I have tons of photos to share and projects to write about, but I'm just popping in to show off one thing, my advent calendar:

This is from a tutorial by Elizabeth of Oh, Fransson! on the Sew, Mama, Sew! blog.



I used a variety of fabrics and highlighted more prints than the tutorial suggested.

I also changed the seam allowance for the pockets so more of the background fabric would be seen.  I chose a loopy quilting pattern rather than the meandering stitch.  This is the first time that I've ever used a free-motion quilting presser foot. 

There is a lot of room for improvement in my quilting technique, but I'm still pleased with how it turned out.






I used Kei honeycomb dots for the binding.  Don't you just love a good dot fabric?

This was the first time that I ever hand stitched the binding to the back of the quilt.  It really does look invisible.

I hope your holidays were delightful.  We've been busy reading books, playing with trains, dancing to Bing and doing "dishes!"  Henry would rather roll up his sleeves and drag a chair up to the sink than play with his toys.  Silly guy :)