Color studies

First off, I want to say thank you for the extra patience that was sent this way the past few days.  Ben gets home tomorrow night.  I think there are 30-ish hours left.

I still don't have a lot to say, but I've been stitching one inch hexies to keep my sanity.  I thought I'd share some color shots with you.

Orange

Pinky-purple

Red

Gotta run. I think there is a dinosaur roaring in the next room, but I'll be stitching again after his bedtime.

Short on words

Today's picture is not my sewing.  I am blessed to receive these blocks from the ladies in the Pastiche Bee.  If you click the link you can look through all of the bee's blocks and see which block belongs to each quilter.  The produce we have featured left to right and top to bottom are leeks, cherry tomatoes, blueberries, chard, pumpkin, flowers, eggplant, cabbage, honey and a pear.  Mmmmm...

Lastly, Ben is out of town visiting his folks this week so it is just Henry and me.  If you have any extra patience laying around, could you send a bit this way?  Henry shows how much he misses daddy with extra tantrums.   And we still need to make it until late Friday night.

Knitting Tiny Things

Do you ever yearn to knit something little but interesting?  Do you have a lot of sock yarn leftovers?  Do you have a young friend that loves handknit garments for her dolls?  If so, you must go see all of the Barbie clothes patterns on this site.

The site is in Swedish, but the patterns come as PDF files and can be downloaded in English.  There are over 1000 patterns on there.  This purple dress is #288.  If I knit it again I'd make the skirt longer and use a larger needle for the bodice because my stitches were too tight there. 

This dress pattern is #99.  Again I'd make the skirt longer if I knit it again.  I wonder if the designs were made for vintage dolls that had different measurements than today's dolls.  With a little tweaking, some size 0 needles and some quality yarn, these patterns turn out really cute. 

I had no idea that I'd have this much fun knitting tiny tiny clothes.  But, if you get inspired to try it out, too, let me know. 

Sweetie Peach Quilt

My friend has a baby girl that smiles from ear to ear all of the time.  And now she's even cuter because she has her bottom center teeth and the top 3rd and 4th teeth but not the top center ones.  She's a smiley little milk and yogurt vampire.  I started a quilt for Catalina when her mom was pregnant, but I finally finished it this week (she's 13 or 14 months now).

I started with the color scheme of a favorite vintage sheet (the red, pink and yellow pansies) and then I grabbed lots of other scraps and coordinating fabrics and just cut and sewed, added and subtracted until it was 50" square. 

I used my walking foot with the arm and quilted concentric circles.  This was my first attempt at it so it isn't perfect.  But Miss Catalina gave it a huge grin and nuzzled it with her nose and then hugged it close right before she fell asleep under it.  I think it is a hit.

This kind of random scrappy quilt is my favorite to make.  I think I don't do it more because I'm afraid to cut up favorite fabrics that aren't vintage sheets.  I'll cut into them just a little bit to make little blocks like the Farmer's Wife blocks, but that's about it.  Now I need a new challenge to do the same with a favorite Japanese fabric or something equally rare.

Quilt As You Go (and then quilt more later)

I've always wanted to use Penny's tutorial (parts one and two) to make a QAYG block.  The plan behind the tutorial is to sew the block together with the batting on all at once.  Then you can make lots of blocks and then just attach them at the end and make one huge quilt. 

Well, I was only making one block...and I was am still in my hand quilting everything in sight phase.

I recommend checking out the tutorial and trying it at least once.  It is a super fun way to use some favorite scraps.

Trying my best to finish some UFO's

I've been working for hours every single day this week to finish some old UnFinshed Objects. 

I finally have some ideas for how to finish the edges on my 1" hexies quilt.

I'm excited to pass this on to one special girl with the biggest smile in the universe.

And my mom saw this on her last visit and now the batiks will have a home instead of gathering dust in the back of my craft closet. 

I'm so excited to finish all three of these that I'm flitting from one to the other very happily.  My house is a disaster with piles of supplies for three projects spread out everywhere, but I'm a happy, happy crafter.