Weekend Wind-Up

Wait a minute...it's Sunday evening and I'm actually writing a blog post?
It seems I may be getting back on track.

After I accidentally stayed up until 3am the other day, I decided it was time to get back to work.
"Work" did not entail cleaning, cooking, organizing, going to the office, calling the office, ironing clothes, folding clothes, putting clothes away, making the bed, or any of the myriad other tasks that often comprise my weekend. Thank goodness.

I finished the apron I started back in...well, I don't remember. It was a while back. January, maybe?

I'm pretty happy with it.
Here's a pic of me actually wearing it:

(I assure you, my hair is not that high. It's a shadow.)(My skin, on the other hand, is that red. Stupid pregnancy hormones.)(I never had a problem with acne before.)

...notice the cool part? It's reversible! The pattern came from "Sewing Vintage Aprons" by Denise Clason. I have no idea what the fabric is; I found it in the clearance tab of Fabric.com months ago.
 
I did have leftover fabric, and used it to make a grocery bag for my sister. (She already knows she's getting it, so sharing photos won't ruin the surprise.)(Although, Babs, if you're reading and you want to be surprised, stop reading now.)

This pattern came from "Sew Serendipity Bags" by Kay Whitt:

The cool part is how it folds up and tucks into that little pink pocket on the side:

And then can hang on a hook with other reusable fabric grocery bags:

These will get dropped in the mail eventually. Really, they will. The nice thing about them, of course, is there is no seasonal rush to send them. Completely unlike with the beret and scarf I made her, then didn't get a chance to mail until March. (To be fair, though, Chicago is pretty darn cold in March, so they weren't entirely wasted.)


So now the only thing I have left to worry about is How the heck do I quilt this?

More stuff I accomplished while away from blogspot

On Sunday, I mentioned I had more projects to share.
Here they are.

My mom sent me the BHG All Small magazine with a sticky note that she liked this pattern. The sample in the magazine was very cute, but it was done with all pink fabrics. I couldn't do that, even if I did know we were expecting a girl. (We won't find that out for a couple more weeks.)
So, I used a Fat Quarter bundle that had a pretty good mix of green, yellow, red, pink, and blue. The fabrics came from the Apple of My Eye and Millie's Closet collections from Riley Blake. (Note to self: when you get a fat quarter bundle that is only available for a month, write the collection names down! You don't want to spend hours clicking through thumbnails online, trying to find the pattern just to order backing fabric.)
The backing & binding fabric is on order, along with more batting. I'm really excited about this quilt, because it's intended for the nursery!

Ok, like many, many other women, I have a thing for bags. So I found this pattern and had to make some:

The funny thing about these fabrics, when I first received the bundle I just set it aside, thinking that I didn't care for them. Silly me. That purple? It's got moons, stars and storm clouds!

And that green floral-looking one? There are tiny skulls hiding in it!

How did I not see those earlier? I noticed them when I was cutting the fabrics. Anyway, these things are darn cute and take about 20 minutes to make. If I were back home, they would totally be favor bags for my baby shower. But I'm not home, so I don't get one of those. (Neither did my mom. There seems to be a pattern of moving very, very far away before the first child is born in our family.)
My point is, I am going to wind up with a ton of these little things, because they are pretty addictive once you start.

There's also my jump-start on decorating for the holidays...since we had just moved here last fall, we weren't able to really do much for Halloween or Thanksgiving. So right now I'm working on a Halloween themed quilt to toss over the couch come October:

The plan is to finish this one before August, so I can maybe finish another afghan before September, and perhaps get the Christmas stockings and quilts done before the baby arrives (which will hopefully happen before my parents arrive, since it would really suck for them to fly across the ocean only to spend half their visit waiting for us to come home from the hospital.)

Seems like a lot, right? Except I've been ignoring my blog for the past few months, so it really isn't as hectic as it seems.

Linked to WIP Wednesdays...Check out the button on the right-hand side of the screen! You know you can't resist it...

Definitely Summertime...and lots of photos!

I've been seriously remiss at writing anything in recent months. It's a bad habit to get into, since the less I blog the less I think about blogging, and the less I feel like blogging...
So I'm back. Sort of.
And I have a lot of catching up to do...

Let's start with the quilts. Remember that quilt top I pieced back in March? Well, I finally finished it:

I machine-stitched the binding on this one. It's something I tried when I finished the quilt for my nephew Lincoln, and it really works for me. It may not be quite as pretty as hand-sewn binding, but it is so much faster (and requires far fewer curse words!)
Here's a bit of detail on that:

Those mitered corners turn out great, too.
This quilt is currently adorning the back of our new sofa, along with my City Lights quilt:

And the Painterly Stripe Afghan:

Yes! I finished afghan #2! Which means I still have 4 more to go if I'm to make my goal of six for the year. I think I'm behind schedule.

There are a bunch more projects that I've finished, but I think I'm going to save those for a bit later this week. I need a reason to keep blogging, after all.

More Coasters!

Despite my recent bout of depression, I have managed to complete a couple little items.
Like these coasters:

I have to say, I'm not thrilled with how the binding turned out. I tried something new, and it didn't work so well for me...but these were meant for our house, anyway, so it's no problem.
Actually, I tried a couple things new with these.
For one, I strip-pieced them. That's not really new for me, but I remembered to take a picture this time:

Then, I played around with free motion quilting. I did the green ones in a bubble pattern, the blue took stippling, and the pink...well, it was supposed to be a kind of angular stippling, but I need some more practice, I think.
Another new experiment:

See it? Yes! The backs are fussy-cut. At least, two of them are. I didn't exactly have a lot of scrap fabric to make these, so I did the best I could.
Overall, I'm happy with how they turned out, and Tim says "they fly well," so they must be ok.

Yay for Weekends!

I finally had some time completely to myself today! And I got a little crafty...

Ok, to be honest I made this on Monday, and just now got around to posting it. It's just red felt, I think I bought it at Nishizawa, and I traced the hearts, cut them out, and ran them through the sewing machine without stopping or cutting the thread. I wanted something a little Valentine-y in the house.

And today, I was struck with the urge to make something for my sister. Why? Because she's my sister, and I love her, and I very, very rarely get to see her. (Christmas, 2010, was the last time we were in the same room at the same time.)
So here's what I came up with:

Some cheerful, flowery coasters. These are 4" square.
Not sure what else I'm going to work on tonight...

And it's on!

Last night, I decided to sit down and quilt the City View quilt I pieced over the weekend. I'd been trying to decide whether to just straight-line it with a walking foot, or if I was going to use free-motion quilting. I finally decided "No guts, no glory"...and went ahead with free-motion.
I'm using a bubble pattern:

I honestly don't know where I saw this first, if it was on Leah Day's blog or if it was in Elizabeth Hartman's book "The Practical Guide to  Patchwork". It's in both places.  At any rate, it really isn't difficult, the toughest time I'm having is getting everything to fit on the table, under the machine's arm, in my lap...

But despite wrestling with the fabric, this is really fun!
I remembered to take pictures frequently, too...I took a photograph every time I had to change the bobbin. There are a lot of pictures, but it's pretty cool seeing how this progresses...

First Bobbin

Second Bobbin

Third Bobbin

Fourth

Fifth

Sixth

Yep, 6 bobbins already and I'm still not done...I estimate another 3 or 4 to go. And this is just throw-sized! Then there's still the binding...yeah that scares me a bit. But I'll get there.

And it looks as though...

...I will finally finish a quilt! No, really. I don't mean just piecing the top. Or piecing the back. Or piecing the top & back and then setting them both aside to work on something else.
Alright, yes, this is really simple, quite small (crib size), and the pattern was free...but I might actually finish this week! I just can't decide if I'm going to just straight-line quilt it, or take a chance and free-motion quilt it. I've been practicing the latter on scraps. The new sewing machine is definitely inspiring.
Oh, did I not mention that? Around Christmas, I think Tim got a bit fed up with hearing me curse every ten minutes when sewing, and he said I should just buy a new one. I should mention that I'd been thinking about doing just that for a while, but I couldn't justify it quite yet. I guess I just needed someone else to tell me it was ok.
I bought another Brother, this time a CP-7500. So far, I like it a lot. It's a lot quieter than my old one (a LS-2125i that I bought at walmart for $70 four years ago), and it hasn't made me cuss at it yet. I still need to use it some more before I can give it an actual review.

Really, though, my big question to myself is...do I want to try and free-motion quilt this? Part of me really, really wants to try. There's another part that demands perfection (or something close to it) and says "just use the walking foot. You want it to look good."
Eep.

On the 4th day of Christmas...

...I decided I'd better post again.

Christmas was wonderfully low-key. Tim and I exchanged presents, we had a skype conversation with my family, and then he started playing Skyrim while I played with the new yarn.

Oh, yes. New yarn. Mom was quite generous and sent me 4 hanks of Berroco Voyage, which immediately was crocheted into the Sagramor Cowl:

It's very, very warm.

And I'm apparently the first person (after the designer, of course) to make this on Ravelry.

I still have just enough yarn left over to make a hat...just looking for a pattern.

Today, I started working on some quilt blocks again. This time, it's using the Northern Cardinals jelly roll that I bought at half-price earlier in the month. (Thank you,  Fat Quarter Shop!) It's my first real attempt at strip-piecing:

I actually have two jelly rolls from the same collection. I'm thinking I'd like to make both the front and the back of this quilt pieced. Still working out the design for the back, but I'm leaning towards a rail-fence or streak-o-lightning design. I'm also still waiting on the batting I ordered, so I've got some time to play around with ideas.

Another Pillow Cover!!??

Yes, that's right. I had another fit on Sunday and just had to re-cover an old throw pillow. It was looking a little worn, and needed a facelift anyway.
I love the look of log cabin blocks, and that inspired this design. It's not really a log cabin design, in fact I'm not really sure what to call it. But here it is:

It's made with some of the half-yards I ordered from Connecting Threads (they were on sale for $2.96/yard, and they were orange...how could I resist?).
In case you're wondering what it looks like on the other side:

This is the same method I used on the blue&black pillow I made last week. I like this style because 1) it's easy to get on & off the pillow, 2) it's fast to make, & 3) it looks good. Although in retrospect I would have the orange panel on the outside, instead of the blue.
Anyway, I'm definitely on a pillow-making kick, likely because I have a bunch of fabric that isn't tagged for a project. Plus, I like being able to finish a project in a day & enjoy it right away. And did I mention it's good practice for piecing? I'm getting much better at it!

Pillow Talk

I get a bit manic sometimes.
I find myself inspired to take on a project, and then I just can't stop until it's done.
So it was last night, when I found myself still awake at 1 am, stuffing a pillow form into its new wrapper.

What do you think?
I'm pretty happy with it. The seams are all perfect, it fit over the pillow just fine, and it wasn't so big that there is excess fabric draping all funky.
Here's a closer view:

Unfortunately, due to the current season I'm never home during daylight hours, so artificial lighting is what I get to take photographs.

This weekend I have big plans for crafting. We'll see how much I get accomplished.

Over the Hump

It's Wednesday. We're more than halfway to the weekend.
I wish I had more to write about, but really that's about it. Work is a grind. My evenings are spent browsing the internet, watching Big Bang Theory on DVD, and crocheting.
Oh, add sewing this week.
I found a pattern in the Winter 2011 issue of Simple Quilts & Sewing for fabric produce bags made from fat quarters, and I decided to give it a go. I've had some green batik yardage hanging around the craft bin for a long time (I think it was intended for pillowcases, but I bought it so long ago I don't remember.) Anyway, the pattern was ridiculously simple and I think each one took me about 20 minutes, and some of that time was waiting for the iron to get hot.
Here's what I finished with:

They're on the smallish size, but I fit two bottles of water, a notebook, colored pencils and a tylenol bottle in one of them just fine. Tim figured out they are the perfect size for an egg carton, too.

I might try making some larger ones. Next week.