Towel of my dreams

This sounds ridiculous but I've been hunting for the perfect hand towel for my laundry room for years.  It's possibly my favorite room in the house...one of the few that is painted and decorated and organized mostly the way I would like.  (What can I say, I'm better at small scale projects.  Still no clue what to do with the living room).  I've always wanted a laundry room, and I've always wanted a sink in said laundry room.  Now that my wildest (laundry room) dreams have come true, the only thing missing all these years has been a great towel.  

Found.

Made, actually.

I've always loved these big huge flour sack towels...they're almost like cheescloth.  Huge, light, quick dry.  But it had to be cuted up somehow.  

Enter hexagon obsession. Problem solved.

Of course I couldn't make just one so there are a few listed in the shop

( The shop, by the way, is currently open, but knowing me that is subject to change any time.  I'm hoping to list a few Christmas gift-ish goodies in the next little while and then will probably close up shop again in early December in order to fully revel in Christmas-y-ness.)

Hexagons

It's hard to log a lot of hours behind my machine these days but I take every chance I get to do hand sewing.

I'm a little obsessed with these hexie flowers...

Cute feet.  Didn't have the heart to crop that out.

I've already used most of these...stay tuned to see how...

Baby showers

These are awful phone pictures but the fabric was so cute. A couple boy babies:





And a girl baby.


The assignment on this one was "aqua and coral with a little mustard. Kinda washed out vintage feel." How'd I do? I'm not sure I nailed the coral. That's one color that appears to range from orange to pink and lots in between.


Coral or not, it was fuuuuunnn to make.

Sewing for Joy one more time

Today is Joy's birthday. I never did make her a quilt when she was born so this was her birthday present.




I've been wanting to try piecing letters and a 3 letter word seemed a manageable project. It was definitely trickier than I thought but luckily worked out alright.

Happy birthday Joy! So many love and miss you.

Butterflies, scooters and bikes, oh my!

I love echino fabric.


And straight line quilting.





And striped bindings.


And gray linen.

My version of sending flowers

One of my good friends passed away a couple weeks ago. She loved flowers but I wanted mine to last...so I made these for her mom and sisters.










Miss you Ann.

NOT sewing...

It's been a little sparse around here as far as sewing projects...most of my free time this summer went to training to ride LOTOJA! About 206 miles of this: 

And now I can't wait to hang up the bike and do some serious sitting.  And hopefully sewing.

Friends having babies...

...is my favorite excuse to sew.

Sometimes I need a sewing day

Closing the Etsy shop is always bittersweet...it does free up significant amounts of time.  I am constantly debating whether it is worth it or not...I love Etsy and have had so much fun making and selling and connecting with people, but right now my kids are young and need me and I want to be available for them as much as possible.  That said, every once in a while I just need to take a little time to sit and look at pretty fabric, and cut it up in pieces, and sew it back together again.  It reminds me how satisfying it is to be able to make or do something that nobody can UNDO as soon as it's done.  I guess that's why I like mowing the lawn too.  Laundry? Dirty clothes in the basket again before the clean ones are even folded.  Dinner? Demolished in seconds.  Clean floor? Bag of Goldfish dumped and smashed immediately.  Bathrooms? 4 boys live here.  'Nuff said.  So today, I had a sewing day.

 Nothing terribly noteworthy but I got some potholders whipped up for my brother's Great Harvest.  

I just. love. fabric.

All the little tabs and bindings!!

And here they sit, in a pretty little stack.  Hopefully nobody gets into the scissors drawer.

Scrap attack

I have buckets of scraps in every color. I love my scraps, but I know I have way more scraps than I will ever put to good use. They have been neglected in their buckets for quite a while so the other day I got them out to play with and decided to cut them into user friendly, uniform pieces in hopes they will be easier to use. 4" blocks galore! I even fought the urge to save all those 1/2"-2" pieces that came off in the trimming process (string quilt?! No! Focus!) Now to make some quilts...

For Baby T

Our neighbors had a little boy a couple months ago.  When she told me her nursery colors were brown and green I wasn't sure how I felt about that.  Then I started putting fabrics together.  Yummm.

Another project made possible by my embarrassingly comprehensive stash.   

For the record

I DID make baby a quilt before birth after all...just never photographed it.  

 Of course now it has been washed countless times and been used to wipe, clean, cover, dry...not to mention being covered BY many unmentionable substances.  It's held up remarkably well, considering.  

 Bright colors as usual.  Mango paisley minky.  

Lots of Dots

For some reason, I have no problem picking out fabrics and patterns for quilts for everybody else, but when it comes to making something for my own kids, I'm always stumped.  I think I over think it.  I have WAY too many incredible patterns pinned and stashed and even imagined and I always want to make them that one special thing they will want to keep forever.  But the truth is...I no longer have (make?) time to do anything beyond the most basic of projects.  Maybe it's my time they will appreciate more than the thing I used my time to make for them. I know they would prefer I spent it playing Go Fish than making them heirloom quilts.

So my "baby" got his quilt for his first birthday.  Wow.  That's a slowpoke record even for me.  

 I have been in love with polka dots for a long time and one day I just binged and bought a half yard of every polka dot fabric I could find.  I decided to just go for it while I was still excited about them, so I cut them all up into squares and alternated them with natural linen (my other fabric crush right now).

 SO simple, but I LOVE how it turned out.  Once again I'm glad I took the time to quilt along the edges of each seam.  It measured 45" x 60" (standard crib size) which is the perfect size to cover the crib mattress.  It's a little smaller now that it's been washed and dried but still does the job.

 I know I took some pictures of it before I washed it but I can't seem to locate them.  It was very crisp before but I am so in love with the crinkly look of washed linen.  It has an orange shot cotton on the back and is so soft and cozy.

 I couldn't resist a striped binding.

Happy birthday, babe!

Christmas quilts

I've closed the Etsy shop. I'm not gonna lie, I miss it.  But I sort of miss it like I think I would miss crack (you know, if crack were my thing).  It's more of an addiction, I'm afraid, than anything.  Maybe I'll ramble more on that later.  The point is, I never work on stuff for MY kids, and closing my shop has given me a bit of a chance to catch up on some of the things I've wanted to make for them.  

I wanted to make my big boys snuggle quilts for Christmas...just something simple and cozy and the perfect size for them to curl up and read or watch TV with.  

 Oh...the color possibilities!!  I finally arrived at a couple of combos I am really happy with. 

Bright and happy but still very boy-ish.

 The happy recipients: they were good sports to pose for me.  

 

and...a few more...

Sorry I just can't quit with the hot pads.  My sewing time seems to be evaporating but every once in a while I get an hour or 2 that I just have to spend cutting and piecing. Rather than start anything big I know I won't be able to finish any time soon, I love making these little finished projects!

 Plus, Great Harvest ordered some more.  

Plus I have all these delicious scraps to use up.

 These are the scraps from the quilts I made my boys for Christmas.  I thought it was kind of interesting to see how a different binding and backing fabric completely changes the look of the exact same fabrics.

For holding hot pots

Time to post a few formerly top secret projects.


I wish I had counted how many pot holders I made. They were so much fun...like short attention span theater for quilters. I got to try out all kinds of little designs I've had floating around my head that I don't have the time or inclination to make into entire quilts. The hot pad is a perfect audition.


It was also the perfect home for scraps I couldn't bear to throw away. I won't say I seriously diminished my scrap pile but I made a pretty good dent in it.


Perfect neighbor/teacher/friend gift. I even made a bunch for my brother's Great Harvest, which is such a cool classy joint I was just honored to have my creations in there with all those heavenly baked goods. Then my local Great Harvest got wind of them and picked some up too, which worked out great for me since we are trading for baked goods, mmmm. If I may digress, I think trade is the way the world should work. (Specifically, I would love to find a carpenter that would like to trade built in bookshelves for pot holders. Ha!)