Made from scratch

My youngest brother and his wife just bought a Great Harvest in Oregon! Their grand opening is tomorrow and I wish I could be there. But the next best thing seemed to be to send some made from scratch kitchen dry goods. 

Tree skirt(s)

I've been wanting to make a tree skirt for years but I've had serious commitment issues.  My mom and sister made a red wool one with white stars that is fan-tab-u-lous but a tiny part of me didn't want to be the third wheel, or skirt, or whateva. So I've been on the prowl for my own look and somebody actually contacted me to make this one.  I immediately liked it enough to take on the project, but once I got the pattern in my hands and the fabric actually ordered...I knew I had found my skirt.  So I made two. One to sell:

And one to keep. Mine has green binding instead of orange.  I love them both.  Apparently I didn't take any pictures of mine...maybe next year.

plus quilt

Here's another pattern I've been wanting to give a whirl.

 I love an excuse to pull out a huge stack of favorite fabrics.

 Of course I was so excited to show the recipient...but all she had to say was: "there's not enough pink."

 I fixed that.

 At home.  

Good thing I  hurried and took pictures, it didn't take long to get covered in green marker.

Yellow Herringbone

I saw a herringbone quilt somewhere or other out there in blogland and knew I had to have one.  I tend to make everything very small since a. I have a short attention span b. sewing time is becoming increasingly limited BUT I knew this one wasn't going into the Etsy shop and as the people around here are getting bigger the quilts are going to have to keep up.

I tend to be drawn to wild patterns and bright colors and I've been wanting to try my hand at something with a limited color scheme and solid fabrics.  I LOVE the muslin and yellow together...although of course I couldn't resist a blue ikat on the back.

I believe the traditional method for these is half square triangles but I couldn't bear the thought of making that many identical pieces.  So I tried a kind of freestyle method...that I wouldn't necessarily recommend.  I sewed straight strips together and cut them on the bias, which probably did save lots of time but it was much harder to be accurate than I had anticipated and there are an awful lot of puckers where I struggled to get seams to match up.

Luckily the recipient (messy 8 year old boy) is not terribly particular.

A custom order

The shop was closed for several months and I really missed sewing so I was glad of the excuse when somebody contacted me about a toddler sized minky quilt.

Gray green and aqua. Nice combo.