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.

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.