It's been so long!

Due to a series of events, beginning with not having a computer of my own for 6 months, I have clearly been quite absent for many months now. And perhaps the biggest news of this absence is also what will keep me from updating regularly for a while....I'm Pregnant!!! Due very soon now in fact. On the one hand, that has given me many crafts that are smaller and get done quicker, on the other hand it will make free time much more scarce once baby arrives. At any rate, considering how many months it has been, I really don't have that much to show for it, but I do have at least 10 finished projects to post. Some of them have been done since the fall, some of them are very recent. So I'm going to go through the older ones first and then we'll get down to baby stuff :)

For today I want to post something that I have been talking about for ages...as in since 2008 when I started it and posted about how much I loved the yarn I was using. It started out as a bridesmaid gift and I had hoped to make two similar ones and give them to my girls before the wedding last summer. Obviously, that didn't even come close to happening, but I did manage to finish one and give it to my amazing friend Sara for her birthday/engagement/christmas gift this past fall. It is a shawl that I made using a pattern my Mother-in-Law found and gave to me from knitting daily tv. It was pretty easy, and came out great, it just took me forever. I actually got a really big chunk of it done and then got hit with working 4 months and then the wedding took over and then it was fall and I finally finished it. Anyway, I used the spa yarn from naturallycaron.com and it was probably a little less sturdy than if I had used the linen yarn that the pattern recommended, but it's alright, I like it better this way. So here it is, I have one picture of it being blocked, and a close up of the pattern:


And next time, hopefully this week unless a certain baby decides it is time to come out, I will be posting the ragged square quilt that I made as a gift for my sister and gave to her for christmas :)

camera strap cover

Item 1: The ragged square quilt is done! It is bound, washed, dried, and the frayed ends are clipped. I am going to make something little to go with it, so I need to get working on that, but I am really happy with it and can't wait to post it and share it with the world.

Item 2: The quilt shop hop was great! I didn't buy too much either, just a few really cheap quarter yards, and the beginnings of a holiday quilt. It was good to go see all the places in the area and be able to figure out where it is worth driving an hour to and where it isn't.

Item 3: I have already pieced the front and back of the stacked coins quilt I have been wanting to make. I still need to baste, quilt and bind and really, who knows how long it will take me to get to that, but I'm moving right along. Before I can quilt it I want to learn how to free motion quilt so I can stipple it....so I'm going to make a scrap quilt and practice on that and then do the other one.

Item 4: I would like to show off the awesome camera strap cover I made recently. I had seen a few for sale and was convinced I could make one to cover the Nikon strap my camera came with and add some padding for my neck. I also decided that I could figure out how to put a lens cap pocket in it and I love it! I used the pattern here and then modified it, making it a bit wider to accommodate the little pocket for the lens cap. It took me while to get pictures to put up since I already had it on my good camera and wasn't going through taking it off again so I had to find and charge my little kodak camera...so the pictures aren't quite as good. I think if I make another one I will make the pocket a different fabric so it stands out. Anyway, here it is.

pincushion

Can you believe that I didn't own a pincushion of any kind?? Well really I don't use pins unless I have to (I know, I'm bad) but I thought it was about time. So I found a pattern by Heather Bailey, took some scraps and got to work. It is so cute, much better than those stupid tomato ones :-P and I had everything I needed to make it already so really it was a free project! It has come in handy so far and I'm sure it will continue to do so.



That's about it for now, I still have a few other things I have to take pictures of, so those will be coming along shortly. I also will be done my binding this week I think, so I'm pretty excited about that. I am also going quilt shop hopping this weekend for the first time so hopefully I will come away from that totally inspired and with loads more ideas that I don't have the time or money to complete :)

50th anniversary card

Alright, I know I'm a slacker....I just get so easily distracted! I'm just sure this can't be entirely my fault....genetics or something :-P Anyway, I have been working very hard on this quilt that I will continue teasing you with. It is very large and therefore difficult to quilt. I took the ragged square quilt that she posted on crazy mom quilts, and basically made it 72 blocks instead of 30....I must be insane! 3 days later I am 1/3 done the quilting part and hopefully another 1/3 will get done today. I am pretty excited for it to be done so I can just sit and stare at it for hours while considering how freaking proud of myself I am....it will be a good day. And then I will proceed to make baby size blankets for a while haha.

Anyway, on to the good stuff. About a week and a half ago (October 2 to be exact) my grandparents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. I feel super lucky that I have been able to see both sets of my grandparents reach that huge milestone in their lives and relationships and I find it really inspiring. I can only hope that I will reach that point still as much in love as ever. In honor of the event I decided to make a card for them with a collage of pictures from their years together. Starting with the wedding they were both in when they started dating (2 years earlier...but it started it all) and continuing to include pictures of them, their children and grandchildren through the years. I could tell as we all sat at dinner honoring them and silently thanking them for....well our existence, that they are proud of the family they have created. I thought it would be nice to post the card....and show off my mildly impressive photoshop skills (at least I like to think they are).




It's a little hard to see, but you get the idea. I am still doing a bit of digital scrapbooking, but not as much as I might like. Soon I hope to start working on a wedding scrapbook and ultimately I'd like to make a physical one and a digital one. Who knows how long that will take. But there you have it. And now I am off to another full day of quilting :)

tote bag

September 24th was my wonderful sister's birthday, and at her request I made her a tote bag for the beach/gym. It was a pattern I had picked up a while ago and just never got around to making and it was just perfect for this! It is a huge bag, more like a weekender then anything else, but I love the way it came out and so does she. Since I saw her and gave it to her over the weekend, I can now talk about it and put up pretty pictures. The pattern is burda 7674 and I just kinda modified it until it made sense to me. I couldn't find the right snaps so I used my snazzy new automatic button hole maker (totally awesome!) and the directions for putting the top band on made no sense to me so I did it my way and it worked out great. I love all 3 fabrics that are used, and of course the lime green polka dots are just for her. It is just such a happy bag and I hope she gets lots of use out of it :)




Just for the record, it looked better stuffed so you can really see the shape of the bag....and in the pictures it is holding 2 of our couch pillows, that's how big it is! It's a beast! If that doesn't fit beach towels, etc. then I don't know what will.

So that's that. Tomorrow will be a big sewing day for me but unfortunately since it is a Christmas gift I won't be able to share it for a few months. Not to worry, I have other things I am working on to post. And once I am done this quilt I have another that I can start on pretty much right away and that one will be posted as soon as it is done. I am guessing both will be done by the end of the month if all goes well, but we shall see.

a yarn bag

I just had a ridiculously productive two days. I am now finished all the sewing projects that I wanted to do that weren't quilts. A few of them are gifts so their posting will be delayed, but I have a few goodies to share next week. This weekend the hubby and I are taking a little drive down to Jersey for some family festivities, but once we get back, the quilting will be in full swing :)

Anyway, since we are going to visit and my dad asked me to make him one, I have created a little yarn bag for him to hold his current project. I tried one once before but it was a bit too small for some of the yarn he was using so this time I tried it out with a bulky yarn I had sitting around and it fit perfectly! I didn't really use a pattern, I just kinda made one up....ya know, hemming the top, sewing around the sides, and putting a handle on. Easy peasy. One day I may try one that with a little slot for needles too, but we'll see when I get to that. So here, in wonderfully manly fabric, is a yarn bag for my dad (and yes, it matches his needle holder) :)


You'll just have to excuse the crappy images....the sun has apparently decided it has had enough of Binghamton for the year so I have some major flash going on. Next week I have a few other little projects to put up and hopefully in the next month, a quilt that I can post! The quilt I am starting next week is a gift so that won't be up until after christmas since you never know who is reading these things.

Lola

Lola is my sewing machine :) As we finished up our first project together the other day, the song Lola came on the radio and I just knew she was speaking to me. Ha, don't think about it too hard, it doesn't really make sense. At any rate, project 1 is done and so far I love her. The sewing goes quick and the stitches are even. It is a quiet machine which is nice and in general, things just went well. The only problem I ran into was putting the bobbin in the second time. The tension is supposed to be adjusted automatically and if you don't hit the tension spring right, it won't be adjusted right...so I put it in again and it worked. I am still not sure what made the difference, but I assume I will figure it out in time. I can not, at this time, reveal the project due to it's gifty nature, but I promise to do so as soon as possible.

I am also curious to see how Lola handles a quilt. I read some reviews that some of these machines don't seem to be able to handle thick fabric or too many layers, but we will see. I love my attachments and can't wait to use them. As it turns out, I have become quite obsessed with quilting recently. I just want to make so many quilts! I believe I made that clear a few posts ago haha, but seriously, I can't stop thinking about it. Tomorrow, I am even going quilt shop hopping! I have been avoiding the quilt shops (and didn't even know there were so many in the area) because, let's face it, I'm pretty poor and can not be spending $15/yard for fabric and I didn't want to get sucked in. But now I have a friend that I have slowly coaxed into the wonderful world of quilting and we are going to venture out together. Now, the last time I went in search of a fabric shop around here, I could not, for the life of me find it and ended up very frustrated, so let's hope tomorrow goes better than that. I am super excited though, even if I don't end up buying much it will help give me an idea what is out there for when I plan future projects. We have four shops we are planning on hitting and we'll see where it takes us.

Looking forward, I have 3 projects I would like to try and complete next week and then the following week I plan to start on a quilt (the Ragged Square quilt for a christmas gift in fact). All the squares are cut out and I am ready to lay it out and start sewing but I want to finish a few smaller things first. And I should really do some knitting too but we'll see how that goes. In fact, I think I'll go work on that now for a bit. Next time I promise to put up something involving pretty pictures :)