WIP Wednesday

A totally just because I wanna, for no particular reason, fun new project

I'm using the Nittany Block ~ tutorial here

This quilt will include some of this cuteness that Kerri had designed for her shop,Sew Deerly Loved



Along with many of my favorite red and aqua prints...


Not sure where this will live when it's done. Perhaps on the front porch - we need a quilt out there for chilly Oregon Summer Evenings.

Happy Sewing!

~ practicing for swap 3

I'm doing another Swap. Yes, I am. This time it's this cute little gathered clutch from Noodlehead sews. The swap is being run by Penny, SewTakeaHike. I decided to do a little practice clutch the other night partially because I have been meaning to make a simple little pouch for some time. I need something to store my hexies in on the go, and they are just generally handy little things for who knows what. So here is my practice run using some scrap Flights of fancy from my stash

I left out the card wallet holder because I don’t intend to use mine as a wallet. But the divider pocket is a great idea. Scissors on one side and hexie templates on the other don’t you think?

~ The Back

And wouldn’t you know it, as soon as my daughter saw this one, she immediately requested one of her own …like I didn’t see that one coming…. She is a purse girl for sure.

So I made her this one embellished with lots of Farbenmix Ribbons in her favorite Peace/Love theme.



And while I was at it, I made simpler zipped pouches for the pool.


One as a wet bag to put in her soggy swimsuit and the other just for storing small personal items in her pool bag. The pool versions are both made of laminate so they stay dry. These are so fun to make and whip up so quickly.

I need to make a bigger one for my on-the-go knitting projects ~ so the needles don't keep poking through the ziplock bag I am currently using ~ I know, pretty pathetic huh?

So all in all, a fun project, quick to sew up and plenty useful. Try it sometime! I’ll have to make another one for my swap partner soon.

And while I'm on the topic of swaps, check out this lovely pillow and keychain I received from my Pillow Swap Partner, Liz of ollie.kate, from Pillow Talk Swap 3 ~

Isn't it gorgeous? And works perfectly on my sofa see? ~


These pictures don't really do it justice, it's so much nicer in person ~ I'm thrilled.

Happy Sewing!

Circa 50 in the house

I don't usually gush about the fabrics that cross my threshold, they are all amazing in their own way. But this latest fabric is Circa 50 from Monaluna/Birch Fabrics and it deserves an exception - even it's very own blog post. It's awesome quality fabric.

Reminds me a lot of the munki munki fabrics in quality. You Munki Munki devotees will know exactly what I'm talking about. Tight weave and a smooth finish. Awesome colors and adorable prints - all retro-like - very cool.

I love all things that are 50s and 60s retro. Check it out! Cute little squirrels and owls. I'm sure this is going to end up in a baby quilt. Yes there are more babies on their way soon - not here, at work. Apparently, the fresh Oregon air is good for fertility ~ or something. I have to make at least 2 more baby gifts this summer and a Munki Munki quilt is definitely in the works. Might have to add in this Circa 50 too.

Look at this innovation! Finally!

Excellent idea Cynthia, keep up the green innovations.

That's all for today. Happy Sewing!

More Hexies

I did it again - I joined yet another swap. This time it is

{ Handsome } Hexies - THE SWAP

organized by Heather (a la mode fabric). The Pillow talk swap was so much fun, I thought I'ld do it again. My swap partner was none other than the Hexie Queen herself, Heather. The pressure was on...

So here are my hexies for Heather ~All Christmas themed as per her request...

And here are the ones I received from Brooke ~ aren't they cute? I love these. It was so fun to receive a little surprise package of hexies in the mail.

I guess I'll have to come up with a plan for these next...

In doing this I noticed a few things. I cut my one inch paper hexagons out of printer paper and basted onto those. Some people are using precut hexies from a couple of online vendors. The paper of the precuts is much thicker and therefore the finished hexies are much sturdier and crisper looking. Both types of paper work fine but if you want a really crisp looking hexie, you are probably better off buying the precuts. I am using them on my half inch hexies because I didn't want to cut out that many tiny hexies and the precuts look a lot nicer than my printer paper hexies. Plus the precuts are probably a bit more accurate in size than the hand cut ones.

Check out some swaps on flickr if you are interested in this sort of thing. They really are a ton of fun to participate in.
Happy Sewing!

Taking the Process pledge

About a week ago I took the Process pledge. This was started by Rossie and basically is a committment to include all the parts that go into making a quilt or quilted project in your blog instead of just showing the finished piece. The idea being that we can all learn from each others design processes. Often times the process ends up achieving something quite different than the original design idea. You can read more about the process pledge here.

So I took the pledge and I did show you quite a bit of the process that went into the PTS3 pillow but I couldn't quite tell you everything about that process because my swap partner still hadn't received her pillow and some of the process was a dead-giveaway. But now that she has happily received her pillow, I can say a few more words about that process and then show you the next project.

The PTS3 pillow was inspired primarily by this quilt in Ruth's inspiration mosaic. This amazing quilt was done by Jody of Because i'm me. I love how the colors in this quilt blend from one side to the other. Lately, I have been very interested in recreating the idea of color fade-in/out and fade from one color to another in my quilt projects. So when I saw this picture, I knew immediately what I wanted to do.

My mission was to create a piece of fabric that would achieve the same effect as this picture but there was one caveat. Since the final project was a pillow meaning that my size limit would be somewhere around 20 inches - I had to achieve the same quilt color fade effect in a very small area. That meant that the pieced squares would have to have a final size of around 1/2" in order to give me enough squares to produce an obvious color change. This was a bit of quilt piecing that I had never done before. The small-squares piecing approach using fusible interfacing made the entire process doable. I'm pretty sure I would never have gotten all those tiny squares to line up otherwise.

On to the next process.. Here is my current project

This the design plan for a hexagon pillow made with half inch hexagons. The idea was inspired by this photograph.

This is going to require around 400 hexies ~ my current count is around 360 so i'm getting there.

Hexie pile so far...

That's it for today - happy sewing!