Single girl

So I’m a single girl again! Ha ha!! No, not really, but I am going to be working on the Single Girl Quilt-along organized by Nova and Katy and making Denyse Schmidt’s Single Girl quilt. So at the moment I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of the pattern for this quilt (currently winding its way across the country – probably on a brown UPS semi) and while the pattern is on it’s journey, I figured I might as well audition some fabrics for the quilt. So here are some stacks I pulled out as possible candidates.


Here’s the first, very Tula and Pink! No, really! ~ and maybe a little too pink. I’ve used her owl fabric as inspiration and pulled out some colors from that including a café latte brown for the background and some bright aqua accents.


While I love this combo I can’t help but think it’s a bit too pink for me. I don’t usually do pink, certainly not in décor and my daughter is too old to appreciate it – so I think these fabrics will probably go back in the stash. Who knows, - I might make up a test block when the pattern arrives and hope that someone has a baby soon so I can have an excuse to use these colors.

Second audition uses Laurie Wisbrun’s fabric for inspiration. I LOVE this fabric a LOT so I’ve pulled a stack of fabrics that kind of go with it.

This one is a bit more me and a lot more functional within the house color-wise, but I’m not totally in love with these potential fabrics just yet.


I think the stack needs something else? Usually I go with my gut and my gut isn’t quite happy with this just yet. Again I think I’ll have to make up a swatch block first just to see what it might look like. Any thoughts?

Yes, I know I’ve promised a blog-i-versary celebration and it’s coming – promise.

In the meantime, happy sewing!

Pickledish-ing

At long last my Pickledish quilt top is complete! I participated in Aneela's (Comfortstitching's) Pickledish Quilt-along and started this back in ??? well it was many months ago. It's been bugging me lately, 'cause I don't like to have unfinished business to attend to - so I spent this lovely warm sunny weekend inside. Yeah I know, I was kind of lamenting that myself, especially in Oregon, but I was in a mega work-mode, so I kicked the kidlets out into the sunshine and I just rolled with it.




I'm so glad the top is done. I'm piecing the back at the moment. Hopefully it will be done soon, but I'll need another sunny winter day in Oregon to sandwich it - a ha ha ha ha ha ha ~ sooo yeah it should be awhile.

I should've gotten my hubby to hold this one up - it's BIG!!! 80"x60" which is possibly the largest one I've ever made. This one is going to be the new picnic quilt - planning ahead! Yes, I know we are going to set it on the ground and sit on it - but, hey why not picnic in style?!!

Happy Sewing!

Back in Business

Well after much worrying and wondering just how much my sewing machine repair was going to cost me, hubby managed to fix it when he got back into town! Yeehaaaw!! I'm so thrilled that my baby is back and it didn't cost me a thing to fix. So, with my machine working again I was able to finish up another project in the dedicated to decorating series.

We redid the kids playroom recently and turned it into more of a den/hangout for the kids. When we did that, we moved the game system in there and it's been in a bit of a disarray ever since. I'm not sure if this is because it's mostly a kids room or just because we don't have the right furniture in there yet but it needed some help. Here is the before shot:

Yeah, kind of a hot mess. So I made another storage box for that area. This one is 12x12x8". That size fits perfectly under that tiny table holding the components. Now all the games and controllers are all neatly organized in the box instead of sprawling themselves all over the place. Much better!

I had a lot of questions on the last post with the scrap boxes about just how I made these boxes. So I'm planning a quick tutorial in the next post along with an upcoming blog-i-versary celebration. So stay tuned.

Happy Sewing!

Disaster Strikes

Disaster has struck. No it's not fire or flood or sickness or anything really bad. Just, you know, disheartening, frustrating, bewildering...

My sewing machine is broken! Just the other day, midway through the seam no less, my baby just stopped - dead - she functions no more! Quick call the whaambulence. I didn't even know what to do. I didn't believe it at first - I was in full on denial mode. This cannot be, surely she has just become unplugged - but nope! Nada nothing! She has never failed me in all of her thousands of hours of sewing, so I guess she just needs little vacation. Sooooo, off she goes to see Mr. Repairman, hopefully her stay won't be too long. I will miss her. Let's hope she has a speedy recovery.

AACCK!!! Now what? --Can't sew-- What to do with myself? See, I'm a bit of a work-a-holic. I'm always working on something. Always. I never feel quite content unless I'm multitasking several things at once.






So, as always when faced with a sewing hiatus, I turned to another of my crafty endeavours. I have been knitting a lot lately and decided that i needed some fancy schmancy stitch markers. So I pulled out all my old beading bits and baubles and went to town.

Hmm, how many stitch markers can one person really need? Well, back to knitting...

Happy Sewing!

2011 ~ Dedicated to Decorating!

I don't usually make new year's resolutions. Here's why: I personally feel that you should and can make a change in your life at any point during the year and that you don't have to wait for the new year to reflect on necessary changes. But this year, I'm going to make an exception. I've officially unofficially dubbed 2011 - a year dedicated to decorating. I'm going to attack the many aspects of this house that never quite got to where they were supposed to get from a home decor point of view. Here's the thing, we moved into this house 8 years ago. At that point I had 2 very young children. We got the rooms painted and moved in and we put everything where we wanted it but I never quite got all the little touches done on this house. There is this stack of picture frames sitting in a pile in my front room that have lived there for around 7 years. Yes, 7 years! I know it's shameful really. But there you have it! There was just quite never enough time in the day and after awhile I just plum forgot about them. So I'm going to eradicate that this year. In 2011 I'm going to attack a room every month (some rooms will take more than 1 month) and finish all the final touches. While I'm at it, I'm going to share the process and the journey with you here. Want to join me?

Job 1: Sewing area
Scraps, scraps and more scraps.

Seems that when there is sewing there are always endless, growing piles of scraps. Know what I mean?


My scraps used to live on my floor under the cutting table, in paper bags no less - not very attractive or functional and really an awful place to store them. So I decided to make them their own little bins, color coded to correspond to the fabrics inside.

Voila! I love this solution and I made them big enough that they should hold scraps for a few years to come. Phew! Much nicer looking. Here they are living on top of the fabric stash.
You can make these to! They are just fabric boxes reinforced with Peltex fusible interfacing. There are lots of tutorial on making storage boxes online if you google it, so I'm not going to describe the process here. Plus these use up a few scraps as well - yes! Now I just need to make a couple more.

Much better! I feel better already! I think this year is going to be very fulfilling.

New Year, new sweater!

It's 2011 now! How many months of writing 2010 on my checks before I finally remember it's 2011?? Usually takes me about 2 months. ha!! We'll see. But, it's 2011 now, Happy New year everyone!!



At Christmas time, I usually switch over to knitting for a few weeks. Largely because my sewing area is shutdown once the tree goes up and partly because I want to spent more time hanging with my family. So my stitches have been keeping me busy over the holidays. I haven't made myself a sweater in years and years - probably quit that right about the time my kids were born. But now that they're older, I have time to think about knitting bigger projects again. I discovered this Madeline Tosh dk merino yarn just a few weeks ago and it was love at first sight! This stuff is so soft and squishy that it's heavenly. So I decided to call this sweater the my Blue Heaven sweater named for the lovely soft yarn. The pattern is Cable Yoke Pullover by Norah Gaughan from the Vogue Knitting 2010 holiday issue.


So happy with how this sweater turned out. The project was supposed to last me a wee bit longer though, so now I'm dreaming up the next project.

Happy New Year Everyone and happy Sewing!!