Stop staring and start sewing!

A January quilt (by the skin of my teeth)

Okay, this counts for my January project!  I only had one blip while sewing my quilting stitches and fortunately it wasn't a big one.  The edge of the backing got tucked under and then stitched.  It was about 10 inches long so it didn't take long to pick the stitches out and re-stitch it.  It don't worry about mistakes showing since I now know it will all blend nicely once it's finished and washed.

I made a nice roll of binding using some of Tina Givens fabric that I think is a perfect match for my quilt.  I used Elizabeth Hartman's binding tutorial again and I loved it (again!).

I honestly love the binding process.  It's my favorite tedious work ever and I was really glad to get to this point.  Very satisfying stuff.  Plus, I get to sit for hours and nobody accuses me of being lazy.

My fingers are a little sore but I'm going to jump into another quilt right away so maybe I'll start building up some "binding calluses".  Finished pictures coming soon, yay! 

What's the matter? Cat got your quilt?

I'm finally around to quilting my latest quilt.  First I had to run a bunch of tape over it to get the cat hair off.  I don't know why I bothered.

Every time I walk away I come back to this.  Check out that "I dare you to knock me off" look.  Sheesh.

Still I am managing to get some work done and can probably work on the binding this weekend.  I think I'll end up liking it a lot but I'm looking forward to doing something a little brighter next time.

Have you heard about Pinterest?  Here is my Pinterest board.  It's lots of fun (but another beautiful distraction).  You have to request an invitation but it's worth the wait.  And I was thrilled to see my Sunny Scallop Dress on Denyse Schmidt's site done up in her new Greenfield Hill fabric.  Yay!

Have a great weekend!  I'll be back with a finished quilt really soon here (fingers crossed)!  Oh, and I've added a search button to my blog!!  Look in the upper left sidebar.  You ask...I deliver!

I could tell you but then I'd have to kill you

I've been very busy here.  But I can't show you yet so don't even ask.  In the meantive I finally got out of the house and up to Scottsdale where I met Sarah of Green Clogs in person (finally!) and we exchanged our quilt blocks (finally!).  I love what she made for me and I especially love the Flea Market Fancy selvage in there (eek!).  Check out her links to great lemon recipes here (she's been harvesting too).  I'm going up to her house again tomorrow for our Phoenix Modern Quilt Guild meet up where we'll have a mug rug exchange, yay!



Sarah has such a fun, chatty family (the best kind, in my opinion) and her husband makes pot stickers (from scratch, hello!) and I was thrilled to see the skirt her daughter Annika made as her first real sewing project.  Is this the cutest, or what??  It's my Evelyn Apron Skirt pattern and I love the fact that Sarah and Annika added their own personalities to it with the embroidery stitches and Oz applique.

My friend Melanie made a gorgeous version of my Edith Twirl Skirt and I'm just drooling over this Jennifer Paganelli fabric.  Melanie lives just south of me in Tucson and owns a wonderful fabric store called Above All Fabric (she carries my patterns and that's nice of her!).  Isn't this beautiful?

And Rebecca (one of my Quilt Market roommies!) did a review of my Edith pattern on her Restitcherator blog and I love seeing it done up in these rich Anna Maria Horner fabrics.  So pretty (and a little funky too, which I love)!



I've found some interesting things around Bloglandia that I wanted to pass on to my crafty, fabricky friends here.  Debbie Moebes of Whipstitch has a very interesting post on the upcoming cotton shortage which, unfortunately, mean higher fabric prices are coming too.  Heather Ross has a post (somewhat depressing) on the IRS and Paypal which you'll want to read if you are running a business (even a small one) on etsy or ebay.  And on a happy note, there's a Sewing Summit coming and you'll want to check it out (really you will!).  I'm sticking it on my calendar and making every effort to get there.   This should be lots of fun!

And if you're fast you can run over to Where Women Create, which is a really beautiful blog, and try to win 5 yards (yes!) of fabric from Jennifer Paganelli.  You need to get there before January 25th so don't wait.  Have a wonderful weekend!!

Go here. Now. Help.

Australia has been hit with floods of near biblical proportion.  Here is the email I received from Toni of Make it Perfect:

"I'm writing from Australia - we are in the middle of a national disaster which is horrifying and unprecedented. Much of the north of Australia has been flooded. People have died being washed away in flash flooding, it looks like a war zone in many towns and cities. We have half a million people without electricity. 11,900 homes are completely flooded with a further 14,700 partially flooded, many of which will never be habitable again. Brisbane, which is the third largest city in Australia is shut down. Businesses are closed, infrastructure destroyed, schools washed away.  So many families lives have been destroyed."

Incredible.  Heartbreaking.  Please follow this link to see a list of wonderful auctions offerered up by wonderful, crafty people.  100% of the proceeds will go to help the people affected by the flood. 

Have a nice week and hug your family.

The start of a fresh start

Well it's been 3 years since I made this ironing board cover and posted it as my very first tutorial so I am long over-due for a change.  As you can see it's received a lot of use and while I have washed it occasionally (because I remembered to pre-wash my fabric before sewing this time!) I'm just bored with it.  I've been painting and sprucing my sewing room so this was another project that needed tackling.

Here's my old worn cover (which has held up great in spite of the stains)...

And here's my new, fresh, happy cover!  I really like it and the colors go nicely with everything else in the room.  Yay!  It's home dec weight which I prefer for my ironing board covers even though it limits my selection of designs.  I got this fabric for 1.00 a yard many years ago (and I have more if it so I'm sure it will pop up somewhere else soon!).



I used a fun contrast for the casing even though I'll never see it unless I drop something under my ironing board and happen to look up (just in time to see the iron falling on my face with my luck).  I think those little surprise details really make a project special though.



And here's my favorite new detail!  A covered magnet to hold all of my pins while I'm working on a project!  I'm always wishing I'd brought a pin cushion to my ironing board when I'm in the middle of pressing something and then I'm never sure what to do with the pins as I remove them.  Problem solved!  And it's removable because I sewed velcro onto the ironing board cover and the little fabric square over the magnet.

It's a new year and I'm off to a good start!  Whew!

1-1-11 (it's so today, so happening right now!)

Well it felt like life handed us a lot of lemons in 2010 and I'm so happy we have this one day where we can say "Okay, time for a fresh start!".  I know there's nothing magical about a date but the idea of a clean slate is so appealing. 

We harvested most of our lemons two days ago because we've had freezing weather here in the Southwest (my kids got to see snow falling in the Phoenix area!) and didn't want to lose our bounty.  Last year I counted over 100 lemons and this year I'm not even going to count them, there are so many.  So tonight we are zesting and squeezing and starting our year with a big supply of lemon curd.  Susanne at Stash Books swears by this recipe so we are going to give it a go.  We'll freeze a bunch of juice and zest for later.  I'm a lemonaholic so this is my idea of wonderful.  A fresh start indeed (see my fat orange kitty in the background?)!

I'm compiling a list of goals for this year and have already started on some of my professional goals but one of the things I'm most looking forward to is making an effort to add more color and personality to my home.  I've done the "neutral colors" thing for too long (7 years in this house) and I've realized we're not going to be selling our home any time soon so I need to make it mine finally and stop worrying about marketing it for a buyer.

I've started with a few things already but this spray painting project has made me happier than I anticipated.  I use these doors to close off my sewing/studio/office space upstairs and while I expected the new color would spruce up the room I didn't realize how much it would brighten up the hallway (on the other side of the doors).  It's just the beginning!

I'm not one for making resolutions every year but I do like the idea of resolving to savor all the small wonderful moments that happen.  Maybe if I had done that last year it would've helped offset some of the hard times a little more.  So here's to filling up my "happy bank" a moment at a time.

Have a WONDERFUL NEW YEAR!!