Too Long!

It's been much too long since I posted. A trip overseas, to visit family in Holland and England, and a bit of a sewing funk too, conspired against me. Or rather, one was a pretty valid reason but covers only a 2 week period, and the other just left me with nothing much to post about and made me feel guilty about being in the funk and not having anything to write about or show off.

My birthday was May 25th. The middle of the 30s, eep! With my dad and stepmum we planned a trip to Europe to coincide with my birthday. A trip just for Jeff and myself. While grandma and grandpa would have loved to see the kiddos, sometimes it's nice to just get away together. Also my dad and stepmum will be visiting in September and will get to see the wee people then.

I had tried very hard to get my Fossil Fern quilt finished for my youngest brother, but I ran out of time. I'd started quilting random straight lines on it, and ended up unhappy with how the couple I'd sewn looked. Rather than keep going and be dissatisfied about the result, and not having enough time to do it the way I wanted to (while also not having settled exactly on what I wanted to do) I just put it aside and told my brother he'd have to wait a little longer. This was as far as I got just before we left:

It's pretty big, about 76" x 65". Not quite a bed sized quilt, but as both my brothers are over 6 feet tall, I wanted to give my youngest brother a good sized quilt for him to be able to snuggle under. You know, manly snuggling...

This weekend has been the first weekend in about 6 weeks that I've had to myself (literally, as Jeff's working in Raleigh NC this weekend), and have been able to sew uninterrupted. The kids' dad was away for several weeks, and so they were here the entire time. The summer seems to have zoomed past... summer day camp has come and gone, and now the start of school is almost here!

Yesterday I completed the quilting on my Fossil Fern quilt, made the binding and sewed that on. It just needs hand stitching on the back and it'll be ready for my dad and stepmum to take back with them for my brother.

Then, after getting that quilt out of the way, I pulled out my Flip Side quilt top, one that had given me a headache last year and that I'd put away. In hindsight the issues weren't so terrible, but at the time it had me so frustrated and annoyed that I really needed a mental break from it. I managed to fix the problems and complete it, so I'm very happy about that!

A quick picture on the couch with less than ideal light, before I headed off to bed. The pattern is by Rachel Griffith, and the fabric is Kate Spain's Central Park.

I'm happy to be out of my funk a bit, and glad to have gotten some overdue projects done. How's everyone else doing?

WIP Wednesday #4

It's been a while since I got any real sewing done. The holidays interfered a bit, and some personal stuff too. Recently I decided to start cutting into half of my Fandango layer cake for the Jaybird Quilts' Carnival pattern I've had lying around for a while. I did quite a bit of the cutting the other weekend and on some random days here and there along with a little of the piecing too.



Yesterday I finally sewed together most of the blocks, and then the rows and the rest of the quilt top.

Lieam helped while I pieced the rows...



Blocks all done and now awaiting the borders:



And roughly 5 seconds after laying the blocks on the couch to take the above picture, Shiloh made herself at home on it...



I'm not sure what it is about fabric and quilts, they are like cat magnets! I do look forward to one day having a living space that has a separate room for me to use as a sewing studio, and for Jeff's music things, one where we can restrict the access of the furbeasts (and sometimes even the teacup humans!).

I'm glad I got some more progress made on this quilt though, it felt good to be able to sew anything more than 15 minutes worth.

Making Whirligigs

The problem with not having a dedicated work space is that it ends up getting taken over pretty fast. Or, reclaimed for its real purpose I suppose. This place is pretty small and so my work space is usually the dining table. I do usually leave the sewing machine perched on a corner, and often the cutting mat stays on the table too, but sometimes it's a bit of a pain in the ass having to move all the other things on and off the table when other life things need to happen there. Mostly it was reclaimed with other things, and I haven't sewn all week until today.

Admittedly some of my evenings have been taken up by some other hobbies too. I dug into the game I bought back in March last year, Torchlight. It's a single-player adventure game, in the dungeon crawl/hack-n-slash style. It's a lot of fun, if you care for those kinds of things. Also, I played some Civilization V too, the popular strategy game (and achieved victory as Catherine the Great, whoop!). Both are worth checking out for those of you who also enjoy some computer gaming once in a while.

Trying to sew today was obviously a little foolish too, as both kids are home because of the schools being closed for Rosh Hashanah. But I got a bunch of the Terrain and white solid charms cut and parts of the whirligigs pieced. Even if it wasn't much, I feel like getting back into the swing of things.





(Excuse the dark pictures, they were taken with my phone and the indoor/weak natural lighting is a bit odd.)

I'm using a tutorial from this page, which is about how to make whirligigs using charm squares. Handy because I wanted to use the 2 charm packs of Kate Spain's Terrain I won on Melanie's blog. I had 2 charm packs of Moda Bella solids in white, so I'm good to go for a while!

And now off to bake some banana bread muffins with Miss Matilda. Mmm!

Ending the Summer

I feel like time has slipped by the past two weeks or so!

The kiddos came back from vacation with their dad, and last week school started for Dashiell. He's back at Kindergarten, with the same teacher and the same aide helping him, so many things will be familiar for him.

This week, Matilda had orientation for her 3's preschool class, which starts tomorrow. She's so excited. She's wanted to go to school since she was old enough to express a desire to, and since Dash has been going (he's been in various Special Needs school programs since he turned 3 and left Early Intervention for CPSE/CSE).

Summer is almost gone, and it makes me a bit sad. I'm happy for the days with more moderate weather though... what we have right now is perfect! Warm, sunny, days with nice temperatures, low(er) humidity, and cool evenings. I'd like months more of this please!

The past weekend we took the kids to the Renaissance Faire, dressed in last year's Halloween costumes (Renaissance princess and a knight). Matilda really enjoyed all the dressing up. Dashiell's a little difficult to manage at events like this, but I think he enjoyed himself too.

All of this means that I haven't sat at the sewing machine all week, besides to fix some elastic on Miss M's undies, and a ripped seam on her costume.

My Flipside [Rachel Griffith pattern] quilt has been giving me some problems, which hasn't helped. All blocks were partially sewn on my old machine and partially on the new one, so the seams for the older machine stitched parts aren't as accurate, and so the blocks aren't accurate as the pattern calls for. This is an issue because the sashing uses a little block of color on the intersection between blocks, and I'm having problems matching the seams up. The discrepancies are REALLY bothersome and noticeable, otherwise I would have just gone ahead with it. I haven't entirely decided whether I'm going to try again to make things match up, or just do away with the little colored intersection squares, and just make it white sashing all the way. I think the latter may save my peace of mind.

Last week I received some Terrain charm packs in the mail. I was lucky enough to win a giveaway on Melanie's blog My Fifteen Minute Break {thanks Melanie!}. I really want to make Whirligig pinwheels with them. I do have a Lil' Twister ruler, but while fun, that doesn't leave me with square blocks. I'm considering making one of the pinwheel quarters a different fabric, rather than pinwheels all from the same print, but I'll have to play with that and see.

Pajamas

This past week or so has been perfect, weather-wise. I'm enjoying the late(r) summer weather, with less humidity, less crippling heat and cooler nights. It does make me sad though that this indicates that we're on the downward slope temperature wise, heading towards winter. We had a long and very cold one here in New York, and it feels like Spring and Summer only just showed up recently!

I'm glad the height of Summer is gone, and I look forward to balmy Fall weather with crisper nights. It would be great if it could stay that way. Fall, and Winter, do bring the promise of being able to wear some warmer clothes, and excuses to pile quilts around. I think that's the excuse I should use on Jeff if he asks why on earth there's another quilt in the process of being completed...

Anyway... a couple of weeks ago, I was looking at the previews on Moda's website for Kate Spain's new line, Terrain, and noticed that it includes flannel. I tweeted into the Twitter-verse that what would be AWESOME, would be to make pajamas from that. My pajama wardrobe is in dire need of some replacements, and it seemed like a logical thing to make. The lovely Ms. Spain saw my tweet, and offered to send me some of the flannel that she'd just received to help me on my way!

Now, I have to say that I'm generally a Purple girl. I don't entirely know why, but I often just gravitate towards that color. And while there were purples and blues among the 9 Terrain flannels, I went a different direction entirely. Oranges and greens and yellows. Because it will be cold and gloomy soon, and those colors are such a warm and sunny pop of color, calling into mind, for me at least, the late days of Summer and early days of Autumn.





I have to say that this flannel is the nicest and softest flannel I've ever seen. I haven't always had a really high opinion of flannel, but that opinion is mostly based on encountering it as cheap and awful receiving blankets. This was a welcome surprise! I want to keep touching and petting it. And I keep having to fight the cats to stop them from sleeping on it and covering it in cat hair.

The pattern I chose is "Sweet Dreams" by Make It Perfect, which I purchased over at Pink Chalk Fabrics (along with a pattern by Valori Wells for a small cell phone purse). Free shipping on patterns, yay! enabling!

Once I get the house a little more organized, I'm going to dive into making these. The kiddos went to stay with their dad for 3.5 weeks on Friday, as part of their Summer break with him, and I'm using some of that time to give the house a necessary deep cleaning. The cats are doing their best and stepping up the mess-making in the kids' absence. Lieam especially is good at knocking things off surfaces, to then bat them throughout the room. I'm still looking for my nice seam rippers, a week after they went missing >_>