Here is the name tag I made for the Sewing Summit.

The tutorial for the felt dahlia can be found here.

I put a separate pin back on the flower so I can remove it and wear it separately.

I needed a new camera strap cover.  I thought it would be the perfect project for this fabric.  Now, every time I grab my camera I get to see these sweet little cowgirls.

{made using cluck cluck sew's tutorial}

I also made this strap to secure my suitcase.  I've sat on planes and looked out the window as they remove luggage.  Luckily my bags were fine, but it left me with horrible visions of my undies flying across the tarmac. {shudder}

This should help...

{made using i like orange too's tutorial}

I was able to find a two inch buckle at Hancock's, but they didn't have the glide.  I improvised and used some velcro strips to help hold the extra length in place.

Next up, I'm hoping to get a back put together for Cj's quilt so I can bind it at Friday's craft night.

I wish my laundry was in a Paris apartment!

This is my new travel laundry bag made with Bari J.'s Paris Apartment line.

I'm working with fat quarters so the back uses one quarter with the front pieced to match the size.

You put right sides together, stitch the sides and bottom together, leaving the top open.  Then turn and press the top down 1/4", then turn down another 1".  With the bag wrong side out, edge stitch the bottom edge for the drawstring pocket/casing.

Then turn the bag right side out and edge stitch the very top of the bag.  Make a couple of bar tacks at the top edge and bottom edge of the casing, then use a seam ripper to take out the stitches between the bar tacks.  This gives you a little hole for the drawstring.

You could use ribbon, but I made a spaghetti style string for mine.  The main panel on the front is the embroidery sampler from Bari J.'s new project, We love french knots.

I love the look of all the knots clustered together.

Well, all this talk of dirty laundry has reminded me I have my share waiting for me down by the washing machine...

We took a little trip last week.

Cj's favorite part of any hotel stay is having snacks in bed while watching tv.

ahhh the simple pleasures (this was taken about 4 o'clock in the afternoon)

Lulu and I did our best to travel handmade.

Here she is in the elevator with her weekender.

Here's my weekender.

I love it.

Lily of the valley and purple are some of my favorite things, so I was thrilled to find enough of this fabric. (hooray superbuzzy) It's the weekender pattern from Amy Butler.  (I love that link because I could access it with my phone and get the pattern requirements while I was in the fabric store, before the pattern arrived at my house.) I tend to have good luck with her patterns.  Although there was one point around step 11 where I finally had to stop and slowly read out loud the same step a couple of times because I just couldn't figure out what she was talking about.  Once I figured it out it was smooth sailing.  For me, the biggest help was to stitch slowly, pin the corners with several pins, and also not stitch too closely when making the piping.

You can see my zipper pouch made from tape measures that a friend gifted me, along with the tiniest bit of the edge of an embroidery hoop sticking out of the pocket.  I had the best of intentions to get some stitching done, but was too tired by the end of each day.

I also finished a simple drawstring laundry bag from a fat quarter of the dwarves' laundry print from Heather Ross.

This is lulu's weekender bag.

When it was all done, she threw it over her shoulder and told me it's her favorite of all the things I have a made for her.

I really don't think you can receive a better compliment.

It's made with Ty Pennigton's home dec fabric (Moorish) and the pattern is Amy Butler's Weekender.  And, I had no intention of having the fabric line up like it did.  I didn't even notice how nicely it matched up until I was looking at these pictures.  I know, I'm pathetic.

Now I can get started on mine.

Seems like it rains everyday, but we have managed to sneak in some outside time.

Lulu is blending colors for the perfect sunset.

I conducted a little picnic blanket experiment.

I got a great deal on some fabric and was desperate to make something loaded with pattern.

I also tried out some applique with satin stitch.

I frenchified picnic to picnique which was not without incident.  After I had everything fused AND stitched down I realized my u was upside down.  After a few choice sewing words, I had it the right way.

It has flannel instead of batting so it's lightweight.  I used crochet thread to tie it.  Instead of making a binding I left the backing 1 3/4" wider, folded it over onto the front, and machine stitched it.

Here's the back.

We are in the midst of planning for next week's big event.

Someone here is turning 7!

I always forget all the little short cuts that can make patchwork go more smoothly. I think about strip sets only after I've individually stitched an entire postage stamp style quilt.

So, when it came to making a non-traditional rail fence block I put extra thought into what I could do to make the piecing part go a little more smoothly.

Here's how I make the blocks for my broken fence quilt.

I cut 12 1/2" squares of fabric.  (a total of 36 for my lap quilt)

I want 5 bars in each block so I work with 5 pieces of fabric at a time.

I stack the five pieces on top of each other and make 4 random cuts with my rotary cutter.

Then divide the pieces so that each block had a slice from each fabric.

I stitch the pieces together with a 1/4" seam and press.

After pressing, I trim each block to 10 1/4 " square.

This method gives you 5 blocks at a time, but my quilt is made of 36 blocks.  For the last block you can just make one block with individually cut strips, you can make an extra set of five (use extras on back or in another project), or you can do one set of six.  I will warn you (because I didn't think this all way through when I chose this option) if you do six cuts, your block will be shorter than 10 1/4" .  I simply add an extra strip on those blocks.

For this quilt I cut the bluish blocks vertically and the reddish blocks horizontally.

happy piecing

Lulu is losing three classmates to moves this summer. One is a close friend who is moving several states away.

Lulu asked that I make a sister doll (like this one  here and this one too) for her friend before she moved.

It's extra sweet because her friend named it after her so she would always remember her.

They flew to their new home right after school was out for the summer.  Her mom was kind enough to text this photo of her on the airplane.

How sweet is she?

I managed to make my deadline for teacher gifts. Today is the last day of school.

We went this morning to watch the kids compete in the school olympics.

Both kids competed in the three legged race and neither one fell over!

I made a set of pot holders for Cj's teacher.  I found some fabric with math problems on it and couldn't pass it up.

Lulu's teacher will be having her first baby near the end of August.  She's planning a yellow nursery so I went with a group of fabrics from Kate Spain's Central Park line.

The pattern for the block is the box block from the book The Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt.

I enlarged the template a bit from the one in the book.  I did outline quilting in a sort of tic tac toe pattern on each block with a variegated yellow to cream thread.

The back is a solid piece of the zoo print from the Central Park line.

I'm off to pick up my new fourth and second grade students!

box block pattern from the book, The Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt.

I don't know if this happens to other sewists, but often when I look back at a project I remember what was going on while I was working on it. While piecing together my desserts quilt...

I was watching the first season of Jamie Oliver's food revolution.

It took forever to baste my graphic bricks quilt...

because I was caught up in "Vincent and the Doctor" and "the Lodger" from Doctor Who.

I just finished this quilt.  It's for the kids to curl up in during movie night.  Lulu chose all the fabric, kindly keeping in mind that she loves monkeys and cj loves owls.

I was having a new water heater installed while I was piecing the blocks.  I tried to distract myself with the cutting of the triangles, in an effort to ignore the pounding that was going on in the basement.  (who knew moving some pipes around could be so noisy?)

By the time I was ready to finish the binding, it was the royal wedding day.  I was able to stitch my way through the ceremony and ended up with a perfect quilt for the kids' movie night.

Erin and Amy, creators of the Sewing Summit, asked us to share why we sew. I spent yesterday thinking of all sorts of deep thoughts about my reason for choosing sewing as a hobby.  I planned to use words like creativity, necessity, control, process, and usefulness.

I've spent the last few weeks reading all sorts of heated discussions about what is modern and what is handmade and whether it's all right to buy fabric for a big time quilt maker to sell her designs at a chain fabric store.  All of that overthinking left me in word overload.

When I woke up this morning I realized I sew for two reasons...

1. it's fun

2. my baking hobby was making me gain too much weight

the end

will be spent hand stitching

I just love this Freebird line from MoMo.  I also used it for the spots quilt that now lives with my mom.  The colors are rich, the patterns are bold, and what's not to love about all of those different polka dots? I based the block design on a traditional rail fence pattern, although those are usually more unified in color and made of staight lines.  That's why I decided this is more of a "broken" fence for me.

The back has some more of the pieced blocks along the right side.  These block are next to a band of print that is one of my favorite pieces of fabric around.  I just love those big blue trees.

Inspired by the some the sashiko embroidery that's been popping up around the interweb, I quilted it with chocolate brown thread in a ripple pattern, wider ripples at the top that get closer together as they spread out across the quilt.  I'm really pleased with the how well the wave effect turned out.

It's listed at etsy and big cartel.

If you would like it to come live with you, just let me know.

A yarn shop opened about 3 blocks from my house.  Honestly if my little town would get a quilt shop I would never have to leave the city limits again. At my first stop, I found the yarn.  Then came home to start knitting and realized I didn't have a size 2 needle.  No problem.  All I had to do was walk back up the hill.  At this point, I knew I had to switch to a size 6 for the crown, but did I check to see if I had a 6 - of course not.  A couple of days later the brim was done, I was digging for 6 but only came up with 8 and 9.  No problem.  I really like having a yarn shop in town.

The pattern is "aloof" from hattitude, a book of knitted hats that a friend gave me for the birthday.

I've also been working on a quilt.

I've have definitely been eating far too many of these.

I've been patching jeans.

I've also discovered that iLs takes a serious commitment.  I didn't really think an hour a day, 5 times a week would really bite into a schedule, but it does.

The other thing I didn't expect was to see a such change in him, but that's a story for another day.

There has also been play dough.  This time it's blue.

play dough

1 cup flour

1/3 cup salt

1 Tablespoon cream of tartar

1 cup of water

1 Tablespoon oil

liquid food coloring

Mix flour, salt, cream of tartar, water, and oil.  Place over low heat.  Stirring constantly until it is the consistency of mashed potatoes.  Remove from heat.  Add food coloring.  Stir until color is blended.  Knead dough until smooth.

I didn't plan to make a postage stamp quilt, but it seems that's what I ended up doing. I knew I wanted to do a black and white quilt.  I already had a great mix of black & white and black & off white geometrics.

I knew I wanted to bind it in a bright color and this blue jumped out at me from the shelf.

I started out by cutting 4 1/2" squares, but they were too big for what I had in mind.  I ended up cutting each of them into quarters.  I loved the look until I started to stitch them up - all those little corners to match up.  I randomly stitched blue corners on some of the blocks just to add a little color.  I was afraid I was going to run out of blocks so I decided to add the blue cross to use up some space.  I'm so glad I did.  I think it makes the quilt top much more interesting.

I didn't have a plan for the back until I was wondering around the shop with the blue under my arm and spotted Kate Spain's Central Park line.

It's machine quilted with an old gold thread.

I didn't want it to be too  structured since the blocks were already arranged in a strong grid.  I decided to go with a wandering diagonal.  I didn't use guides so that the stitching lines would have a bit of flow to them.

It's listed for sale over at etsy and big cartel.

I noticed that my old shower curtain has been slowly shrinking every time I washed it.  I ignored it to the point that it finally shrunk up past the lip of our shower.  This makes for a very ineffective shower curtain. I found this Prospect Park line and couldn't resist this print with two shades of grey and pale pastels.  Lulu approved, mostly because she loves the birds and butterflies.

I also made button holes for the first time since Pearl arrived.  Once I figured it out, I felt a little like standing on my sewing chair, arms raised, while I shouted "I'm king of the world".

how cute is she?!

check her out posing like a supermodel

i can hardly stand it

(photo credit to aunt jo)

I took some squares from a charm pack along with some extra yardage from a previous project and put together some more pot holders. For the first one, I cut four charms into smaller squares.

For the second one, I cut the charms into triangles.

For the third pot holder, I cut them in half.

I pieced the backs together with the extra yardage.

Then I wrapped them up and gave them to a friend for her birthday.

So here we are, trapped with colds and coughs in the cold and snow.

My plan is to hide in the house and eat big pieces of this cinnamon streusel pound cake

I did manage to get a few things done before the storm hit.  Cj has started his recorder unit for school so I made a new case for my old recorder.  I used some of the leftover echino from the quilt I'm working on.

I also finished up some patchwork pot holders for a friend's birthday.