Tutorials Moving In . . .

Just to let you know, I'll be moving in my tutorials from my other blog over the next few days, so they are slightly polished repeats of the tutorials from Life and Times of Jill.

I am going to take a new set of photos for the wonky teacup tutorial, so it may be a few days for that one to show up.
 Thanks for your patience!

Everything is in Progress These Days . . .

It seems like everything here is always in progress. Some examples: Knitted hat - one ear flap and some blanket stitch left to go:

Kitchen table - never completely cleared of stuff:

Threads Together Quilt: binding stitched on one side only

Laundry: never ever ever ever finished

Kitchen floor: inevitably spilled on 10 seconds after mopping is complete.

Sigh. And that doesn't even begin on children and myself . . .

What's in progress at your house?

Fab Little Quilt Received!

The very same day that I sent out my Fab Little Quilt, the postman knocked on my door and passed me a parcel (I do wonder what he thinks of all my squishy envalopes somedays). Inside it was this terribly exciting little quilt!

 

Cindy made this quilt just for me - like, really for me. She read and asked about and thought through my discussion about deconstruction and reconstruction and my love of all things cute a whimsical, and worked way, way outside of her normal quilting box to produce the amazing little quilt you see above.

Cindy sent me a note to say that the four little birds are my children, and the orange bird is the mama - me! What a lovely sentiment. All the special details and care put into this quilt made me a little weepy on the day that I got it, frankly. I was having a hard day, and this quilt really perked me up.

But enough about me - back to this fabulous quilt:

This little quilt is so fun! The birds are all removable and pinned to the back with safety pins. They can tuck into the yarn covered nest (which is a pocket) or be pinned anywhere else on the quilt. Right now, on my wall, I have one bird out on the top branch and three in the nest.

These leaves are double sided and stitched carefully in place down the middle so that they are also three dimensional and look like "real" leaves.  The quilting is a lovely all over leafy pattern. Cindy is a professional long arm quilter, and it shows in this quilt. Finally, the label:

A little wink to my request for something deconstructed, and to her work playing with a collage-like sky and leafy background to the quilt!

 

If that wasn't enough, she send me a cute little card, three fat quarters (two of which are already in use, Cindy) and a magnetized notepad (right as I had been thinking, "I wish I had another magnetized notepad to write grocery lists on . . . )! They were all tied up with this cute little piece of bias tape which my daughter promptly stole.

This quilt is now hanging on my quilt wall, well out of reach of any little fingers that might want to swipe all those sweet birds! Thanks so much for this darling quilt, Cindy! Every time I see it I smile.

Distractions and Nerves

I have sent and received my Fab Little Quilt (and the one I received is Fabulous) but I want to do proper posts about them and a few people have opinions about Mom sitting at the computer typing for long periods of time.

One person in this house is VERY two-going-on-three right now:

And another person has decided that since he can't move himself around the house yet, it is Mom's job to carry him around so he can watch everything:

I thought the Jolly Jumper might be a solution to part of this frustration. Unfortunately Emma thinks the Jolly Jumper is there for her to swing her brother in, which is lovely for a few moments until she gets it sideways and swings him into the door post . . .

Its busy times around here, I tell you.

Just wanted to pop in and say that I'm super nervous / excited because tomorrow night I will go to my first meeting of the Montreal Modern Quilt Guild. I'm sure it will be fun, but I do wonder if I'm "Modern" enough for such a guild. I am Modern in the use-of-technology and modern fabrics side, but not so much in the lots-of-solids-and-mid-century-patterns type of modern. I'm sure it will be fun anyways. Wish me luck finding my way to Laval with two other NDG quilters and a fussy baby in tow.

Back to School Sewing

I got to do a little bit of sewing for each of the boys at the end of August. I'm really happy to send a little bit of handmade to school with the boys, so I enjoyed doing a few quick projects.

Andrew starts studying in English and French this year, and his school supply list included two waterproof drawstring bags to hold his books for each language seperate.  I thought this would be a fun opportunity to sew for him, and I had already picked up some star wars and superhero fabrics that were supposed to be used for shorts this summer (whoops!).

I was originally going to line these bags with PUL to make them waterproof, but when I was at Fabricville I found this iron-on vinyl that I thought would work better. It was actually a great choice, because it makes them look (as Andrew put it) "real" instead of handmade.

They are pretty basic, lined drawstring bags. The inside is some solid cotton I had laying around (this yellow is all the way from when Andrew was little - its the same fabric as they boys' superhero capes). I originally used gross grain ribbon for the handles, but I quickly realized they would not be strong enough to hold up through the year.

Instead I switched to some handles made from the endless organic duck cotton, et voila! Two very cool and handy bags.

Aaron needed a smock for Kindergarten, and he wanted to make sure he got a piece of the superhero fabric before it was gone. So he got a quick smock made from the pattern in the Sew Liberated  book.

This project took a lot less creativity, as I just followed the pattern to the letter. I made the bias binding out of the same yellow fabric (it never ceases to amaze me how far 2m of something can go) as Andrew's bag lining, and whipped this up in a night. It s a little big right now, but I figure he'll grow into it.

This was a really quick and easy sew - it took me a few hours one night. I felt a little odd when I was dropping off his school supplies the day before he went to school, because all the other kids just had old dad shirts cut short. But Aaron is not the kind of kid to care about that kind of thing, so I think he will enjoy it anyway. And if he doesn't, I can always bring it home and cut up one of Dave's shirts so he "matches" all his friends. Sigh.

So, now both my big boys are off to school all day, 5 days a week. So far we're enjoying the quiet, but we're glad to see them by the end of the day. Here's a parting shot of Aaron's first day on the bus, including our awesome bus drivier:

A Crafternoon and A Kitty Shirt

I had a lovely crafternoon with my friend Valerie , who is a knitter, yesterday. She gave me a knitting lesson and I gave her some advice on a lovely fall quilt she is putting together.  She taught me how to make a skien of wool into a ball.

This is the lovely, chunky wool I'm using for hats for Aaron and Owen:

Valerie also taught me how to make an i-cord and knit on the front and back of a stitch, so I can knit this little hat .

I'm almost done Emma's little kitty hat. I have about 2 inches left to knit, then I just need to stitch the top together. Emma loves it and she's super excited to get it. I have had some trouble with this hat - it is supposed to have a regular seed-ish type pattern, but I've had trouble keeping track of the rows all the time, so its not quite perfect. I may have also added or lost some stitches here and there. Such is learning to knit with small kids around.

I also discovered that Emma is at that age where I can no longer keep her on my lap while I'm reading blogs without consequences. I was reading wee wonderfuls and Emma saw the kitty shirt Hilary made for her daughter.

Emma immediately wanted a kitty shirt, too. I had just picked up some fabric pastels, so I could actually make her a kitty shirt.

 Its not pink and sparkly, but it is pink - with brown and red spots, as requested by my customer.

Its not perfect, but Emma loves it. You can tell, because it was in the laundry about 2 hours after I finished it. Fun times, these days at home.

Progress Report: Fab Little Quilt Swap and UFO

When we last saw this quilt, it was just a few green blocks and a bunch of blue fabric. But I have been chipping away bit by bit, cutting and pinning and pressing and cutting some more here and there throughout my days until I ended up with this:

After a few adjustments, I pieced it all together to get this lovely little quilt-let. I know, the hills don't match up as well as they did before it was stitched together, but I've decided that is part of the quilt's charm. It has finished up at about 12 x 18.

I went to baste it so I could quilt it, only to realize that I couldn't find any safety pins.

 That was when I remembered that I had used them all to baste the Threads Together UFO (UnFinishedObject) that has been rolled up, stuffed between my sewing desk and shelves for a good two or three months now. So, it is being quickly quilted in my very tight sewing space in order to harvest the pins. I'm not sure what I'm going to do when I go to quilt a big or heavy quilt. I suspect I'm going to have to set up at the kitchen table. In any case, this quilt is going to be quilted with my walking foot in organic lines.

Since I have aquired a new quilting helper who likes to randomly lunge forward and grab at the quilt, despite having neither the balance nor core muscles to catch himself,  they are going to be VERY organic lines.

The Fab Little Quilt will be free motion quilted in cloud-ish and sky-ish and grass-ish patterns. And yes, I'm sure those are technical quilting descriptions somewhere. Really.

There is much back-to-schooling around here, but as back-to-schooling takes a lot of energy I shall save that for another night.