look at me!

i'm feeling pretty proud of myself today. not only did i not leave the iron craft challenge until the very last minute, i actually started it on monday! and i finished it last night! yay!



the challenge this week was "Fat Tuesday in the Quarter", which was a play on Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras and the French Quarter of New Orleans. we were challenged to make something that used as close to a fat quarter of fabric as possible.

admittedly, i did not use that much fabric. i intended to make multiples of these, which would have brought me up to the requirement, but my sewing machine's tension issues and my patience level was not conducive to that. maybe i'll edit this later with another one - we'll see!



i found the pattern for this in the newest issue of Stitch magazine, though i changed it up a bit. (of course!) after i basted the hexies and pentagons, i decided that i was done with hand sewing, and that i wanted to try machine sewing them together.



that would have been fine, if my sewing machine didn't decide that it hated satin stitch! however, i persevered, and though i went through ridiculous amounts of thread, i succeeded. half of my pieces were just basted to the interfacing, because it wasn't iron on, but i saw my error, and used wonder under to fuse the fabric and interfacing together after that. however, i did not go back and fuse the ones that i'd already basted - i totally should have.



so it turned out a little bit wonky. but wonky is charming, right?



i used the teal linen that i'm obsessed with, and several charm squares of Moda's Oliver and S Modern Workshop.

i like it. i want to make the larger sizes too.


and speaking of Stitch mag, OMG i LOVE this magazine. admittedly, i'm a big Interweave fan anyway, but every issue of this magazine has been amazing. it doesn't come out super often (which makes it hard to find!), and it's kind of pricey, like a lot of magazines now, but it is soooo worth it! there are always a ton of projects that i want to do, and considering that i often buy books that might have 3 or 4 projects that i really really love in them, a magazine that has at least that many projects that i love is totally worth it. and rather than having all of their projects on one theme, like a book would be, there is so much variety. yet they manage to not just be a mishmash, even with the variety - it's beautifully curated.

a few of my favourite projects from this issue -