Felicities!

i know, it's not friday, but i wanted to share some felicities anyway. happy things are good every day of the week!


felicity #1?
ohmygod, i'm so glad guild meetings are done for the month! i'm usually the opposite, sad that i have to wait another month before we meet again, but this month has been exhausting. i over-committed myself (surprise!) and have been frantically rushing for days now to get things done before the VMQG meeting, most especially my big Kona Modern Quilts challenge project. i'd actually hoped to have it finished by the FVMQG meeting on november 8th, and didn't even end up finishing it in time for yesterday's VMQG meeting, so that shows you how severely i underestimated the time it would take to quilt it! of course, it didn't help that i had three other challenge projects on the go as well.... so i'm very happy to have a chance to breathe today. i spent most of my afternoon sleeping, and it was wonderful!


felicity #2
thunderstorms! we so rarely get them out here on the west coast, and i miss them so much. we had some truly spectacular thunder and lightning about an hour ago, and it was a treat. HUGE thunder, it was fabulous!


felicity #3
tutorials! i know, i'm SO BEHIND with posting the tutorials for GotCraft? projects, but i've got one ready to go up tonight! two blog posts in one day, who'd've thought it?


felicity #4
VMQG's scrap bag challenge and swap! Felicity's been coordinating this, and i'm super excited! i didn't have time to dig through my stash and put a lot of thought into my selections, so i filled my ziplock with some tone-on-tone rainbow scraps that were towards the top of my scrap pile, and a large chunk of blue linen, cut from the skirt i nabbed off a sale rack in the mall last weekend, that i had out to use for felicity #5. if i'd had the time to plan out my scraps better, i probably would have ended up with the same, to be honest!

the baggie i grabbed was Paul's, and is full of yummy teal and blue prints that i can't wait to play with! in honour of Paul's amazing quilts, i'm pretty sure i'll be doing some improv piecing.


felicity #5
pincushions! VMQG is participating in huge a pincushion swap organized by Kansas City Quilt Guild, and last night was the deadline for bringing in our pincushions. i'd had an idea for my pincushion for ages, and i was DETERMINED to use some of the Liberty lawn scraps that i'd purchased from Ali of Very Berry Handmade's Folksy Shop, but i was so frazzled with everything else that i didn't think i'd get mine finished.

however, when i finally accepted that i wasn't going to finish my challenge project, you know, late yesterday afternoon, i stitched together a pincushion, and threw some stuffing in a bag with matching buttons. i finished my pincushion during the meeting (nice benefit of not being the secretary anymore!), so i still got to participate.

and i finally used some of my Liberty pieces!



it's a bit simpler than my original idea (which was eensy weensy paper piecing), but i've been assured that i don't always have to go overboard (thanks Holly!).



i used two of the vintage buttons that i found on my most recent trip back east, and though the paler liberty prints are totally not my usual colours, i'm happy with it. Krista helpfully pointed out that it's not actually for me... it was a good reminder! one of my favourite things about swaps is the excuse to make stuff that isn't my own style, and this is a great example of that. hopefully it finds a home with someone who loves it!

WIP Wednesday

i have very little to report for WIP Wednesday.

i haven't gotten much accomplished the last few weeks, fatigue has been seriously kicking my ass. if i'm not sleeping, i'm wishing i was sleeping! i'm trying to keep myself on a regular sleep schedule, which means that i'm often awake when my body/mind want to sleep, and i'm pretty useless in that state. i've been doing a lot of mindless pinning.....



i do have lots of WIPs at the moment, as usual. in fact, i have so many WIPs that i'm kind of scared to list them!


my big WIP at the moment is that i decided to join in on Katy of Monkey Do's Spinning Stars
(pdf) quilt-a-long. i know, i know, don't i already have enough projects on my plate? but it's so pretty!

there are some amazing fabric combinations in the flickr group, and Katy's quilt is going to be oh-so-fabulous in Field Study (with leopard print rings!), but i decided that the web like centre of the blocks obviously made this the perfect halloween quilt... right? i'm so excited!

i hauled out my halloween fabric stash, and so far i've cut all of the A and B pieces for 9 blocks. (sadly, it barely made a dent in my stash...) i'm hemming and hawing on the C pieces, because i'm using the same fabric for all of them, so it seems silly to cut 8 pieces for each star. doesn't it? it just seems like a lot of unnecessary seams! i'm trying to decide what i'm going to do instead.

i've only sewn together one block, so i need to get going on the rest of them. however, i HAVE been sewing with the scraps leftover after i did all of that cutting!



remember last year's halloween blocks? or what about the year before? yes, once again, we're doing a halloween block lotto at VMQG. yay! can you believe that this will be our 3rd year doing this? (our guild is growing up!)

today i sewed my scraps together and made blocks for this year's block lotto. the last two years i've had mine done really early to use as examples/demos at our September guild meeting, but this year i couldn't get it together in time for the meeting (blegh, fatigue). however, Felicity had an awesome example, a mini quilt top she made using the blocks she won last year!

this year's guidelines are the same as last year - make halloween themed blocks that are multiples of six inches finished. so that could be 6.5"x6.5", 12.5"x12.5", 6.5"x18.5", etc. two of my blocks are 12.5"x12.5" and four are 6.5"x6.5", but i think i'm going to keep one of them for myself, so that'll be 5 blocks for the lotto.


(those aren't two nearly identical fabrics, one of them is purple)




(again, the bottom two are actually using purple fabric)



i've also been obsessed with pincushions, and have about 10 in varying stages of completion. i'm making halloween pincushions just for the hell of it, as well as sewing themed ones for a craft fair that VMQG is participating in later this year. i work on them assembly line, which works well, but means that i don't feel very accomplished until they're all finished, and then i feel REALLY accomplished!

i did finish one of the halloween pincushions, because i wanted to test the pattern. i can't decide if i like it, i might change the dimensions a bit for the rest of them. it was unexpectedly really hard to sew the circle perfectly, not sure what that was about.


(halloween pompom trim!!! that's purple too, by the way)





in addition to that, VMQG is participating in a pincushion swap that the Kansas City Modern Quilt Guild is coordinating, so i spent one fatigue-addled day searching around the internet for pincushion tutorials and pinning them. if you're looking for a pincushion tutorial - here you go! there are 271 pins in that board, and the majority of them are linked to tutorials. i think i can safely say that i've seen all of the pincushions on all of the internet!




what about you? are you getting anything accomplished this month? do you have a favourite pincushion pattern or tutorial?



linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced and at The Needle And Thread Network!

stuff i've been working on....

oh hai.

it's WIP Wednesday. i haven't done one in foreeevvveer!


i haven't been posting much, as you can tell, and i haven't decided if i should post about not posting or not... hm, i'll keep thinking about that. i definitely have a backlog of finished quilts to post! in the meantime, here are pics of projects i've been working on the last few days.


if you know me at all, you must have known that i'd be obsessed with this fabric. i was just waiting for Spool of Thread get it in, and now i want to put typewriters on EVERYTHING I OWN. seriously.



what do you think it is? it's a secret till it's done!



i tried making pincushions today. i was so proud of myself that i actually knew where a glue gun was, but of course, it didn't really work anyway. glue guns never work, honestly. do you use glue guns? eugh. i prefer glue like goop, or silicone sealant, but my goop was all dried up and i have no idea where my silicone is.





when i come across neat mugs, i pick them up to make pincushions out of, and then i never get around to it. they'll be fun door prizes for guild., once i pick up some more glue!





i put some fancy rocks into the bottom of the mug to weigh it down. partly cause that orange one above is rather top heavy, and partly because i find that pincushions have a tendency to slide off the table right when you need them to stay. you could use anything, really, but i found those at the dollar store by my house.





magic!

i put something else at the bottom of the mug, below the rocks. magnets! it's handy when you drop pins, or if you have a hard time picking up tiny things.





i love this mug. isn't it cute? i bought it ages ago and it's been sitting on my counter ever since. my sister tried to tell me that it's an easter mug cause the little girl is collecting eggs, but upon further inspection, i think she's full of crap.





what do you think is in the little girl's basket? i think she's collecting mushrooms, not eggs. the yellow one has a stem! those are mushrooms, right?

little linen projects

i've been slightly obsessed with the linen that i used for the hoopla bunting pillow, and i just keep finding more and more projects to use it for.

so far i've made pincushions, a nametag for guild meetings, and a cute little fabric basket to sit next to my sewing machine and hold all my thread scraps. these projects were all with hoopla, because i'm totally loving it, and i still had lots of scraps left over after the bunting pillow.

i made the mugrug with some scraps from the pillow, just playing around. i used wonder under to adhere the little flags, and then freehand machine stitched. there's batting behind the linen, but it wasn't enough to stabilize it, with all of the stitching i did, so it turned out slightly wonky. i like it, but it's definitely wonky!



the next thing i made was the nametag. i used this paperpiecing pattern, and instead of creating a rainbow, i alternated prints with the linen. i machine embroidered my name onto the centre fabric, which is a twill, so a little bit heavier than standard cotton, but it handles the embroidery better. the pattern is actually in three pieces, because of the letters in the centre. because i was embroidering on it, i didn't want any seams in the centre, so i adapted the pattern a little bit. there was one seam that i had to handstitch, no biggie.



and then i added the back and a pin, and did a teensy bit of hand quilting. i made the back in two pieces, and left a hole in the centre back seam. after i'd sewn the back and front together and turned the nametag rightside out, i stitched that up by hand. it's so much easier to stitch up a straight seam than it is a round one, if i'd left the hole in the circle seam!



and then for some reason i decided to make pincushions - i don't really know why, because i don't usually use pincushions! but i have been using the purple one, and i've been finding it handy, so maybe that's about to change...



anyway, they're just simple pincushions, 4 patch on the front, and linen on the back, and i stitched them together like a biscornu, with 8 sides. i stuffed them, and then stitched on some vintage buttons - i love having an excuse to use part of my massive button collection! i like them.

and then i made a little fabric basket, inspired by lili at spool of thread. her mom made a bunch of these, to sit by the machines in their sewing lounge, and i totally fell in love with them! i really want to make more of them, and experiment a bit with size, etc.



but i got sidetracked onto another project with the linen - here's a sneak peek!



yum!!

the other day i went back and bought 3 more metres of the linen.
(i told you i was obsessed!)