Back to Swooning... again!

Yup, I pulled my poor, neglected swoon blocks out of their box for a little love. I managed to finish this guy up today:

I just finished it up before work over a cup of coffee :) You can just see in the top of the picture the pieces cut and ready to go for the next one! Hoping to whip that up this weekend, too. And maybe, MAYBE get the fabric cut for the last two blocks.

What are you working on this weekend? Linking up to Sewjo Saturday with Kim at My Go-Go Life!

Finished Purse!

I have been a project-finishing MACHINE. Seriously. Last weekend, I made a purse! And I have another quilt top to show you. But it will have to wait until there's enough daylight for pictures :)

But look! Purse!

It's the accordion bag pattern from Sew Sweetness that I got in my Pattern Parcel. Except instead of making the front flap accordion-like, I made it a quilt as you go panel. First time I've ever done QAYG, but I really love the results!

I used some fun, happy dots for the inside.

My old bag was looking so sad. I'm so glad I finally took the time to make a new one :)

Linking up to TGIFF, hosted this week at Devoted Quilter!

Scrappy Chevrons Top- Finished!

As promised, a big finish! Okay, it could be bigger. I just haven't mustered the courage to baste this gigantic monster, so it isn't quilted. But still! This has been in progress so long, it still feels like a huge accomplishment!

Okay, so we had like 10 minutes to do this before Mario had to go to work. And it's huge and Mario wasn't tall enough to hold the thing up without it touching the ground...

So we moved so he could stand on the circle of bricks around the tree. Didn't help as much as we'd hoped! But that's okay. You get the idea, right?

This quilt is for my sister. It has been a loooong time coming! Hopefully she can wait a couple more weeks while I get the quilting question figured out ;)

This was probably my favorite shot of the day. After Mario's arms got tired and we were about to go back inside, I snapped one more. Cute, right? <3

And in case you were wondering how big it is... here is the phone picture I snapped right after sewing and pressing the last seam. Please excuse the mess! We have still not finished unpacking and setting things up and the bedroom is probably the worst! There is plenty of drapage over each side of the bed. I think my sister will be pleased.

Linking up to TGIFF, hosted this week by Lorna of Sew Fresh Quilts!

A New WiP

Yes, I have started a new quilt. It's been a while, huh?? I have been a little more focused on small projects lately it seems.

This one is for Mario, my wonderful boyfriend who has waited ever so patiently for me to finally make him a quilt. It has taken me this long to get around to it because I just couldn't decide on a pattern! I wanted to do something amazing and complicated and time consuming. Because you know, Mario is special. But I finally decided I should just bring him in on the decision.

And as it turns out, Mario loves churn dashes! Who knew, right? He especially loves them when they're huge. So that's what I'm doing. Enormous 24" blocks! They're marvelously fast.

Sorry for the dark crappy pictures! I have not been doing well with remembering to take pictures before work in the morning... The red is really much better than that! It's Kona Poppy. And the background is Kona Meringue, just in case you were wondering ;)

This can was the color inspiration. We ordered this beer at a local pizza place and Mario thought it looked awesome. So naturally I said we could turn it into a quilt! So we found some at Total Wine to help with the fabric choosing. Yes, it is empty now. I wanted to get a picture before we actually drank the beer, but there was Top Gear to watch and it really couldn't wait. You understand, right?

I currently have 7 of 12 blocks. There is every possibility that this will be done before his birthday in late May! EXCITEMENT.

Linking up to WiP Wednesday with Lee at Freshly Pieced!

New Work Pouch

Goooood evening!

You may remember that once long ago I made myself a little pouch to carry around a couple of essentials with me while I'm at work. You know, like my work phone, and a tube of chapstick. But! I got a new phone. And once I put a case on it, my little elephant pouch was just too small.

So what was a girl to do? Make a shiny new elephant pouch, of course!!

Adorable, no?

I used a tiny elephant print for the outside. Not sure what it's called, but I really love it! The blue is some quilter's linen. I love the texture. And the inside is Joel Dewberry. I love a lot of his prints for the insides of pouches and purses! And I finished it off with a little strap made of the purple ombre from Simply Color.

This fits my new phone and my work phone comfortably along with all my crazy pens. Perfect!

I'll have a very big and exciting finish to share with you later this week! :D What have you been working on?

Linking up to Show and Tell Tuesday with Randi!

Making Clothes

Lately I have been on a real clothes making kick. I need new clothes but I have so much fabric lying around that I feel slightly guilty going out and spending money on them. I also really want to improve my garment making skills, so I have been trying my best to sew more clothes for myself.

First up is a simple infinity scarf (which is actually for my sister). I'm sorry there are no pictures of them on me! I was supposed to rope Mario into a photo shoot last weekend, but we got too busy.

She picked out the fabric, which is a medium weight pretty floral knit. It's nice and soft and not too hot. I doubt she can use it outside in these parts by this time of year, but here in the desert we have a tendency to over compensate for the hot temps outside by cranking up the AC way too much. So she'll still get some use out of it this year, I think!

Next up: a shirt.

For this one I used the Boat Neck pattern by Melly Sews. I downloaded it what it was still free, so not sure what the pattern looks like now. It was really easy to throw together and it's really comfy. I used another soft stretchy knit that I found at the local SAS. It wasn't too bad to sew with, but it was definitely curlier than the scarf fabric.

And last: a tank top.

This one I didn't use a pattern. Just traced the outline of a tank I already had with a similar amount of stretch. You can see the arm holes are rather inexpertly finished. I had bias bound one of them, but I messed up a bit and it looked awkward... then in ripping out the stitches for that, I ripped the binding in an irreparable way. Then I didn't have enough fabric left to make a new strip, so I just folded the edges under and zig zagged and called it a day. For a first tank top, it's not too bad, though! I wish the stripe was more centered in the collar, but I wasn't willing to attack it with a seam ripper after what happened to the arm hole. So I called it good.

I recently bought the Perfect Pattern Parcel, so I'm definitely planning on making more clothes! Have you heard of this? It's a package with 5 awesome sewing patterns and you get to name your price for it! You can even decide how the money is split between the designers, the creators of Perfect Pattern Parcel, and charity. Pretty fantastic idea, don't you think? This is a limited time deal, though, just 9 days left!

Do you have any clothing patterns that are simple and comfy and good for everyday? That's what I'm going for to start and would love any ideas! Thanks :)

Best Mail Week!

This has been a fabulous week for happy mail.

First, I got my swap spoils! I signed up for a Skinny Pinny swap on Flickr last month. It has been really fun looking through all the finished swap presents! Everyone has such different taste, so there is a lot of variety in there.

Anyway, on to the good stuff, here is what I got!

Isn't it awesome?? Not pictured... is a bag of Skittles. It was too delicious to save for picture time. I love my new pincushion. It's got a nice heft to it and look how pretty! Erica really got me dead on. I love a good rainbow! And the extra little fabric pieces! SO thoughtful. Thank you, Erica!

For my partner (who was not Erica), I had a little trouble. I couldn't find any Flickr accounts or blogs to stalk, so I had only the short description in the original swap email to go on, which was a love of vintage fabrics and brights. I don't have really anything that can be construed as vintage, so I went with bright. And cute animals. Because everyone likes cute animals, right??

I didn't get a picture of the extra stuff I sent along, which included a mini charm pack and a note :) I'm always a little wary of sending food, probably because I live in Tucson and I have a fear of everything melting (which is silly! Even if the Skittles melted, they still would have been in the package and delicious!). But hopefully she likes it!

So on to my other mail...

I *may* have gone a little crazy during an awesome sale at Fabric.com. Maybe. This may be ahem 13 yards of fabric. But! In my defense! The most I paid was $4.50/yard! How could I not go crazy??

Seriously, though, this was an awesome mail week!

Fierce Quilters Progress

Yes, it's true! I have finally made some real progress on Allison's quilt. She wanted a sampler style quilt with geometric blocks in jewel tones.

Here is my contribution:

I'm really not sure how I feel about the block on the top right, but I didn't want the fabric to be wasted so I'm sending it on. If it doesn't end up fitting in, it can always go back to Allison as an extra or something!

The diamond block on the bottom was whipped up by me using Quilt Assistant. I'm starting to get the hang of the program, I think. But it'll be a while before I'm designing anything complicated, for sure! It's just 6 simple diamond blocks sewn together. I really wanted the diamond part to be a continuous piece of fabric, so paper piecing was the way to go. I really love how it turned out!

Here are all the current blocks all together:

Aren't they fun?? They will be moving along to Audrey as soon as I can get to the post office!

Oh, and because I keep talking about my new house and don't have any pictures, here you go:

Just the outside for now, but at least it's something!

Also, if you're interested, I'm sharing a little tutorial and a couple of designs for scrappy plus blocks over on the Stash Bee blog this month. Go check it out if you're interested! Here are my samples for the month:

I'm so excited to see what everyone makes!

Hope your week is off to a good start :) Mine definitely is!