Finished Blocks + Pillow

I did it! I achieved my goal of finishing the rest of my scrappy trip blocks yesterday! I was super tired by the end of it, though. Mostly because I decided to do Insanity (again- I did it once last summer) and as this is my first week, I am SO SORE. But! I can still keep up and even do almost as many push-ups as the super fit people in the videos, so I'm pretty please with myself :) But that made for really sore arms during my sewing fest. My obsession was such that I gritted my teeth through the pain and now I have 36 pretty, scrappy blocks. Please excuse the crappy phone picture. I didn't remember to get out my nice camera while I had the blocks all laid out... and I really don't want to move the furniture and do it again!

I can't wait to get it all sewn together! Then I just have to put together some sort of backing and quilt! Question: if you were me, what color thread would you use for quilting? I feel like white would stick out too much, but there are so many colors, I just can't decide. There is more blue than anything else, probably, so I was thinking maybe a lighter blue. Or light grey, maybe? Hmmm. Help??

Also! In between the scrappy madness, I managed to finish another Sister's Ten pillow:

For this one, I just did straight line quilting. I couldn't decide what else to do and I didn't want the quilting to distract too much from the block itself, which I am really quite fond of. I love it so much! I need to redecorate my living room to match my new pillows, I think.

Linking up to Finish it Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts!

A Little Break...

I took a little break from the scrappy trip madness today to make this:

I turned one of my Sister's Ten BOM blocks into a pretty little pillow :) I decided to try a loopy FMQ pattern on this one. It's a bit inconsistent as far as spacing goes. But that's what practice is for, right? I really love how it turned out! I had put these blocks away because I could decide what color to use as borders for the pillows... I thought I would use a neutral, but I didn't like any of the ones I held up to the block, so into a bin they went to wait. Then today I decided I needed a little break from scrappy tripping- I'm up to 11 blocks! And now I need to cut more strips. Which I really didn't feel like doing. It was quite by chance that I settled on this green for the borders. It was laying on my cutting table waiting to have a strip cut from it for my scrappy trip and they just looked so perfect together! I cut a couple more strips and a little while later I had a pretty finished pillow. The back is a simple envelop closure in the same green as the border. The other block is waiting to be quilted and will join its sister as a pillow hopefully this weekend. Yay!

I also finished my bee block for the month.

Isn't it pretty? I don't think I would have picked these colors, but I really love how it looks now that it's all together! It will be making its way to Virginia tomorrow morning :)

Okay. So I didn't achieve my goal for the week, which was to knock out all my BOM blocks. My scrappy trip quilt is still totally distracting me... and covering my sewing table! There is a fabric explosion in here and I really don't feel like cleaning it up to make a couple of blocks and then have to get it all out again. So I'm probably going to fall behind in the BOM department. But for my scrappy trip quilt... that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make!

Now I can't decide if I should finish my pillow this afternoon or make a few more scrappy trip blocks... Decisions.

Linking up to Finish it Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts!

Yay Finishes!

A week of finishes. All drawstring bags were made with this tutorial.

I had an extremely busy sewing week! Above is a little mosaic of everything I completed. From top to bottom, left to right: 1. Sister's Ten BOM February block; 2. Quilted shift boot cover; 3. Drawstring bag; 4. Skill Builder BOM "Mood" block; 5. Quilted Skill Builder BOM "Magnum" block; 6. Quilted Skill Builder BOM "Sound Wave" block; 7. Skill Builder BOM "Em Dash" block; 8. Drawstring bag for my dad; 9. Drawstring bag for my boss's birthday.

WOW. Seeing it all together makes me feel pretty proud. I got so much done this week! And this isn't even everything I did... I also completed all the blocks for my sister's Kitchen Window quilt and started sewing them together! Here's the next in the "to be sewn into rows" pile:

It's turning out so good! Just like I imagined it. And I was very careful with all the directional animals and cut them so that they would be facing the right direction for both vertical and horizontal windows. It's going to be fabulous! I wish I could stay home and work on this all day, but today is the last day at my part time job. It would be sad to miss it! I think I can at least get the top done this weekend so I'll post a nice picture of it when it's done :) My sister's birthday isn't until mid April, so this is going to be done super early!

Linking up to Finish it Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts! What a good week for finishes. Now to go look at all the other eye candy until work time!

Sleepy Morning

Good morning!

I don't know about you, but I don't feel very awake yet. There isn't really a good reason for this. By my calculations, I got about 8 hours of sleep. And I didn't even wake up because of nightmares like I did the night before last. Maybe it's the cold weather? It seems our annual week of winter has finally arrived in southern AZ and it's less than 40 degrees outside (I know, shocking!). It is set to freeze the next few nights, which probably means pipes bursting all over the city because we are never prepared for winter. Really. Two years ago we had a hard freeze and when I went to class in the morning, pipes had burst all over campus. There was a geyser of water outside the building I had class in that day. It was weird and kind of funny. Winter always takes us by surprise.

So what have I been working on? A bit of sewing, a bit of crochet. Well, maybe a bit more crochet than sewing. Although my crochet projects take less time than the sewing projects, so maybe it's about even. Anyway...

I finally finished some arm warmers for a friend for Christmas... Yes, I know. It's January. And I started these in November. For shaaaaame.

I also made myself a pretty scarf. I haven't woven in the ends yet, though, because I used a whole skein of yarn and it still doesn't feel long enough... now I'm debating whether I should be lazy and call it good or if I should just suck it up and go get another ball to make it the length I really want. Right now I'm leaning toward lazy because I feel sleepy. But I think I'll hold off on the decision making until I feel I've woken up properly.

What about sewing? Well, I did finish cutting strips for Mr. Hounds Tooth. But I won't bore you with more pictures of strips. I got distracted from Mr. Hounds Tooth by this:

This is the January block for the Sisters' Ten BOM over at Gen X Quilters. I don't know that I will follow along the whole year, but I had some time on my hands and a pretty fat quarter bundle of La Dee Dah, so I decided to take a break from cutting 2.5" strips. Since I only made one, I think this might be destined to become a pillow. But how nice will it look as a pillow?? I'm kind of excited about it. I'm also pretty pleased with the piecing. I'm getting much better with the accuracy thing :) 

But the most exciting thing I've done? I FINISHED A SKIRT. And it even FITS. 

I can't prove that it fits. Because no one was here when I needed to take pictures and I didn't want to mess with trying to set up a times and anyway... my hair is a mess and I haven't shaved in a couple of days because it's winter and my legs are hiding under jeans most of the time anyway and... Well. You get the idea. So you'll just have to trust me ;) I used some super cheap Joann fabric that I got on clearance. Because it was my first attempt at making clothes, I didn't want to spend a lot of money in case it all went horribly wrong. 

With a Christmas Amazon gift card from my sister, I bought a book called Sew What! Skirts by Francesca DenHartog. It's a nice little book that goes over the basics- how to measure yourself, how to make a variety of cuts and waistlines for skirts, how to add buttons and zippers, etc. I did an easy elastic waistline to start because I didn't want to attempt a zipper on my first ever skirt. That and I forgot to buy zippers. Next time I think I will use wider elastic (this is 3/4" elastic I actually bought for a costume a long time ago and forgot about- it tends to roll easily) and add more flare to the skirt. But I'm still so pleased with the results! It was so much easier than I thought it would be. Definitely a good introduction to garment making, which is something I would love to do more of in the future. I already bought a couple of yards of blue and white gingham that I plan to use on a simple dress. Maybe I'll start working on that this weekend :)

I'm feeling a little more lively now. Time to cut the coffee umbilical cord and face the day, I suppose.

Linking up to Finish it Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts!