Aren't I a busy bee?

When the weather is cold, your local coffee shop has just shut down, the wind is too bitter to take your children out and the roads are too icy to drive to your friends' house, what do you do to keep your spirits up? Sew, of course. I have been on a bit of a rampage in the last couple of weeks. The boys have discovered that they can happily coexist in the basement, making up imagination games and riding and "fixing" bikes lately. Aside from setting up tents and having all my fabric bins emptied out everywhere (okay, I admit the latter is a bit of a high price), I have had relative peace to sew. I am surprised my little Singer isn't smoking, its been so busy.
First off, I finished Beatrice's quilt. This is the partner to Marie's quilt that I finished in December. While Marie is a hot headed and dramatic little girl, Beatrice is quite cerebral - quite brilliant in fact. So I used a more subdued border for her quilt -- blues and greens instead of the hot reds and oranges. Oddly enough, when I was finished randomly throwing the blocks together, I ended up with a bunch that looked more "bluey" and a bunch that looked more "orangey" quite by accident (mostly because I got caught up in my thoughts and mis-cut the red fabric for the stars and had to cut more blue fabric to compensate . . .but that is all part of the creative process, right? Well, for me it is.). This worked well with my original thought for the quilts. So, finally, about a year after starting these things by cutting and piecing 480 half-square triangles, I have Bea's quilt finished! I really should stop doing 100 small sewing projects to every one quilt I make.

Here it is all folded up and ready to go.

Next, I had some sewing to do for my spring swap. I will not reveal precisely what is in this package, except that I added some apparently illegal gummi bears to it. Yes, thats right. You can not export gummi bears or any other packaged food to the United States, by order of the FDA. Sorry FDA. I hope the Canadian made gummis I sent to Inspired Mama don't spread mild mannered politeness throughout the US. I forgot to take photos of any of the contents of this package, so I shall send you to photos of them later, when my partner receives them.

Then there were the giveaway coasters. I quite like how they turned out -- I am especially partial to the dark brown / green side. But hopefully Mary will like both sides:

While I was at it, I quilted my own set of coasters that has been sitting in the basement half-constructed for three months now. They ended up being strip pieced in the midst of a bit of personal tragedy, so I had to put them aside for a bit. It was weird to finish them, and I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to keep them. We shall see.

And then I had my doll quilt for the giveaway to make. I love the look of coin quilts, but decided I wouldn't do one until I had actual scraps to use. This little one was a good experience, and I'm sure I'll do more of these later. They are fairly quick and I think this one is pretty:
I'm especially happy with the quilting. I just did random wonky lines with my walking foot. I will definitely do that again. It was quick and the result is cute.

After I finished the machine part of the binding for this quilt (the first cut I've made in my 1 m of this wonderful yellow chadalier fabric by Tina Givens), I gave my machine a thorough cleaning and oiling and let it have a day of rest.