No stash sunday this week.

Sorry.

I did ORDER some fabric today, however, so I should have a fantastic stash sunday in two or three weeks from now. I realized I had a blue deficit in my fabric stash. No longer, dear readers. No longer.

Now I have to go and sleep so I have the energy to finish the quilt I am selling to make the money to pay for the fabric I just bought. Ahem.

If you want to spy on other people's stashes, or display some of your own stash, feel free to pop by quarter of an inch and see who is playing along this week.

And the Winners Are . . .

All right. As my regular readers know, I am all about high tech and using the easiest method possible around here. So I did this the scientific way:





Yes, I harassed Dave at the end of a long work week (Sunday night is his Friday night) and made him pull names out of a bowl for me.

The winners are Digital Misfit and Mary. Fortunately, Mary requested the coasters and Digital Misfit requested the doll quilt, so I don't have to pick a number between one and one hundred or ask them to do virtual rock, paper, scissors or anything like that. Is there virtual rock, paper, scissors? I'm sure there is. If not, I'll bet my friend John will invent it one day.

So, I shall be contacting these ladies tomorrow, when I am less tired (Aaron has decided that 4:30 am is a great time to wake up for the day lately), and finishing my little projects and sending them out later this week!

Thanks so much for all the entries! I had fun reading them.

A sticky situation

So, it was snack time. Andrew had asked for bread with jam (his favorite thing these days), and I had explained to him that there was no bread right now, so he would have to have fruit instead. I started cutting up some apples, when I saw Andrew walk by with a jar of jam. I said, "Don't open that jar of jam."

I saw him put the jar of jam on the counter and walk away. About five minutes went by, and I was just about finished cutting apples, when two very sticky, smiling boys rounded the corner. We are talking jam on their faces, their hands, and Aaron's clothes and socks. Trying not to laugh, I wiped them up and went to see what had happened. There was grape jelly all over the living room. On the carpet, on library books, on the couch, on the table -- everywhere!

After Andrew finished his time out, we had this chat:

Me: You need to help me clean this up.
Andrew: But Aaron got the jam everywhere.
Me: But you opened the jar after Mom told you not to open it.
Andrew: Mom, you told me not to open the jam. This was jelly.

Stash Sunday

This is some reproduction fabric I bought when I first started quilting. I was caught off guard in my usual cerebral way by the fact that these are reproductions of fabrics that Jane Austen used in a quilt. It was cool that such a famous writer was also a quilter -- although I assume everyone of the female persuasion was a quilter -- it was just good sense (and sensibility) to be one. So, who doesn't want to channel Jane Austen from time to time?

The project I was thinking of when I bought this fabric is totally wrong -- it requires bigger prints to look good, I think, and was something I don't think I would make now. It also required a big border of the yellow floral, which I'm not super excited about anymore. I'm debating between making a log cabin quilt with the blue in the centre of each block and as a thin border, or making a snowball quilt with the blue as little squares between the blocks.

You can find more stash sunday posts or join yourself here .

Please feel free to enter my giveaway on the post below for some scrappy coasters or a doll quilt, while you're here.

Some Thank Yous and A Giveaway!

Extra hooray for Katy at Im a Ginger Monkey! I finally won a giveaway on the great destash giveaway day! I received these lovely squares from Domestic Anarchy . She was generous enough to ask me what colours I wanted, and cut squares according to my wishes. I said not too many pinks, since I'm the only girl around here, and I received this fun collection:
And this is my haul from the Feb. A Little Fabric, a Little Chocolate swap on Flikr from Meg. You should check out her amazing bags at her etsy store . The strawberry pincushion is super cute in real life, and the chocolate was delicious (it is very much in the past tense) and the fabrics are great! The one on the far end is a giant stylized bee print by Tula Pink. Fantastic.


And now, drum roll, please! This is my 500th post! Do you beleive it? I've been blogging since 2005. It is funny to go back -- my blog was a lot more wordy then. There is a post about my first trip to a fabric store to get ready for my beginner quilting class. Andrew was a toddler and Aaron was a twinkle in his dad's eye. I had not even heard of Flikr or html or swaps or had any experience with the blog community. I just took a leap in the dark and decided I wanted to write about my life. I think in my first year I had about 6 hits a week (all my friend Kris). And now, look at all the fun I'm having! I feel like I live almost as much of my life online as I do in real life these days.

So, in celebration, I am going to have a giveaway to show my appreciation to you, my dear readers and swap buddies. I will pick two winners from the comments below. You may pick from either a set of scrappy coasters something like these but in blues and greens, or a happy spring doll quilt. Let me know which you would like. I will leave this open until March 20th.

How can you win? Leave a comment and introduce yourself -- give me two interesting and one boring fact about yourself. And/or tell me one thing you enjoy about my blog. Hope to hear from you all soon!

This is today, March 11:

It is -40 with the windchill. That is frostbite to exposed skin in 10 min.

The one sign of spring is the bird tracks in the snow, although the birds are no where to be seen this morning.

Hope it is warmer wherever you are.

Stash Sunday!

I forgot about this last week! Ah well, things have been kind of hectic around here, between toddlers getting molars and me getting a cold and being overdramatic and it being March -- month of never ending winter around here. So here is some nice fabric to cheer us all up. This is most of my garden party stash. I have added a few brown and burgandy prints, so its all ready to make a happy, simple quilt. I love this fabric so much, that I had it in my happy fabric cannisters for a while, and I had to move it into one of my bins. I could not get any of my Christmas sewing done with it staring at me, calling "Sew us! Sew us!". I can't wait to work with this fabric.

New Dress!

Remember my complaint about not being able to wear dresses? Well, I am weaning Aaron, so I decided that it was time to bring on at least one dress. And it just happened that I saw this amazing dress on etsy, at Sarah Clemens' shop and happened to show it to Dave, and he just happened to be in an unpredictable mood and said, "Why don't you get it?".

After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I did get it. By the time I decided for sure (about 2 hrs later) it was sold, of course. Since it was hand made, I had to wait for the seller to receive a new bolt of green fabric, and sew me a new dress. But it arrived yesterday and it was SOO worth the wait.



I couldn't wait to take a photo -- in retrospect, I should have cleaned the mirror. Thanks for the blurry photo, two small boys! It will be a bit more ruffly after I hang it to dry to get the wrinkles out. Thanks, recently folded linen. Isn't it great?

Apparently everyone is feeling the pinch these days.

The knights seem to have downsized. Maybe they were finding upkeep on their other castle too difficult. This one is certainly easier to build up again after being smashed by a capricious toddler.

seasonal celebrations swap button

seasonal celebrations swap button
Originally uploaded by Inspired Mama

Joined up for this fun swap over at inspired mama's musings. You send your partner a spring tradition, spring handmade decoration and spring time recipe, plus whatever else you think might tickle their fancy. I am having so much fun coming up with ideas for this one.

It occurred to me yesterday that I never post to let people know about swaps that have sign ups open in case anyone else wants to join. Would anyone be interested in being tipped off about these things?

Change

So, we have been collecting change since we moved here. Or rather, to be more accurate, Dave has been collecting change. I'm that annoying person in line in front of you who pays .94 in dimes, nickels and pennies because I happen to know I have enough change in my wallet. Dave, on the other hand, has a broken wallet becuase he stores all his change, then puts it all in a cup when his wallet is full. I sort through the cup regularly and pilfer it for what I call "big change" -- twoonies, loonies and quarters (that is two dollar, one dollar and twenty-five cent pieces). The rest just sits.

Until now. Andrew and I spent a few days rolling change. Andrew loved this. He is a great quality control guy. He sorted out all the pennies, then sorted the American from the Canadian pennies. Then he rolled up lots of the change. This was great for helping him identify pennies, nickels and dimes, and also for starting to get the concept of sets -- eight sets of five makes a roll of nickels. Five sets of ten makes a roll of pennies. That kind of thing.

Anyway, do you know how much we had? Thirty three dollars. Yes, that is right. $33 in change. That means we accumulate about $8 of small change in our house every year. Crazy, eh?

Maybe we need more blocks . . .

Our toy box fell apart yesterday. This is what happens when boys climb in and out of it non-stop for three years. It has served its duty as a car, a motorcycle, a boat, and occasionally, a toy box.This of course, meant that Andrew needed to dismantle the toy box and integrate it into his latest castle.
Seriously, Andrew now uses up every block in the house and is searching for things to finish up his vision with. The other day he had all the toy bins emptied out to use to build walls for his fortress. Oh well, soon it will be spring, and we can pull out all the scrap lumber in the sand box and start gathering sticks.

Threads Together Quilting Bee - February

Here are my blocks for month one of the Threads Together Bee. I was sent four fabrics, and instructions to make 12.5 inch blocks with straight lines (ie no wonkiness) and fussy cutting.

I made a cutting error when I was cutting the fabric for the star block -- thus the two blue points. I had been trying to conserve fabric, so I thought I would cut one five inch strip, then cut down the 4 1/2 inch square out of the top and cut six 2.5 inch squares out of the bottom half of the same strip. But then I went off and broke up a fight between Andrew and Aaron. And when I came back, I thought I was cutting the other set of pieces needed for the block (four 4.5 by 2.5 rectangles) and so I cut the wrong size of strip and didn't have enough fabric left for all the squares. I am so daft some days. But I like the improvised results in the end. I do prefer the first block to the second, partially just becuase I'm not a big fan of pink.

The funny thing about these blocks is that I've borrowed the entire Season Two of Project Runway from my friend, and so as I was making these blocks, my overactive imagination was kicking into play. I was imagining the judges tearing me apart, and me getting eliminated from the quilting bee. Silly, I know. In the end, I was pretty happy with how they worked out, and I hope Jennycakes likes them.

Done with Bloglines

So, for the last six months or so, I have been following all my blogs via Bloglines. In case you are not familliar with it, Bloglines basically follows your blogs for you. You subscribe to a blog on it and when you log in, it highlights all the blogs that have new posts. When you check them, you just see the post, not the header or the sidebar information. For a while I thought this was really cool, becuase I didn't have to click through a bunch of sites with no new posts to find out who had written something new.

But as time goes by and I sub to new blogs, I've discovered a few things. First, without all the extra visual imput, I can't keep which blog I'm reading straight. And I can't remember which new blog is about what topic. This is all part of being a visual-spatial person, I think. I remember people by associating their names with their faces and how they move. I remember blogs not by their name but by their visual presentation.

Second, I comment less. You have to click through to the blog to comment, then click through to a comment form . . . and I just can't be bothered some days. So less comments.

Third, I miss visiting all the actual blog sites. I love seeing new things in the sidebars to click in to, or new headers.

So thats it. No more bloglines for me.

Sunday Stash -- I Spy Edition

A lot of these are 6 or 10 inch squares bought in paks from various online fabric stores. But quite a few are fat quarters or half yards to fussy cut. About 2/3 of this is now cut into squares for my son's quilt. I keep having all these ideas of ways to make it fancy, but I really think that is just me complicating things -- a simple one patch quilt is going to be just fine.

Child Labour -- the good kind

So, I got tired of stopping every 5 min. to break up fights while I was trying to make supper. My alternative plan: enlist the troops in cooking activities. This is sometimes easier said than done with a 4 and 2 year old. But yesterday, I put the lads on carrot duty.



It took about 45 min. to peel these carrots, and I cleaned up peelings for 10 min after that. But I also had time to make apple crisp between fishing Aaron out of the sink and encouraging Andrew, and we listened to music instead of screaming.

The day before, I let them knead their own loaves of bread, too. Aaron's got confiscated due to excessive eating, but Andrew's worked out just fine. He was so excited to cut into it for breakfast the next morning. (forgot to take a post-baking photo, sorry)

Not quite so little any more

This is my two year old. Yes, in January Aaron turned two. There was so much else happening that I didn't even get a chance to blog about it! And look how big he is getting. Notice the new, slim sillouette he is sporting? That is the I'm-in-underwear-now look. Yes. Last week, Aaron decided that he was done with diapers. Every time I would put one on him, he would pull off his pants and diaper. So I put him in underwear. And a week later, he is almost always dry.

And the haircut? We were loving Aaron's long, shaggy look. It was especially cute on dry days when the static would make it fly around his head, and he would look a little like a blonde, devilish dandilion. Until one day when Andrew was at playschool. We came home and Aaron said, "My hair static-y. Get scissors. Cut my hair." So we did.

And that was the end of my little baby. Suddenly, he's a boy.

So, in between the two sister Peas and Carrots quilts, I have been doing a bunch of little projects to just get a breather. First, I made these coasters for my friend Sharon. These were actually for Christmas, but because she had family over at Christmas and then I went on holidays before they had a free moments, I just gave them to her a few weeks ago.
These were a fun way to use scraps. I cut a big piece of muslin -- about 11 inches by 37 inches, and then pieced these scraps on top. That way I could use little strips and about an 1/8th of an inch seam allowance. If you have the leftovers from cutting metre or half metres, you can just use all strips and it goes really fast. When I didn't have a full 37", I ironed over the edges of the pieces and just stitched them right next to each other, then zig-zagged over the top.

The I cut the big piece into 8 - 4 1/2 by 10 1/2 " strips and followed the instructions in Last Minute Patchwork and Qulting. These were really fun and satisfying.

Next up, a doll quilt for Aaron. He always tries to steal Andrew's, so I thought he might like one of his own. I used my own scraps plus a scrap pack from Starlit Nest (thats where all the dogs and fish came from). I just did improvisational log cabins. This is about 15 x 20.

This is something I've been wanting to do for a long time. I love having my coffee from a bodum -- it comes out all fresh and frothy and delicious. Unfortunately, if you don't pour and drink it five seconds after its done percolating, it is also cold.

I had seen these awesome coffee pot warmers over at jcasa . Hers are made out of vintage fabric scraps, and have two or three buttons and some elastic loops to keep them on the coffee pot. I really wanted to make myself one like that, but I was getting frustrated becuase I didn't really have the time to do something so fiddly for a while, and my coffee was still cold. For a while I resorted to using my electric coffee maker, but it just wasn't the same.

Then, I saw some cute little egg cozies made out of felted sweaters (can't find them now, sorry) and that led to my aha! moment:

This was much faster. The blue is that felted sweater I've been making a thousand different things from, and the button and ric-rac are from swaps. All I did was cut the felt to fit my coffee pot and fold over a bit and snip a button hole in it. Then I stitched on the button and ric rac, and zig-zagged over the button hole. Unfortuantely, I thought that when I was clipping the corner on the right I was straightening the fabric, but I was actually making it crooked. Now that missing 5 mm is going to bother me every time I look at it. Oh well.

The best thing about my coffee pot's new sweater is that it is thick wool and keeps the coffee hot. The first cup is always piping hot now, and the second cup stays warm for 40 min or so. I am in coffee heaven.

Stash Sunday

As I mentioned, I was rifling through my stash to try to find a yellow or green that would co-ordinate with my Peas and Carrots quilt. And here's what I found:

Sister quilt top finished!

Well, this one was a bit of an adventure. As I mentioned before, due to a cutting goof up, I ended up with less choice in the border fabric for this one. Also, I don't know what I was thinking when I chose these fabrics for the border. There was a blue and green stripe, and a blue pez that would have looked fantastic with this quilt. But I bought this quilt when I was still really learning about how quilting "worked", if you know what I mean. Like, I knew how it worked, but I didn't yet understand how the borders and blocks interacted in the quilt as a totality. I think I'm getting a bit better at this -- we'll see when I get on to my next few quilts, won't we?

Anyway, this was my first try at finding a set up for the border. You might want to find some sunglasses before you scroll any further.


So, I decided that was a bit too bright and competed with the blocks too much, while not actually containing all the colour in the stars. So I ditched the idea of using a yellow or blue, and went back to the pile of scraps I had left from the quilt. Among it, I found this green daisy fabric. I had no used it originally because there was only 6 1/4 inches left and I needed 6 1/2 inch squares. But when I realized that my border on the first quilt did not fit quite exactly with the blocks anyway after all my squaring of blocks, I decided to use it anyway. Then I found this panel I had bought with the fabric, plus a few of my own 1/4 yrds, with the plan to make myself a little quilt with the same fabric. So I came up with this, which I like much better:

I wanted this quilt to be a bit softer and calmer than Marie's quilt, as Beatrice is slightly less dramatic and more cerebral in nature. And I think is succeeds nicely.

Now to quilt.