Rail Fence Quilt

So, I got this far on the back of my rail fence quilt, and decided that this has to be its own quilt. First, this is too stunning to be on the back of anything else. Second, two sides of different strips sets would be majorly overstimulating. I do love this quilt top, though, and I'm going to sew it together just like this:

Fun enough, the only thing I picked was which side I was going to add new strips onto. Even this final layout was just how they ended up on the floor after being laid out with very little thought. I love the mixture of chance and intuition that made this quilt top. It is going to be very fun to finish later this year.

In the mean time, once I had decided not to use this as the back of my rail fence quilt, I realized that actually the Nicey Jane print I had bought meters of for another plan that fell through would work perfectly with the blues in the Meadowsweet prints on the front of the quilt, and provide a nice calm balance to the front:

See , isn't that better? I think so too. I'm in the middle of quilting this in organic squiggles that run the opposite direction of each strip set. So far it is a really effective way to pulling all the fabric together in the quilt. The quilted squares look much more finished. I'm using a light pink thread I already had, which strangely enough, seemed to work with the quilt and add something it needed as well.

I'm really excited to finish this quilt. I want to be done everything but the binding before we go to Family Camp at a local Bible Camp next week. I figure that binding the quilt will be a fun, manageable take-along project. I'm a little hesitant, since we can only afford to tent and make our own food, which will be a bit of a hassle, but lots of the other families with kids our age from church are going, so the boys should have fun and be fairly easy to manage. Its a good way for me to keep building a new support system here, and it should be fun even if I'm making our food and tenting. Another family we know is doing the same thing so I think we're going to divy up meals and take turns feeding each other's families.

In any case, I'm excited to have this quilt for me. Andrew was giving me a lecture today about how I'm not allowed to give anymore quilts away. "You give all your best quilts away, Mom. No more swaps, and no more giving quilts away." I was thinking about how I do tend to give away my best both in quilts, energy, time and ideas. In the tradition I grew up in that meant I was really spiritual. Sometimes I think it just means I de-value myself and don't think I deserve to enjoy the fruits of my own labour.

Can you tell I've been the only adult in the house for two days now? I'm totally rambling. I promise I'll be more pithy (as my Dad used to like to say) next time.

The Girl on a Swing Dress

 Remember how I mentioned that I had been doing some clothes sewing? Here is one of my favorite results: the Girl on a Swing dress. My local quilt / fabric store had some of this cute fabric from the Sherbert Pips line in stock, and I decided it was perfect to make a little something for Emma.

 Although she didn't feel like posing when I was taking the photos, she loves this dress once you get it on her. This fabric is really light weight for the summer and it is loose and cozy. One of my favorite features (if I do say so myself) is the red bias tape I made for the neckline and sleeves - it makes it look like a Chineese dress.

Also, the sweet polka dotted pocket and ric-rak trim are pretty cute, too. It goes perfectly with these leggings, which cover Emma's knees. This is essential these days. After all, when you're just learning to run and you have two big brothers to keep up with, you fall and scrape your knees. All the time.

Just a sidenote: U2 is playing Montreal tonight. I'm not there because Dave is in Rome, and I would have wanted to go with him, but I can hear them from my house. They are at the Hippodrome, which is not too far from me (maybe a 10 - 15 min. drive depending on traffic). I heard the rumbling bass and high tenor singing when I came into the kitchen after putting the kids to bed and thought, "No, it can't be." But then they played something with the famous guitar reverb (possibly "Where the Streets Have No Name") and I knew it was them. It is just on the edge of hearing, so I can only sort of make out what songs they are playing, but it is pretty cool none the less. And I can definitely hear the crowd cheering.

Quick Update!

Hello, everyone! Thanks so much for all the comments about my Grandma. The funeral was really good and I was glad I went. She was 93, had outlived all her friends, and was fading to the point where she could not remember anyone, and did not even remember how to knit anymore. She had such a full life, and was such a firecracker, that I am sure she is happier now.

The trip was good; I got to catch up with my brother, sister and neice, who I drove up with. I saw my cousin who I haven't seen in years and got to know my aunt. I felt sad that my family wasn't closer, but distance and strong personalities meant that I didn't know my grandmother as well as I might have otherwise.

Now I'm on my second Odessey - 10 days without my husband. He's gone to Rome to do a research trip, lucky duck. I'm sure he'll have tons of amazing architecture and mosaic photos to inspire me when he comes back.

The mermaids are awesome, and deserve to be their own quilt, so I picked a different (and totally obvious, now that I think of it) backing for the rail fence quilt. It is rambling its way through the sewing machine as we speak (well, not right this second while I'm typing). Excited to show it to you soon.

 This quilt back is coming together really quickly. I love the juxtaposition of the yellows / oranges with the purples and browns. The concept is that the strips will look like coral or seaweed and bubbles waving in the ocean currents, with the fish and sea creatures and swimmers peeking through the vegetation.

Wether it "works" or not, I love the colours and it will be a fun quilt back. Or maybe this will be the front . .?

My grandmother died a two days ago, and I found out yesterday morning. We were not super close, but I am going to the funeral. I'm taking a bus to Ottawa, then driving up with my brother Rob and sister Kim. Its 9ish hours across Northern Ontario to New Liskeard. I kind of feel like I'm about to enter the plot of a Can lit novel or road trip movie . . . wish me luck.

Now that I have some time to sew again . . .

I have a few things on my "to sew" list. Lately, I've been making clothes for me and Emma, simply so I could have some summer clothes - I think I still need to blog about some of them. In any case, I like sewing clothes, but I don't find it as creatively satisfying as quilting. There is a lot more freedom to mess around in quilting, and not so much anxiety about wether its going to look good in the end. A quilt can always be balled up and flipped over and otherwise manipulated to show off its best points, or just used for picnics and the beach if its really terrible. Clothes -- not so much. They either fit or they don't. They look good and you want to wear them every day, or you want to cut them up and reuse the fabric for patchwork. I like making clothes because its fun and I can get exactly what I want, but its not play for me, like quilting is.

In any case, I wanted to finish up a few quilts that I've had in process for a while now, as unfinished quilts always weigh on my mind. I'm not one of those people who likes to have fifteen or twenty projects laying around. That just discourages me and makes me want to start a new hobby. One or two is okay, but too many and I just get frustrated.

So, my first work in progress is these Meadowsweet blocks. Remember way back in January of last year when I was strip peicing these? I bought the fabric for me, then ended up using a lot of the blocks in this baby quilt because Olivia was very premature and in ICU and I wanted to send some comfort to her parents right away. But the other half of the blocks, the half I kept for me, sat for a long time. You see, I used the blocks that balanced well in Olivia's quilt, and kept the ones that weren't quite doing it for me. I always planned to either make two more sets of blocks (6 more total) and make a bigger quilt, or cut the blocks up and stitch them back together again in some fancy way that would make them more interesting. The idea of making more blocks was leaving me feeling frustrated, and the idea of cutting them up and finding a way to sew them back together again felt too exhausting right now, so instead I came up with a third option. This:

I decided, on laying the blocks out again that the problem was the busy-ness of the quilt. There was a lot of colour and pattern and not much to ground it or hem it in. Olivia's quilt was stablized by the owl fabric (I put it all in her quilt and the scraps are in Aaron's quilt) and the umber Kaffe dots, but I didn't have any of either of those fabrics left to work with. I didn't want to interupt the rail fence pattern, but I did want a fast way to make it come together, without putting a ton more energy into this quilt. I didn't want it square, but it felt too long and skinny as a rectangle. So I added these two 6" brown strips along the edges. I am planning to bind this quilt in these same fabrics, thus creating a frame of brown to hold all the riot of colours and patterns together.

While I didn't want to do any more work on the front of the quilt, I don't have a big piece of fabric that matches with the front to put on the back. But I have a LOT of fabric in the same general colours as this quilt, as I was planning to do a really cool quilt with lots of Mendiccino fabric in it, and so I'd bought a fair stack of fat quarters as well as some other stuff to co-ordinate with it. This is one of those stacks of fabric that I have had grouped together in the back of my stash for over two (three?) years now. I have occasionally sketched a really complex pattern for it involving lots of fussy cutting and inset seams and hand sewing. But lets get serious here. I have three children and no wall space for a design wall right now. Anything that complicated is never going to get done.

Not only that, but I've been feeling like I need a release from this obsession with fabric lately. Like these bits of cloth are just becoming way too precious to me. And like I'm becoming too anxious about finding just the "right" fabric, or about people thinking I'm too lazy or not a good quilter because I do a lot of square and rectangle quilts (as per the big web blow out a few months back). So I decided that I was going to use this Heather Ross fabric (that is now worth about three times the price I bought it for -- fabric speculation - who knew) as a symbol for my creative and spiritual release. I trimmed all my fat quarters to 16" lengths, and cut it into strips:

Yes, there it is. No plan or rhyme or reason, just cut up. I'm going to piece the strips improvisationally and use them for the back of my quilt. Here's the rules of the game (these are not mine, they are taken from "Last Minute Patchwork and Quilting". Joelle Halverson borrowed them from Denise Schmidt.):

I'm going to put all the strips into this paper bag.
I will randomly pull out pairs of strips and sew them together end to end and press them. Then I will put all the pairs of strips back into the bag and do the same thing until I have sets of four. Then eight.
Only when most of the strips are sewn into blocks of eight will I lay them all out and arrange them into the size and shape I need for my quilt.
The only restrictions are that the two strips can not be the same colour or the same pattern in a different colourway. That's it. Otherwise, its all up to the paper bag, baby.

I am so excited to see what happens with this quilt back. Even if its a total flop, I love all the colours and patterns, so I'm sure it will at least be nice to scrunch up and look at when its done.

Latest blocks for sarah and molly's

This month was crosses. Last month, one of the blocks was flowers. I had the idea of a giant pink flower. It didn't quite come out how I had envisoned it, but I think its pretty cute anyway. I'm glad I made it first so I can make some cute little flowers for my partner.

Spicing Up the Kitchen Swap -sent!

Well, I finished my swap package! My partner likes red, cross blocks, sherbert pips and she wanted a tea cozy. So I started by pulling some fabric and scraps:

 First I made a tea cozy. I meant it to be a stripy tea cozy, but I measured wrong, so I then had to make it into a coin strip tea cozy. I think its pretty cute none the less:

Cross blocks were the block of the month over at sarah and molly's free piecing study, so I decided to make some cross blocks for my partner. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do with these -- it was one of those days when I just needed to sew something without thinking too hard:

In the end I made a fourth block and made a little mat for the tea pot (I'm sure there's a proper word for such a thing, but I don't know what it is. Trivet? Hot pad? I don't know). I think the grey binding is one of my new favorite blender fabrics, and that it really pulls the disparate colours together in this one:

Finally, since we are supposed to have one "big" item (tea cozy and mat in this case) and one "small" item, I decided to make some matching potholders. They are a little wonky in real life, but that simply adds to their charm, right?

Now that the post office is open again I went and sent these off. The postal workers were literally up to their elbows in backlogged mail. This one has to go internationally, so hopefully it won't take too long to wing its way to its final destination.

Hello again!

Well, summer has finally started, and I am feeling like I've caught up enough to blog again! I spent the early part of the week catching up on sleep, de-cluttering all the toys and clothes we don't need anymore and re-arranging the boys' room. Where we used to have the bed, I made them a little reading / playing nook:

And the bed is now against the inside wall of the room, making it feel a little more cozy (note how nicely I got them to make the bed this morning . . . )

I had a lot of clothes to declutter. Its not that I've bought a lot of clothes since we got here, but two things have happened:
1. the children decided to grow. I know they do that way too fast. and since Emma is probably baby number last, we don't need all those baby clothes anymore.
2. people gave me clothes. I love it when people give me clothes. The problem is that the boys are developing their own styles now, and won't wear clothes that don't fit into their personal styles. So about half of the clothes we can use, and the other half we can't.

My apologies for the picture quality -- our camera is slowly dying

The other big new development is Emma's budding independence. For a while she would start screaming and fussing whenever I went to put the tray on her chair so she could eat. I thought she wasn't hungry. On the contrary, she just wanted to sit at the table.

On Tuesday we took the Metro to check out the kids' section of the Jazz Festival (which was awesome -- too bad that due to construction it is far away from any music that was playing at the time), and Emma insisted on doing everything herself. She wanted to go into the bouncy castle with the big kids. She wanted to go down the slide with the big kids. On the way back she insisted on walking down all the stairs to the underground tunnel below the Place Des Arts herself, on getting on the metro herself, and - funniest of all - on sitting in the seat not on my lap, but all by herself. Here she was, this tiny little girl in little dress, sitting next to a huge lady. She was looking up at the lady as if to say, "Yes, that's right. Here we are, two big people sitting on the metro together." It was priceless.

For the first week of summer, Andrew is at a Day Camp put on by Crosstalk Minsitries at our church. I sent Aaron, too, even though we're paying for 3 days of babysitting. The topic is the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts, and Andrew is fascinated by the idea of the Holy Spirit. He has a lego flame, and he has taken to sticking it on the head of one of his Lego guys and pretending that the guy is filled with the Holy Spirit. We have to discuss wether the Holy Spirit would win in a battle against Storm Troopers, and I hear him yelling, "I can defeat you because I have the power of the HOLY SPIRIT!" Its pretty funny.

I will not sign up for DQS11
I will not sign up for DQS11
I will not sign up for DQS11 . . . .

But if you want to, sign ups are open right now. Read "quilt" quilts only, no art quilts this round.

I would love to sign up, but I usually end up taking 10 or so hours to make my quilt, and I need to spend that time making a quilt for my own bed this summer. Yes, I know, a finished quilt for me. Do you think I can manage?

I don't usually post a lot of parenting stuff, or a lot of links, but here are two really lovely posts that have encouraged me this week:

This one speaks to my "style" (??) of housekeeping, and comforts me that I'm not alone in sort of loving creative chaos
http://sugarcityjournal.blogspot.com/2011/06/wabi-sabi.html

And this one is heartening to me as I begin to rediscover my identity in this new place and stage of life:
http://www.soulemama.com/soulemama/2011/06/souleful-mothering-with-tara-thayer.html

I might actually get to sew and blog a little more now. I'm done with the teaching-of-the-students part of teaching, and on to the marking-of-exams, tallying-of-marks and invigilating-exams part. And boy, do I have a lot of exam supervision next week. Sometimes up to 6 hrs a day. So much for getting home earlier. Although I supervised what was supposed to be a 3 1/2 hr exam yesterday afternoon, and all the kids were done after an hour and 45 min., so it might not be as bad as I'm thinking it will be.

Have a great weekend!

Finished Scotty Dog

Yes, my little dog is done. She has a split personality, and so it was necessary to give her two different colours of ribbon for her collar. That's okay, though. I think she's precious. I made her for Emma, who liked her. But Aaron has swapped his old black kitty for the dog for the present. I would actually like her for myself, so I can take her to school and remind myself that sometimes being a female dog can be a beautiful thing . . . . (you have to do things like that when you teach high school, its how you stay sane).

Bilingual fun

It is awfully fun hearing your children learn another language. I do know some French, as all Canadians have to take it in school, so none of them have surpassed my vocabulary yet. I have the kind of French that can scan most documents and generally understand what its saying, or understand what people are saying if they talk slow and make lots of hand gestures. Sometimes I can even respond in a proper sentence.

Andrew has been in French Immersion for almost a year now, and because he is a perfectionist, we are just starting to see some of the results of that. When he speaks French, his accent is perfect. He won't speak to French speakers as he's afraid that he won't speak "properly", but he will talk at school. He has spent a lot of time with a lovely tutor who has worked closely with him to help him learn the French phonemes he needs to be able to properly pronounce the language.

Aaron and Emma have been in a French speaking daycare since January now. Aaron is finally starting to come out with some French words, but it is a much more casual, random French, the kind spoken in every day conversation. His accent is more slurred and sometimes we don't really know what words he's trying to say.

Emma is in that language - learning stage, and she is somewhat behind where both my boys, who were only hearing one language, were at her age. She babbles a lot, sometimes in something resembling English, and sometimes in something resembling French. Sometimes her few words are English (Dada, eyes, berries) but sometimes they are in French (bebe, maitnant (now), bas (socks) and regarde (look!)). It makes it fun trying to guess what she's saying sometimes, as its a bit or a garble.

The other day something flew by our yard, and Aaron was outside. He yelled, "Look! An el-co-tor! An el-co-tor!" Andrew came running out and said, "You mean un hel-cop-tour, Aaron." Yes, they saw a helecopter. And both only remembered the French pronunciation.

Did you ever have one of those days that were so sweet, you couldn't dare feel it? Like you were afraid that the bitterness must be there, hiding around the corner somewhere? Today is like that for me. We are all home, together. It is sunny. The grass has finally grown in so we can play in the backyard. We are celebrating Dave's 37th birthday, which was yesterday. I am home with all my precious ones, after a long week away. And Dave got a new cd, and every time Emma hears this song, she has to get up from whatever she's doing and dance . . . . (wait for it, it does kick into the song proper eventually)

Latest awesome quilting flikr meme

I don't know, is it called a meme when a whole bunch of people start to sew the same thing? Or is it a trend? Are X & + blocks "trending"? Is trending an official word yet? Should it be one . . . oh, right, I digress. You really must check out Strawberrylicious' awesome quilt in progress . In fact, check out the whole flikr group of people working on these blocks . I totally want to make some. Do I have time right now? No. But I'm staring at my scrap basket dreaming of it all magically transforming into these beauties. Sigh. Maybe a summer project? But before or after my teacups? That is the question.

What's a long weekend for

Done half the half square triangles
Originally uploaded by davenjilly

if not to give you a chance to finish up some projects. This weekend is Victoria Day (as in the former and much loved Queen) in Canada. In Quebec, its called Fete des Patriotes, and is a holiday that I think relates to the separatist movement. Not sure, really.

In any case, either way, Monday was May long weekend. I finished my skirt (photos another time) and played around with these. Just a few more half-square triangles to stitch, lots of trimming to do, and about a hundred tea cups to make. Oh, and I guess I need to stitch the triangle squares into blocks, too.

Okay, so maybe "just" is the wrong word?

Anyone feeling generous and want to make me a teacup? Just saying . . .

SUTK Swap Mosaic

SUTK Swap Mosaic
Originally uploaded by davenjilly

Hello, all! Well, my latest swapping adventure is the Spicing Up the Kitchen Swap. This is my mosaic for my partner. Hi, partner!

So, here's the story. I would love a table runner, or some hot pads or an apron. I don't actually have any of those things and any of them would be fun. I adore all the motifs and colours in all these pictures. Yes, I know I'm ecclectic and not very picky. But I figure that gives you lots of choices to express yourself creatively, right?

So, take any of my mosaic photos for inspiration and just run with it. Have fun. Do your favorite thing. Or do something new. Or do something old that you love doing. Play. Enjoy yourself. I am sure I will love what you make and happily display and use it in my kitchen.

Thanks so much for your thought, care and time in putting together something for my kitchen. I can't wait to see what you come up with!

A Little Tinkering

 Well, the days have been busy around here lately. My schedule looks something like this:

5:00 boys wake up and climb into bed for a snuggle, causing much noise and chaos
5:10 boys get kicked out of bed to go play
5:45 my alarm goes off and I get up and get ready for work
6:30 I leave the house and walk up the block to catch the bus
6:50 I transfer from the bus to the metro
7:30 I transfer from the metro back to the bus (with the bus driver that flirts with me every morning despite being a good 20 yrs older than me)
8:00 I arrive at work and deal with argumentative and rebellious teenagers with a serious sense of entitlement (as in "Just because I haven't handed anything in all term doesn't mean you can fail me.")
12:30 lunch
2:40 done teaching and so I clean up, get everything ready for the next day and rush off to
3:30 catch the bus back to the metro station
4:00 transfer from the bus to the metro
4:25 transfer from the metro to the bus

4:50 arrive at the top of my block and walk down the hill to my house.
If its a daycare day, I then:
5:00 get in the car and drive to pick up the kids
5:15 start supper
5:45 eat supper
6:20 do homework with Andrew, while Aaron and Emma have a bath
7:30 start putting the boys to bed (usualy mostly Dave's job)
8:30 start putting Emma to bed
9 - 10 fall asleep with Emma

Occasionally in that 9 - 10 block, if Emma is not falling asleep, I will do a little bit of sewing while she plays (or watches and tries to sew her hands to the fabric). In that way I have had a chance to stitch a little here and there on various projects:

As you can see, I have been tinkering with a bunch of things.  The pink and green thing is my dysfunctional flower for sarah and molly's free piecing study (glad I made mine first, not Mel's). The blue fabric is my unhemmed skirting the issue skirt (pattern and fabric Anna Maria Horner). The scotty dog shape is, well, a scotty dog in the making (following the free downloadable pattern on Denyse Schmidt's website).
 

This is the other thing I picked up last week: an embroidery kit. I thought it could keep me busy during my commute, or when the school year starts drawing to a close and I have nothing to do at work (since I don't know where I'll be next year I'll have some free time on my hands in between invigilating exams - On a side note, I love the word invigilating. It sounds so sinister.) The embroidery patterns are from the Black Apple. I think I might stitch a hedgehog and rabbit having tea . . . not sure what for yet. I also want to use the cute little village for something, eventually, but I'm not sure what yet.

What have you been doing in those little spaces in your day?

A Little Clarification

So, I don't know how much those of you who are from other countries know about Canada, specifically about Quebec. So here's a little background that might make our situation a little more understandable.

The thing about Canada, is that it started as a colony not of England, but of France.

What is now Central Canada was once valuable property because it was full of wild animals, and fur was THE hot fashion item. Not only were there lots of furs, but Canada had (still has, actually) this great system of rivers and lakes that meant you could travel all through the forests by canoe. And there were lots of people here who would gladly swap you valuable furs for some shiny glass beads or an old cooking pot.

Once England found out what a killing France was making, they had to get in on the action. So, two different parts of this big land mass were settled by two different groups of people. One section English, one section French. Some parts having both English and French settlers. A little while later there was a battle about this. Guess who won? England. But they were nice enough to let the French stay.

Fast forward a few hundred years and you get the complex politics of Canada, especially Quebec. While most of Western Canada is mainly English (well, technically its new immigrants from all over the world that are told they have to learn English to fit in), and much of Central and Eastern Canada is bilingual (speaking both our official languages), Quebec is aggressively French speaking. So much so that there are laws about signs, language, education and cultural protection. So much so that dyed in the wool Quebecois (decendants of the original French settlers) want Quebec to be its own country. There's even a political party whose mission is to seperate Quebec from Canada.

In the midst of Quebec, there is Montreal. Back in the day when boats were still the main form of transportation, most Canadian immigrants funneled through the port city of Montreal. Many stayed. Many were Irish, Italian, or Jewish. They chose English as their preferred language of choice. When things got sticky with Quebec, and it became aggressively French, those English groups (who had also been here for generations) became a minority.

So, in Montreal, the Western side of the city (closest to Ontario) speaks mostly English, while the Eastern side of the city (closer to the rest of Quebec) mostly speaks French. English speakers around here are called Anglophones, French speakers are Francophones, and people who grow up with both languages are known as Allophones.

And that is your lesson on culture for the day. How does it relate to us?

Well, Andrew is in English school. In order to get into a French Immersion school in the English school board here, we had to fill out all kinds of paper work to prove that we had gone to school in English, otherwise he would have had to go to a straight French school. Andrew and Aaron's daycare lady is from Guatemala and speaks French and Spanish. Its hard to get official things done because all the websites and government workers and phone company people are French and sometimes you can get a translation. All the signs in the stores are French. When you walk into a store in the mall, you are helped in French.

Did I mention that the last time I took French was in grade 8? And it was mostly fill-in-the-blank-congigate-the-verb style French lessons? Yeah. Its been a bit of a stressful year trying adjust. In many ways, Quebecers have succeeded. Even in Montreal, although we are still technically in Canada, it does often feel like we have moved to a new country.

One of the fun things about Montreal . . .

is that I've got to meet friends like Mark. He's an artist, and he's going to do an art installation in Korea for the next month. Want to find out what he's doing and how you (one of my vast plethora of readers) could help him fund his project and get yourself an art print? Check out his video with details here and see what you think. Sounds like fun to me, and I think I could afford a 4x6 from his project. How about you?

One of my least favorite parts of my new job is the commute. I spend about an hour and a half on the bus/metro/bus each way. My classroom doesn't have an overhead projector, but it does have a video projector hooked into the ceiling and a screen. So I've taken to typing out my notes in Power Point and carrying my laptop to and from school. This means my laptop travels with me on the bus / metro / bus twice a day and all around the school, since I don't have a key for my classroom (which is another story altogether). So, this of course means that my laptop needs some stylish protection.

If you combine this with the fabulous half yard of Echino fabric that came with the fat quarter pack I ordered from Pink Chalk Studios , the answer was obvious:

This was a really cool piece of fabric. The front and the back of my laptop case were each strips, with green and purple "fields" of fabric in between them. There was just enough to cut it into this laptop sleeve.

The pattern is from Oh Fransson's blog ( on her small projects page), and as with all her patterns and tutorials, the instructions are easy, the method of sewing is elegant and the results are beautiful. This blue topstitching is, I think, my favorite detail. See how it matches the birds' wings? The best thing about it was that it was accidental: I was being lazy and didn't switch out my bobbin thread when I was sewing the flap. I liked the look so much that I switched out my thread to topstitch the top of the laptop sleeve, too.

I'm not showing you the inside because it is pretty plain. The pattern calls for flannel, and the only non-juvenile flannel I have right now is a natural cotton colour. I figured the outside is dramatic enough.

Even I can admit that sometimes there is such a thing as too much drama.