W.I.P. Wednesday

Happy New Year everyone!  I have been away so am totally behind on things but I'm slowly catching up.  We went on the trip of a lifetime over the holidays, and I've hummed and hawed about sharing photos out of respect for our host's wish for internet privacy, so I've chosen a selection of nondescript/random photos of our time away just to give you a little taste and will leave it at that!

Now, sewing!!  I figured a good way to ease back into sewing would be to tackle my January bee blocks.  We've been asked to make two simple 16-patch blocks using 2.5" squares in purples.  Purple is one of those colours that I really do love, but have very little in the way of purple fabric or even scraps.  I've managed to squeak out one block and have some squares for my second but not quite enough.  I feel silly asking, but would one of you Canadians be willing to send me just 6 small purple scraps?  Big enough to cut one 2.5" square from?  I'd truly appreciate it!  Let me know....

And other than that, my big project at the moment is the wonky stack & whack quilt I'm making for my friend's daughter.  I have all 48 blocks finished and have half of the blocks sewn together, but I haven't touched it at all since before our holidays.  Hopefully this week I'll get back at it.

Have a good week everyone!

Linking up with Lee @ Freshly Pieced
 

Really Random Thursday ~ 10/17/13

My poor neglected blog.  What better way to return than with a bit of random!  We had a really nice Canadian Thanksgiving with family this past weekend.....

On the ferry...

The fam

The trip home, overlooking beautiful Vancouver

Today is foggy, but this is what we had the other day.  Amazing.

And since we are a sewing blog.....

No progress on this, so you get an old pic!

October blocks for Joy circle of do.Good Stitches

That's the end of my random for now, and I'm hoping to get back in the groove and have some more to show soon.  I'm also in talks with my good friend about making a quilt for her oldest daughter so I'll probably have more to say about that soon too.

Happy New Year!

I feel so out of touch people!  With Christmas, kids/husband home from school, my sewing machine in the shop again, and close to a week away from home, I feel like I've fallen off the face of the earth as far as sewing goes.  Re-capping the past year seems too overwhelming right now, so I think I'll just take a look into the near future and make a bit of a to-do list:

• it's my month in the bee I belong to and we've been doing granny square blocks using a whole variety of my scraps along with a natural shade solid - the blocks are starting to come in already and I don't want to leave them languishing!
• finish the library tote that I started before Christmas, using Michelle's pattern
• purchase backing and batting for my disappearing 9-patch Brrr! quilt.  I'd hoped to get this one finished by Christmas and it just didn't happen.  But I figure that since the fabric is more of a winter fabric than a Christmas fabric, I'm still good to go for a few more months!
• figure out what to do with my Etsy shop.  I haven't had any sales since around the time of Black Friday, and neither of the two Christmas-y items I had listed sold.  I honestly don't know how much effort I want to put into stocking the shop and promotion and all that stuff so my thought at the moment is to just put stuff in there when I have something to list, and if it sells great, if not, no big deal.  Which is kind of how I started off thinking about it anyways.

We just got back today from our week away visiting family, I'm marking my google reader as "read" and will carry on from here.  The family picture was taken by my Dad on Wednesday, our "snow day".  We had to drive 1.5hrs to find that snow, and it was coooooold, but it was worth it.  We had a ton of fun!

Really Random Thursday

Do you ever have a bit of a sewing slump following a really large project??  I feel a bit like that's what's happened to me.  Finishing Fussy Fairytales was a huge accomplishment, and things have been a little slow since then.  I've also been working at our school office once or twice a week lately, which doesn't sound like much, but it does affect my productivity sewing-wise!

Since I missed W.I.P. Wednesday yesterday, I'll share a few little things today instead.

This is a family passport wallet (pattern by One Shabby Chick), which I'm making for someone.  These are the exact fabrics I used for the one I made for our family.  I had a little run-in with the directional print yesterday and realized that the numbers on the strap will end up upside down, so I'll be re-doing the strap today!

I finally picked up Michelle's "Read Library Tote" pattern after admiring it for some time.  The bag we currently use for our library books isn't big enough to hold very many books, or very large books.  So I'm excited to make this tote.  I have the paper pieced letters done so far and I love how they turned out.

Ever wonder how many safety pins it takes to pin baste a twin size bed quilt?  Maybe I'm the only one who wonders these things....  I counted the pins I used for Fussy Fairytales and there were nearly 500!!

We had a bit of snow this week, and let me tell you it doesn't take much snow in these parts for chaos to ensue!  I was working at the school yesterday and we had less than half of our students show up.  Let's just say, less students at school makes things more crazy.  :)  So today we are happy that we have above freezing temperatures with rain.  haha

And finally for today - I don't often share photos of my kids on the blog, but here they are.  And looking rather mischievous I must say.  :)

Grateful for commenters, and a few random tidbits

On my W.I.P. Wednesday post earlier today I posted about the "Sleep" baby quilt I'm making, my question being whether the Kona Coal works as a background colour.  I like Coal a lot, but wanted to see what others thought about using it in this project.  I received a comment from Janice (pssst...check out her blog, it's beautiful!) which made SO much sense to me.  This is part of what she said:  "I think the charcoal is making the white around the letters stand out more than the colors in the letters."  Hmmmm, as much as I like Coal, I think she's right!

Here's the photo showing "Sleep" with Coal:

And the new version, against Kona Snow:

It really does have the effect that Janice was referring to - the colourful letters stand out more against the Snow and the background fabric I used for the letters blends in waaaaay more than it does with the Coal.  I really think I'm sold on this idea, so thank you Janice!  I'll probably sneak Coal into the project as well, just not right against the letters.  (and I see that I inadvertently swapped my two "E's" around in these two versions...I think I'll keep the red one in the centre)

A few more little tid-bits, non sewing related.  My youngest, Owen, has had this bushy long-ish hair for over a year now, refusing to get a haircut.  Well today he finally said he wanted one so off we went!  The before/after....much better, no?

This haircut required a tiny bit of bribery on my part, and what he wanted was a Lego mini-figure.  :)  If you know anything about these you'll know that they come in a sealed bag and you don't know what you're going to get.  You can try to feel what's in the bag as much as you want, chances are you won't guess right!  This is what he got today:

Isn't she lovely??????   ;-)

W.I.P. Wednesday

I'm a little slow on the W.I.P. train this morning, I see there are already 70 projects linked up! Let's see what I've all been up to...

One of the best Works in Progress ever:

~ Levi. Born 10 years ago at a tiny 5lbs15oz, you've grown up and are now entering your second decade of life. I can hardly believe it. Happy Birthday Levi!


Ongoing projects:

~ Wonky Log Cabin with Little Apples fabric - nothing has changed since last week. Can you tell I'm not really feeling this project? Some of the seams on the top ended up a bit puckery (my lovely sewing machine up to its old tension tricks) so the top doesn't lay totally flat. I will eventually to do a whole bunch of dense quilting on this one and hope that will help! I must say, that little squirrel is very cute. :)


New Projects:

~ I made a little something for the Giveaway Day coming up at Sew Mama Sew on December 12th. Can't show it until then but let's say it uses some more of my Hometown scraps.

~ I have a few super secret projects in the works, will only show this for now....more to come after the holidays.

We now interrupt our regularly scheduled programming...

First regular season game ~ tonight ~ 7pm PST ~ some of us (ahem . . . the boys . . . ) have been waiting for this day since mid-June when the unspeakable happened. I am mostly just enjoying my new t-shirt!