My Cousin is Part Mermaid

Hey!

I'm pretty excited to share my recent finish with you today! 

I have a cousin who grew up in Africa (most of my mom's family lives there). She lived near and loves the beach and has sea air in her lungs. She just had a sweet baby boy a week ago and I mailed her a couple goodies.

While she was pregnant I started looking for baby quilt inspiration on pinterest and pretty quickly found the perfect pattern!

I followed this tutorial by Erica of Kitchen Table Quilting. She gives you a breakdown on sewing the curves that will set the most nervous mind at ease. I cruised through the curved piecing portion of this quilt and it was the first time I've ever sewn a curve! I was pretty ecstatic with the results. 

^My husband wasn't sure what to do with his head while I was taking pictures and kept getting distracted by whatever was on the other side of the bush.

I didn't follow her instructions entirely regarding the shades of blue because I couldn't find any one place that all six shades of Kona blue. The top and bottom are Kona but for the in between I went with what looked good at my local quilt shop.

Brett also didn't have a lot patience for close up shots attempting to show of the variegated thread I quilted with so you can see it here in the below picture.

Finally, here it is in my sons crib!

I am completely in love with this quilt! I love the motion the quilting provides, I love all the blues, and I really I love that I conquered a technique that I was afraid of.

That is one of my favorite things about sewing. I was afraid to try curved piecing though I've wanted to for ages. Now, not only have I done it, I've done it well and I cant wait to try more!

I've shipped this lovely quilt off now (I miss it already) and I hope mom and baby love it as much as I do.
Have a happy day my sewing friends!
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I want to know!
Curved piecing, yay or nay?

Are you a quilter?

What is your favorite new baby gift to give?

9 Things Since We Last Met

It's been 9 days since we last met so here are 9 things that happened during our separation.

1- We acquired Tsum Tsums. We are now those people. There have been even more since this picture was taken.

2- We've gone to three run club days.

3- We ended up back in the hospital.

4- I knit a Christmas stocking while hanging out in the hospital.

5- I worked on a sweater for Kent.

6- I made a Mailchimp account (more on that in the next couple of days).

7- I played A LOT of Mario Galaxy.

8- I made a Hello Kitty dress for my niece.
9- Finally, today I finished all of the blocks for my baby Broncos quilt.
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What have you done in the last 9 days?

Just Your Average Monday

Lorelai is off school for the next three weeks and terrorizing us all. Just kidding but, I do think she is pretty bored. There is a lot of structure at school and we don't do a whole lot around the house, especially with Kent fresh home from the hospital.

She came up behind me while I was blogging and asked if this was my "sewing log". Haha, yes this is where I write about my sewing adventures. Well now she wants to have a blog too.

So now she does :) You can follow her story over at Kid Wonder Woman Sews, I've got the button there to the side---->
As you can imagine setting up a blog took up most of my day.
Now that she has a blog to talk about her sewing she is in more of a rush to get sewing but her machine wasn't working so I spent another little while sorting that out.

One I got the machine opened to see what was going on it was actually a quick fix. Thank goodness.
I once thought, "Oh it'll be so fun if Lorelai gets into sewing we can sew along together happy as can be!" Haha, it actually takes quite a bit of time from my own sewing but oh well. I still am thrilled that she wants to try doing the things I do and enjoys it.

It's lonely here in my corner of the sewing world with no sewing friends around but I'm grateful Em still takes me on her shopping trips. Lorelai was totally impressed that I was weighing in on Emily's fabric choices even though we are in two different states.

I spent much of the rest of my free time sorting out the rest of my knitting pattern for my nephews Christmas stocking and finding the pattern I want to follow for his baby quilt. Hopefully I get around to cutting that out today.

Oh and just for fun, Look at this grape I found while making my husbands lunch --->

We left it in the bunch for the kids to find.
Have a happy day all!
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Do you have sewing friends near by?

What kind of machine do you use?

Do your kids steal your sewing time?

Time for Some Catching Up.

Kent and I spent all of last week at the Children's Hospital. He had surgery on Monday and it was a pretty tough recovery. I spent most of my time tending to his needs but there were a few quiet moments when he was asleep or happily watching a movie. During these quiet moments anxiety and stress would settle in and I would just ache to do something crafty. Ideally I would have sewn but I was all out of hand sewing projects. Fortunately, I have a baby nephew on the way and he is going to need a Christmas stocking in the next couple months so I was able to use this time to work on that.
For his parents I made Ninja Turtle Stockings and for his sis I made a San Francisco Giants stocking. For this future Broncos fan I am working on a Broncos stocking. I was able to finish the entire jersey portion of the stocking while we were in the hospital.


We got to come home Friday and I spent the rest of that day tidying and sleeping and Saturday I worked on getting us all back to our normal routine. I must have been in a serious nesting mood because I made 15 Crock Pot freezer bag meals and I managed to fit them all into my tiny freezer!

Sunday the boys and I stayed home from church because the Dr doesn't want Kent going out and about for another week. He's feeling a lot better and was happily entertaining himself so when Mark went down for a nap I pulled out my sewing machine and got started on a new baby quilt! I finished the quilt top last night and I am finally starting to feel like me again!
Oh! I hit a pin and it didn't break my needle but I did have to open up my machine to fish the broken bit back out.


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Have you had a child stay at a Children's Hospital?

Freezer meals? Love 'em or Hate 'em?

Do you pull out your pins or sew over them?
I try to pull them out. I missed one this time.

My Patterns on Craftsy

Hey all. This year since Mark was born has flown past and tons of things have happened. A few that I feel I should catch you up on.

I stumbled into the world of instagram quilting and it has introduced me to so many new things! I've been sewing lots of mini quilts for IG swaps and that has been awesome. I've made tons of new sewing friends, learned new skills and acquired a lot of new goodies. I also learned of a methond called paper piecing. Machine paper piecing. This method is fantastic and opens up a whole new world of detailed sewing. I've enjoyed it so much I've even created a few my own and put them up for sale on Craftsy.

The first one I made was Tinkerbell!


I designed this Tinkerbell for a swap I was in and I couldn't find a Tinkerbell that matched my idea in my head.

 

After Tink I made Wonder Woman, Super Girl, and Bat Girl for my Lorelai. These three are available on Craftsy individually or as a group.

They were fun to make and seem to appreciated by the masses ;) I feel like Tink needs a fairy friend and I've got an idea in my head for full bodied super heroines. We'll see what I can come up with.
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Yesterday was kind of a lazy day. I opened up an exciting email first thing in the morning and couldn't think about anything else the rest of the day.
The Sew Pro Convention! Even Brett thinks I need to go. Yes! Just waiting for pay day (ToMoRRoW!) to register. So many more details on that as time goes on. I think Emily should go too ;)
I watched my friends baby while she worked yesterday. Kent says he loves having babies to take care of and Lorelai was upset that our baby friend went home before she got home from school. He spent a lot of time sitting on this laundry bag full of PVC pipes.


Finally my friend just got back from a visit to Utah and she said while she was there she just HAD to pick up some milk. Seriously? She said we had to try it, it's root beer milk! It was an instant hit at our house.


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Tell me, do you like the patterns you've seen?

What other patterns would you like to see?

Anyone else dying to go to Sew Pro?

Ever tried root beer milk? Would you want to?

Feature Friday: My Moby Wrap

I had hoped to model this with the real deal angel baby but that kid is really taking his time and I couldn't wait to share about the awesome deal I got!

A few months into my pregnancy I decided that this time around I wanted to be a baby wearer (did you know that was a thing, ha!). There was a woman in my ward that had a Moby Wrap and that really seemed like the way to go. Only problem, they are about $50. That just does not fly with me. So I put the thought on the back burner until I came across a pin that led me to this blog post. It was super useful because all I really needed to know was how much fabric to buy (2.5yds).

Now some more waiting. You see, I wanted to get the good fabric and the good fabric is $15 a yard and never goes on sale. Then this past Sunday I got this glorious text message...

Wooo! It only took some minor arm twisting and I convinced Brett to take me to Joann's. I found my favorite fabric, confirmed that it was NOT on sale, it wan't, it never is, and I BOUGHT it. Gleefully. It was only $15. I hurried home and made my wrap. 20 minutes later I had this happiness. $15 vs. $50 happiness is the BEST! I can't wait to try it out on my real babe but in the meantime we had fun with these fine models :) Enjoy.
Brett humored me but Lorelai was truly excited to try it out.


Thank you Bitty Baby for standing in during our time of need.

Nesting, It's Really Getting to Me

This little angel baby I've been growing will be making his appearance this month! That's so soon and the nesting instinct is kicking my trash! Is it so wrong that I want to feel ready for baby? No, but it kind of amuses me how frantic I feel about it recently. I kind of blame the fact that my niece was born recently. I think that really threw my hormones in a panic. Haha.

It's been good though, I dawdled a bit wondering if anyone would be throwing me a shower but when it looked like that wasn't going to happen I went out and bought diapers and wipes and some cloth diapers (my ultimate go to burp rag, I'll post more about that a little further down the road). Then I realized I needed more space for these things and the space I had in mind was full of craft corner over flow. Something needed to be done. I fully believed my shelves could contain it, I just needed to get organized.

Em must have felt my vibes all the way in California because at just the right time she pinned this pin and it was just the kick in the pants I needed to take my fabric corner from this...

To this...

What you can't see in the first picture is that a lot of my fabric and ribbons are spewed onto the ground at the end of my bed which is where my crib is needing to go. You can see now we are good to go!

First, I pulled all the fabric off the shelves and stood there a little overwhelmed. Then, I went to the comic book store and bought some little boards. I used these to make my own mini fabric bolts and you can see what a difference they have made. We went from 8 shelves of helter/skelter fabric to just over five beautifully organized shelves of fabric.

There were some fabrics left over that were gigantic. Way too big to be rolled around the comic boards and that's where those cardboard boxes came in handy. Brett brought home these perfectly sized boxes and I used them to fold and hide away those large cuts of fabric. They also came in handy for my batting, my 'in-progress' yarn projects (Up there on the right), scrap fabric and I even used one to store Brett's project! I love them, I slapped on some labels and now they are perfect for hiding away those odds and ends.

Next step was to control the yarn. Brett kicked all my yarn out of its home when he put the DVD player up there on that top shelf. I don't have a lot of yarn (compared to an actual "yarn crafter" sewing is my main game) and I really felt that the best case solution was to get it all back on that top shelf. I bought a little wire shelf and put it over the DVD player and added all my yarn back in as attractively as possible.


Clearing out all that crazy fabric left me with an open shelve under the yarn so that it where my serger thread migrated to. Separating it from my ribbon shelf has been wonderful, no more spools or thread or ribbon making suicide jumps anymore.

After that was taken care of I had Brett come into the game again and he drilled a couple of holes on the shelf so that I could add some dowels to hold my ribbons! I like how it looks now but I'm not sure that it will be the ultimate ribbon solution but for now it is working and I'll reevaluate in a couple of months.

It is so much nicer now! The pathway is clear, I can see what I have at a glance, and that's one more thing off my crazy nesting mind :)
I know we all love a good before and after so this is just for you!

Have a good weekend everyone!