Christmas Crafting

I'm not quite done with my holiday sewing, but that's okay because my family isn't getting together to exchange gifts until the 29th. Plenty of time, right?

Here's what I made my co-workers...zippered pouches. I filled them with candy. I hope they liked them...I have one made with the same tutorial, and I think it's really handy.  

Hope your holiday sewing is going better than mine!

Projects!

I've been busy lately (always!) but I've been sewing more. I think not having a bee block due this month has freed up some time.  I also think that we're finding our rhythm between work, school, and the baby, and now I can carve out more sewing time.

I finished my mom's quilt...pictures of that will be forthcoming!

I also sewed up some winter gear for my son in his favorite theme...robots! 

A hat, scarf, and mittens. They were fun to sew, so soft and cozy, and since they were all made with one yard of fleece, the whole project only cost $7.00.  I'll be making a winter set for my daughter next...it'll be fun to take her to the fabric store to see what she picks!

 I've also been working on my scrappy log cabin quilt.

I'm still working on free motion quilting it.  I haven't done free motion in FOREVER, and I was surprised how rusty I was.  However, I'm back to my old ability level...which, granted, was still pretty low.  But I'm having so much fun doing it.

I'm glad things are settling down and I have regular sewing time again.  I missed it so much these past few months.

Binding

After months of work (actually, a few months of work and many months of not-working because of pregnancy and having a newborn) my mom's quilt is finally at the binding stage.

I had originally hoped to just wrap the backing of the quilt around to the front and sew it down as kind of a pseudo-binding, but I didn't quite have enough.  So I guess I'll have to do real binding.  I'm not sure if I'll do it by hand or by machine...probably by machine, otherwise it would take a year to finish.  I'm so slow at hand binding.

After this is done I can finally finish my scrappy log cabin quilt, and then maybe start a new project.  I feel like it's been forever since I've shopped for fabric for a new project...it'll be so nice to do it!

Paper pieced

Today was my local quilt guild's sew day, so I had to bring a project to work on.  I'm in the middle of quilting my mom's quilt and my log cabin quilt, but since treadle machines don't travel well I had to come up with a project that was a little more portable.

Paper piecing to the rescue!  I used this pattern to create my block.

I kind of adore it!  I'm going to make two more paper pieced blocks to use as mini quilts to hang between two of my husband's guitars in the living room.  Even though I love it, it took forever to make.  I couldn't imagine tackling a whole quilt this way.

Mending

Crafting and blogging don't pay the bills, so I have a job as an educator for a local school district.  Unfortunately, this coming year will be a challenging one.  I won't bore you with the politics going on in Wisconsin, but the end result is that my take-home pay has been sliced.  Badly.  And as the sole breadwinner in this family (my husband is a stay-at-home dad, another great occupation that doesn't pay bills) it's been causing me a lot of stress.  So I've been looking at ways to save money.

Unfortunately, over the past several months my son has developed the habit of chewing on the collars of his shirts.  His pediatrician and his dentist both have no idea why this is.  It seems to be an absent-minded habit at this point.  I started putting spray on his collars to deter him with a bad taste, but it was too late.  The necklines of several of his t-shirts had holes.  After taking a good hard look at his shirts, and a good hard look at my bank account, I decided to mend them instead of replacing half of his summer wardrobe.

I don't know how to mend...I actually had to look it up on YouTube.  It wasn't too tough, and now I'm pretty decent at it.  I worked my way through a small stack of his t-shirts this afternoon.  This was one of my first attempts.

Not perfect, but not too bad.  I think it'll be pretty inconspicuous on a moving five-year-old.  I also mended a dress of my daughter's...she got a hold of a pair of scissors and decided to "make a pocket." 

I also shortened the sleeves on one of my son's long sleeved t-shirts...his kindergarten class was painting one day and he got paint all over his sleeves.  It absolutely wouldn't wash off.  Why on earth would you give four and five-year-olds non-washable paint?  Anyway, my Singer 27 did a great job, as always.  I'm always a little surprised when I find it can sew a type of fabric that didn't exist in 1901 when it was manufactured.  But it actually did a better job than my modern machine did the last time I tried to sew knit.

I need to finish my mom's Carpenters Wheel quilt, but I'm itching to start a paper-pieced Mariner's Compass...I want a Mariner's Compass mini-quilt, and I already know just where I'll hang it.  I hope I can finish both soon!

Finished block

My finished bee block...I kind of love it. I may need to make a great granny square quilt!

Bee blocks, Mom's quilt, and oh yeah, I had a baby

I'm finally back on my sewing machine after a hiatus of over a month.  I had my baby!  She's beautiful and wonderful, and everything went great.  But the adjustment of going from a family of four to a family of five has been a challenging one and not much time was left for sewing.  Fortunately she's started taking longer naps, which means I can sneak downstairs with the other kids and get some sewing in.

My August bee block is underway!

I think this is the first block in the bee that I'm actually sad to mail off...I wouldn't mind keeping it!  I'm still working on piecing it together (and I actually made more progress since this photo was taken this afternoon) but I already really like it.  The colors are really pretty to me.  I hope the recipient likes it too.

I also got some work in on my mom's quilt.  I'm over a third of the way done quilting, and I'm going to show it to her this weekend.  Hopefully she'll like the direction it's going, since I don't want to rip out all of that quilting.

I also got an urge to start another mini-quilt...a paper pieced Mariner's Compass.  We'll see if I actually get around to doing it...I feel like I have too many WIPs, and I want to finish some before I start some more.

It feels so good to have my hands back in fabric and my feet back on my treadle.