Vintage Postage (and First Time Just Three!)

A few years ago, quite possibly six, I was handed a box full of scrap fabric and quilt patterns. 

Much to my shame, I tucked it into a closet.

Today while cleaning out said closet, I came across the box again. It looks like the intent was to make a Dresden Plate, or similar type pattern applique quilt. There are a few larger pieces of fabric and even more that area already cut in petals.

I don't think I've mentioned it, but I really dislike Dresden Plate. Also, I'm not a huge fan of applique.

So what to do with the pieces?

A little voice in my brain whispered postage stamp.

Postage stamp? Like, sewing together a ton of 1-1/2" squares? Oh that doesn't sound like fun, and definitely not something that would be up my alley.

I heard it again.

POSTAGE STAMP

Very rarely do I hear that small, still voice, but when I do I know HE has something in mind that I had better get done.

OK, so I'm making a postage stamp quilt with a bunch of vintage fabric. Most of the fabric is polycotton.

What I'm going to do with the quilt I have no idea. Sometime, I'll hear some instructions again.  I don't know what size it will be, either.

I foresee cans on cans on cans of spray starch in my future.

On another note, Tracey at Traceyjay Quilts has a fun way of making monthly goals seem reasonable.

Just Three challenges us to set three goals for the month.  Totally do-able! I'm limiting them to personal sewing.

So for this month, I am choosing these THREE:

1.  Cut out the postage stamps.

2.  Sew at least one, hopefully more, maternity tops for myself.

3. Piece together the top for Sister-in-Law's baby quilt.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

I thought about adding potty train The Toddler to the list, but I imagine this is going to take a little longer than a month...

WIP it Good!

This is slightly frightening - I haven't taken stock of my WIPs (works in progress) since April. 

Oh boy. 

 The list is long. Really, really long. Be prepared, this'll be painful. 


Stuff finished since April, limited ONLY to quilts: 

Two small baby clothes quilts 

Three medium tshirt quilts 

One large baby clothes quilt (Oorah Love)

One small, double-sided baby clothes quilt 

 

A quilt for my cousin's baby boy (thankfully I didn't pick out the fabric on this one...

A quilt/nursery setup

Bavarian Rose twin-sized ( finished photo coming once I have some sunshine here!)

Mother-in-Law's quilted curtains. They're finished, but she's doing something more to them so they have never been hung up. I don't expect to see them up. Ever.

Some of those are going to get their own posts eventually, a few are not. 


IN THE WORKS:

My baby clothes quilt with clothes from The Toddler
The Toddler's big girl bed quilt
Sister-in-Law's baby clothes quilt. STILL waiting for photos from her.
Maternity shirts for me! Wahoo!! 

IN THE CLOSET:
My wholecloth quilt. So sad. 



Whew. The list goes on, but that's all I can do for now. Yikes.

Linking up!!

Blogger's Quilt Festival - 2012 Fall!

I can't believe it's the BQF again! Woop!

If you haven't already go check it out here: Blogger's Quilt Festival.

This season's entry: my Oorah Love quilt. 

I haven't posted any "finished" photos, so this is going to be a bit of a photobomb!

"Oorah Love"
60" x 60"
Machine pieced and quilted by myself
Best Category: baby quilt?
Made with onesies, blankets and outfits from a baby boy's first year.

block pattern: "Jungle Path"
binding tut: Susie's Magic Binding

the back: a large cotton print featuring the island of Okinawa, flanked by strips from two bandannas the mom sent me. Also The Toddler playing.

and a few of my favorite blocks:

Home from the hospital tie-onesie:

this was a lovie blanket:

Footies from Marine jammies:

footies from fish jammies:

can you make out the quilting? muhawhawhaw

All wrapped up and ready to go:

Thanks for looking!

Thanks also to Amy's Creative Side for hosting this event again and all the awesome sponsors!

Yes, I know. I haven't blogged since August. I may remedy my infrequent writing in the future, but probably not. I just don't have the discipline to SIT DOWN for that long!

Oops I Did It Again

I am the worst blogger. Possibly ever in the entire history of blogging. Certainly in the circle of bloggers I follow!

My entire life I've been this way with keeping a journal though, so I don't expect it to change any time soon. I got through fits and spurts where I write a ton, and then a few weeks or months where I don't write and totally forget about it.

Life with The Toddler and the hubs has been lovely. A turned two at the end of June and a few weeks after that she and I spent three whole weeks away from hubs visiting my side of the family. It was fun and exhausting all at the same time.

I had about a month off sewing. Thankfully the sewing machines didn't rust.

There are large families of spiders hanging out in the corners of my sewing dungeon so I've been avoiding going down there as much as possible. Spiders scare the poop out of me. Figuratively speaking, of course. The only one in the house who poops herself if A.

And speaking of potty training....re-training is much more difficult than training. Before vacation A was doing awesome. Zero accidents, waking up dry most of the time from naps and nighttime, actually telling me when we were out that she needed to go. I made the mistake of putting her in pullups while on vacation. I was totally petrified of her peeing on some relatives couch.  And so she "forgot" her training. It's going slowly. I'm out of towels by the end of the day most days.

We're also working on cutting out naps. Because if she naps, she doesn't need to go to sleep until midnight. Literally. The hubs and I are exhausted.

On the sewing front, I'm working on a memory quilt using clothes worn by a baby boy. It is my favorite that I've done to date. I'm going to call it Oorah Love:

This is the spread of clothing, blankies, hankies, and even a map of Okinawa!

A few blocks...this was little boy's come-home-from-hospital onesie:

A pair of camo footie pjs:

A lovie-sized blankie:

And the cutest little pjs I've ever seen. The Something's Fishy applique was on the butt and the 3D fishies were the feet. Oh My Goodness!

An overall view of the finished top. I still have to quilt it,  hopefully in the next couple of days.

Once it's quilted I'll take a gazillion photos and have plans to do a quickie tutorial on how to do the footie blocks.

So yeah, that's all for now. I really need to do a catch-up post, before I have to do a catch-up for the catch-up!

WIP Wednesday, Whoah already?

Yoiks! I cannot believe it's already Wednesday again! Where did Thursday - Tuesday go?

It was an unusually busy week around the Toddler house last week.

I finished four tops. Got  caught up on a ridiculous amount of laundry. This laundry caused me to not sew over the weekend. My poor machine babies didn't run for three whole days. They were almost dusty when I used them.

We traveled to catch an NHL game. The Toddler was the only one who wore her jersey. Us adults were too embarrassed by the poor performance of our Leafs to wear ours.

Completed:

As usual, nothing from my list!

Lace diaper cover.

Lace ruffled leggings (see a theme?)

In Progress:

• Two custom baby clothes quilts.  

• Mother-in-law's Asian curtain/quilt. One quilted, one to go. No progress.
• My t-shirt quilt. No progress on this guy, either :(

On hold:

• Wedding dress quilt. Not mine, but for a customer. Waiting on the dress to arrive.
• SIL's baby clothes quilt. Waiting for photos of the kids to print for the final three blocks. 

On the Chair:

My 2nd Anniversary Wholecloth quilt.

Socking up!!

Linking up!

WIP Wednesday & The Daily Sockies

Completed:
5 tops for Etsy orders.


New top design:

And in action:

(How's that for an Internet Nurse in Public, or iNIP?)

Stuff you can't see:

• Business books :(  Bu-bu-bu-boooooring. I tried to convince my darling hubby to do them for me, but apparently he gets enough tax junk at work and has no desire to do it at home. 
• Lawn care/gardening. The problem with an early Spring is that I have to mow grass in March! I've been working on the roses and dividing some of the more leggy annuals.

In Progress:

• Mother-in-law's Asian curtain/quilt. One quilted, one to go.
• My t-shirt quilt. I had it on the quilting frame this week but had to rip out all of the stitches. Having issues with the invisible thread and I don't want to switch over to a "normal" thread since the quilt is 90% finished all in invisible.  

On hold:

• SIL's baby clothes quilt. Waiting for photos of the kids to print for the final three blocks. She should be sending really soon though!
• Two custom baby clothes quilts. Waiting on fabric to arrive and tshirts from the customer. Pink and lavender polkadots, I cannot WAIT!

OUT of the closet:

My 2nd Anniversary Wholecloth quilt. It's been moved to a chair in the living room. Once the weather warms up this is going to be worked on while I sit on the patio watching A make a dirty dirty mess of herself in the backyard.


Linking up:

Oh yeah.....YOU'VE BEEN SOCKED!

The Daily Sock with Marsbar Melts

First things first - The Daily Sock:

Funky zebra. Love 'em. 

Second things after....I finally made The Londoner's Marsbars Melts.   

A. Ma. Zing.

This is all it took for me to bring a little Heaven to the family by way of chocolatey goodness.

Before the went into the oven...

After they came out of the oven....

After I bit into one...

 

The tutorial is HERE. I made a few modifications just because I stink as a baker and cannot follow directions. 

I used three eggs, 7 tbsp of oil, and dipped my fingers in flour before rolling the cookie around the chocolate bar. I tried it without flour first, and the batter just stuck to my hands. But that's because I had an egg and some oil too much in them and so the batter was stickier.

On a sewing note, I have to look for a new source for the tan colour of my "milky" blouse. I bought the last of it today. Boooo!!!  I absolutely love the colour combination in this blouse so if I can't find a tan I like I will be ever so sad.

The (every other) Daily Sock

It turns out, I may be the worse mommy in the world. Poor little A burst an eardrum yesterday because she has a double ear infection. Yes, I know, really common, but still I feel like poop about it. She didn't complain whatsoever about it until the night before last. 


I noticed the massive amount of drainage from her ear yesterday while we were running errands, but didn't put 2 and 2 together until we got home. Thankfully, our doctor has an after-hours clinic on Wednesdays.


Here's hoping she's not allergic to amoxil! 


I needed a white towel yesterday so I figured I'd make a quick trip into my local Giant Tiger. I don't get to go into it very often because, all things considered, it's not that local. 
Anywho, in a giant bin outside of said Giant Tiger are women's socks. Bright, colourful, attractive anklet socks.  10 pairs for $5. Did I mention I need socks?  I couldn't resist. At $5, who could?


All these beautiful socks that I need to share with the world reminded me of The Daily Dress posts over at Nerdbiskit and so I am inspired to write an Every-Other-Daily Sock post now. I really do need to get blogging more.


So yesterday's socks:

Fantastic, no? 

On an I-want-to-cry note, I decided to take some photos of my hand-quilted king-size anniversary quilt that I'm "working" on. It hasn't come out of the closet since A was born. She's turning 2 at the end of June.

Notice anything missing? You might not.

     There should be a ton of blue lines that show me where to quilt. 75% of them have faded.  It took me a WEEK to get all of the designs drawn onto the quilt, and I did them using a lightbox. Now I'm going to need to make templates. Oh boy.  I didn't actually need another excuse not to work on this quilt, but I've got it now.

     The quilting design is mine, so if you steal it please remember where to give credit.

WIP Wednesday

Ok so I had the best of intentions. I did get most of the things I have wanted to get done in the past couple of weeks. Not all, by any means, but most.


I had an explosion of Etsy orders last week, plus an infinity dress to finish, so not a whole lot else got done. I can't complain though, because the orders allow me to fund the side projects!


FINISHED


First, the infinity dress. I wish I'd gotten to keep it!

And a photo of one of the tops:

I don't have a photo of them yet, but I tried out a new design for a skirt and a ruffly tank. Love them both!

Its kind of sad that I can just copy and paste my last list.

No progress:

My tshirt quilt. Really, me? Come on.

MIL's Asian curtain/quilts. They WILL BE QUILTED this coming week.

On hold:

SIL's baby clothes quilt. Waiting for photos of the kids to print for the final three blocks.

In the closet:

My 2nd Anniversary Wholecloth quilt. Yes, we are celebrating the 6th year this year. It's king-sized and hand quilted. I was overly ambitious.

And linking up: