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I keep seeing maple leaf blocks everywhere and they must be contagious because I had to make some!  I don't have time to make another quilt right now, but I would certainly like to make one someday.  These blocks are quick and fun to put together. This will hang on the wall behind my computer once I acquire a dowel to hang it. I was a little torn about how to quilt it, but I ended up going with a Orla Kiely-style leaf and I am happy with how it turned out (although far from perfect as usual!).  You can see lots more maple leaves over in this flickr group .

This week I. . . Almost finished this tote bag for a swap, which I talked about in my last post .  I just need to hand sew the hole in the lining where I turned the bag and it will be complete. Got about a quarter of the way done quilting my wonky cross quilt.  Maybe not quite that much, but I will round up :) Received my papers for the Travellin' Pic Stitch blog hop.  I'm going to be EPP some rose star blocks .   Finished most of my flying geese for my daughter's quilt .  This is a low priority, but I'm having fun working on it with my daughter so I will hopefully get to do some work on it this week.  That's about it.  This week I would like to . . . Get about half way done quilting my wonky cross quilt.  It is queen size and I have a hard time working up the motivation to sew those LONG lines. Make my son's Superman costume.  This actually has to happen since we are going to a Halloween party at Disneyland on Tuesday. Start working on somet...

A few weeks ago we had a little chat within the wish circle of do good stitches and thought it would be fun to do a swap.  It is a great way to get to know more about other people in the group, plus it is just fun to make something for someone else.  Since I signed up for a couple of other swaps that are due around the same time, I thought I would get started on something for my partner so I don't get overwhelmed. I don't want to share too much about what I made (I cannot show the lining, I think it would be too big of a hint!) since this is a blind swap, but I really enjoyed making this and I was too excited to keep it to myself.  I have been wanting to do something with triangles since I saw Holly's quilt , and they were really fun to make. This project was very enjoyable. Until the very end.  After the tote was 100% done, I put it over my shoulder and realized that I had made the straps WAY TOO LONG.  The thought of ripping out stitches to fix the straps was ...

A couple of days ago my husband had an urgent need for the new iPhone 5.  We had just upgraded our phones last year, but somehow he persuaded me that we had to have the new one so he lined up at 5am this morning. This new phone doesn't have any accessories available yet.  Supposedly this new phone is very scratch and shatter resistant, but I don't trust myself.  I have preordered a case but in the meantime I need something to protect my phone. I based mine on  this tutorial , but I changed the dimensions (I used 4x14.5" strip, though if I could do it again I would probably make mine a little more narrow), velcro instead of a button, Thermolam instead of batting, and flannel for the lining. It is very simple but it should do the job for a couple of weeks.  Also, Rachel at Stitched in Color posted voting for the Softly Against Black contest and one of my mosaics made it to the finals.  If you have a second, go take a look at all of the beautiful fa...

I have been attempting to keep my sewing area (aka my dining room) a little more tidy so I haven't accomplished as much as I would have liked this week.  I have a hard time getting everything out to sew, and then having to put it all away every single day.  Hopefully one day I will have a dedicated sewing space. 1.  I did finish this queen size wonky cross top.  It has also been basted and I have even done a little quilting.  There's a long way to go with that though.  I am doing straight lines and I have found it to be much less boring if I just do a little at a time. 2.  I started about 80 more flying geese for my daughter's quilt .   3.  Last night I made 2 converging corners  blocks for the September quilt for the wish circle of do good stitches.  I think this was a great block to use for the bee because I don't think I would have the patience to make an entire quilt worth of these! 4.  One new project is that I am going to...

Luckily I saw this post over at Stitched in Color during my kids' naps and was able to completely ignore my messy house to play around with some mosaics :)  I love to participate in things like this because I struggle a little with matching fabrics in colors that I'm not comfortable with and it is a good exercise. I made one with blues and yellows and one with purples and oranges I thought it was a fun challenge, you should check it out if you haven't already!

Currently in Progress:  Forgive the Instagram photo.  I finished the last blocks for the queen size, wonky cross block quilt for my sister-in-law last night.  This one is for a Christmas gift but I would like to get it finished before the Holidays get crazy. I also started the Remix quilt for my daughter that I mentioned in my last post. Need to get started: Halloween candy buckets for my kids Halloween costume for my son.  My daughter has requested to be Rapunzel and she already has a perfectly good dress already, so I just have one costume to make.  Graduation quilt for my sister.  She is graduating from high school early so I need to get started soon-ish.  I am considering ditching my original plans and hopping on board with the spinning stars QAL. My goals for next week:  get the wonky cross quilt top pieced and possibly basted and possibly start quilting, I have such a hard time working up the energy to baste a quilt that big make a few more ...

My daughter Harper likes to help me with "my fabric" and is always asking who I am making things for.  The other day she asked if we could make something for her and I can't say no to that! I have built up a little collection of Remix fabric and it is perfect for my spunky little girl.  I pulled out my stash and she chose which prints she wanted to use and then she helped me match solids to the prints.  I had just seen this quilt  so I felt inspired to make some flying geese, but I have no idea what exactly I am going to do with them yet. We've made about 50 so far and I think we will just keep going until Harper decides how she wants to lay them out.

I have finished my Groove Quilt.  I did have some apprehension about free motion quilting so I put this quilt top in a drawer for a little while until I decided what I wanted to do.  I have only done free motion quilting a couple of times and I have never done anything other than pebble quilting so I knew that my options would be pretty limited.  I do have Angela Walter's book  (which is AMAZING, I honestly would have never had the courage to try this if I hadn't read the book) so if you are a beginner like me, or even if you aren't, I would definitely recommend it. But I could not imagine straight line quilting this one, even though I love straight line quilting.  The process went pretty well.  My main hangup was actually that I had planned on doing some echo quilting in the white sections and I did not like how that looked so I had to rip the stitches out. All of the solids are Cotton Couture solids from Michael Miller.  They are just lovely. This qu...

When we moved to LA 6 years ago, we were lucky enough to meet the Moores.  My husband and Morgan's husband were both attending graduate programs at UCLA and they lived in the building next to us.  A couple of years later we both had daughters within a couple of weeks of each other. Kate and Harper have been the best of friends every since Kate and Harper Halloween 2009 Harper and Kate Halloween 2011 Morgan is one of those people who is very inspiring to be around.  She is effortlessly creative and her quilts are what inspired me to start quilting two years ago. This past summer the Moores moved away to Massachusetts and we miss them dearly.  But, Morgan has started a wonderful new project where she is hoping to share some of her wonderful craftiness with the world.  You can read about her project on her blog here .  She is hoping to fund this project through Kickstarter.   You can find out even more about Morgan's project and make a donation on her Kic...

I had a pretty productive week.  In addition to making a passport wallet , I also finished some more wonky cross blocks. . . I am about halfway done with these blocks now.  Most of the first half are lighter blues and I am planning on cutting some darker blues and more neutrals for the second half of the blocks. And basted, quilted, and squared up my groove quilt . . . Hopefully I will get the binding started today.  I was very torn about how to quilt this one.  Generally I am a fan of straight lines, but I did not think that would be right for this quilt.  I am not very comfortable with free motion quilting, and I have only really ever done some pebble quilting, so I didn't know if I would be able to come up with a different way to quilt each color.   I am pretty happy with how it turned out.  It is FAR, FAR from perfect, but it is better than I expected it to be.  I figure if I waited to start doing more free motion quilting until I was amazing ...

A couple weeks ago I saw this post  and thought this would be a fantastic solution for keeping our passports safe and together. I used up some precious Melody Miller viewfinder fabric for the exterior. And some fun, bright prints for the interior.  There are only 4 of us so I used the directions for the 4 passport wallet, but the pattern also includes instructions for a wallet that holds 6. So my thoughts on the pattern are that it is good and it makes a very useful product and has clear directions and beautiful photos.  I did have a couple of thoughts/issues while I was making it: The pattern suggests either Pellon Fusible Featherweight or Craft Fuse as interfacing options.  I only had Craft Fuse on hand, so I used that even though I was a little worried because it is definitely much heftier than the featherweight option.  I would not use Craft Fuse again.  It gives the wallet some nice structure, but it was pretty much impossible to get the corn...