One Pressed and One Wrinkled

One cowl I whipped up tonight for a Christmas gift, and the one I made for me a few weeks ago.

It surprises me how warm these are even though they're just 2 layers of quilting cotton. They are SO fast to make and the possibilities are endless fabric-wise. Too bad I only have one neck.

Ho Ho Ho

I know myself too well to try to make anything as ambitious as an entire quilt as a Christmas gift. So far I just have 2 little things on the go that are for Christmas.

 Just a sneak peek of this mysterious blue object. Don't want to spoil the surprise! I always hate throwing these cute little ears away! Maybe I can flatten them and make coasters?

I might make some scarf/cowls too. After making one for myself and seeing how cute and easy it is, I think I could whip a few up. Gotta scrounge up a photo of the one I made for me (Liberty, plus Cotton and Steel, plus hearts and birdies... so cute!).

Sawtooth

In progress a while back...

Ready to baste!

MQG

I have officially joined the Maritime Modern Quilt Guild and have been to two meetings so far. This is a pretty exciting step for me and I hope that joining up will keep me motivated to plug away at my projects. It seems like I'm pretty slow compared to most quilters, so knowing that show-and-share is coming up each month might just light a fire under me and my sewing machine. 

It worked for October's meeting - I wrapped up the binding on little brother's "plus" quilt/change pad just in time. Sorry for the non-humble caption, I stole this shot from the guild blog post since I don't have a good one handy...

 

At November's meeting I showed my completed sawtooth quilt top from Denyse Schmidt's latest book. I have no idea how close I can come to getting it quilted before December's meeting, IF I can even make it to the meeting, but we'll see how it goes. The swap is a Christmas ornament, but I don't know if I can get THAT much sewing in. I've got a knitting project on the go too, and I'm itching to get it done before the weather gets too cold (it's a stocking cap, I lost my favorite one this spring, boo).

I shared the URL for this here blog with the guild, so I thought I would add a couple of pics in case suddenly people started to look at it, ack!

 

Here's a floor pillow (just the cover in this shot) I made for my sister's kids a couple of years ago. It's from an Oh Fransson tutorial. It was so fun to make! I'd like to do another one for my own family some time; or better yet, a quilt in this style.

"Pie in the Sky" from Denyse Schmidt's older book is STILL in progress from who-knows-when-I-started-it. The hubs says they're basketballs, and now that I agree, I'm less motivated to keep going. I just have three more balls to applique to their backgrounds, and then I should be home free.

Here's the Totally Groovy quilt I made for Pile O Fabric's quilt along a while back. I'm so proud of this one. I love how the quilting itself came out. It was only the second thing I ever quilted with my walking foot. It's hanging on the wall in my bedroom and I love looking at it even with its little imperfections.

I LOVE this little guy. I made this purse bag thing for my husband's aunt for Christmas one year. I traced a picture from Edward Gorey's "The Gashlycrumb Tinies" and just made up the embroidery from there. I think this is "Desmond who was thrown from a sleigh." I'll have to double check that. Some day I want to make an Edward Gorey quilt all in black and white with little bits of red. Oh man, he's so cute!!!

Hope to have more projects to share soon!

...and Matching Elephant Daddy Jams

Happy Father's Day! 

The bloomers are a little big for junior right now, but we're about to switch to cloth diapers so hopefully they'll fit over his big butt then. The daddy-jams fit, though. Phew! I traced a knit pair of daddy's pajama pants and was worried about the difference between knit fabric (stretchy) and the quilting cloth (not stretchy). It worked out fine because the knit jammies were plenty roomy. I also used the buttonhole feature of my sewing machine for a legitimate purpose for the first time on these where the drawstring goes in/comes out. So easy!

And here's an Open Wide zipper pouch I made for B. The colors look terrible in this photo, it's cuter in the daylight :)  Sewing a zipper for the first time was not too bad, once I figured out the zipper foot on my machine. Oops, got to change the needle position, drrrr! It's Heather Ross on the outside and Kona on the inside. B is keeping her shell collection in there for now.

Elephant bloomers, so cute!

Tiny little bloomers for baby Cowabunga from Lotta Jansdotter's book Simple Sewing for Baby:

I think they came out so cute - I hope they fit!! 

Good thing infants can't object to how you want to dress them :)

I wish I had taken the time to figure out how to put the bias binding around the legs on the outside instead of on the inside because the papaya color looks so cute with the elephant print. Oh well, it sort of peeks out a little bit.

There was only 1/8" elastic and 3/8" elastic in my sewing box and the pattern called for 1/4". The 3/8" was nice stuff, but it just wouldn't fit in the openings so I used the 1/8" What a nightmare to join the ends!! There must be a trick. Hopefully what I did won't come undone!!