Remember the doll quilt?

We finished it last week.

I'm so proud of my little girl. Not only was she integral in the design process, but she stitched every single seam of this quilt. I'm afraid at times I was a little bit of the quarter-inch-seam-Nazi but by the end of the quilt she really got the hang of how to feed the fabric through in order to maintain the straight seam allowance.

We pieced it together in rows, then attached row to row to make the rectangle. Her eyes lit up when she saw the pattern taking shape, and she let out a little gasp. "Oh!" When the top was finished, I sandwiched it and pin basted it for her, then let her do the quilting. I used a edge-stitch foot to help her keep the stitching as much in the ditch as possible. She did surprisingly well.

As a reward for finishing her quilt, Denise and I took her to our local quilt shop to show off her creations. The ladies oohed and ahhhed and gave her a round of applause, and generally made her feel like a rock star. And then we bought her more fabric for her stash. She's got good taste, I think.

Toodles,

Dude... These are our curtains

This was Thursday's Daily Swatch over at True Up. AND it's the fabric in our living room curtains. How seriously cool is that?!?!

Toodles,

Yeahhh, I'm still here

Remember how I said I had a busy, busy week? I guess I actually had a busy, busy week followed by a lazy, lazy 2 weeks, and then another busy, busy week.

I don't know why it is, but once a week had passed without posting to the blog, it got harder and harder to write this entry. I think I thought that with that much time away, I had better write something significant - either to justify my silence or perhaps penance for my silence.

So tonight I'm just writing the "get the feet wet again" blog post. I won't bother you with the details of my absence, but I'm back from blogging vacay. Liv finished her dolly quilt (even did the quilting herself) and I'm finishing up a cool mini-art quilt. Will post pictures tomorrow. Or Sunday.

Still here,

Busy, busy week

Okay, so I kinda dropped off the face of the planet for a week. We hosted a baby shower at my house yesterday and the preparations took over my life. It was all kind of craftiness getting ready for it, but I'm ashamed to say that I got so busy that I didn't get any pictures of the final result! (I'm hoping Denise or Scarlett got one???)

I'll post later with more details. Right now I'm kind of braindead with the post crafting/party letdown.

Oh, and guess what came in the mail Saturday??? The Orange Dreamsicle print from Marisa!!! It's going to hang over my computer desk. Off to the frame store to find something that will do this justice....

Toodles,

I totally jinxed myself...

...when I said I thought we could have Liv's dolly quilt made by the weekend. Just 4 hours later, Liv comes down with a stomach bug.

That'll teach me.

It was only a 24-hour bug, but it kinda interrupted the crafting mojo. Gotta make a bunch of stuff for a baby shower this weekend, then we'll get back on track.

Dolly quilt sneak peek

We're making progress on our dolly quilt. It's actually going together much faster than I had expected. Yesterday while Little Bit was as school, I cut all the pieces for her to sew. I had thought we'd spend days sewing little pieces of fabric together, but now I'm thinking that we can get the whole thing knocked out by this weekend.

We started with Liv's birdie fabric that her Aunt Scarlett had given her. I think she went for that one because she had the most of it, and she didn't want to actually run out of any of her precious fabric. I added some "dogs" from my own stash to get our palette:

Based on Liv's design changes, I came up with the basic pattern. Each square represents 1 inch.

AND just so I won't be called a tease again (punkinhead), here's a sneak peek of the progress so far.

No, the corners don't match, but keep in mind that it was sewn by a 5-year-old. Her seams were actually pretty straight. I hovered a bit, I'm ashamed to admit. Every time it looked like she was getting off of the 1/4-inch mark, I'd tell her to stop and we'd straighten it up. By the end, she was starting to get the hang of it.

We're gonna sew some more today. Hopefully I'll have a finished top to show you tomorrow.


Toodles,

Gonna make a dolly quilt

I saw this post on Sew, Mama, Sew! about a doll quilt sew-along and immediately wanted to make one, too. So I showed the post to Liv and explained what a sew-along was and she asked me, wide-eyed, "Can we make one, too?" Oh girl, I love how you take the bait!

Of course, I follow it up with the fact that she'd have to use fabric from her own stash to make the quilt. "Or, we could make it with part my fabric and part your fabric" she countered. My little hoarder.

I found some old dogs in the stash bin (that's what we call the ugly fabrics - dogs) that matched one of her fabric pieces. I laid them out for her and she immediately starts showing me with her hands where we need to cut the pieces to alter the pattern from straight square blocks to squares and rectangles. I love the way her brain works!

Today, I wash the fabrics and then we'll cut them into rectangles and squares. I think this is gonna be fun.

Toodles,