I'm in Fabric Heaven!

I'm in fabric heaven!  I went to the mailbox last night and retrieved 10 small squishy packages.  Ten!  It was Christmas in Ju..well ok, Christmas right before Christmas!  First I unwrapped that small bag I won in the SMS giveaways from adelaidelemonade.  Don't forget to hop on over to her site to get the tutorial for the bag so you can make one too!  The bag was sooooo much cuter in person. And even more gorgeous when I stuffed it with fabric.

See that pink and red yard of Folksy flannel from Anna Maria Horner sticking up out of the bag above?  You should get some, the pattern is so subtle and the colors are wonderful. I want to get a ton of it and make this baby quilt, from Anna Maria's website - soooo soft and pretty.

Next I opened a bunch of fabric from a quilt I'm being commissioned to make.  What's not to love about a quilt commission???  You get a bunch of gorgeous fabric sent to you for free, you get to play with it until you're sick of it, you get to keep the scraps, and then you give it away.  Sounds like normal to me.  Except you get free fabric to play with, free scraps and money to boot!  What's not to love?  And all I have to do is put in about 100 hours of hand sewing labor.  Big deal, i'd be doing that anyway.  And having said that, let me also say I love all the trust there is in the quilting world.  She trusts me to send me the fabric, then I trust her to pay at the end.  I love our quilting community, don't you?

Lovely Amber sent these fabrics to coordinate into a copy of Finn's quilt.  She chose some Kokka Japan as her focus fabric:

Then she pulled all the colors out of the focus fabric with these:

So cute!  The organic cloud fabric she sent even came with two tiny swatches to intice you to buy the whole collection, and guess what, it worked.  Now I want the mushrooms and orange dots too.

Enjoy!

A Cat Finish

A kitty cat finish!  This is the comissioned cat quilt for a friend to use as a gift.  It features the actual five cats of the intended recipient, complete with nametags and correct coloring.  You can see the cats more closely here and here and here and here.

I really enjoyed making it, it was lots of fun!

I chose a gorgeous soft flannel for the backing that perfectly matched the green/blue batik.  It has blue stars around the edges and green stars in the middles.

Like this, see?  Merry Xmas everyone!

Sashay Shantay

Here is my grumpy little dress model showing off her winnings!  Thanks again to brownpaperpackages for the gorgeous dress!  She saw me open it and demanded to put it on right away. After which, she immediately got grumpy.  Almost two year olds are always frustrated about one thing or another!

Maybe petting a kitty will cheer her up!  Nah, probably not.

I also got fabric in the mail!  Yay!  My first batch of Red Letter Day, plus birds.  Annie got it for me as a thank you for fixing her resume.  I do that on the side if you need me to look at yours too.

Have a great day!

Another Giveaway

Here's another chance for you to become a winner, winner chicken dinner like me! Hop on over to grosgrainfabulous and enter for a chance to win a $50 gift certificate to Firststepphoto!


They have the coolest vinyl wall art, you just put it up and when you want to change it, it just comes right off. I've been eyeing some for the wall above our couch for a while now!

Fish in a win!

What Did You Win?

Did you win anything in the Sew Mama Sew giveaways??? I won three things! I'm so happy. I entered almost every single one they had, like 200 giveaways!

The first is this gorgeous dress for Gigi from brownpaperpackages! I love the pieced star detail at the waist. I'm going to put it in the drawer and she will love it next year!

The second is this super cute rag softie named "Flakie" (as in snowflake) from Eerika at ragpets! Check out the sweet description of him on her blog. She describes how he can't wait for Christmas and then shows him tucked in bed and says, "Since going to bed early makes Santa come quicker, Flakey has donned his PJs and is going to sleep now in order to make the presents come faster." So cute!!! And now he's all mine - well, my two year old's anyway. He's flying in all the way from Finland to Texas. I should buy him a cowboy hat!



The third thing I won is this sweet little lunch bag from adelaidelemonade! I love that Farmer's Market flower and of course the Mendocino kelp stripe and seahorses. It's about 7"X8" so the perfect size to take my lunch in every day. If you want to make one for yourself, she has a tutorial here. You can make one too and we can be twins!

Edited to say: Wow, I was calling it an "easy" tutorial before but I just really looked at it and I can't believe the amount of work that went into this bag! I take it back, it wasn't easy! I appreciate it more now.

Thank you all and thank you too Sew Mama Sew!

And if you'd like to win some stuff, you still have a chance! Hop on over to Sew-Fantastic! She's only on the seventh day of Christmas, and besides, you can enter the first six right now if you want. Check it out!

I Finally Understand Embroidery Stitches!

Thanks to the blanket stitch tutorial and the whip stitch tutorial offered by the amazing Alice at her futuregirl blog! As a self-taught quilter, i've never quite understood how to make the embroidery stitches. My friend Sarah tried to teach me the split stitch and I just kind of use that all the time. The futuregirl tutorials are very clear, you should check them out!

Futuregirl also offers these free downloads with detailed pdfs instructions on how to make felt sea creatures including octopi, seahorses and starfish using those stitches.

As if that weren't enough, she also offers this tutorial describing how to make a hilarious clean/dirty dish indicator for the dishwasher. Love it! That would be a fun Xmas present for a friend with a good sense of humor!

Star in the Cabin

My mother in law has a lot of great quilts, but this one was my favorite from our visit. What a great pattern! The whole quilt reminds me of Christmas. Not the colors, but the qualities. The star in the log cabin pattern reminds me of the star of Bethlehem and the manger.


It's super heavy and made of all heavy corduroy. Reminds me of cold weather and snuggling around the Christmas fireplace. Must have been hard to piece! By machine, I'm sure. I wouldn't want to try it by hand!


Even the backing is all corduroy! This thing weighs a ton but is very soft and snuggly. Do you like it?