Wow!

Ever have those times when its really clear to you who gets you, and who doesn't? This weekend had some of those moments for me. My sister, she gets it. She made this for me for my birthday. Can you tell what it is?



My own lemonade sandwich! Thanks Sarah! I'm pretty sure that no one else has one of these, and only you would think of making it for me.

Shopping

Having finished a whole bunch of projects, I find myself in that lull where I don't know what to do next. So I have taken advantage of some birthday money to go out on a small fabric shopping spree.

Just looking at the variety of patterns that have come in the door is an amazing example of the totally different tastes that I have.

For the bright colors, pink girly side we have the following:


You have got to see the things that these German designers at Farbenmix do with this dress! I don't have anything nearly so elaborate in mind, yet. They have a website all in German here that sends me into a pink and orange high every time I look at it. I ordered these from here and they were the first to arrive.

For the earth-tone calm side we have:

I found these at Purlsoho They are even better in person, with more colors and no repeats from selvedge to selvedge. I almost want to hang them on the wall as is. I suspect that they will take some courage and a firm idea before they are touched by scissors.

For the country side we have the long awaited red and white polka dot series, as well as another favorite motif of mine, black text on white fabric.


These were all ordered from eQuilter These will be needed to finish my quilt kit right away, and will then join the overwhelming stash.

Now that I have all this fabric, I hope to be able to actually make something during the upcoming long weekend. I'll let you know if it actually happens next week!

Finally - some projects!

I've been on a quilt spree lately. Well, not actually quilting, since I have never actually made a finished blanket, and then quilted together the various layers with stitching to create a real quilt. Usually, I do the piecing, and then am pretty much done with the project, so find some other way to use it. Some day I will actually make a quilt. Probably.

In any case, here's what I've been up to:

This pillow is a pattern from the Denyse Schmidt quilt book. I really like this book. If it had existed 10 years ago, when I was thinking about quilting but really wasn't interested in the usual quilt patterns, then my entire hobby trajectory might have been different. Plus, I got to use some of my Amy Butler fabrics that I bought last spring, thus justifying an order for some of her latest Belle designs.


I also stumbled onto Natascha Rosenbererg's website and blog. She has an illustration style that makes me smile every time. She also happened to have a few little quilt kits at one point, and I was lucky enough to get the last one. Thus expanding my mailbox fun to packages from Spain. I had so much fun putting this together, playing with all of the pieces. I threw in a bit from my own stash to fill it out. I haven't figured out how to finish it yet, but I want red fabric with white polka dots, which I seem to be unable to get at my local fabric store. Natascha has some other finished pieces on her website that I love. Anything with houses appeals to me, and she has a couple of stuffed ones with her own people peeking out the windows. How great are they?

My last, non-quilting project, was inspired by this paper doll book. I think the book is actually a little too simplistic. In many cases, the paper doll examples just use a lot of vintage ephemera smooshed together, or other similar sort of easy ways to make a paper doll. Some a really great though, and I enjoyed the history of the dolls. But it did give me a little push to just put together this guy in an evening. The biggest problem is that in the process of punching holes for the eyelets using a hammer and punch, I made a few marks in the studio floor. Whoops! So while the book is only so-so, anything that gets me to actually make something is a winner.