My Preciousness

I don't usually join online quilt-a-longs, bees, and the like, for a couple of reasons.  A) Ever since having children, my sewing time has dropped drastically.  B) I don't like to be held to time constraints when sewing.  I always have a million projects going at once, and I hop between them constantly.  So with A and B going on, I'd never finish anything in time for deadlines.

However, I found Kelly's, My Precious quilt-a-long, so easy and relaxed that I decided to join in the fun.  The basic guidelines?  You can sew whatever you want - it doesn't even have to be a quilt - but you have to use your most precious, hoarded fabric that you'd never dream of cutting into.

Success!  I was in desperate need of a small purse or clutch to stow my wallet, phone, etc. in for when I go out sans children.  And my super precious fabric of choice?  Meadow print in olive from Heather Ross' line Rabbits and Racecars (even though I had previously cut into it a little bit for my kitchen rug project).  I went with the Curvy Clutch pattern from Michelle Patterns.

Why is this fabric my absolute favorite?  The color simply rocks my face off.  I love that bright olive with the hints of orange, pink, and yellow flowers.  And let's face it - those random little turtles and chipmunks are pretty darn cute.

The Curvy Clutch pattern itself came together really nicely - my only issue is that I think that the sew-in interfacing that I used was too thick.  It was a beast to turn, and there is one area on the interior where the interfacing does buckle outward a little bit.  I'd definitely go with something more lightweight next time.  I went ahead and lined it with Wildflowers in brown from Heather Ross' Lightning Bugs line. 

Even though my olive meadow print is now down to scraps, I'm glad that I finally took the plunge and made it into something special.  I'm sure I'll enjoy it much more than if it was still sitting on the shelf.

Check out what my other fabricaholics most precious fabrics are, and see what they made out of them on the May link-up page!

More coziness

Since I really don't need many baby supplies for this second little girl, I decided to splurge when it came to making her some special keepsakes.

Right now I'm in baby blanket production mode since all of Phoebe's baby blankets have been claimed by, well, Phoebe of course.

I have been madly in love with fabric designer nani IRO for a looooong long time.  Not only are her prints incredibly gorgeous, but some of them are printed on the softest, most lovely double cotton gauze - of which I have been completely smitten ever since Heather Ross' Far Far Away collection came out.

So why isn't my entire house swathed in this fabric?  Well, at about $22/yard, it's definitely a splurge for our current budget.  But after a couple of good Etsy sales, I went ahead and order a yard of this print...

.....and a yard of this one - both from Superbuzzy.

All of these blankets are pretty simple with just one piece of fabric for the top, and one for the backing.  I sewed them right sides together, turned them out, then used a decorative topstitch around the edges. 

I paired each of them a little differently - this one has the double gauze top with a voile pastry line backing....

.....and I pieced a backing for this one out of all of my leftover Far Far Away double cotton gauze.

Finally, this one has a Little Folks voile top with a Folksy Flannel backing - both purchased from Pink Castle Fabrics.

Each one is softer and more luxurious than the next, and I think that both baby and momma are going to love cuddling together with these.

And Polly too, of course.

New Heather Ross - eeks!

Is it a blessing or a curse to have the owner of Pink Castle Fabrics live right around the corner from me?

I ran right over soon as I got the text that Heather Ross' new line, Far Far Away III was in today.  Sadly, there's no way I can afford the entire line, but I picked out a couple of my favorites.   These pinks, yellows, peaches and browns are my current favorite color palette (and have been for the past two years if you take a look back on Phoebe's nursery).

I'm sure I'll have no shortage of projects in which to incorporate these beauties!

Snow, painting, and a giveaway

Oh how I love those weekends where you lazily lounge around in your pajamas till noon and get dressed purely to visit the Dairy Queen that is situated a mere 1/10th of a mile from your house.  I kid you not - it's pretty freaking awesome - and yes the ground is covered in snow, but ice cream has no season in our family.  We've lived here for only two weeks and I'm pretty sure they know us by name already. 

But we were up and moving extra early this morning because.....

It snowed!

For the first big snow to hold off until mid-December here in Michigan is quite rare, so we were pretty excited.  Phoebe didn't even get a chance to change out of her sock monkey jammies before heading out into the winter wonderland.

Our weekend also involved lots of painting.   After painting a dozen swatches on the wall, and pouring over almost every paint chip created, we went for it and painted our kitchen Lemon Pound Cake.  And we hated it.   So I got to spend both naptimes and bedtime repainting it Corn Husk Green, and goodness, it looks about ten million times better.  I'll have some pictures once I finish painting the trim and ceiling (yes, the ceiling is currently painted calamine lotion pink.  I'm still not quite sure what the previous owners were thinking).

Now, onto the giveaway! I just want to say "hello and welcome!" to all of the new visitors here for Giveaway Day.  I'm offering up an assortment of scraps from my stash of Heather Ross fabric.  I might have mentioned a few times that Heather is my absolute favorite fabric designer, and what better way to introduce you to my blog than to share with you some of my favorite things!

I've got quite an assortment of pieces left over from my various Heather quilts, so if you'd like a chance to win, please leave a comment telling me what you are hoping to receive this Christmas.  I'm still really behind on my shopping and would love some great ideas.

And I don't know about you, but I hate it when people make you tweet, like, follow, blog, etc. for extra entries (who has time to do all of that?), so I'll make it easy on you and just leave it to one entry per person.  But if you'd like to add me to your reader, that would be awesome :)

**Comments are closed!  Announcing the winner tomorrow :) **

Blogger's Quilt Festival

Not too much crafting has been going on here lately thanks to packing, a very clingy toddler, and a particularly nasty cold I've been fighting.  Today I was feeling better enough to drag myself out of bed and cut out a pattern for a shirt that I'm working on, but that's about as far as I've gotten.

While going through my huge list of blogs that I have yet to catch up on, I was reminded by multiple posts that the Blogger's Quilt Festival is coming to an end, and if I'm going to join in the fun it had better be now!



This quilt is titled "Heather Ross, Squared" and is one of the very first quilts that I made, once again using solely fabric from Heather Ross' first fabric line "Lightening Bugs and Other Mysteries".  I think this might be my favorite fabric line of all time, and I really wanted to show off the amazing prints.




If I remember correctly, this pattern is called "Four Square", and is made up of 8", 4", and 2" squares, separated by 1" sashing.  I used up a ton of my HR stash by doing some major fussy cutting for the 2" squares, but I completely love how it turned out.  I ended up quilting it in an all over, loop-di-loop pattern - my first time doing free-motion quilting!



I even entered this quilt in my first (and so far, only) quilt show!  I didn't win any prizes, but it was a lot of fun and a great feeling to see it hanging up there with the quilts of all those other talented ladies, and I got some great feedback from the judges.

There it is!

Thanks for letting me share!  Click on the link below to see all of the other wonderful entries in the festival (I think there are over 500 of them!).  And a huge thanks to Amy for the genius idea, and organizing the whole shindig!

Heather Ross Studio Sale

I usually don't post twice in one day, but I just had to share my loot from the Heather Ross studio sale, which just came in the mail today!

So I think I've mentioned a few times how incredibly in love I am with Heather Ross.  I was lucky enough to get to participate in her studio sale this year, where you basically set a spending limit and she packs up a box full of unknown goodies for you.  I gave her a limit of $50 and asked for fabric and artwork, and she sent me this treasure trove of loveliness.  On the top left is one yard of Munki Munki beach scene in jersey and to the left are two 14"x14" home dec weight prints from her newest line Macaroni Love Story, which is available from Spoonflower.

I am so in love with these signed and numbered prints that will look so wonderful in Phoebe's room.

I am especially excited about these three scraps, which measure about 5" tall by about 5-10" long.  These are also from her new Spoonflower line, but they are in colorways that didn't end up making the cut!

And finally, one more signed print that I think might have to stay up all year long.

Stuck

This is what my design wall has looked like for over a month now.  Actually, we're probably inching closer towards two.

Heather Ross is hands-down my all time favorite fabric designer, and her collections are what really sparked my obsession, love affair, interest in fabric.  When I heard that she was coming out with a new fabric line last year, I went on a fabric buying fast, and saved up all of my extra cash to drop on Far Far Away II.  I purchased about 12 half yard prints the second they came in (seriously, it was about 1:00am when I received the notification email from Hawthorne Threads), and let them sit on my sewing table for a couple of weeks so I could gaze at their loveliness.

Please ignore the cat hair!

  I struggled over how to piece this quilt because I really wanted to keep the pieces large so I could show off the prints, but I wanted to add some sort of variety other than just the same uniform sized squares.  So in addition to the large 8x8" squares, I added in 2x2" squares of the rose prints and some coordinating solids. 

I won't go into how many different arrangements I've sewed these into, but I've definitely spent a lot of hours with the seam ripper.  That row of patchwork sashing on the left and the kona coal on the right are staring at me right now, waiting to suck up hours of my time.  And don't get me started on how I am not liking that the squares are vertically stacked on top of each other.  That is just too much seam ripping to think about.

I'm just not happy with anything I've come up with so far.  I think because I love this line so much, I'm putting too much pressure on myself to come up with something astounding.

Any suggestions, crafty people?