Has It Really Been Four Months?!

Apparently my need to update my blog has been almost completely eclipsed by my need to sew, sew, SEW!  Currently, I'm working on a birthday present, a baby shower gift, two purses (a matching mother-daughter set - aww!), a dress that comes from an old shirt that I thought I had to throw out, and a quilt for li'l ol' me. Oh!  I'm also attending a quilt class, each Wednesday night for three hours, to help me work through some of the more challenging blocks from the 2011 Western Washington Quilt Shop Hop.

Whew.  I just wore MYSELF out! 

Long story, short - I have plenty of upcoming blog posts in me.

To catch you up on a few projects that I've completed since we last saw each other...  As I mentioned in my last post, I have been working on blocks for the quilt shop hop from 2010. I've just about wrapped up the blocks for that project, only about a dozen more to go. (That's not so bad when I started with 58 to make!)  Here's another one that I designed myself. I took pictures of the flowers that appeared in one of the fabrics from the hop and then enlarged them in my dear, precious, couldn't-live-without-it Photoshop.  After that I traced the flower shapes on to some Steam-a-Seam 2, and played around with the three flowers to get them to all fit on one 8.5" block. TA-DA!  It looks like I was able to pull off a little magic with this one! 

Now we come to a scarf that I made a few months ago...

One evening, while I was blog-stalking, I came across this fantastic tutorial on Make It and Love It. (By the way, thank you Amber Weyland, for pointing this blog out to me. Yes... I still want to make those alphabet bean bags that you mentioned!) I had been in such a rut with purses and aprons, this came as a breath of fresh air. It also looked like the perfect project to use some voile I had found at Fourth Corner Quilts. If I do say so myself, I was right! I never really envisioned myself as a ruffle kind of girl, but I may just have to change my tune!  Speaking of the ruffles, here's their close-up shot: 

Now I just have to figure out the perfect outfit to wear it with. OH!  I almost forgot!  If you want the directions to this pattern, the very same one that I used, click here.

Last update of the evening!!!

It seems like lately, there's been a non-stop baby train. I have so many friends that have either recently had, or are about to have, a baby.  The last baby shower I went to was for Jolene Thayer. Since the shower, she gave birth to Liberty, on the 4th of July!  CONGRATS!  For Jolene and Liberty, I tried my hand at a rag quilt. I've seen them around for quite some time, but I hadn't taken the plunge. I started by choosing an adorable pink owl fabric, and some coordinating pinks and greys, from Two Thimbles Quilt Shop, also here in Bellingham. 

It's such an easy quilt to put together... All the directions I needed I got from this picture I took while I was at The Quilted Forest in Salem, OR. Granted, the instructions are a bit vague. If you have questions, let me know. I'll just leave it at that! 

Here is how my first attempt turned out:






Jolene liked it, that's what matters most to me!



A close-up on the "rag" effect.