Birth Month is over 1/3 complete

Being short - February just seems to zing right by - although I am sure those buried under feet of snow will disagree with me this year! Being in a normally snowy area that has not really gotten that much snow this season, it is strange to be reading of blizzards elsewhere and have nothing here but a low covering on the ground and mostly dry roads. NOTE - this is NOT a complaint -just an observation!!!!

We are over 1/3 through the month -and the Giveaway deadline is TOMORROW!!! Be sure to comment on the giveaway post for a chance at the "big" prizes!! LOL!

Gift giving continues on a daily basis here - hugs, iPod headphone extension cords, I Spy books, chocolate and Legos have been a few of the favorites for child and adult alike -

Tonight's gifty was a handmade one for the Munchkin - a robot placemat and coaster in preparation for his robot themed birthday party. The robot fabric was one I picked up over the weekend during my shop hop with Shellie.

It is just a fat quarter, so I wanted to stretch it as far as I could. I have plans for some other little robot goodies, so I just took a small 6" wide strip to make the coaster and the focal strip on the placemat, stitching it down onto a batting foundation, and adding various solids which were in the "rainbow" of fabrics sent to me by Jill a few weeks ago (with the exception of the red - which has been in my stash for YEARS!!!!! Seriously - 3 states, 7 moves, and I still have scraps of it!)

The overall effect was cool - kind of retro like the robots - and very masculine. He LOVES it - which is the best effect of all! It's a tiny bit smaller than I would have liked, and a bit wonky -but it fits his plate, coaster and cup with no problem so I guess we are good.

One other little gifty I made this month was not for Birth Month, but for my sister-in-law, who was a bit under the weather and in need of a heating pad. I love love love my rice bags for nice moist heat on sore spots, so I put one together for her -complete with two removable covers -one flannel and one straight cotton. Each has a little flange and cuff just like the big pillowcases I make - for a bit of fun and extra comfort.

Hopefully they won't get too much use - but now she has them when she needs them.

Sweat Shop Products

Since I am delivering 2 of these pillowcases tomorrow - I thought I would give a sneak peak - and let you see the other 2 as well since you really can't see the focus fabric so it won't give too much away.
And the big project I have been working on is one giant step closer to completion. I put the triple borders on the pinwheel and really like how it makes the center pop even more. The middle border is made from leftover charms from the charm packs I used to make the pinwheels, and the inner and outer borders are fabrics from that line as well - I was sure to pull them out of the middle border so there would be more contrast, but that's hard to tell in this photo.

And for the first time ever I have done a pieced backing. I found a bargain fabric that worked with the front fabrics - but unfortunately it was a bit shy of being large enough to do the entire backing - so I scraped together the leftovers from the front outermost border, a piece I had purchased to possibly use for the inner border, and some marble charm squares left over from the pinwheel and middle border piecing. I chose not to put any of the prints in there - only the marbles - as the other backing fabric has a kind of busy print to it. I scrounged enough from the bottom leftover pieces to make another strip of the bargain backing to make my "inset" wide enough for the quilt back, and then just stitched it all together. It looks a little puckery here but I think it's just the way it is being held (thanks Hubby!)

The layers are now all pinned with a layer of flannel in the middle and once I pick up some thread tomorrow the machine quilting can begin - diagonal all the way - including the borders.

And the quilt now has a name .... "On Pinwheels and Kneedles" - it's a gift for Hubby's mother as she undergoes knee replacement next month.

Nothing like a good rainy day...

to get a lot of work done...

I still need to take photos, but the binding on the Boy Scout Quilt for Hubby is DONE. The Munchkin and I gave it a trial run with a mid-afternoon sofa snooze - works great!

And I made 3 more pillowcases. My goal is another 4 by the weekend so that each of my visitors will have their own new pillowcase during their stay.

Tomato bag update - we have fruit!!! On at least one plant. It's been raining since then so I have not been out to check again. All 6 plants seem happy and healthy.

Seeing Red

I've been making progress in dribs and drabs this past week - a quilty project is giving me frustrations and is now in a little heap in the corner - while I have moved on to other things.

Lazy Girl Designs just came out with a wonderful new bag pattern - Claire. You can read lots and lots about Claire on Joan's blog, including seeing the Claire that my Lazy Sister Sue posted, making her the first one to tell us about her Claire.

I was having difficulties picking my fabrics on this one - there are three different fabrics in the cover, and though I had a lot of pairs in my FQ stash that I would have liked to use together, I did not have any trios that did it for me - except for some I have set aside for a gifty project and so are off limits. Having seen pictures of all of Joan's samples as she shared them with her Yahoo Lazy Girl group, and actually having held a Claire in my hands prior to the pattern going to print - I was full of all these ideas and just could not decide.

Today - on my way through JoAnn's in search of children's scissors for the Munchkin, I noticed a cool red floral FQ - where the flowers looked almost like popcorn to me. And if you ask anyone - anyone in my family -they will tell you how much I LOVE popcorn!!! My life in Japan was frustratingly incomplete until I found a source of raw popcorn kernals and could make it the old fashioned way!!! Got me through many bouts of homesickness I'll tell ya!

(oh - and YES - the FQ's ARE on the way to the kids crafting supplies - really - trust me - they are!!)

In addition to being a fun print - this red combo really felt summery to me, and gets me geared up for our annual big Fourth of July picnic - I think our guest list this year is around 50 for fun and food in our backyard. This put me in the mood. Don't know if you can see it well in these photos - but the red on red has almost a starburst/fireworks motif.

Anyway - I found my trio -and got to sewing after the Munchkin went to bed. About 2 1/2 hours later - here she is - my finished Claire.

I opted for less variety in the inside -using a white on white yardage for my lining, and a second FQ of the polka-dots for the inner pockets. I have enough left over for a Wonder Wallet, too!

Oh -and over the weekend I finished up a pillowcase for my father-in-law for Father's Day. He's fixing up an old car, so this fabric was perfect for him. Now to figure out MY dad - who is coming to visit soon after Father's Day. Hmmmmm...... I got nuthin!

It's so nice when Hubby comes home...

Hubby was away at camp for the weekend - an adults work weekend to get Scout camp ready for the summer. He left EARLY Thursday morning, and got home at noonish today.

45 minutes after he got home, I was out the door to a quilt show.

And with him handling bedtime - I was able to get 2 more finishes (start to finishes) done, which gives me 2 more in the first week of our Waun-a-Quilt summer.

The crabby fabric of the pillowcase I have had for a while, and thought I could get the cuff out of my stash, but nothing was jumping out at me so I went back to the store and picked up one of the coordinates.

The Cars bag is from the leftover fabric from the pillowcase I made yesterday and is for the Munchkin to carry around his "Cars cars" that he likes to play with. He has been carrying them around in a bag with trains on it - and somehow that was working for him, but just did not sit right with me - not when I could coordinate things for him.

The quilt show was interesting - I went by myself, which was not nearly as fun as it would have been if I had gone with someone else - I chatted with a few people as we looked at the quilts and browsed the vendors, and I ran into one co-worker that I did not know was a quilter, but most of the time I was walking through alone.

I took a few pictures -will probably share those tomorrow.

Tonight I will just share my 2 finishes - and the first peek at Purple Miranda I.

2 more finishes

I got a couple of sewing sessions in this morning - the Munchkin and I took a mid-morning break to restock some videos and toys (and coffee!) upstairs - and then I was at it again.

I finished 2 different pillowcases - one for a birthday party this afternoon, and the other one for the Munchkin.

Both of these were start to finish projects - and I did a bit of stash busting with the black flange and the cuff on the Cars pillowcase.

The star fabric on the hockey case is a staple fabric I like to use for the body of pillowcases - it is nice and soft and cool on your face, but the stars give it a nice little dimension. It is a mid-range price fabric at JoAnn's, too - so when I have a good coupon or there is a good sale, I like to stock up on this one. It also makes a nice white-on-white for other projects.

I like to use this neutral for most of my case bodies for 3 reasons. The first is cost - I can do a novelty fabric cuff with 1/4 yard and not break my budget. The second is quality - sometimes I find the novelty fabric I want, but it is not a nice smooth soft finish for sleeping on. The third is best described as "restfulness" - I once had someone comment that the pillowcase I made was nice, but that the fabric was very busy and they did not find it restful when going to sleep.

I usually evaluate the focus fabric I have, and then decide what approach to take on a case by case basis ('scuse the pun!) - you can see with the Cars fabric that I opted to use that as the body and use stash for the cuff.

A Hard Fought Finish

The Prolific Online Quilters have put on their cheerleader uniforms and picked up their pom-poms, and we are encouraging each other to finish up projects that have been languishing.

Tonight, after battling the skeeters to water my garden (forecast said 60% chance of rain at 9pm, radar at 8:30 PM showed NO sign of rain - I opted to water - in the dark) I decided to see if I could finish a sewing project, or two, or more.

Well - it was to be ONE - and only ONE. See - ever since I started making fancy pillowcases with cuffs and trims and all the bells and whistles, I thought it would be nice to use the same technique of hidden seams and no raw edges to make a cover for my rice bag - it's own little pillow case. So I figured out the measurements, and as I manage my scraps of novelty fabrics, I have been cutting little fancy cuffs for just this purpose and tucking them into a zip top bag (cutting the big case area out of neutrals). My favorite of these is the bandaid fabric - which I thought would be great for those not feeling so good moments when the rice bag is needed.

Well -turning the tube on the full size pillowcases is EASY - and on these little ones? Not so much. Add to that a broken fingernail, a "French Seam" that was having challenges catching all the fabrics, and just a lack of patience - and I decided that this would be my only finish of the night. (well - that and finishing a blog post, I guess).

Will I make more of these? Yes! Will I pull out my handy dandy turning tool for next time? Certainly!!!

OK - now to go warm up the rice bag - my arms are tired from water aerobics today. Feels good -but still....

Birthday Dreams

This is what was in the Birthday pocket for today - a birthday pillowcase for sweet birthday dreams.

Hubby and the Munchkin got them, too. These themed pillowcases are just so much fun!

Sweet dreams everyone!