0 bee blocks.

Hope you all had a nice Memorial Day weekend!  I finally had some time to put together my May blocks for do. Good Stitches!  Nothing like getting them in at the last minute.  Evelyn asked for square in square blocks for an older boy using primarily blue and brown, with bits of gray and green mixed in.

This first block measures 12.5" square.

Rather than a second large block, I opted to make 4 smaller blocks to add to the quilt, each measuring 6.5" square.

 Here's how they look together.  I can't wait to see this quilt finished!

I made progress on the herringbone quilt this weekend as well, and now all that's left is to hand stitch the binding!  I love that part of the process.  It should be finished in the next couple days, so stay tuned for pictures of the finished quilt before I send it off to Project Linus.

2 giveaway winners.

I am kind of sad that I'm not at home this week (I'm gone again for work) because my sister just sent me a package that would have made the perfect picture for this post.  She wrapped the "gift" and added at least five layers of tape around the entire thing, and then wrote on the package that it was very important and extremely fragile and to be extremely careful when opening it.  After spending 10 minutes carefully cutting it open with scissors, I get inside to find this ridiculous cheap dollar store trophy that says "WINNER" on it.  She's so nice to me.

Anyway, thank you all so much for your sweet comments on the giveaway post!  I gained over 150 new followers, so welcome to all of you and I hope you'll stick around!!  There were 797 valid comments on the giveaway (I had to remove the last 3 because they were a day too late in entering, I'm sorry!).

Now for the winners... the winner of the pillow cover is comment #20, Oso, and the winner of the charm pack is comment #755, lulafortune.  Blogger isn't letting me upload the random number generator screen shots, but I'll try to do that again later.  Congratulations to both of the winners and thank you all again for entering!

14 herringbone quilt progress.

Looking for my Sew, Mama, Sew, Giveaway post?  Enter here!

The herringbone quilt top has been sewn up, I pieced together a back, and it's basted and ready for me to start quilting!  It is kind of a crazy quilt but I like it more and more every time I look at it.

 I notice something new in it every time I walk by.  Kind of like an I-Spy quilt of sorts?

Now, to figure out how to quilt it.  I'm thinking some random diagonal lines (like I just did on this pillow) would look pretty cool.  Any other ideas you want to share?

In other news...you can kind of see the new color of my sewing room in these pictures!  The room is still a work in progress but I will try to share some true "after" shots next week sometime.

777 giveaway day!

This giveaway is now closed!!  Thank you all for entering!  I'll announce the winners later tonight.

Today is Sew, Mama, Sew's Giveaway Day!!  Welcome to all of you stopping over here from there!

I have two things to give away today, the first of which is this bright and fun 16" pillow cover!

For the second part of this giveaway, I have a handmade charm pack (6" charms) made up of 14 of my favorite fabrics!  There are 4 charms of each print, for a total of 56 squares.

To enter, simply leave a comment on this post!  Please make sure to include an email address if you're set to no-reply.

Followers (old and new) may leave a second comment for an extra entry.  I appreciate you coming back to visit me here often, I heart you all :)

This giveaway will end on Wednesday, May 25th at Midnight CDT.  I'll announce the winners on Thursday, May 26th!

Thanks for stopping by!  I hope you're all enjoying Giveaway Day!

16 pretty little pouch, part 2.

I made an extra pouch for my Pretty {little} Pouch Swap partner last night.  I had rainbows on the brain after seeing all of the awesome blocks that Rachel got back for her do.Good Stitches quilt.

I basically just cut 8 wonky strips, sewed them together in two sets of four, cut them in half again along the width and sewed them together a second time.  After I finished and trimmed the block, I thought it still needed a little pop so I added a red border (which is very uncharacteristic of me...I never use red!).  I used the gray Heath to bring it up to size and as the back of the pouch to calm down the bright block a little.  I quilted it in white along the width of the pouch and around the red border.

 I used the orange Painter's Canvas by Laura Gunn for the lining, and after auditioning a few different colored zippers, chose a lime green one that matches the green fabric in the block.

 Now I just need to add in a few surprises and ship my package of this weekend!

p.s.  Here's a link to the other pouch I made, in case you missed it!

5 herringbone blocks.

All of the blocks have arrived for the herringbone quilt!  This quilt is being created for the Inspire circle of do.Good Stitches, and we'll be sending it to Project Linus when it's finished.

It's looking pretty scrappy, but I like it.  I'm still debating whether or not I should put some sashing in between the columns.  The layout still needs to be tweaked a bit, but I'm excited to see how it all comes together!   I'm hoping to be able to sew the top together this week.  We'll see if that actually happens, we still have some painting to finish before I can start.

4 mothers day brunch.

Adam and I had our families over yesterday for Mother's Day brunch.  These photos were taken about 2 seconds before everyone swarmed the table, so they are not the most beautiful pictures but it's the best I could do.  There is no time for food styling when my nephew is hungry and asking when we're going to eat every 30 seconds.  I'm sure you can all relate to that, right?

I think I used almost four dozen eggs and three loaves of bread, which is kind of excessive but there were a lot of mouths to feed.  I made four different egg bakes, french toast bake, crepes, bagels and spinach dip, sausage, breakfast potatoes, and a huge bowl of fruit.  We had a chocolate pudding/whip cream concoction and strawberry shortcake for dessert.  It's safe to say we probably all gained five pounds yesterday, but everyone seemed to enjoy the gluttony.

We took a few pictures with our moms after brunch; here we are with Adam's parents.

And with my mom and sister.  This is what happens when you forget to set the camera to "auto" before handing it off for someone else to take a photo.

I'm sad to say this is the only picture of us with my mom from the day!  I definitely won't forget to set it to Auto next time.

Minus the failed family photo, the day was wonderful!  Beautiful weather, good food and a great way to celebrate all the moms in our lives.  Hope you all had a nice Mother's Day as well!

8 goodbye blue.

So things have been moved out of my office/sewing room and we're ready to start painting.  I cannot wait to say goodbye to the blue walls.  I like aqua as much as the next person, but I don't like being surrounded by it on all four sides!

 You can bet we'll be saying goodbye to the fan and the creme colored ceiling as well!

Even though this was one of the first rooms that I unpacked after we moved in, I never really felt like I could fully move in, hang stuff on the walls, etc. since I knew we'd be painting at some point soon.  I hate the feeling of living temporarily in a space, and especially in this room I believe it may be part of my problem of feeling uninspired lately. Walking into the blue every morning just made me cringe a little.

So we're saying goodbye to the blue this weekend, and welcoming in a lovely shade of gray!  Hopefully it will get me one step closer to my inspiration for this room!

4 another WIP.

I started working on a new quilt yesterday.  It probably seems like I haven't finished a quilt in a long time, and while that is partially true, I did recently finish one for Quilts for Kids but forgot to take a picture before I sent it out.  I have a lot of things in different stages of progress, but I can't seem to stick to one thing for too long lately. I'm not sure why that is, but I hope I get over it soon!  To help me out of the rut I started this simple quilt using a jelly roll of Weekends by Erin McMorris and some strips of Kona Ash.

Of course as soon as I was done sewing the strips together, my husband and I decided that it's time to paint my sewing room!  So I've starting moving things out of here and am excited to finally make this room mine.  More on that subject tomorrow!

9 circle quilt sighting.

I can't remember the last time I did a feature on any of the projects in the Bijou Lovelies flickr pool!  Jessica from a little gray just had a little girl (Elsie Morgan...such a cute name!!) and her mom made a circle quilt for the nursery using my tutorial.  It's so adorable that I just had to share!

Isn't it cute?  I love the coordinating sheet and crib skirt, and pillow that were made to match.  It looks great Jessica, and congrats on your new baby girl!  Thank you so much for sharing!

Don't forget to add your projects to the flickr pool if you make anything using one of my tutorials or inspired by something you see here.  I love seeing what you're up to and I might even share it here on the blog!

10 practice makes perfect.

Well maybe not perfect, but it's a vast improvement from my first pouch!  The proportions and fabric choices for this one are much better!  I used an Echino print for the top, linen for the middle, and a yellow print from the new Denise Schmidt collection for JoAnn.  I handstitched a few little X's on the front, just for fun.

The inside is my favorite Modern Meadow Herringbone print by Joel Dewberry in Aqua, and I added a pink zipper for an inside pocket.

The bottom has boxed corners to give it a little depth.

It's hard to see in the photo, but I stitched my logo on the back with the same gray perle cotton to finish it off.

This one will soon be on its way to my partner in the Pretty {little} Pouch Swap!  I hope she likes it!