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!