maybe i'll finish some bibs...

For some reason I've been having trouble doing any sewing lately. Could it be that my baby is trying to do a million new things an hour and then he's also refusing regular naps? (Read: tired baby makes bad choices.) By the time he goes to bed at night all I can do is sit and stare at something. 

I have been doing bits and pieces of projects though. Mostly planning, I guess (I'm so good at making plans). 

Today I cut out some fabrics to make baby bibs. I'm pondering doing some little patchwork applique on them, so naturally, rather than making a decision, I'm putting the whole thing off. Here are the fabrics though:

Next I need to cut the flannel for their backs.

I actually have a bunch of bibs in various stages of "doneness." These need topstitching and snaps. Those at the very top just need snaps. The middle fabric way at the top is from the 80s. I love it.

Wish me luck getting something done today!

busy weekend

We had a busy weekend. Thanks to a snafu at Whole Foods in which they ran out of corned beef on St. Patrick's Day, I made ours on Friday instead, complete with "champ." It's an Irish version of mashed potatoes, in this case, with tons of scallions. Yum. No, YUM!!! I was pretty impressed with myself for making corned beef and cabbage, as well as a side dish with an 11-month-old in the house! He enjoyed watching me scrub and chop the carrots. So cute. Here's a link to the recipes: champ and corned beef (I actually used the cookbook Forgotten Skills of Cooking but the recipes on Epicurious were pretty similar.)

Charley also became obsessed with pulling himself up and getting stuck in tiny spaces (like under his high chair), so multi-tasking is all but impossible now. (As I write this he's pulling a baby gate out from behind his pack and play. How does he notice the most subtle changes in our house?) Oh, and he learned how to climb the stairs, which I hadn't seen until just now. If I had his capacity for learning I'd be fluent in Spanish by the end of his first nap. He's currently crawling past the stairs, and I find myself hoping that he'll simply glance at them the way I might look at a CVS through the car window. No such luck...

Okay, I also used part of a Jo-Ann gift card! This has to be a record, because I almost always hoard store credit for months if not years. Not anymore, darn it. I was planning to buy colored elastic, Insul-Bright and poly-fill. Well, it dawned on me that I could use hair bands (which I'm hoping I didn't get rid of because they had that little piece of metal that tangles your hair) and the poly-fill felt like someone shredded garbage bags and stuck them in a bag (I already have bamboo stuffing and don't love its texture). I did buy some Insul-Bright, which I'm planning to use for pot holders and maybe coffee cozies. Well, I decided to look at the fabric, even though I felt a little guilty doing it (I try to support independent quilt stores as well as use my stash only...or my mom's stash). Well, they had some Alexander Henry prints, and I just couldn't pass up two of them.

Oh, and there's that little book too! It's called I Love Patchwork, and it's pretty much awesome! Since I'm in Craft Book Challenge, which I'm pretty sure says not to buy a new book all year, I felt sort of sheepish buying a new book. I realized, though, that I only bought one, yes, ONE of the books I already have! So then I didn't feel so bad. Here are a few projects I want to try...

Puzzle Ball--it uses paper piecing (that's what I'm calling it), which I want to try.

 Mini-pincushions!

A fabric calendar, cute much?

Placemats with guides for the silverware...want to know a trick though? My brilliant mom taught me that you can remember it this way: fork and left have four letters, while knife, spoon and right have five letters! I've never forgotten how to set a table since. I still think these are adorable, though, and would be such a cute gift for newlyweds. 

Off to do something productive! Long live naptime!

ikat

(This photo is of a gorgeous antique Ikat from Uzbekistan. 1stdibs is selling it...I'd accept it as a Christmas or birthday gift.)

Lately I'm doing a lot more thinking and planning than doing when it comes to making stuff (although I've been cooking some good dinners, if I do say so myself). In the crafting/sewing department all the action has mostly been in my mind. Today I was poking around looking at Ikat. When Charley was just a bun in the oven I realized that our silk throw pillows would have to go, so my mom and I picked out some fun fabric at JoAnn's. It's a nice weight and fun color scheme, especially for not being from a quilt store. Anyway, you've probably guessed that it was...Ikat. I made the first one at my one and only (for now) quilting retreat, but then my mom made the rest. They look great and maybe sometime I'll take a picture.

I only learned what Ikat is about two years ago from an amazing book of my mother in law. If I figure out the title, I'll link it up...Anyway, the book was so interesting that I actually read a lot of it rather than just looking at the pictures. My interest was re-peaked (?) a couple days ago when I was poking around on the anthropologie site. I have a gift card that I've been rationing, and lately their clothes look like something Liza Minelli would have worn in the 80s. I trust them, so I can wait out this bad spell, but in the meantime I was thinking that maybe I would use it on something fun for our house...that a soon-to-be toddler can't ruin. A lampshade seemed to be the perfect choice, and guess what? There are three Ikat lamp shades! (p.s. if you haven't looked at their lampshades online, check them out; they do a neat trick when you drag your pointer over them.) None of them are my favorite, but it was fun to look at them.

Next I looked on Etsy, and found this gorgeous set of pillow covers from Bali. You get all nine! I love that they're not all red or pink or orange; it's way more interesting this way. (My mom would say that there could even be another color added for interest, and she might be right.) Anyway, I love how they look together. Their shop, Ikat and Batik, has lots of other sets too. (If you click the photo it takes you right to that item. Buy it so I can live vicariously through you please.)

Here are some other lovely Etsy finds (click on the photos for their source...I had two favorite shops):

(This coverlet is from the same shop as the pillows!)

(This shop uses vintage and antique fabrics; it's called Material Recovery!)

Okay, I really must go to bed. It's funny how what should be quick little internet explorations end up taking longer than some sewing projects!http://www.1stdibs.com/furniture_item_detail.php?id=407299

i've been thinking about...

embroidery. Last year (or maybe the year before that, actually; funny how that happens) I decided to try my hand at embroidering a little needle case. I blogged about it, and oh look, it was in 2009! Anyway, during that little project my mom dragged out tons of embroidery books for me to look at, and most of them bored me to tears. But then a little lightbulb went off and she was like, "You know what? You might be more into freehand embroidery." As I remember it, she was like Ollivander when he hands Harry Potter his wand. You know the one. She let me take them to my house, without the dust covers, (I can't be trusted with those). The books are incredible. Seriously. Having only skimmed them, I can say they are awesome! They're all about taking images from the world around you and turning them into art using different materials and stitches.

Here's one of my favorite series of photos showing cabbage in different media from the book Design in Embroidery by Kathleen Whyte. Unfortunately, the photo quality in the book isn't that great (you know, black and white for a color project...), and my own photos aren't that great either. My scanner doesn't get along with my computer. 

And here is another from the natural world as shown in Stitchery: Free Expression by Ann Woelders. Note the crossword puzzle paper used in the paper collage!

Maybe I'll actually make something...

take your camera everywhere.

We had so much fun visiting my parents in Minnesota! I'm really kicking myself now for forgetting to take my camera along though. There is so much worth documenting at that house!! One of the funnest (yes) surprises was that my mom and dad made Charley his own little room! They hung up the giant 1970s fabric panels we had up when I was little. It's weird, because I couldn't find anything like them online. I assume it's a case of using the wrong key words.

As I searched I did come upon this little gem for sale at Toys of the Past on Etsy:

And this adorable rotund birds fabric that unfortunately is no longer available.

And this boat fabric from LuLu's Vintage Blog:

One of my dear friends I met through teaching passed her giant 1970s panels on to me, and one of them is the children in this quilt. I can't take pictures of mine right now because they're safely tucked away in the basement until we move somewhere with walls large enough to hang them. I love that there isn't one token child of color. (p.s. I've never seen Jane Foster's Blog until now, but um, love!!)

Well, I've spent probably 45 minutes trying to find pictures online of them...I should have taken pictures!!! Maybe I'll ask my mom to take some...

packing...or not

So I woke up at 7:00, while Charley is still sleeping. This is highly unusual, since I usually let him wake me up. Rather than start packing for our trip to Minnesota (Yay!!!), which would be the smart thing to do with extra time like this, I'm trying get started on a new project! Great use of time, don't you think? I am going to make a coffee cosy for my friend Leah. I don't think she will see this, but if she does, surprise!

The only reason I haven't made it already is that our printer is malfunctioning, and I can't find a pattern where you don't need a template. Argh. And I don't have a coffee cup to use as a guide. Rather than do something else, I am stubbornly surfing the web for a pattern without said template (since the cup is curved and the diameter of the cup changes, I have a sinking feeling that no such pattern exists). Here are some cute ones I've found:

from Alyson's Petals (with a tutorial) This one would be a good way to practice binding, since this is a tiny, tiny quilt. 

from Terri's Notebook (with tutorial as well) This one involves sewing strips, which is my favorite thing.

There is another tutorial from House on Hill Road that looks fun. Well, I had planned to take a picture of the fabric I'm going to use, but what do you know? Charley is chirruping in his crib, which means he's awake! I don't want his chattering to turn sad, so I guess I'll have to continue this later...