A new technology affair and some quilting

Where have I been??

I have fallen in LOVE...with an iPad. (Yes...I realize that this may make me sound like I have my priorities out of whack....and YES, I do know that it is not a person...but I still have a deep affection for my iPad). This is the first big tech item that I have ever purchased for myself, and man is it FUN!


Also...have you discovered Pinterest yet? If you are a visual person (like me) then this is the place for you. It is essentially an on-line version of an "ideas" bulletin board. So much inspiration! You can find me on Pinterest here. The combination of the iPad and Pinterest together is deadly. It's like a time sucking vortex. You have been warned.

In spite of all of the summer time spent with my family and iPad, I have managed to complete some crafting. A long time family friend had a baby this month. I didn't know if the baby was to be a boy or girl, but I did know that her parents like colour!

Tada!
Close up (with polka dot binding):


The back (you can see that I opted for my usual favourite - straight line quilting 1/4" on either side of the seams):
This quilt definitely delivers on the colour front! I am pretty happy with how it turned out. I hope that baby Marion and her parents like it as much as I do.

Close, but no cigar!

I love me some hand stitching. When life gets to be stressful in the slightest I start to crave a little bit of hand stitching to slow life down and put everything into perspective. Yesterday was one of those days where I was itching to get into my pyjamas and hand stitch up a storm! OOooHHHMMmmmmm....

In preparation for my exciting evening plans, I purchased this London embroidery pattern from Comfort Stitching that I have been coveting for quite some time. I feel certain that it will make the perfect gift for my sister to memorialize the trip that she, my mom and I took to London together.

I gathered all of my material and successfully transferred the pattern onto a lovely piece of white linen that I had hanging about the house....and then I realized my problem....NO EMBROIDERY NEEDLE!! Argh. I spent the next 20 minutes pulling out all of my craft supplies because I could not believe that it could be true. Regrettably it was. Any of you out there have similar crafty tragedies befall your happy crafting night??? Any crazy rampages through your crafting supplies? Do you ever contemplate frenzied emergency trips to the supply store late at night?

Fortunately, the evening was not a complete wash. I managed to located my two baggies of vintage buttons that were missing for another project. One vintage white buttons, another vintage shell buttons. (NOTE to self: perhaps a re-org of the crafting shelves is due??? If one spends more time hunting for craft supplies than crafting, it is a problem.)

Images of how the buttons were used to follow! For now, please enjoy the pictures of the lovely roses that my husband purchased.

Gorgeous, non?!

Greedy girl treat herself

I travelled to the Boxing Day (week!) sales with restraint in mind. Truly not my forte if I'm honest. I had a 50% off coupon. It would have been wrong and wasteful not to use it, non?

Behold! The thing that I didn't know that I needed/wanted until I saw it:

Please don't misunderstand. I don't regret my purchase...just my lack of discipline! Please be reminded...it was HALF price!

I immediately set to work cutting all of my Christmas cards into tags so that they will be ready for next year.

Here is what I started with:

My clever new cutter even lets you "preview" where the cuts will happen.

Don't forget that there is prime tag making material on the back of the cards too!

Here is the cute little stack that resulted:

What a marvellous, non-wasteful self-serving purchase!

I was quite please with my work until my son (who is 3 years old) came into the craft room and asked why I had cut up all of his "happy cards". "I am very angry with you Mommy!" he scolded. Whoops.

Should I be ashamed to confess that I'd do it all again???

Is it too early to be excited about handmade Christmas ornaments?

I recently had the good fortune to partake in a fabulous "girls craft night in" with the lovely ladies from Kindred Crafters.

Donna and I became fast friends when I moved into her (now our!) neighbourhood. Not only do we have children the same age who love to play together, we discovered a common love of crafting! She has heavily influenced some of my new crafty pursuits and I am forever grateful for her friendship.

Donna's crafty-blog-o-sphere friend Sara has also become my crafty friend. We share a common hesitation to cut into our favourite fabric stash. It is good to know that I am not the only person who likes to fold up and admire fabric (and can do so for many happy hours each month). Donna and Sara are old friends who have been kind enough to fold me into their crafty friendship.

I had not met Sara (in person) until very recently when she travelled to Ontario. I wanted to offer her a crafty token of friendship and stitched up a Christmas-y toadstool (with holly, from Holly - so glad you got the reference Sara!!). The lovely Sara has posted some of her signature BEAUTIFUL photographs on the Kindred Crafters blog.

This gift was modeled on a tutorial found here (just in case you want to go make your own). They are good handstitching fun!

And Donna....no need to be jealous. I have one at my house waiting for the Christmas season for you...

Tukeyliciousness and balance

Happy Thanksgiving Canadian friends!

I am the designated turkey-maker this year. I must confess that while I really like cooking, I don't really adore turkey dinners. This is why my long-suffering husband gets turkey only once a year for Thanksgiving.

I'm certain that the leftovers will be glorious, though...

This has been a very welcome long weekend. The work week has been one of my longest ever. I made it home in time to see my son only one night this week. Entirely unacceptable. It is making me re-examine my work-life balance and question whether it is acceptable. I think that maybe it is not.

I should point out that I am usually able to manage daycare pick-up and regular home times...except for in the Fall. Fall is the busy time at work when I seem to disappear from my life for 3-4 months. This has always been OK with me until last year. Now I find the travel/overtime too big of a sacrifice. What to do?? I am left in the all too familiar quandary of figuring out a balance between a career that has been cultivated through hard work and my family (who will not be young forever). I don't remotely imagine that I am alone in this quest to find balance. I think that I just imagined that I had set my life up with a lot of room for balance before my son was born. Perhaps not as balanced as I thought. Hmmm...some more thinking and balancing will be required!

All this being said, work has also interfered with my crafting somewhat. Unlike a 2-year-old, crafting can stay up late with me. I have been coming home from work, eating some dinner, and then crafting late into the night! Sleep, shmeep. I am working furiously toward a shared November 14th deadline. Hello Ottawa crafters! More about that soon...

Craft show intimidation

What have I gotten myself into?? I agreed to take part in a craft show.



I think that at the time I agreed to be part of the craft show it seemed very abstract. It seemed like a good way to meet some other local crafters. Besides, I love craft shows! I think that I might mean that I love GOING to craft shows. I love to be inspired by the creations of others. Now I am intimidated...my creations are more "crafty" than inspiring. There are some real, hard-core creative people who will be selling at the Craftalicious show. YIKES! So feel free to come out and be nice to me while I sit at a table and feel somewhat intimidated (November 14th in Ottawa!).



Here is a small preview on what I am working on for the craft show:

• Re-usable Christmas bags. I will have a few sizes, but most importantly one size that will fit wine bottles and another size that is perfect for video games and hardcover books.
  

• Bird ornaments. Some in Christmas fabric, some not.
  

• Card ornaments. These were probably the most satisfying to make. It was really fun to pick out different colour/pattern combinations. The closest to quilting that I could manage on a larger scale for a craft show.

The one in which I am not that smart...

My crafty stories today very clearly demonstrate what a quilting novice I truly am. I wonder if when other people say "self taught" they have had to rip out the same (very high!) number of stitches that I am ripping out in my new hobby? Oh well...I see seam ripping time as time to come out of the sewing room and enjoy a bit of television.

I (FINALLY!) started quilting my zig zag quilt. I thought that I would do some straight line quilting because I really admire how clean the straight line quilting at Red Pepper Quilts looks.

I had measured the width of my walking foot and decided that I would use the edge of the foot as my guide for 3/4" spaced lines. Here is the part where I am not smart - I didn't really account for the fact that the needle travels down the centre of the 3/4" measurement. The result? Extreme busy-ness on busy-ness. Not pretty.



So....I learned something about how to measure.

I also came to the realisation that what I really liked about the quilts that I had seen at Red Pepper was exactly what my quilt is NOT! Calm, quiet, soothing and linear. This does not mean that I don't like my quilt...it is bright and bohemian. It just means that this is not the quilt with which I should try to emulate a crisp, clean style.

Here is the plain old zig zag quilting that I did (once I had finished watching some TV and ripping out the previous straight quilting):

Much cleaner stitching against all the ziggy-zagginess and the bright, bold colours and pattern.

I also enjoyed some quality time with a glass (or two!) of red wine and a movie (Vicky Cristina Barcelona). Clearly I was too into the movie (or the wine!) and I made a mistake in my ripple blanket. Can you spot it? I didn't until I was a few hours past my mistake. Boo!

I'm off for some quality time with the TV and crochet ripping out.

Lazy Sunday post on a Tuesday

Ah Sundays...how I love a rainy Sunday. Sundays are usually the day when I get some quality crafting time. The rest of the week crafting is all about stolen moments between the daily routine and falling asleep...but SUNDAY! Sundays we wander to the Farmer's Market, buy something delicious for breakfast and come home to good coffee. After that my husband usually reads, my son plays with trucks and I craft. How glorious are Sunday mornings at our house?!

This Sunday Evan and one of his trucks joined me in the craft room. It was really an enjoyable way to spend a morning. It was especially nice to have his company since this is the first weekend that the cat isn't around to hang out with me...

Just when I thought that his little hands were not going to be able to resist "helping" with the scissors or the sewing machine, Evan found the amazing little box of buttons that Sara sent as an extra surprise when I bought some vintage linens from her Etsy shop. Thanks Sara! Evan and his truck were entertained for nearly an hour by the little box and all of the pretty buttons inside. What fun to sort, stack and dig little buttons.

I finally finished piecing the back to the zig zag quilt. It's not that it was complicated or even big, just that I couldn't quite decide what to do. I'll try to finish basting and quilting ASAP so that I can finally post the final pictures.

BTW - Yes, my son was still in his pyjamas after the Market and YES...that is a hockey mask on my son's pyjamas. Yes...we are a Canadian stereotype!

Riding the waves...

Here is the most recent quilt top completed. Mmmm...love it so!





As I was stitching everything together, I realised that I had given no consideration for the direction of the print. (You can see what I mean pretty clearly in the close up below.) I was certain that this was really going to bother me, but I must say - it doesn't really. When you step back it's all just pattern and colour loveliness!



The seams on the back seem quite thick. Have I missed a clever trick? It does lay flat when pressed.



Other than that I have been working on the crochet waves. The waves look the same as before. There are just more of them...

A new obsession...

Pretty little crochet waves...mmmmmmmMMMMmmmmm...

Much of this was completed during our summer road trip. There is something very restful about a road trip. Really there is nothing that you can do but spend the passing hours looking at the beautiful scenery, listening to music, chatting, napping...and if you're me -crocheting! You are absolved of all "responsible" tasks that you could be undertaking.

The road and scenery were absolutely hypnotic! Add repetitive crochet stitches into the mix and I was all RELAX-ED. Ahhh.

True confession - I don't really know how to crochet. I wasn't able to understand all of the instructions in the pattern. After 3 false starts I decided that this looked close enough to the pattern in the book, and most importantly - I like the way that it looks!

Still millions of little crochet stitches to complete and no more road trips planned for the summer. Sounds like the perfect excuse to watch rainy day movies and crochet or to haul the blanket into the backyard with a cool drink on sunny days!

Gotta love summer!

Crafty-cation?

Does that sound really wrong??? (sounds a bit shocking to me!!). I am trying to convey that I will be on vacation for the next three weeks (so excited) and that I plan to do some crafting (sooo excited!).

The first week will be family togetherness week. My daycare is closed and we (my son, husband and I) will be at a family wedding in "cottage country" at the end of the week. Should be fun, but as with all family intensive events, it could also go terribly wrong! A very kind friend has agreed to watch my son on the evening of the wedding so that my husband and I can dance it up with the rest of the wedding people. A dressy night out? It's been a while! Should be good fun.

In preparation for the free time, I have ordered some exciting craft books to inspire me:

1. Weekend Sewing by Heather Ross
2. Martha Stewart's Encyclopedia Of Crafts: An A-to-z Guide With Detailed Instructions And Endless Inspiration
3. Vintage Crochet: 30 Gorgeous Designs for Home, Garden, Fashion, Gifts

I don't really know how to crochet...but I fancy myself able to learn. We shall see. We shalllll see...