all kinds of sewing going on!

Two weeks ago I joined a group of friends for a retreat at Bridge Creek Cottage in Augusta, WI.  We tried out these temporary tattoos.

My body art!

Assorted adorned quilters' arms.

 One of the quilts I worked on at this retreat was derived from a pattern I made in 2010.  After publishing the pattern for this quilt, I added a modification for a little baby quilt using the center portion.  By changing up some of the fabrics, I gave it a new look.

Star Light, my design for Quilt MN 2010

This is the baby quilt version.  It's for a little girl due in December!  My nephew, Scott, and his wife, Katie, are having their first baby.  Scott is the son of my sister, Jan.

This will be quilted very soon and finished right around the time that this little princess arrives!  They are using nursery colors around the theme of the vintage Peter Rabbit pictures and storybook, so this will hopefully fit with that.  They live out near San Francisco.

I tackled another new project, too.  My machine got a good workout making 8 owls.  Each of those eyeballs has about 20 pieces in it!

I was relieved to get them all done, except for that poor fellow on the left.  I made a mistake in the cutting and didn't have the extra fabric along with me to correct the problem while I was there.

Forest Friends by Elizabeth Hartman

I picked up and worked on a project that I had started last year.  I made 3 of the 6 stockings in this pattern by Laura Heine. See the full set below.  These will be displayed at Bear Patch for our Christmas window.

Stopping By The Woods by Laura Heine (Fiberworks)

Here's something I started working on when I got back home--my little grandson, Ian, is going to be moving to a new sleeping arrangement soon.  A new baby brother in the house in March means Ian (4) moves to a new bedroom and a bunk bed!  He needs a special new quilt to make that move happen with ease, don't you think?  He's really involved with super heroes right now, they are his favorite topic of play and entertainment.  Thomas the Train is so 2015!  So I ventured into the licensed prints aisle at JoAnn's.  I was gobsmacked by the assortment there!  I don't think I've ever been in that aisle before!  I found some good choices for Ian's quilt, and drafted a simple design that keeps large sections of the characters intact.  Here are some blocks on my design wall--

I showed him, via FaceTime, some of the fabrics and he was so excited!

I had been looking at a pattern for a little bag, Sew Together, by Sew Demented.  I was a little hesitant to get it going because it had quite a few parts to it and I couldn't decide what fabric to use!  I wanted it to be just the perfect fabric because I thought it would probably be the one and only that I made from that pattern!  Do you ever have that feeling?  I finally took the plunge and put all the pieces together.

It has 3 zippered compartments inside.  I used mostly fabric from Cotton + Steel.  And some Moda Grunge for the pocket lining.  I added some beautiful ribbons on the outside for trim.  It actually all went together very well, my only stumbling block was putting together that long purple zipper with the striped binding at the edge.  I'm not real satisfied with my top-stitching for that.  I did have some helpful coaching from my friend, Mary, who was at the retreat and has made this more than once.  Thanks, Mary!

And here's something that is part of a much bigger plan.  A little birdie, part of the Urbanologie quilt pattern from Sew Kind of Wonderful.  It's made with the Mini Quick Curve ruler.

Can you find the birds in the picture below?  I'm considering making this as a block-of-the-month class at Bear Patch in 2017.  There are 12 different pieced units incorporated into the overall layout.

So that pretty well sums up what's happening in the sewing world at my house!  Today is the day before Thanksgiving, and I'm not scheduled to work but had thought I would go to the store anyway.  It's closed, and I have to get working on changing the window display to our Christmas theme.  It's nice to do that when there aren't customers observing the mess!  But it snowed during the night, and has started snowing again as I write this.  So I probably won't be driving the 30 miles to do that.  Instead, I will make it 10 miles to the grocery store to get what I need to make my pumpkin dessert for dinner tomorrow at my brother's house!  Priorities, you know!  And that will leave me more time for sewing at home!

feeling lucky!

I know there's a lot of problems all around the world, and many things to obsessively worry about it I choose to go that way.  However, I'm am trying to maintain a positive feeling in my everyday life, without being Pollyanna-ish.  I just had a great time with my mom visiting us, and a quilt retreat, and a relaxing weekend.  I am even feeling really good about the fact that we have done a thorough sort and purge and reorganization of another storage closet!  

And some really fun things to look forward to on the horizon, too-- Dan visiting and bringing Jessica to meet us, a couple more quilt retreats planned, and, drumroll please, 

another grandson due in March!  Woo-hoo!

2 weeks ago while on quilt retreat, a few of us took a field trip to a new (to me) quilt shop in called Altoona, WI.  That's on the eastern border of Eau Claire.  It's called Stitch Supply.  I will definitely be going there again!  They have the largest assortment of Cotton + Steel fabrics that I have seen.  It kinda required me to buy several fat quarters of some of the prints that we haven't ordered for Bear Patch.  Don't they look fun?!  Odd bugs, fountain pens, rotary dials, matchsticks, jacks...

Good additions to my fabric gallery!

My mom stayed with us for a few days after that retreat, then flew out to Whitefish, MT, to visit Dan.  She can get a direct flight from Minneapolis to Kalispell, which makes it easy.  She was there 5 days, then came back to our house for an overnight before returning to Iowa.  Before she left Montana, she asked if she could bring me anything.  I jokingly said I would love a fresh huckleberry pie.  Well, she carried a piece of that pie all the way back to me!  I was so excited!  I'm eating only a little at a time so I can make it last!

After finishing up my recent garment sewing experience - and I will definitely try to get a picture of it in action - I really wanted to get back to sewing some quilt blocks.  So I picked up where I left off at retreat and went back to work on these faux wedding ring blocks--

I have some sewn together, and the rest in different stages of assembly.    I would like to get this done to put on the class schedule at the store after the 1st of the year.  

I did complete another small quilt, below, that could also become a class.  It's called Timbuktu, and I started working on it last January.  It requires the use of the X-blocks ruler.  After I got the quilting done, I couldn't remember if I had binding for it already picked out.  A lot of times I do that, and I usually put a little label on that piece of fabric and store it in a little box.  Labeled "Bindings", of course!  I looked all over the place for a cut of that green fabric because it seemed logical to me that I would have chosen that for the binding.  I never could find it, and it finally dawned on me that maybe it was a different fabric.  I found what was left from the backing fabric, and there was plenty of that to cut binding strips, so that's what I did!

Last week at Bear Patch, we received an order that included these hexagon pre-cuts of the most recent Tula Pink fabric line.  They work just right with my 2" hexagon papers for English Paper Piecing, so I have been getting those ready to stitch together.  Tonight is our employee sewing night at the store and I will be taking that along to work on.

I recently wrote about our English paper piecing group at Bear Patch, and I included the recipe for a yummy dip that I made.  Today I am making it again to share with my co-workers!  Time to get to the grocery store and pick up a few things needed!  I hope your day is lucky, too!