Summer is now in full swing

There's a little sewing going on in my world ... but mostly it's just summer. Two weeks of back trouble (that I blame on my new birks) left me almost flat on my back. What a way to end off my maternity leave. Boo. I'm a week and a half in to being back at work, and it's going ok. Baby is adjusting to daycare, and I'm adjusting to having time to be with adults and have adult conversations.

But I miss having TIME at home. Particularly this week, when I went ahead and organized evening activities for myself not just Monday, not just Monday and Tuesday, but Monday, Tuesday, AND Wednesday. Yikes! It's been WAAAY hot here, too. I think today it was 40C with the humidity. Oh the humidity, Oh the humanity. That's 104F for those Americans among our readers. Maybe that's not even that hot compared to what some of you face, but for me, a born and bred Northern girl (we're talking north of the 60th parallel here), this is hard. Our lovely, 95 year old house is not equipped with central air (or ducts, for that matter), and since we're trying to be all green and stuff, we haven't even put in the window a/c unit that is languishing in our (recently insulated) basement . . it's hot. And the basement is not even cool thanks to our environmental upgrades. Not that I'd want to hang out down there, but it was always enjoyable to sink below on 'errands' and enjoy the cool.

I'm not meaning to be all complainy. I'm actually in a good place. Eating well, really enjoying my walks to and from work, (yay for built in exercise!), and looking forward to getting some Christmas gifts underway AND some goods for the craft sale that I'm organizing and selling at in mid-November. My first one. I'm terrified and excited, all at the same time.

More on that in another post. Just wanted to stop in and say hello. Isn't summer a difficult time to be productive? I'm in awe of what some of you are accomplishing and I'm so thankful for the craft blog community. Reading what other folks are doing makes me feel more crafty! And that's a good thing.

- Donna

Purple People Eater

I don't normally do purple, but every now and then the mood strikes me, and the night I made this camera strap must have been one of those times! This was made to bring on vacation with us bright and early tomorrow morning. It's been a long time coming and I just can't wait. It'll be hard to sleep tonight! Word to the wise: if you make yourself a camera strap, take pictures of it before it's attached to your camera...unless, of course, you're a contortionist.

Be back in a week or so. Be good 'til I get back, now.

~Sara

String Quilt Top - A Work in Patience

. . I would say a work in progress, but it's really mainly done. I will be adding a three inch sashing in white on all sides. This photo only has 72 squares, as I took the opportunity provided by the break in the seemingly omnipresent clouds yesterday to snap a photo. I added another row last night to make it a wee bit bigger.

The quilt top currently measures approximately 52" across by 65" down, and I'm thinking I will add 3" inches on all sides. I'm planning a very plain backing, although I can't resist just a wee bit of piecing. My plan is to piece the back, and then put them aside for awhile so I can work on other projects. (Like 4(!!!!) small baby gifts I want to put together for recently-born or soon-to- be-born babies. I'm hard at work tonight on some piecing for some cute bibs).

Advice on how to quilt this thing once it's all sandwiched up? Ashley at Film in the Fridge, who made the beautiful Kaleidoscope quilt and brilliant accompanying tutorial that guided this one did a meandering free motion, but I don't think my machine could handle such a big quilt (it's a bit stubby!). I was considering something like this - thoughts?

I used the "eyeball" method for laying out my squares, that is, I didn't measure where the white strip should go, I just tried to line it up as best as I could. I didn't use pins at all except to try to hold my seams together when attaching rows together. I say this not as a suggestion on what to do . .just a confession. In the recent quilting class I took, the instructor said "oh, you can pin, but you'll just have to take them out as you go" . . I kinda took that to heart! (Call me lazy!)

I didn't have a hard time getting the paper off at all - I just bent each and every row of paper back before tearing it .. my stitch length was so small it really was as though the paper was perforated . I used regular copy paper and a few scraps of newspaper when I ran out . . both worked fine.

I used 1.25" strips instead of 1" for the white as Ashley did - - looking at hers, and looking at mine, I wish I had followed her suggestions as I like how her white pattern is slightly less prominent. Lesson learned. For next time . .these are addictive. My string bin will remain close at hand for me to chuck potential strings into as I sew other things.

On another, much less exciting note, I go back to work, full time after a year of maternity leave, in just two weeks. I expect the time alloted to sewing to dwindle extensively. I'm very concerned about how little sleep I've been getting and how that will affect my work performance (maybe I'll just adapt, but I must admit that often when I'm sewing at night my eyes go a bit out of focus and I know it's time to pack it in for the night . . I am thinking earlier nights will have to become the norm with my youngest daughter being such an early bird). After staying up until 11:45 sewing last night, topping up the baby with milk, reading for a few minutes (a nightly ritual) and tossing and turning with visions of string quilts dancing in my head, I fell asleep at 12:30am with baby m waking at 5:30. It was my husband's turn to "sleep in" so up I got. (The quotations denote that a sleep in at this house=a 7:30am rising).

Good thing this is the face I get to look at so early in the am.

- Donna

"Making it Work" quilt is finally complete

When I had the idea to make a quilt for my mom and stepdad (what else was I going to make them, really?!) I knew I wanted to use Daisy Chain in this colorway. They just repainted their house and these colors fit in well with their decor (I hope!).

I've had the fabric for a while now, but was struggling with what pattern to use. My mind went through a good many patterns before I got frustrated and just started ripping the fabric and sewing strips together. And so it became what you see here, the "Making it Work" quilt. Once I had the strips, I just made it work from there!

My intention was to make a checker board with white blocks between the blocks of strips, but it looked too bland with just the white, so I cut up the white blocks and framed up some Robin's Egg and Stone Kona solids.

The binding is pieced with each of the five Daisy Chain fabrics in the blocks and is sewn on entirely by machine. I'm pushing two weeks late on this one, so some sacrifices had to be made! I am quite pleased with how it turned out. My picnic quilt also has a machine sewn binding, but it's lacking a bit since I didn't figure out to sew the 2nd time around on the front until this quilt! Much neater this way!

Throughout the process, I was never 100% sold on this quilt, but I've never met a quilt fresh out of the dryer that I didn't fall in love with.

~Sara