A quilt!

Well, like I said, I've gotten interested in making a quilt lately, and I did!

I didn't use my Wonderland fabric - I thought I'd start with some random fabric from my stash. So I made this spaceman quilt:

Here's a closeup including the sprockets I used for the backing:


You can also sort of see the letters on the orange fabric.

So, mistakes were made (many of them!), but for a first quilt, I'm quite pleased with myself. And I learned some things so I can make improvements the next time. I actually didn't have any purpose for this quilt; it was just meant for practice. Which is just as well, because my kids have claimed it as their own. I don't know what they're planning to do with it, but apparently it's theirs, lol!

So next I'm actually going to make a little wall quilt. The girls have decided they want to share a room, so we're redecorating A's room with an ocean-y theme. I found some super cute sea animals fabric from Clothworks, so it's in the mail to me now. I got enough to make curtains, and then an assortment to make the free pattern in the link. (Well, more or less. Mine's going to be a bit smaller, with less edging.)

I'm all excited about quilting at the moment. We'll see how long my crafting ADD keeps me on this! ;)

I haven't been very bloggy lately, although I have made a few things.

A couple of weekends ago, my mom and I took a trip to Savannah, which was lovely. I decided we needed water bottle carriers, since we were going to be walking a lot. So, I made myself this:
(Wow, what a terrible picture!)

I made my mom one as well, which I actually think is much prettier. However, my camera freaked out on Saturday, so none of the pictures I took were actually there. So I have no pictures. But it's cute! I did find that we didn't really wear them quite the way I'd intended - I had a messenger style purse, and I didn't like slinging the water bottle around my neck the same way as the purse. So I used the strap to tie it onto my purse, and that worked fairly well. It was nice to have something to stick water into, anyway.

Before that project, I'd been working on the Portabello Pixie Gracie pattern for the girls. I found the bodice annoying, so I had to put it aside for a bit. (For the record, it's probably my own fault it was annoying, because I misread the directions at first. But that didn't stop me from being annoyed!) Anyway, I finally finished the dress, and A really likes it:

Twirly!

I didn't actually follow the pattern for the tiers at all; I just did my usual tiers. I don't love the way it turned out, though, because I think the bodice is really too small for the tiers - it looks a little disproportionate to me. But A likes it, so whatever. Sometime I'll make M one to match - it's all cut out; I just haven't felt like sewing it together.

(As an aside, I made the dress M is wearing over 2 years ago. It was a gift for A on her 4th birthday, only she was in her blue phase and refused to wear it. Ever. It's nice to see it on one of my kids! :) )

I also made a purse that I don't love (seems to be a theme at the moment, lol!)


It's an attempt to make the Buttercup bag a little bigger and therefore more useful. I didn't enlarge the entire pattern; I just made it taller. (Oh, and it turned out a little narrower at the top.) Something about the proportions is off to me, though. Maybe it would be better with a longer strap? Or maybe it's that I prefer the brown version of this fabric, and that's coloring my opinion. I don't know. For the moment I'm just using the slightly too small one I made a few weeks ago, until I decide what I want to try next.

I did get some pretty new fabric, though - a yard of My Secret Garden from Alexander Henry (so pretty!), and an assortment of Wonderland by Momo. (I realize I'm very late to the party on that fabric, but I like it a lot.) I think I'd like to get a few more fat quarters of it, and then I'm thinking maybe I'll make a quilt of some kind. I'm thinking about it, anyway. We'll see. I might do something simpler first, quilting-wise. Or not. I'm sewing-indecisive right now!

4th of July

The 4th of July dresses are done. I hadn't gotten around to doing anything about dresses until the beginning of the week, and A mentioned that she wanted one. I, however, didn't really want to go buy anything. (Amazing, huh? Usually I'll take any opportunity to buy fabric!) So, I dug around in my stash and came up with some red, white and blue knit. (The red was actually a failed shirt from my wrap around shirt attempts earlier this year that I cut up. It's good kids are smaller than me!) Then I got a vision of a tank dress, and made up a pattern for it, using a t-shirt pattern I already had to get the sizing (more or less) right. I think the next time I'll make the armholes a little smaller on M's, but I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out. M ran away from the camera this morning, so here's A alone:

(She was being kind of nutty, so it's not a great picture, but you get the idea.) They seem to like the dresses, although A's first response was "Why is it only stripes? I was thinking of something with more stars..." Hee, hee. I thought about stenciling some stars on, but honestly, it seemed like too much work. Plus I like them the way they are.

I actually managed to get a sewing project for myself done this week, too. I made a buttercup bag from Made by Rae. (I'm a bag addict, in case you haven't noticed. Iestyn is continually amused when a new bag shows up.) It's cute, but not really practical for me for everyday, given that it won't close when my normal wallet is inside. It'll be a good going out purse, though. And I'm using it right now even though I can't close it.

I changed a couple of things - mostly the strap, and I added a little interfacing (although I think I'd prefer more interfacing, actually.) I had some trouble with the pleating, but it was apparently user error, because it eventually worked the way it was supposed to. Oh, and I didn't follow the final assembly instructions, because I prefer doing it my usual way, and that worked fine. And I love the look of the original curved button flap thing, but my attempts to make a curved one all went really badly, so I went with straight edges. ;) Anyway, it's cute, and I love this fabric (Amy Butler, from Daisy Chain), so I'm pleased.

Uncrafty stuff ;)

We've been very busy with swimming since school got out, but last night was the last swim meet, so we're done! I'm really glad we did it - A had a blast, and she learned *so* much - she went from just barely doggy paddling to swimming full on backstroke and freestyle. I'm so proud of how she's worked! She really loved it, too. It's exhausting, though (just SO busy), so I'm glad we're done for this year. (A isn't, though - she told Iestyn the other day that she wished swim team was every day forever! I'm sure M is pleased she doesn't have to go to the pool every day and NOT swim anymore, though, lol.)

In other news, we just got a Roku box, and it's super cool. It's a little box that hooks up with Netflix to allow you to watch movies instantly on your TV. Not everything from Netflix is available for instant watching, but there's a bunch of stuff, and it's really nice to be able to just watch it on the TV rather than the computer. Plus the quality of the video was really quite good. I'm very taken with it, so I've been busily adding things to my instant queue. (Such a very random selection, but there are plenty of things that I want to watch.) This is vaguely craft-related, in that this will give me more to watch while I'm sewing, since all my shows are currently off for the summer! :)

The only actually crafty thing I've done lately is work on 4th of July dresses for the girl. They aren't done yet, though. Somehow summer has not been very productive for me, probably because I tend to find it hard to sew when the girls are running around. But I'll post the dresses when I finish them!