The night before we left home for Telluride, I found myself all packed with time to spare.  Can you believe it?  Good ol' procrastinating me with time to spare!  That was definitely a first.  What's a girl to do?  Sew, of course.

I decided it was high time that I make myself some wide-leg lounge pants from Amy Butler's In Stitches.  So many crafty bloggers have made them and they all love them, so I thought why not?  I wish I had some wonderful vintage sheet to use, but I didn't.  It doesn't matter - I love them anyhow!

The wide leg part is just that:  wide.  At first I thought they were maybe a bit too wide, but the more I wear them, the more I love them.  I will definitely make these again.  Not only are they super comfy, they were fast to make.  It took me 2 hours to make these from the time I started tracing the pattern to pulling the drawstring through the casing.  I did use my serger for all the seams I could which probably sped it up a bit.  Now that I have the pattern ready to go, I imagine the next pair will come together even faster.

I love vacation.  And lounging.  Lounging on vacation?  Bliss.

For my end of the swap with Lisa, I made her a tote bag.

I used Anna Maria Horner's Drawing Room fabric and some brown linen from the stash.   The inside is lined in a pale pink linen and has a pocket, too.

I love adding personalized details to the gifts I make so I embroidered Lisa's initials on the pocket and trimmed it with some ribbon I had on hand.  I think the ribbon came from Blair.  (Am I right, Blair?).  The tote is about the same size as the wool patchwork one I made for myself.

OK - that's all I have for this Tuesday.  Fatty's gone home, my parents are off to meet the newest family member who is being born today and the girls are at day camp.  I think I will knit - and maybe take a nap.  Sounds like a plan.

I wanted to thank everyone that sent me sheet scraps by sending them a little something in return.

I bought a stack of moleskins with the intent of taking pieces from my scrap box and making some stitched notebooks similar to the ones in Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts.  Once I finished my quilt, though, I took a different course.

I used more of the sheet scraps and made bloom notebooks.  I was a bit concerned that all the stitching would weaken the cover, but it didn't.   I took the same approach to the stitching as I did in my bloom quilt except that my letters turned out WAY better on these.  I think it was because they are on a smaller scale, but who knows?  I love how they turned out.

Everyone was so generous adding to my fabric garden with their scraps.  I wouldn't have been able to make my quilt without their help.  This is just a small token of my appreciation.  Thanks to all 16 of you!
(Tonya, I didn't mail yours.  I will get it to you when I get home).

I think you will probably see more stitched paper from me in the future.  These were so fun to make and the ideas keep coming.

Happy Tuesday!

I have gone and done something crazy.

I have entered my still unfinished x-string quilt in the state fair.

Here's the thing:  for three years now, I have said that I wanted to enter something I made in the state fair, but have never done it.  Two years ago, I didn't have anything I really wanted to enter.  Last year, I was going to enter an apron, but I missed the deadline.   This weekend I finally finished quilting (!) the x-string quilt and it dawned on me that I might be able to enter it in the fair before the deadline.  Oh no - the deadline was July 1st.  Next year, I thought.

I tell Fatty that I missed the deadline and that I can't enter without paying a late fee.  On top of that, I am not finished and the drop off days at the fairground are the one weekend in August when we will be out of town.  How much is the late fee? he asks.  You pay $15 instead of $8.  He looks at me and I can see it on his face.  You want to do this, right?  Yes. Yes, I do.  Pay the late fee and find someone to take it over to the fairgrounds for you.  You can finish it in time.  You always do.

So, that was that.  I poured over the categories in the catalog and tried to discern the differences.  I settled on machine pieced and machine quilted.  I hope that is the right one.  I'll have four days when I get home from Telluride to finish the binding and sew a sleeve on it.  Then I will have to persuade a friend to drop it off for me.

Am I nuts?  Probably.

But I'm going to have a quilt in the state fair.  And I think that is pretty damn cool.

I spent most of the weekend sewing, but I don't have anything to show for it.  All of the projects are in different stages of "not yet finished."  I have myself to blame for this:  running out of thread seems to be a specialty of mine.  And now, I can add math miscalculations to the list as I cut a two and a half yard piece of batting in to a completely unusable mess along with squaring a full size sheet incorrectly.  Yikes.  I think I might start chanting, "Measure twice, cut once" but I am not sure it would help.

The good news is that there are a few things making my heart race lately.  The first is Sarah's latest gocco swap.  Oh boy!  I love me some good looking notes.  See the button on the right side bar?  Click it and sign up.  You know you want to.

Second is Pam's February Lady Sweater.  Seriously.  I have spent a couple weeks deciding if I love this so much because it is the most perfect shade of green or because I really like the sweater.  Turns out, I think it is both.  So now I am on the hunt for the most perfect yarn in the most perfect green.  You know, so I can knit the most perfect sweater.  Preferably wool - suggestions?  I won't start it for awhile - the wrist, you know.  But the girls and I are headed to my favorite place at the end of the week (another thing making my heart rate rise) and the tangled yoke is coming along.  It is the only crafty thing I'm bringing.  That will be either disastrous or genius (the wrist,  you know).  Only time will tell.

Finally, Blair sent Emily, Tracy and I our new assignment.  (As an aside, can I just say how happy I am that Blair is back at the blog thing?  So very happy - I really missed her words).  I pulled out the dictionary - man, oh man!  There are lots of choices with this word.

Cover.  Noun and verb.  My initial thoughts surprised even me.  Wordplay is so fun - it gets me thinking in so many different ways.

Enough for a Monday morning.  Back tomorrow with quilt news.

You guys!  Thanks for the quilt love.  Really.  I adore it myself, but I had no idea that it would strike a chord with many of you too.  All those lovely comments make me want to just make more.

While I didn't whip up another quilt right away, I did make this little top for Kate's friend Claudia.  This is one of my very favorite fabrics (I bought it years ago and I don't know who makes it).  It is the same pattern I used for this shirt of Kate's last summer.  It is really so simple - I swear it takes almost longer to cut it out than to actually sew it up.  It also only takes about a half yard of fabric for about a size 6 which is great since I seem to have lots of small pieces in my stash.  I have never made my girls pillowcase dresses, but if I understand them correctly, this is made the same way except there is no bias tape under the arms.  I just pressed 1/4" and then folded it under and stitched it down.  Anna Maria just made her girls some cute dresses out of pillowcases and while I could explain the process more to you, she's already done it!  Her directions are way cuter than mine would be anyhow.

I've got lots to talk about (or so it seems!) so posting should pick up a bit around here.   Have a great day!

When I opened the envelope from Jen six weeks ago, I was thrilled to see the word bloom.  The first thing that came to mind was the saying, "Bloom where you are planted."  And I knew exactly how I wanted to proceed even though I wasn't sure how it would all come together.

Although wordplay is a collaboration with Tracy and Emily, I wanted this project to go further.  I imagined a wider collaboration, something that I could make with bits and pieces given to me from different people.  I was thinking about flowers and gardens and how so often people dig plants up and divide them between neighbors and friends.  That's what I wanted:  a community garden of fabric.  And so, I asked for vintage sheet scraps and boy, oh boy, did you guys comethrough for me!  Seventeen of you to be exact.  There are just somany good floral prints in a wonderful color palette in those oldlinens.  I wanted a large variety and small bits.  You all had the best stash of scraps a girl could wish for.  And you were willing to share - for that, I thank you.

I found this aqua linen on clearance and thought it would be a perfect background for the various colors in the sheet scraps.  I began by cutting out concentric circles from different prints - just eyeing them and cutting, no tracing was done here.  Once I had a decent stack of "blooms", I started laying them out on the fabric to see what I had.  I cut some more flowers until I had a random scattering around the perimeter.  I had planned on embroidering the saying by hand in the middle somehow, but felt I needed something to signify myself to anchor it so I cut the one large bloom for that space.

I appliqued the individual flowers to the quilt top by stitching three straight lines across each one.  My original plan was to tie the center of the flowers using embroidery floss, but once I had the quilt sandwiched, I realized that I would need more quilting to hold it nicely together.   I improvised by quilting three circles around one flower.  Initially, I wasn't looking for the wavy lines that I got, but when I stood back to look at it, it was perfect.  It reminded me of my favorite flowers and I smiled.

I had so many scraps to choose from that I ended up using some for a strip of patchwork on the back.  I sewed a label on there, too.  It got quilted over and I really like how it made it blend in a bit more.  The quilting on the back is my favorite part.  Even if the words read backwards, I like it.

I think "bloom" and "Bloom where you are planted" are about finding your hidden potential no matter what your circumstances are at the moment.  I know that if you had asked me nine years ago where I would be in 2008, I would have never imagined that my life as I know it.  I would not be living in this town.  I would have more children.  I would not be sewing as much as I do and certainly not quilting.  I might be knitting.  I would not be writing and designing.  And I most certainly would not have this group of peers, people that I have never met in person, that support, encourage and inspire me.  But I do!  What a great surprise!  And I feel so lucky to be surrounded by such amazing talent.  I have planted myself in this blogging community and in turn, you have planted seeds of inspiration in me.  With a little of my own creativity and time, I am growing in directions I had never imagined.

I had fun making this quilt.  I haven't made anything for myself in a long time and I plan on keeping this one.  It measures 45" x 51" - a perfect summer-nap-in-the-chair size.  Thanks, Jen, for a great word to get me started and thanks, too, Emily and Tracy for playing along.

Life is about the now, not the past or the future.  And if you are successful in living in the moment, I think that you have no choice but to bloom.

Did you notice Tracy's camera strap?  I did - and so did Fatty and my friends.  Cute, huh?  Then yesterday, I saw this one, too.  And look, she just took hers apart and made a new one.  Easy enough, right?

I dug through my box of 4" fabric strips and found some of my favorite green and aqua prints.  I sewed a quick length of patchwork, added some interfacing and then reattached the strap ends that I had removed from my original Canon strap.  Now I am styling and I absolutely LOVE it.

The only downfall was that I broke my very favorite stitch ripper.  Bummer.  The bonus was that making this little project got me psyched up to start working on the quilt again.  I tackled that for 1 1/2 hours last night.  It is  s l o w  going - more so than I thought it would be.  And you all know how I feel about slow.  Yeah, not so much.