Boxie Bags and Baby Love

I admit...sewing has been hard to achieve lately since the baby has been born (as has blogging. ;0p) Felicity doesn't nap very often anymore and the baby likes to stay up until midnight.

I have been wanting to make a little bag to take to the gym with me, as I attempt to lose these extra baby pounds I seem to have. (What is up with that?!) I tried Indie House's tutorial, and it was super easy. Granted, you can see some seams on the inside, but who looks at the inside of their box bags? Not me. This only took me twenty minutes to make, so I made another.

The blue flower one is for a friend's birthday. I love both of these fabrics. These little moons from Far Far Away II are my favorite, I think, from Heather Ross's new line. I love all the different faces.

However, this is mostly what we do during the day. Hug and squeeze this little guy. We are all in love. Felicity's love can be a little dangerous, but he seems to be getting used to it.

French General Love

I made this table runner for our coffee table to protect it! The girls love to play, eat, draw, sit, you name it on this table. It is only a few months old but is already well dinged. I have always loved French General's Rouenneries line of fabric, but I wasn't sold on Rural Jardin when it came out until my mom showed me some prints that she bought. I was sold and bought a couple of charm packs to make this runner. Easy peasy. I tried to make it niiiiicccee and big to cover most of the table. I tried practicing my stippling. I have only stippled on little practice blocks, so this was my first "real" project.

This is the back, and you can see the quilting a little better. Now don't look too close please! I think I was starting to get the hang of it. It really was rather fun thanks to the new machine! I haven't washed it yet, and I am kind of scared too since I forgot to prewash the linen that I used for the back. Woops! I am sure juice will be promptly spilled upon it. ;0)

In other news I have extended the summer sale in the shop until Friday! Head on over for 20% off!

I also have been doing some fabric reorganizing and have some fabrics up in Flickr that are up for swap!

Summer Pattern Sale!

I am having a big summer sale in the shop! ALL patterns are 20% off (including the patterns in the sale section!). Just check out, and the 20% off your total purchase not including shipping will be refunded to you! Sale ends June 21st!

There are lots of new patterns! The London Peasant Top/Dress is made just for tweens!

Sew Serendipity has a couple of new dress patterns including this one! Perfect for summer!

I am also trying to get some more quilt patterns in the shop. Check out this Cameos quilt pattern by Fig Tree! Do any quilters have any suggestions for patterns they would like to see?

A Pillow and a Pincushion

I have finished putting together my pillow for The Pillow Talk Swap. I admit I agonized over this too much, I think. I just don't like it anymore! Hopefully, my partner will, and she won't notice all the mistakes that I can't stop looking at. I used Oh Fransson's tutorial for the block, and it went together well. It wasn't as difficult as I thought, but it was time consuming. My triangles also stretched a bit. Any tips on how to stop that? I did have fun trying out different stitches for this pillow on my new machine. I added some piping to give it a little more of structured look. I really like the look of the piping contrasting with the white.

For the back of the pillow I used some Anna Maria Horner Good Folks that I have had in my stash for awhile. I really think it compliments the front of the pillow well. I was going to put in an invisible zipper, but got pillow burnout and just went with a simple envelope closure.

After I finished the pillow I decided to play with my scraps and make a "practice" pincushion for The Scrappy Pincushion swap. This was literally made only from scraps, and I like it so much I think I might just send this one of to my partner. I was inspired by these pincushions on Purl Bee, but I changed it up quite a bit. I left the edges ragged for a more "scrappy" look.

Swap Talk

I finished my blocks for the Mod Bento Block Swap! I used almost exclusively scraps for this project except for some of the Kona solids I used. I always love busting my scraps. You can see the other two sets here and here. I am thinking of making a table runner for the dresser in my sewing with this project. So far all the blocks everyone has made look great!

I also got my partner for the Scrappy Pincushion swap. I was thinking of using some of these Rural Jardin charms and some linen for this one. I have been really been inspired by these two French ladies recently.

Last but not least I received my pillow from The Pillow Talk swap from Mary on Lake Pulaski! Isn't it great? She got her hands on Sweetwater's new line, Pure, at quilt market and used it for my pillow. It goes perfectly in our living room, and I couldn't be more pleased. I am working away on my pillow for my partner and am almost finished. The closer I get to finishing the more nervous I get about whether my partner will like it or not, and if she will notice all the blunders I have made putting it together!

Lookie, lookie

Here is a peek at my sewing area. It all looks about the same as it did a week ago...except

Wait! Come closer...

This...this is different. Last week I was reading about Lucia's new machine, and I admit I was jealous. I have been eyeing this machine for a year, but it was always too expensive. I didn't realize that Janome had come out with the Horizon and that a lot of people with the 6600P were upgrading. So I thought I would take another peek at Craigslist and up popped this beauty at a great price! It has barely been used because the previous owner didn't like how it sat so high on her sewing table. She decided to get an uber fancy Babylock embroidery machine that she always wanted. Lucky for me!

Look at all these stitches! I admit I have been playing with it all weekend, and sneaking in for five minutes just to try out something else on this machine. So far I am impressed. One of the reasons I wanted this machine was how well it was reviewed by both garment sewers and quilters a like. My Kenmore was doing fine with the clothes I was making, but I found quilting painful. I took a quilting class last summer hoping that it would help, but really my machine just wasn't made to quilt. Free motion quilting was so stressful with all sorts of funky things going on. I was amazed when I practiced free motion quilting on the 6600. It felt so easy. I didn't know it could feel like that! Also, the knee lever and best of all....the automatic thread cutter. Genius.


Anyway, check out patternreview.com if you are on the market for a new machine. There are usually several reviews of all sorts of machines, and a lot of them are really descriptive of what people like and don't like about their sewing machine.

Some Pillow Talk

Sewing has been slow around here. We had a sick little guy with a cold last week. Poor baby. I thought sleep might never happen again! This week we are back on the potty training wagon... aye yi yi.

However, over the past weekend I did start working on my pillow for my partner for the Pillow Talk Swap. I started out with the star above. I was using a pattern from Martha Stewart's new sewing book. I got this far and then was supposed to add some squares and triangles to make the pillow top. Well, try as I may it wasn't going to work. Why do Martha's instructions never seem to work? Is it just me? I looked online for tips, and the way other people put this block together made it clear that Martha's way really wasn't going to work. So I thought about appliqueing the star on, but it really huge..22 inches! I didn't really want to make a gigantic pillow. So, this idea was scrapped. Although, I am saving the star and think I want to make a wall hanging with it. The fabric is too pretty...

So, I moved on to a completely different idea. I was dead set on using Modern Meadow for this pillow, but it just wasn't feeling like my partner. Can you guess what this is? I still have to quilt the top and put it all together. I am still unsure of how I am going to quilt it.

I have been enjoying this swap so much I went a little crazy and joined two more: The Scrappy Pincushion Swap and The Mod Bento Block Swap. There is still time to join both of these, if you are interested!

I am sorry this blog has been so neglected of late, but I am hoping to post more and start doing more pattern reviews again of patterns that I carry in the shop like I did last summer. If anyone has one of the patterns I carry and wants to do a pattern review, I would love to have you guest blog! Just send me an email at mvansciver at gmail dot com! Also, please do check out the shop. A whole slew of new patterns have come in over the past week or so.