My First Quilt: Part 2

After prepping my fabrics, I started cutting out the squares to make the hourglass blocks for the quilt center. I had to cut just as many white squares as colored, which started to get teee-deee-usss (that's tedious). If you know me, you know that I'm Impatient with a capital I.

Then I got to measuring, marking, sewing, cutting, ironing, more sewing, and squaring. Whew! A helpful tip I learned in my quilting class was to chain stitch the pieces. That means to start with a little "jumper" piece of scrap fabric and continuously sew all the blocks so they are connected by a little length of thread. There is no need to backstitch on quilt tops, and it saves time and thread by not starting and stopping with every piece. Brilliant!

Next up: sewing all the blocks together and devising a border.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hope you get to spend today with the one you love. I'm so glad I get to.

Love you, B.

P.S. Do you like my homemade heartshmallow? Recipe here.

House Hunters International

Okay, well only international if you don't live in the U.S. of A., but it just sounds chicer that way. We could be international to you, if you lived in Europe. Or Australia. Or Asia. Anyhow...

Over the weekend we went to revisit our top 3 house choices to decide which one to make an offer on. Channeling Suzanne Whang, will it be...

House #1, the leaky faux-finish-heavy mid-century ranch?

House #2, the stuck-in-the-sixties rambling mid-century ranch?

Or will it be House #3, the fuzzy basemented mid-century ranch? Admittedly, I forgot to get a photo of the outside, because no, it did not get sunny and make all the snow melt within the 45 minutes we were in the house. Oh well.


Stay tuned to find out which one we picked!

Matchbook Magazine Mention

Cover of Matchbook Magazine's first issue

Say that title 3 times fast! How tickled was I when I happened to click on a link to Matchbook Magazine via wedding blog Snippet & Ink (a blog I still read daily, even though I got hitched many months ago)! My jaw dropped...not so used to seeing my work in print, and nor did I expect it at that moment. They got my company name slightly wrong, but hey, I'll take what I can get.

My custom Retro Cat Eye Bookplates from my fifty2forty8 studios Etsy shop graced the pages of their premiere issue. And they're in good company I must say. If I won the lottery I'd buy most everything they featured on those pages. Sigh.

I've seen quite a few online glossies springing up around the web these days, and I hope it isn't a passing fad. I gobble each one up and clip ideas and recipes I want to put to use later. I'm looking forward to the next issue of Matchbook and the other mags I can't get enough of!

My Valentine's Day Wreath

I wanted to create a Valentine's Day wreath to brighten up our dark, faux wood front door—moving out of this lame apartment cannot happen soon enough! In the same vein as our everyday wreath (more on that later), I created a yarn wrapped wreath to mark the day.

I found a cute "love" cutout at Target, and used that as the basis for my inspiration. I started with a 10 inch straw wreath form and wrapped it in white yarn (got a while? It takes forrreverrrr). I made some hot pink flowers out of felt, and glued on some red brads and glittery pink buttons. To up the cute factor, I sewed a mini felt flag bunting...and of course my sewing machine didn't like that so I had to do it by hand! To hang the little guy I tied a thick satin aqua ribbon to give it a little edge—nothing can be 100% sweet, right!?

Shout out to B for listening to what probably felt like hours of "do you like this here?" and "what if I moved this over a little bit?". Thanks, buddy. I owe you one :)

I feel some more Valentine's decorations coming on!

Resolute in Resolving

A reminder of spring

Is it too late for New Years resolutions? I hope not...I think I have until the end of January at least. I've never been big on resolutions. As in, I make them, but forget what they were by January 2nd. Then maybe come March I'll remember again for a week or so, but they generally fall by the wayside for the remainder of the year. 

If I write them here in black (grey) and white, will I be more prone to follow them? Only time will tell I suppose. Let's set our expectations low here and make only two resolutions: I will enter my work in one two craft shows this year. I don't mean the heavy-on-the-eucalyptus-and-doilies kind, but the hispter crafter type that seem to be popping up everywhere. And wear more red lipstick. Not at the same time. But maybe it will help me sell my goods? Ha!

There. Done. December 31st, 2011 we will see if I resolved my resolutions!

How to use the leftover pieces of your ugly turtleneck sweater

Happy 2011!

A little backstory: something I've been thinking about a lot lately is needing vs. wanting. In downsizing our living quarters and the impending Great Move of 2011 to our first house (!), it makes me stop and think twice before I buy anything new that isn't a necessity. Such as the plastic dog nose costume accessory I had in my hand yesterday (weird you say? but, but, I had the EXACT same one when I was a kid!). I put it back, thank you.

So that leads me to repurpose things we already have around into new items. Hello, upcycling! So when you're left with the arms and neck of your sweater that you turned into a pillow—you mean you haven't done that yet?—it's great to have every little bit reused. And it helps keep trash out of a landfill!

So (drumroll), I turned the sleeves into a draft-dodger for our breezy sliding door. The photo below is what I was left with from the pillow, so I started by snipping off the neck...

The I stitched up the sleeve openings and the neck opening with matching embroidery floss.

I needed something to weight the thing down so it would do its job dodging drafts (or running into them head first?), so I picked up two packs of dried beans at Target.

Then I distributed the beans across the length of the arms, and filled the rest of the space with stuffing.

Then I stitched up the bottom opening, and put my little-bit-wonky-looking-but-still-functional dodger to work.

Please excuse our balcony mess.

For the leftover neck—I don't have photos—but I am planning on cutting it in half horizontally (to keep it formed in a tube shape), and making a reusable coffee cup sleeve, although the diameter will have to be adjusted. With the other half, I'm going to make sweet little votive cup sleeves in the same way as the coffee sleeve, but adjusted to the size of the votives. Perfect for wintery décor, no?