Little embroidery

I have a very good friend, Meenoo, whose husband, Bill, does these terrific little doodles. Usually they end up in the recycling bin, but when I saw them for the first time I said, "I need to embroider one of those!" Meenoo thought I was nuts. But I got her to confiscate one of them and I recreated it in floss. This is my first time doing this kind of fill stitch. I think it's so cute! I gave it to Bill for Christmas.In Molly news, she has a walking cast on due to a sore foot. We're not sure of the reason for the soreness, but she's been a toe-walker forever and never grew out of it. The cast will stay on for a total of three weeks. She says it's feeling better. I'm not sure how much of this is serious injury and how much of it is pandering for the upcoming Oscar season. I'm hoping this cures the problem regardless of its origin.

New year, new projects

Wow. I've never taken a blog break for this long before. Several things happened. One is that I went to a quilting retreat with my friend and co-worker Maureen. These are really fun! Sadly, in the three days following the retreat, both my car and my sewing machine bit the dust. The car was fatal. We ended up trading it in for a tiny commuter car for RT. The sewing machine wasn't fatal, but it took nearly a month to get back from the repair shop. And then there were the holidays and the flu and other such nonsense. On to photos!

I did more than this over the holidays, but these are the photos that are off the camera at the moment. These are some selvedge pincushions. I made a bunch and gave them to lots of friends.
Some people still haven't gotten theirs yet.
More photos soon, I promise. In the meantime, a word from Molly:

Tomorrow's menu. #1: we are going out.

My sentiments exactly, honey. :-)

Today I...

...finished hand sewing a binding on a commission quilt and delivered it. Any day you can check something big off your list it's a good day!

Backing and quilting

Here's a shot of the back of the black/white/green commission I'm working on. The block is a signature block from the baby shower. The backing is Riley Blake.And here's a photo of me quilting it. It's simple loops, but I love it anyway. I'm almost done with the quilting. I gave up when my thread mysteriously broke, even though I had changed the needle. It probably has something to do with the fact that many of the non-white fabrics are mystery fabrics, including home dec weight and flannels. It sure makes for an interesting quilt, though. It will have lots of texture for little fingers to explore.
It's actually quite bright in my sewing room, though you wouldn't know it from this photo.

black and white and green all over

I'm doing another commission. About a year ago there was a baby shower where the guests were asked to bring pieces of fabric which would be made into a quilt. The baby just turned a year old, and I'm putting together the fabrics (along with some white) which will be given this coming week. Yowza. This is a really quick deadline. The top is done, though. Now I have to piece a backing (which includes a signature block) and quilt it. I'm hoping to do all of that and get it bound tomorrow so I can hand sew the binding on Tuesday. Did I mention I'm also teaching a daytime class all week? And I've been sick? At least that seems to be on its way out, after three weeks of feeling awful. Life sure is busy, isn't it?

How does a sewing machine work, anyway?

Check this out! It's originally from Wikipedia, and blogged from Deborah's In a Strange Land blog. I could never wrap my head around this concept, but this shows it beautifully!

6 Hour Quilt

And when I say six hours, I mean start to finish!
Here's a closeup so you can see the fabrics better.
This is one of the Valori Wells sewing card patterns, though this particular one is not listed on her website. The fabric is from the Fun Flowers line by Lakehouse fabrics. Of course, we have it at Quilting Adventures. Did you have to ask?

Today I have awful laryngitis and taught one of my beginning classes. We soldiered through, but it was rough. I have a lot of classes coming up this month.