Merry Christmas

I made an I SPY for A for Christmas. I used the "Turning Twenty" pattern and made the blocks 12" square. I like it :) And more importantly, so does A. I especially like the binding!

I tried to use as much dinosaur fabric as I could in this, it's hard to find dino prints here, but much to my liking A refers to this quilt as his Dinosaur-quilt :D I even put a label on it!!

Miss V also needed a quilt for her bed, and I have been promising her a princess quilt for a very long time.
Sometime in November this conversation took place:
Miss V: Mom, I am looking forward to Christmas sooooo much!
Me: Yes, I know
Miss V: Especially because at Christmas I'll get my princess quilt
Me: Really??!! (slight panic and disbelief)
Miss V: Yes, mom! That's why I can't wait!

So I started sewing!!

This is the front, the panel was giving me a hard time, I have never worked with one before. Miss V loves it, that's a success if you ask me :)

I tried some spiral quilting in the purple border - fun!

Both kids were happy with their quilts, and so am I!!

We had a very happy Christmas, I hope you all did too.
Little A and I have been sick for a little over a week, though, so that slowed everything down a bit.

Now I need to see if I met my sewing-expectations from last New Year, and decide on my goals for 2010!

I hope you and your loved ones had a very merry Christmas!

Scrappy I SPY squares is done!!!

And I love it!! I am so happy this quilt is staying at my house :)
I just finished the binding, some of the scraps I chose are a little heavy, making it hard to handstitch, but it was okay.

Viola is not feeling well, so she is at home with me, which is nice. We have lots of projects, and I get to sew a little during the day. It is not good at all for my paper, I can't work when she is here, so I work at night.
That is seriously cutting into my sleep.... Not a good thing, but I'll manage, the sewing should be done by Dec. 24th (lets keep our fingers crossed. Lol), and the paper by Jan. 5th. And then I'll have some time to catch up!

I made labels for all of the 3 quilts I am giving as gifts this Christmas.. I used stamps, and I am not sure what I think of these, but finished labels are much better then imagined perfect phantom labels...so I am using these :)
Charles' is already on his quilt! YAY!
This quilt is completely done, ready to be wrapped!!
I am soooo happy!

Now onto the next project....I need to piece the backing for my sisters quilt.
And Viola and I are working on calendars for the family, she'll be giving one to Charles, my parents and my sister.

I printed and cut all the photos, one calendar has all the photos in place, and Viola is adding the finishing touches (drawings and stickers!). So only 2 more to go!
But why did I have to choose the kind where I have to write all the dates?!

Dyeing the sofacover

The all-white sofa-cover was looking really dirty after less than 24 hours. LOL! And I just couldn't find a way to make it work. Nomatter what I did, I thought the whole room was pale and sorry-looking :-(

So this morning I went out to get some purple dye. But purple was sold out everywhere!! I went all over Copenhagen trying to find it, but it turns out the company has not been delivering purple to the stores for a while, so they are all out.

Instead, I bought turquoise...
I thought about hot pink for a while, but thought Charles probably wouldn't be too happy with that. While I waited for the machine to do all the work for me, I finished most of the binding on Violas I SPY...
Now all I had to do was wait for it to dry.... It is looking good to me!
I finally finished the binding! Hooray! You must all be happy not to have to hear about this project again. It seems like it has taken forever!
Here is the sofa, new and improved. I like it so much better than the white!And here is the finished I SPY! Viola was so excited when I showed her, and started spying things right away. Oh was I ever pleased about that :-)
I made mitered corners using this tutorial! It was not as hard as I thought it would be, I'll be using this method in future projects!
I also got some fabrics -a lot of the stores I went to in search of dye had fabric too- but I'll show you that next time!

For a great giveaway, go visit Crafty Giveaways. This weeks giveaway is a started quilt!!

What to do?!

I've started quilting the I SPY. If I don't get my act together, this will end up as a UFO and will clutter up both my sewing room and my mind! I can't stand having these unfinished things lying around, they are constant reminders, of what I need to do.

So I started pinning... I bought a little box of safety pins, but nowhere near enough for basting a quilt this size. So I used regular pins, and it worked out fine. Actually a lot better than I expected! I gave my new walking foot a test-run, and I must be doing something wrong :-( It looked horrible, the fabric on the back got all pulled and wrinkled -like it does when the tension is off....

I need to bind it, and then I will show you some pictures of the whole thing...but it may be a while! The kids and I are going to my parents' house next week. But so far so good, right!

And thank you all so much for your nice comments wishing Charles a speedy recovery! He had caught a very persistent bug, but he is all better now. Thank goodness!
......but he has not eaten any jam yet. He did taste it, though, but only because Viola asked him.......who can say no to a 3 year old asking a nice and polite question?!

I SPY quilttop done!

Look what I did today!
I really should have done some laundry, but Ask slept most of the day, and since we don't have a washing machine in the apartment, that was really not an option... Lucky me! So I sewed :-) And I'm really happy with how it is turning out.

I have a few different ideas for what borders -if any- I want. Hmm....how to decide?!

What would you do?

Sewing! YAY!

Today I got started on sewing the I SPY squares together. I set up my sewing machine in the kitchen, and it worked out really well..... Only one scare when Ask had crawled under the table and sat on the presser-foot! But luckily my hands were nowhere near the needle at the time :-)
It's an odd shape right now, but here's a little peek...


I managed to sew 4 rows today....that's 84 squares (for some reason I ended up with a 20x21 square layout). Now I only have 16 rows to go.


I like how it's turning out, however, I think I'll choose squares bigger than 3" if I ever do a quilt like this again. They are quite small.

Here's how I ended up storing it. One envelope for each row, and I also took pictures....just to make sure (thanks Jodie, that must be those organization-of-information-librarian-skills!)


This post-a-day thing is working out well for me already, I don't think I would have taken the time to sew today otherwise. The only other thing I had to blog about, was shopping for rainboots for Ask and shoes for Viola....

Cutting

Cut almost 200 3" squares today, and when I put them all out on the floor, I was pleased :-)

I did cut another 50 dark/black squares so it's dark all along the outer edges. So now I have app 450 3" squares....
I can't wait to finish this. I don't think Charles will let me leave it on the floor until I eventually get around to sewing it, so I'm thinking I'll put each row in an envelope.... Any good ideas as to how to store this?

Viola bought me this flower, I love it....