hubby is concerned

 

 

easy lap quilt from Bend-the-Rules Sewing in Kona Bay prints and Wilmington Prints solids
and in rulers fabric from American Jane's Building Blocks fabric line
t-shirt quilt from old t-shirts and flannel fabric
quilt class quilt with 4-patches and frames in assorted prints, including Denyse Schmidt's Flea Market Fancy
and, someday, pretty much everything from Last-Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts

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My eight fat quarters from Sew Mama Sew's Fat Quarter Swap and look 5 of them are yellow! What are the chances? The swap was totally random without any of us swappers and swappees knowing anything about each others' preferences. (Yellow is not a preference I would have stated, but I don't dislike it.) Still, it's generally considered a difficult color and I'm stunned by the fact that 5 of my fellow swap buddies sent me something so completely yellow. (Of the eight I sent out, I had chosen one yellow fabric.) Each of them is very pretty though.

Now the question is what to do with them. There is a yellow-fan in the family (my son B, whose coat, backpack, socks, crocs, t-shirts, and bedspread all speak of his love of yellow - in fact, when wee one sees a yellow car or bike or toy, she says "B's car"), but these fabrics are a little too flowery to be turned into something for him. Hmmmm... As much as I'd like to keep them together, since they came to me together so serendipitously, it's a lot of yellow. The first one would work in my civil wary quilt though. And the third in a little wall hanging I'd planned for wee one that uses the same line of fabrics. The fifth, with the bumblebees, could become something wee and adorable for wee one. And I just looooove that blue animal print under that one...

What fun!

I couldn't help myself and signed up for Sew Mama Sew's Fat Quarter Swap! I picked out some of my favorite fabrics from my lqs and will send one fat quarter out to eight different people. I should get eight fat quarters back and then we'll see what I can do with them.

I was explaining the swap to the boys (they had asked me why I needed eight little plastic baggies) and it reminded me of how they exchanged Valentines in school last Friday. B was very dubious about the whole exchanging thing - the math just didn't seem to work out for him: "But what if I bring a Valentine for everyone and someone doesn't bring in Valentines at all? I've given out 20 Valentines, but I'll only get 19 back. And do I get one from myself because if not, then they have one of mine but I don't and that's not fair." (Fairness is a BIG issue in a twin household, let me tell you.) I managed to talk him into handing out Valentines despite the obvious inequality of the whole swapping thing. The lure of candy helped balance things out a little.

Maybe I should toss in a Valentines lollipop with each of the fat quarters to make up for the possibly unfair results of a such an exchange? But if the others don't put candy in mine....

What a busy weekend we've had! It all started with wee one's very first haircut.

She'd heard me telling the boys that it was time for them to get haircuts and at one point she just decided that she was going to get one too. After several days of her touching her head and saying "cut? cut?" I promised her we'd ask the stylist if it was too early to cut her hair. (Yes, she's almost two, but her hair is still very thin in spots and short around the front. The boys didn't get their first haircuts until after they were two!) The stylist agreed with wee one that it was indeed time for a little trim. She hopped up in the seat as if she'd gotten her hair done every week of her entire life and got a pretty little bob, a pretty little bow and was delighted.

Pitch Car

Then it was time for a little something special for the boys. On Saturday, I took them to a local board gaming convention (one we used to go to regularly before we had kids: no war games or miniatures or LARP or anything like that, just the German-style board games we play at home). The boys enjoyed playing Keltis, Incan Gold and No Thanks with our old gaming buddies, but their favorite games of the day were the flicking games.

Crokinole

On Sunday, it was time for my special treat, swap day at Knitsmiths!

I picked up some lovely mohair to use in a scarf (like in the Purl scarf from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts) and some Cotton Fleece that might become another Smockie for wee one.

And for hubby, I worked a little each night on finally finishing up his t-shirt quilt. I know I posted it as being done last Christmas (um, yeah, Christmas 2007), but I hadn't actually done the binding yet. When I pulled it out to put the binding on, I decided that it needed a whole mess more quilting as well. So I spent the last few nights quilting a large grid through the centers of the blocks and sewing on the binding.

We've both been enjoying snuggling under it on the sofa. Hubby is very pleased to have his special quilt finally and I'm loving how soft, warm and cozy the flannel is.

So a little something fun for everyone. Not a bad four days at all.

click for a bigger version!

I've finally finished one of the first quilt tops I ever made, waaay back in October 2007. It's hard to believe I've been quilting that long, especially considering how few things I've finished. But the proof it is that there's a huge backlog of quilts waiting to be finished: eight to be exact! Since I'm determined to get the purple quilt and the neutral quilt done SOON, I thought it'd be a good idea to get over my fear of finishing, dive into that quilts-in-waiting stack and finish off a few. This "rulers quilt" only needed the binding, so it was first to the finish.

This quilt is the Easy Lap Throw from Amy Karol's Bend-the-Rules Sewing. This quilt design is perfectly suited to a very beginning quilter. If you're just starting out, I'd definitely recommend trying one!! The strips are simple to cut and piece, with no need to match up points or corners, and, because of its modest size (40" wide), the backing doesn't have to be pieced at all. The quilting is also super simple. (Amy Karol suggests repeated vertical lines of varying widths. I did stitch in the ditch of the seams but then kept the rest of the quilting horizontal, following the lines in the rulers.) This was a wonderful start to my quilting career; I'm only embarrassed that it took so long for me to finally finish it! But I got over that soon enough as I snuggled under it on the sofa for the first time last night.

me and wee cuddle with our blankies while playing Dora Saves the Snow Princess on the wii this morning

While I've been sewing quilt blocks at home, the boys have been working on quilt squares at school. They've just finished a first-grade math/geometry unit called Quilt Squares and Block Towns that had them exploring the many ways that different shapes can be combined.

They started by arranging different shapes to fill various patterns and ended by designing "paper quilts", coloring in shapes within quilt square patterns. When I saw the patterns that they'd designed I suggested that we make real quilt squares out of them. Up first was B, with so-called "pattern E", a simple square in a square design.

B wants me to make eight more of these and sew them together so he can see the blue triangles come together to make a secondary diamond pattern. Clever, no?

S's square was "pattern A", a four-patch with two squares divided into half-square triangles. S's choice of colors made this pattern much more interesting than it would have been in a simpler color scheme.

He was so thrilled that I found blue fabric with yellow stars just like he'd drawn in class!

To fill out the theme, they read some kids' books on quilting, including The Quilt Story and The Quiltmaker's Gift, although I couldn't get them to tell me anything about either of them. Boys!

Still, maybe I should pick up this book?

Thanks to Sew Mama Sew's quilting month, I've been playing around with different quilt blocks all week!

The double irish chain block.

The shoo fly block.

The ohio star block.

The Dutchman's Puzzle block. (You know the one with the flying geese that wouldn't fly!)

And three more pinwheel stars for wee one's scrappy star quilt.

Block of the Month, that is....

It's January, the start of a new year-long block of the month program at my lqs. This is such a cool program that quilt shops do, I just have to tell you about it. (To all you long-time quilters out there, please excuse my newbie enthusiasm - we simply don't have this sort of thing at knitting stores!) So here's how it goes: you pay a very small fee (usually only a few bucks) and in the first month, you get a little packet with instructions and pre-cut fabric to make one quilt block. If you show up the next month with your block all finished, you get the next packet for the next block for free. If you miss the designated day or don't finish your previous block, you have to pay your little fee again to get your next packet. But if you manage to get your block done each month, that means that at the end of the year, you'll have twelve coordinating blocks - the makings of a lovely quilt top - for like five bucks!

And here's the really cool part and why this is such a brilliant thing for the quilters and the stores: when you go to pick up your block, the BOM group gets a quickie tutorial on making the block, as well as a show and tell of new stuff in the store, recommendations for new books and patterns, previews of upcoming fabric lines and events, and a first grab at some sale items. It's like being a preferred customer with a special in on everything going on in the store. Wouldn't it be cool to have that kind of relationship with your lys? I'm not sure there's any sort of similarly universal project that the yarn stores could dole out month-by-month like quilt blocks though. But, an excuse to come back to the store each month - when they find it, sign me up!

See ya some time later this month with block number one done!

Seems like ages ago that I used to drive down to the New Haven Ikea with the boys to meet up with grandma for the afternoon. Once Ikea finally opened a store in our area we stopped making those long trips down to New Haven and I actually did a lot less shopping at Ikea. But last weekend when I was thinking of a good place to stop with the baby on our road trip down to NYC, my mom suggested our old friend, the New Haven Ikea: it's about half way, has food, comfortable spots for nursing, and lots of space for wee one to walk around and see interesting things. It was brilliant!

She loved the kids' furniture area. And I spied some fun fabric there too!

Ikea quilt!! Actually, all of their fabric is way cool, but the very large scale of the prints in most of them make them difficult to imagine in a quilt. Better for curtains and such. But these stripes are so fun and could totally work. I just gotta find the right pattern. And maybe make another visit to get some coordinating solids. Hee, hee, hee. Wee one won't mind the trip!

I know you want me to get back to the knitting already, but I can't just yet. For one, I haven't touched the afghan since I blogged about it last week (instead I've finished every other Christmas gift!). And b, I am practically peeing in my pants with excitement to tell you about these next projects!

First, a future project.

When we did early Christmas this weekend, mom brought me a fabric bundle to make the Color Wheel quilt from Last-Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts. She went straight to the source (Purl of course) to get a whole kit. I can't wait to make this one!

Next up, one finished Christmas gift.

My great aunt's asian quilt is all done and it has come out sooooo beautifully that I want one just like it. This is actually my very first "full-sized" finished quilt. I'd quilted and done the binding on my wee mini-quilt, but this time it was for real. And it was a gift, so you know I had to do my absolute best. I spent about four hours sewing down the binding (hey quilters, is that a crazy long time or normal?) and what a difference it makes. I love that it isn't just one color. Amy Karol has you piece the binding together on this lap throw from leftovers of the main fabrics. It's such a sweet, homey sort of touch. And I still can't get enough of that backing fabric!

I finished off the quilt with a fabric quilt label made with inkjet printer fabric and following the instructions in the Last-Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts book.

And last, but definitely not least, a surprise project. I couldn't blog about it because it was for hubby. I had to work on it over at friends' houses and when he went out to the gym. It's not done yet, but I managed to get it to a point where I could wrap it up and give it to him for early Christmas.

It's a quilt made from his old concert and high school t-shirts! About two years ago my mother-in-law gave me a bag of some of his old t-shirts she'd saved and asked if I could do anything with it. I thought maybe I could and once I started quilting, I knew what I had to do.

Almost from the beginning, I had envisioned finding some black and white check fabric to set off the squares for a 90's rock 'n roll kind of look. When I found the check in flannel at Quilters Way, I decided that flannel was the way to go for the whole quilt. The old t-shirts are super soft, not crisp like quilting cotton, so the flannel really keeps that whole feel across the entire quilt. The back is a solid blue jean colored flannel that is so soft that you just want to snuggle up in it, even if you don't like Meatloaf!

It still needs a binding (I didn't even have time to remove all my basting pins), but even unfinished, hubby loved it. He was so surprised to see those old t-shirts he'd totally forgotten about. We've agreed that when it's all done it can't be folded up and put in some drawer somewhere. It'll be out by the sofa or, if we ever move to a house with more wall space, maybe even hung up to see. Isn't that nice?!

Quilting rocks!

The focus of my blanket-making activities has shifted in the last few days from the manos afghan to the asian Bend-the-Rules quilt.

I have to admit that I love this whole pressing part. Crazy talk, I know, but it's true. It's just so fun to press everything and see how beautiful it's all come out. And this one is coming out quite beautifully, if I do say so myself.

The quilt top is all done. I think Amy Karol's easy lap throw pattern with its long strips does a good job of letting these fabrics show off their simple elegance. I picked out an extra-special fabric for the backing so the back will be equally lovely. The whole thing is all basted together now and awaiting quilting.

But my time in the East is up for now. I must return to the other side of the globe to get cracking on that manos afghan. The deadline for finishing both is just over one week away!! Can I make it around the world in 8 days?!

Are handknit sweaters pouring out of your cedar chest like here at my house? Can you barely close your sock drawer because it is stuffed to the brim with handknit socks? When do you say I have enough? And how can you stop making them when you love knitting and you love the beautiful new fibers and colors that come out every year? How much is too much and what do you do with it all?

In my quilting post from yesterday, I mentioned that I liked the idea of making small mini-quilts (no bigger than, let's say, 2 foot square) because I could try out new techniques and new fabrics that catch my eye without spending scores of hours on each quilt and without blanketing the entire house in, well, blankets. A commenter asked what I would do with a bunch of mini-quilts and suggested that normal sized quilts really are much more useful. It's certainly a valid question and I agree that in theory bigger quilts are more practical, just like a knitted sweater is more practical than a swatch. BUT in real life (and in a home already filled with boys, toys, a baby, and, oh yeah, a ton of yarn) once you get past a certain number of sweaters, socks, or quilts, I might argue that each additional one isn't really that useful anymore. In fact, it's kinda in the way.

I could wear any one of my sweaters or socks on any given day and, if I made a dozen lap-sized quilts, I could, anytime I'm chilly, reach for any one of them. But what do I do with ALL of them? A mini-quilt could be hung up like a picture. Yes, all of our walls are, admittedly, already covered with pictures, but I could switch some of them out from time to time. And storing a dozen mini-quilts is way more imaginable than storing a dozen lap- or bed-sized ones. Heck, if I could find a way to legitimately hang my knitting up on the walls, I'd do it! (Shhh, don't tell the knitting police, but I already break all the handknit rules and hang up some of my sweaters in the closet.)

As my cedar chest has filled up, my knitting has changed. I've found it very hard to complete an adult-sized garment in the last year. What I have been very successful at making are baby items and stuffed animals. And I've enjoyed them immensely! I've gotten to try out new things, use different yarns (some that I'd never wear!) and storing the items has been much easier to manage. I do still earmark very special yarns for sweaters and plan to make more, but I don't want to make, you know, TOO many more. My thought about the mini-quilts is just the same. I do want to make full-sized quilts (for the sofa, for the bed...), but to try out new things and new fabric that I just have to have (even though I already have plenty, or dare I say too much), I think the quilt wall-hanging might be a good option. For me.

But maybe it's just me. I REALLY enjoy knitting. (Those caps don't come any where near enough to expressing how much I enjoy knitting. Is it possible to enjoy knitting too much?) And I'm REALLY enjoying the quilting. (Same really, same question.) But I just have to take one look at that sock drawer and know that that many quilts is going to be a problem! Does anyone else out there have too many socks? too many sweaters? too many quilts? We love to make these things, so what to do?

Just because I'm focused on the manos afghan right now doesn't mean that the quilting has slowed down.

I finished the binding on my mini-quilt. I love the size of this thing! It's no bigger than a picture you would hang on the wall. I'm excited at the idea of being able to make a few of these to try out different techniques and fabrics! I can make them quickly and we won't be overrun by quilts in a year or two.

I've also been doing the quilting on the rulers quilt little by little, highlighting rulers here and there.

It's been really fun. It's almost done and then all that's left is the binding. So naturally I've already started planning and cutting my next two quilt projects.

These first fabrics are for another easy lap throw (like the rulers quilt) from Bend-the-Rules Sewing. This will be for my great aunt for Christmas (I make her something every year - last year it was a felted bowl and four years ago I made her one of the infamous hotties!). She's got a sort of asian theme in her living room, so my mom suggested I look for asian-style prints. I found these gorgeous Kona Bay prints at my LQS (yes, that's L-Q-S; turns out the quilters talk just like we do!). I can't wait to see these all sewn together!

And then there's another quilt for me! I saw this quilt kit online at Tropical Quilter and fell in love with that plaid! I'd seen Denyse Schmidt's jump rope fabric before and thought it was so cute (I used several of her flea market fancy fabrics in my still un-quilted first quilt), but it was so helpful to see the little mock-up image of the quilt done in specific fabrics from that line. I've got like six or seven of their quilt kits bookmarked already!!

It was bound to happen. I called myself a quilter the other day. I was talking knitting with someone and they mentioned what other crafts they do. I said, I quilt. Wow.

After getting a crash course in machine quilting in our last class, I jumped right in and quilted my four-block practice quilt this weekend. Look at how much texture it adds to the piece. Wow, what a difference!

And who would have thought that stitching in the ditch would be so intense? It is completely crazy with the paying attention and staring at those seams. I found a piece of advice online that was very helpful though, suggesting that you don't stare directly at the needle while stitching. It said something like 'it's going to go up and down, just like it always does'. The idea was to keep your gaze a couple of centimeters in front of the needle to keep things on track and not go totally blind. It's actually just like knitting. Do you ever find yourself just staring at those needles clicking away for no good reason? It happens to me all the time and man, does it ever make my eyes tired! Stitching in the ditch also has that same quality that seaming up a sweater does - it's a lot of precise work and if you do it right, you shouldn't be able to see it at all! Don't you love/hate things like that? You can, of course, still see the stitching on the back. See, I went around each large block and then each four-patch inside.

It totally looks like a quilt, doesn't it?! I even stitched the binding onto the front and folded it over to the back, ready for the final step, hand-stitching it into place.

Like weaving in the ends on a big knitting project, I can see that this is the point where projects are going get put on hold. Because you want to jump right on into the next project, you know. Uh, like my rulers quilt.

Yeah, I did all the stitching in the ditch on that one too this weekend. It's still all pinned together because I need to add some more quilting. The quilting needs to be done every 5 or 6 inches so that the batting doesn't shift around with wear and washing (this number varies based on the batting you use). For this quilt pattern, Amy Karol recommends stitching in the ditch along the long vertical seam lines between the strips and then adding more vertical quilting lines between them. The rulers in my fabric however go horizontally, so I decided not to add more vertical lines to the quilt. Instead, I quilted along the horizontal seams where the flower fabric was set into the ruler strips. Next, I'm going to do some more quilting following some of the lines in the actual design on the fabric. This whole process of thinking up ways to quilt your quilt is so fun. It's a whole 'nother design element that you don't even realize is there until you do it yourself.

I hate to sound like a McDonalds' commercial, but I'm lovin' it!

Just because I find this quilting thing so much fun, I give you, the making of my quick mini-quilt!

I used leftovers from the big quilt to make a mini-quilt that I can bring to class to practice our actual quilting on. I started with a few extra four-patches I had made earlier. I precut frame strips to sew around the four-patches and made a stack for each four-patch and its frames.

I began by sewing one side of the frame to each four-patch. Working just one section of every four patch at a time allows me to run all four of them through the machine one after the other (this is called chain piecing) so I don't have to cut the thread at all.

Once all four have one side attached, I simply cut off the last four-patch from the chain, grab a second side and sew a second side to each patch.

Now, my favorite part! Each four-patch now has two sides which need to be pressed open. Look at it before.

And after!

This always reminds me of the "here's the church, here's the steeple" child's finger play rhyme: "open the door and here are all the people!" After pressing the first two sides open (and singing the little rhyme), I sew on the final two sides of the frame, chain piecing in the same manner. This is also when I like to raid the Halloween candy - hee hee.

And now it's time for the rhyme again.

Open the door and there are the people!

With my blocks done, I can sew all the blocks in each row together.

Then sew the rows to each other and voila!

I managed to sew this up in about an hour and a half while wee one took a nap. Later, I added a border and pieced together a mini-backing.

That was fun. And tonight, we quilt!

We have a quilt top! I love that term. Sounds like blacktop or something. But it reminds you that all this piecing and patchwork is just one part of making a quilt. I've made 72 little four-patches, added frames to half of them, sewn all the finished blocks together and added two borders, one of which was pieced with the other 36 four-patches in the corners. I've still got one final brown border to add and then, in the last class, we'll learn how to quilt. Yeah, then we'll learn to quilt! "Quilting" is actually the process of sewing together the quilt top, batting and backing- who knew?! - so I may have made a quilt top or two (see below) but no quilting yet.

The top of my Bend-the-Rules lap quilt is also just about ready for quilting. I need to trim the top and bottom edges to square it off, but otherwise, I'm just awaiting further instructions.

Homework for this week's class is to make a mini-quilt top of four blocks to practice our machine quilting on. In case there are a few of you out there loving this process as much as me, I'll show you some step-by-step piecing in the next couple of days. In the meantime, I'm going to keep pulling out my quilt tops and admiring them.

The quilt pattern instructions say to assemble the blocks in a "pleasing manner". Now who would have thought that that one simple sounding step would take so long?! I was up late last night pairing up four-patches and frames on my first quilt and I've only sorted about about half of the blocks.

I haven't even begun to think about how the completed blocks should be arranged, but I can already tell that this is going to be some kinda crazy patterns-and-colors-all-over-the-place quilt! I think I'd have preferred to use about half the number of fabrics and repeat the same four-patch combinations throughout the quilt, but this is the quilt I'm making in my beginner's class and they called for us to choose 18 different fat quarters and to mix them up pretty randomly. I love all the fabrics I chose, but all together, there's a lot to look at.

As a little antidote to all this randomness and chaos, I'm also putting together the pieces of the Easy Lap Throw from Bend-the-Rules Sewing.

Okay, it's not exactly un-busy, but it is controlled and I am totally in love with these super cool ruler fabrics from Moda (you'll notice that some of their multi-color ruler fabric worked its way into my class quilt above. The colors were just too perfect not to use it!!). I found these richer, monochromatic versions online at purl patchwork. Amy Karol suggests choosing three solids and three coordinating prints for this quilt. I immediately knew that I wanted to use these fabulous rulers for the "solids" and then I thought that the coordinating flower bow fabrics would be super sweet. Unfortunately the rulers ran crosswise from selvage to selvage, so I couldn't cut them running lengthwise down the quilt top, but I still love 'em like this - the colors are just so vibrant. Now that I've settled on the placement of the coordinating patches and see the whole thing as a unit, I can decide on the best fabric for the binding and the backing. Which means one more visit to purl patchwork online. Grin.

And speaking of purl patchwork, they are selling a fat 8ths bundle to make the amazing color wheel quilt from Joelle Hoverson's Last-Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts! Swoon. This is something I soooooooo want to make someday. It's like the Dale ladybug sweater that is so captivating that it makes you want to start knitting just so you can be good enough one day to make it. Well, I made the ladybug sweater and now I just want to keep quilting so that someday I can be good enough to make that freaking awesome color wheel quilt. And if I can get the fabric bundle from the quilt creator herself, then maybe I'll save myself an hour or two when it comes to design time!

My mommy made me a dolly that I love to cuddle with.

And my mommy sent me my new favorite, favorite, favorite sewing book Last-Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts. I pretty much want to make everything in this book. Everything! And thanks to my quilting class and my success with the Bend the Rules Sewing book, I've become deluded enough to think I could make most of them too.

To close out a week of green here at the blue blog, we've got my big green self-healing mat. We spent some time together last night cutting strips so I can start making a quilt!

We're strip piecing in my quilting class, which means that we're sewing two long strips together first, then cutting them into smaller pieces. The paired pieces are combined with other pairs to make four-patches, which make up the majority of the quilt top.

I wish I was one of those random-is-best, just-grab-two-and-put-them-together types, but I'm not, so I've sort of planned out all my little four-patch squares ahead of time. Ooooh, I just love 'em! After the four-patches are sewn together, they'll be framed by more strips. And I'll have to plan those out too. It sounds a little fiddly and annoying, but I'm really enjoying it so far. Playing with the fabrics is definitely a big part of it. It's like putting together 20 of my favorite yarns from my stash. When do you get to do a knitting project like that?!

Semptember was national sewing month. No wonder I've gone crazy sewing things - it's in the air! I started a little early with the two dresses I made for wee one in August, but then in September, there were the three sock monsters and now a total of four cloth books.

I made three more this weekend, including two Winnie-the-Pooh books and a Mary Engelbreit baby animal book. The cutting goes so much quicker now that I've got myself a fancy rotary cutter and mat.

And why did I buy myself a fancy rotary cutter and mat, you ask. Well, in the madness that is national sewing month, I signed up for a beginning quilting class.

Oooh, I just want to eat all these yummy fabrics up!! It's been so funny to go to the fabric store and listen to the ladies there talk about their stash and how they have to store fabric in the dishwasher just to get it out of the way or how they can't let their husbands see how much stash they have. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? They may not be knitters, but I think I'm going to get along just fine with them. Hee, hee.

Wee one's blue polka dots dress is done and ooh, is sewing these little dresses ever addictive!

No pics yet of wee one in her new dress since she's sleeping right now and it's about 65 degrees today in Boston. (We get wee one's summer clothes back, I sew her two new dresses and suddenly it's fall here!)

But the sewing will go on. We've just packed up wee one's baby basinette and put my sewing table in its place. I've got a new little stash of pretty, girly fabrics and an awesome new book full of fun projects that I can actually make!

Have you seen Amy Karol's new book, Bend-the-Rules Sewing? It is so cool!

The projects are simple but beautiful and super cute. There's this little apron pinafore and this little baby jacket, which I'll definitely be making. And then a ton of other sweet little projects for me to make like pillows and purses and the instructions are so clear. There's even a simple quilt pattern perfect for a beginner like me who has no idea what she's doing. It's just the sewing book I'd been looking for - love it!