Work in Progress

It feels like I haven't been here much...

However, I have been a busy bee :)

I am still working on organizing my fabrics:

All the fabric is better organized except
for my scrap bin.

All my fabrics are folded so that I can
see what's in each bin.  

I added more fabrics to this.   

 I haven't yet had time to organize the fabric by color but plan to do it in the next couple of weeks.

These are projects that I'm currently working on:

Dogwood Blossom Quilt:

I'm embarrassed  to say this project is still ongoing.  I work on this quilt a small bit at a time.  I'm still really on step two, which is the hand embroidery part that I have worked on for a few months.  It's hard because there are so many projects that are much quicker to finish so I work on them instead of this one.

Stash Attack!

Since organizing my fabrics, I realized I had way too many scraps.  I hate the idea of throwing them away because I think most can be recycled into another project.  Since learning English Paper Piecing method, I decided to dedicate some of my stash to make small projects such as these placemats:

Star Blossom, English Paper Piecing (EPP):

This was a project from Rachel's Handstitched: Camp Pearl class that I took over the summer.  I'm finally getting around to this project.  She had offered instructions for 16 projects!  Too many for me to do during the summer months so now I'm trying to get to some of them.  I'm really enjoying this project.  She's planning to offer the class again in 2013 and I highly recommend it if you're wanting to learn several different types of hand stitching.  I found her instructions very thorough, offering interesting and diverse  projects.  You can be a beginner  or advanced sewer.  On her blog, Stitched in Color, she offers several free tutorials where you could get a feel for her style.  At first, I couldn't get the hang of EPP but now I can hardly put it down.  I love the portability of this style of hand stitching.  I can even take it to work, whip it out and work on it when it's slow.

The finished project should look like this:

(photo by Rachel: Stitched in color)

Crochet Reversible Baby Blanket:

I'm so close to having this project done! I just need to stitch two sides of the fabric to the yarn and I'll be done :)  I'm making this for my niece, Brittany. She's having her first baby (a boy who's being named Archer)  in two weeks.  Brittany is the first of my sibling's kids to have a baby so it's very exciting for us.  I'm gonna be a Great Auntie... it is just so hard for me to comprehend this.  Surely, I'm not that old!  Anyways, I purchased this pattern from Sheila on Etsy.  (I love Etsy!)

( I embroidered Archer's name under Thing1 and Thing 2)

I made the same blanket for a friend's first grandchild, Leo: 

So I've been busy and hopefully I'll be able to report more progress next week.  My husband, Zdenek, came home from visiting his family in Czech Republic on Thursday; I'm enjoying some much needed couple time together.  I love having weekends off from the hospital.  I can say that having this time off so me and Zdenek can be together more often has made me a happier person.  

Sew long for now.....Kim