Valentine Celebration

Happy Valentine's Day!

I realize that not everyone likes to celebrate this holiday for various reasons.  But I'm not one of them. I realize that it's a commercialized holiday but it doesn't have to be.  I'm happy receiving cheesy gifts as well as thoughtful ones.  The whole idea is about being aware of the person who lives in your heart and letting them know it.  

Today I finished my present for my husband, Zdenek.  He asked me to make him a pouch for his (really mine) GPS (remember, men don't get lost!).  I used Anna's pattern for this scrappy pouch and I'm pleased how it turned out.  I am a little concerned that I might have made this a bit too feminine.  If that's the case, I'll have a new pouch!  Because I'm pretty sure he knows I'm making this, I'll have to surprise him with filling it with some special trinkets.  Yes, I'm cheesy!

I have joined a local English Paper Piecing (EPP) club.  I'm happy to be able to get together with other women who love this style of quilting/sewing as much as I do.  A nice surprise was that I met a woman, Margaret, who works in the NICU at my hospital! It's a small world.  We sat next to each other and got to chat about ourselves and I believe that we'll become friends.  I worked on my "Hex on the Beach" quilt.   I have to remind myself to enjoy the "journey" of making this quilt and not to rush to get it done. I have a long way to go since I'm only on row three and there are 47 rows.

 While at the quilt store, I couldn't resist picking up some Valentine's fabrics; especially because of the 20% discount.  It's a miscellaneous pack with pink, red, brown and white fat quarters.  I haven't decided what I'm going to make with it but I did find a few ideas  in Pinterest.  There's  one idea I really like at SewMamaSew.

I also purchased myself a new desk chair for my sewing room.  I had an old chair that over the years lost its fluff!  It felt like I was sitting on a hard board.  I even tried to fix the chair by taking it apart and adding a blanket and stapling it back together (I know,very amateur!)  All it did was make me feel like I was sitting on a hill!  Either way, flat or hilly, the chair had to go.  I put together my chair with no help from my husband!  The good thing that comes from him traveling all the time is I'm self-reliant.  Of course, I might ask him to take a look at my chair to make sure it won't fall apart!

I hope your holiday is filled with happiness and fun!


                                                             Sew Long….Kim

A Bit of Sewing and Stuff

Good Morning!  

Since I have started having weekends off, Sundays have a new meaning to me.  One, I'm no longer dreading this day because now it is my day off!  Two, it's a  day to spend with my honey, sew some and do whatever I want!  Who wouldn't want that...  My day always starts off the same way:  

C*O*F*F*E*E 

After the first cup all is good with the world (and me).  

I'm making progress with my Hex on the Beach EPP quilt.  I started the first step, putting the paper on each piece.  Well, this is gonna take me a while since there are 1008 pieces!  I purchased some Clover Wonder Clips and I LOVE THEM!  They are wonderful to use and make my life easier.  The clips hold the paper and fabric together with no fuss. They stay put and are much safer (for my fingers) to use than pins.  I use them for most of my projects so if you don't have any... get some!  You won't regret it.  I have never sewn hexagons that have only 1/4 inch seam allowance all the way around.  I have always given myself a generous 1/2 inch seam allowance so learning to hand sew around each one with such a VERY small seam allowance has challenged me.  At first, it felt like 1/4 inch wasn't enough to work with but as time goes on I'm getting faster and coping with it.  I love that I don't have to cut any fabric.  Plus, since the fabric was cut on a machine, they are perfectly cut and the pattern is always in the right direction.  

(Image from Clover Website)

 (it's a start!)

Moving along... 

Star Blossom

Remember when I was going to add a plain back to my table runner?

Well, once again, I changed my mind.   Originally, I was going to use fabric I had on hand but then I went to a fabric shop.  You know how hard it is to resist once there.  When I was talking to the quilt ladies, they convinced me I could hand quilt with a pattern fabric.  I also decided to add a dark blue binding  to help tone it down a bit; the orange and green are pretty loud.  

So I tried hand quilting and had to rip it out.  My stitches weren't even and were very wonky so I'll try again.  But for now, this is how it looks, pins and all:

Another project I finished this weekend were lined drawstring bags.  I purchased the pattern from In Color Order where you can find a free tutorial for this bag!  I bought the pattern, which allows me to sell the bags.  I would like to try and sell them on Etsy.

When I was sewing these together I found that my ironing board was way too big to iron the little bags so I bought a mini.  I purchased it from Joann's Fabric and Craft Store.  It was $19.99 but with a 40% discount coupon I paid $12.  I'm sure I'll be using this for many future projects; it's very handy to have.

On another note...

I won a contest at work this week!  We had a chowder and soup contest.  People brought in crockpots of their favorite recipes and coworkers voted on their favorite.  A winner from each category was picked and I won!  My soup: Deconstructed Lasagna.  I found the recipe on Pinterest:

                                               Source: peggyunderpressure.com via Heather on Pinterest

I hope everyone in blogosphere is having a great weekend :)

                                                                      Kim

A Brand New Year and Plenty of Happy Sewing

Happy New Year!!

I love this month just because it's a fresh new year, which means new beginnings.  It also means letting go of all the things I don't need.  This year I'm letting go of thoughts of things I cannot change no matter of much I want to.  

My changes this year:

1.)  Don't bring home work issues.
2.) Sew more.
3.) Blog often.
4.) Smile.
5.) Believe in my abilities.
6.) Laugh.

Out with 2012, In with 2013!!!!

I'm on a great sewing roll right now.  Last year I learned English Paper Piecing and love sewing this way.  I like that it's portable and I can do it almost anywhere.  I have chosen a huge EPP project this year, a quilt:

(image from Trueup.net)

This is a really cool kit that I purchased from Pink Chalk Fabrics.  

The kit cost $89, a real steal if you ask me since it's all precut!

The fabrics in the kit are from the Salt Water collection from designer Tula Pink.   The prints feature a maritime theme: shells, octopi, waves and lifebouys. It's colorways are aqua, coral and seaweed.  The fabric included 24 different prints and 12 different solids and came all pre-cut (who doesn't love that!) in 1 1/4" hexagons.  There are approximately 28 hexagons per group, adding up to a total of 1008 precut hexagons!  OMG, that's a lot of hand sewing!  I added up the number of stitches and came up with a rough estimate of 72,000.  At first, I thought I could finish this in about a year but now I might want to give myself more time!  The size is 43 x 60 but I may make it bigger by adding borders.  I am making this quilt for me.  I don't think I could part with it after sewing so many stitches!

I'll keep you posted on my progress.

I just finished this top for a table runner using the EPP method:

Star Blossom Table Runner

I'm trying to figure out how I want to finish the runner.  I would like to try hand-quilting the top. I'm thinking of sewing around each of the stars.  Because of the pattern the quilting will make, I think I should use a solid color fabric on the back; the stitches then would make a nice pattern.

This pattern is from  Stitched in Color blog  by Rachel Hauser.  I took a class from her and was introduced to hand sewing.  I almost love it as much as machine sewing!

Wonderful Weekend

I am so in love with having weekends off.  Now I'm kicking myself for not trying before this year to get weekends off.  It's weird how we just go on with life day after day without much thought on how we can make our lives better.  It took me quite a while (about six months) to get a schedule change at work.  But like all really great things, it took time to make it happen.  The reason for my giddiness is that I feel like I'm newly married again!  It's so nice to have time with Zdenek.  It's nice to go out together and enjoy each other's company.

This weekend was full of fun times together:

First of all, we had morning coffee together on the patio.  It's still pretty hot in Arizona so morning is the only time we can spend on our patio.  But soon, we'll be having dinners out there.

On Saturday, we went shopping!!!  I haven't shopped for clothes in so long so I really enjoyed it.  I loved that Zdenek could tell me if  an outfit looked good on me or not.  Normally I would only do this with my sister but once in a while shopping with a man is OK!  I just believe my sister is the best person to shop with.  She has excellent taste, knows what looks good on me and we always have fun.  But she lives in Florida.  She wasn't available this past Saturday!

OMG...I almost forgot the best news of my weekend!  On Saturday, my niece had her baby!!!  Now I'm a great Auntie!  Sounds so weird to me.   My sister, Cindy, is the first of my siblings to become a grandma!  Her daughter, Brittany, had a little boy named Archer:

My sister, Cindy with her new grandson, Archer

On Saturday, we celebrated Octoberfest at a local German restaurant, Brat Haus.  They have a great outdoor sitting area full of long and short picnic tables under shade trees and umbrellas.  I didn't get a picture of waitstaff outfits but they wore old time German attire, I think it adds to the experience.  So we drank beer and enjoyed a sausage meal:

In addition to enjoying a meal out, we headed over to the park to enjoy Ballet in the Park!  Every year Arizona Ballet Company does several performances at different parks on a Saturday evening.  This was the first year we could go.   It was a beautiful night, the stars were bright and the performance beautiful.

(Of course, I had to have some Kettle Popcorn!)

(photo from AZ Ballet Company)

I did have some time to sew on Sunday.  I'm working on a project for a blog hop that I plan to write a post about this week.  It's all about English Paper Piecing.  It's a slow process but really great for my soul.  I love that I can make something by hand with just small pieces of fabric and thread.  This pattern is called Star Blossom by Rachel Hauser.  Rachel has a tutorial on her blog, Stitched in color.

Now, I'm wishing every day was a weekend :)

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

Hexagon Tree Project

I finished another project from the Handstitched: Camp Pearl online sewing class.

This was a project that introduced English Paper Piecing.  I'm sure you remember my last post where I was defeated by this.  NOT ANY MORE!!!!  This is a great example why you should try more than once.  This project was a great introduction to this technique.  I should have tried it first and maybe I would have been more successful with my earlier blocks.  Oh well, live and learn!  What I think made this a success was the fact that the paper was stiffer.  So it was easier to wrap the fabric around the foundation.  Second, all the pieces lined up perfectly.  And third, I only had to  join 2 or 3 EPPs together.  Great project to learn EPP.

Here's the end result.....

Here are some pictures of the process:

Have all supplies and material cut.  Usually I do this on the fly!  But I
totally think this way is much better :) 

First step in EPP: wrap fabric around foundation and stitch to hold in place.  Second step is to attached them together.

Successful EPP!!!  

And you will be making a lot of them!  

Next is to place them on my tote bag.  I embroider a tree truck and these are my leaves!
I played around a bit on how I want to attached them: running stitch or blanket stitch.
The running stitch won.  The tree is made with the back stitch.

Really starting to look like a cute tree.

and after a bit of more sewing, you have the finished product...

Ta Da~  (Notice that I used fabric I already had on hand so I saved money
on this project....makes my husband very happy :))

I feel good about this.  I love the end result.  I would like to make more tote bags but adjust the size of them.  Also, I would like to find a quicker way to make the bag.  Of course I was learning so this took way longer than it normally would.  I love the fact that I can do the EPP and tree embroidery ahead of time.  Plus, I love the fact that the first half of this project is portable, I can do it anywhere.  No machine required! I think these might sell well at a craft fair.  What do you think? 

                                                                  Sew long for now!  Kim 

English Paper Piecing: Happy Dance

If you're first not successful....keep tryin'

Success can be lurking around the corner....

English Paper Piecing

I am doin' the "Happy Dance"

English Paper Piecing vs Paper Piecing

Well....

A picture is worth a thousand words so here it is....

Top: English Paper Piecing Bottom: Machine Paper Piecing

It's really no constest which way was easier for me.  I think that it will take me a lot more practice to master English Paper Piecing and since Rachel, the instructor said something about paper piecing being quicker, I opted for that route.  The only problem about machine paper piecing is I had never attempted it before.  Well, really no better time to learn so I headed over to one of my favorite ways to learn something new, You Tube!  I love modern technology. Nothing could be more convenient than sitting in your pajamas and learning from other women who have way more experience than you.  I love that people are willing to take the time to help others learn from their own experiences.  I found a video  from Vanessa Wilson (blog: Crafty Gemini) on youtube that explained paper piecing in really simple terms.  It didn't take me much time at all to try piecing.  Of course, there were some mistakes that quickly helped me learn!  After I made a couple mistakes, I decided to follow along with her while she was demenstrating the procedure.  Here's a picture of my first tries:

As you can see, I didn't quite follow her instructions at first.  In the top square,  I trimmed off the bottom left triangle.  In the bottom square, I didn't have enough fabric in the bottom right square.  She recommends to use plenty big enough fabric when learning.  Well, I'm trying to live frugelly!  It doesn't pay when doing this.  Maybe once I have more (much more!) experience I can try to be frugal with my fabric.  Anyways, I am thrilled to have tried a new sewing technique.  I am very happy with how my squares turned out:

The real lesson here is that there are more than one way of doing things.  Since I didn't think my English Paper Piecing (EPP) was good enough, I was able to still make my blocks  using a different technique.  Don't be afraid, just jump in :)  Sow sew sow Kim:)