Bee a {modern} Swapper

Against my better judgment, I signed up for a year long swap/bee. It looked like a ton of fun so I decided that even though I didn't really have time for it, I'd make time. The sign-ups are closed for this round, but you can always check out the photos and see when the next sign-ups will be HERE.

February is the first month and we are doing a pincushion swap. I have only ever made one pincushion and I hate it. I was so excited about this because I really, really need a new one. I wondered about what to do for my partner. That's the tricky part about swaps; you don't know your partners likes and dislikes very well. They try to tell you a few key things in an e-mail, but mostly you have to do a lot of stalking, ie: sift through their flickr favorites, their blog, their twitter account...

I was looking for online pincushion tutorials and I found this one on the My Go-Go Life blog. I have never made a cathedral window. Never even wanted to. I have always been intimidated by them, but really, it wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be.

I poked around through my scraps and found some Parisville by TulaPink in there (of course). My partners first favorite color listed was purple so this seemed perfect.

This is where I started. I was pretty pleased with myself at this point because I could see that I was actually doing it!

Here it is finished, before adding the stuffing. I wasn't really happy with it here. It just didn't look right. In the center where the points come together, only one point was correct. I didn't fold the white fabric correctly, I think. I was going to start a new one, but I figured I may as well finish it. So I stuffed it and added a button to the center.

The button completely covered the center and I love the way it looks now! I think this will be a good pinnie to swap, but I'll post it on Flickr to see what my partner thinks before I send it out.

My Favorite Room

I'm linking up with my friend Sharon's blog for her weekly "For the Love of" post. I missed out last week because the topic was books. I love books, a whole lot. And I have massive amounts of them. But unfortunately they are all packed away in boxes buried beneath other boxes in the garage of my new house, in which I am not currently living.

Which brings me to the topic for this week... My Favorite Room. I was at the new house not too long ago and I thought to take a few snapshots while I was there. I really do love it and am very excited to finally be living there a week from today! Can you believe it? You're probably relieved because very soon you will no longer have to hear me talk about it =)

Anyway, here is a peek of our new digs:

Isn't it cute? I normally can't stand split level homes, but I actually like this one. Plus, the exposed brick kinda does something for me. Now as I'm sure you could guess, my favorite room in the entire house would be my sewing room. Of course. Although it isn't as much a room as it is a closet. My bedroom has a walk-in closet (never had one of those before!) and I don't have nearly enough clothes to fill it. So my clothes live on one little hanging rod and the rest is for sewing!

It's not all set up yet but it has a big window that lets in lots of natural light which I love:

And there is just enough room on the far wall to set up a table for my sewing machine:

I plan to have that wall covered in mini quilts soon. I hope you have enjoyed the little peek into my home. I'll definitely be posting some more pictures once we get moved and settled in.

If you have a favorite room of your own, hop over to Sharon's blog and join in on the party.

Ooh, and in case you're wondering, I finished the kids quilts today! Bet you can't guess what my next blog post will be about...

Dessert of the Month

No, I'm not getting delicious fattening chocolatey goodness delivered to my door every month (although that does sound like a pretty great idea). I signed up for the Dessert of the Month cross stitch sampler from The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery. Every month I get a PDF cross stitch pattern sent directly to my inbox. The first month was a darling little truffle. And this month it's a devil's food cupcake! I know it's only been 2 months so far, but I am really loving this. I don't see the novelty wearing off anytime soon.

Here's my sweet little truffle. I still have to stitch the month names below them, but I plan to finish that part in the next few days.

And here's my devil cupcake. I love this little guy! As soon as I saw the pattern I knew I had to get started right away. We get the patterns on the first of the month and it is now the second... so, you can see how excited I was to stitch him up.

As for progress on the kids quilts, I have 2 completely quilted (still waiting for binding to be attached), one is pin basted and ready to be quilted, and the other one is still just a top. I have 2 weeks to finish them up so I may end up machine stitching the binding. It's definitely not my favorite method, but I don't think I'll have to time to hand stitch all four of them. Good thing I got the cross stitching out of the way for another month!