Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving and had a chance to spend the day with friends and family.

Our Thanksgiving was small this year. Just us, my mother and father-in-law, and two dear family friends who didn't have family to spend the holiday with. As usual, I spent the day being ill. It seems that every holiday, I spend most of my time laying in bed being sick. I missed out on Thanksgiving dinner (I had a small bit of mashed potatoes and a roll) but didn't have any of my favorite foods that I spend a year waiting for. The sweet potatoes were consumed within minutes, so I don't even have leftovers to enjoy. I suppose that is a great excuse to have a little Thanksgiving meal prepared later. Nonetheless, I am still very thankful for everything in my life. I may not have gotten the opportunity to sit down to a meal with my family yesterday, but I am lucky enough to have meals with my family every day. We are very blessed, indeed.

I haven't been very busy in the sewing room lately, although I really should be since Christmas is coming up! I have been making lists and deciding what to make for everyone, but that's about as far as I've gotten. I did get caught up on my bee blocks which I was stressing about, so that's good.

This is one of my two blocks for September. These were horribly late and in my rush to finish them, I forgot to get a photo of the second block.

And these are my two blocks for November. Both ladies from September and November wanted improv pieced blocks. They are not my favorite to make and I really struggle with them. But I think they turned out okay anyway.

I also purchased the 241 Tote pattern from noodle-head.com about a week ago and I made myself a pretty cute bag. The pattern was super easy, and she does a great job of explaining how everything goes together. She has several really awesome free tutorials on her blog too. You know, in case you're wanting to put together your own list of things to make for Christmas =)

This is the (almost) finished 241 tote that I made. I did finish it, but I accidentally deleted the pics I had on my computer of the finished product and I'm not quite up to taking more pictures right now.
I really love how it turned out and I have been using it everyday.

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.