Making

This post will be a bit picture heavy, as I have been sewing quite a bit, but not blogging. I'll just show you what I've been working on with a little caption under each photo. Deal?

This is a mini quilt I made for Lizze for Christmas. I used Parisville fabric in a Dresden plate pattern.

A Kindle cover I made for the shop, but I fell in love with it, so it's now mine.

Here's a few more Kindle covers. These ones actually will end up in the shop eventually.

And two custom Kindle covers I made for my friend Christine's mom. She chose these fabrics from what I had on hand.

This is the pincushion (plus a few extra goodies) I sent to my partner for a swap. I got mine in the mail a few days ago, along with another pincushion for a swap I did with Lizze. I'm saving those for their own post though. I'll show you soon!

I loved the cathedral window pinnie I made for my partner so I decided to make one for me.

I have wanted to knit socks for a long time. I found this gorgeous sock yarn at a local yarn shop here and couldn't resist.

Since I had never made socks before, I decided to try with a cheapy yarn for practice.

This is my sock progress so far. It's slow going because I have so much to do lately, but hopefully I'll have a pair to wear very soon.

Fave 5 Friday

Hey folks! Time for my fave 5 Friday post. Today has been productive. I made a meal plan for the next 2 weeks, went grocery shopping, made strawberry freezer jam, and strawberry banana bread. I have yet to get any sewing done today, but I'm headed there after I get this post up. I have a few blocks to make and send out in the mail, then some quilting to (hopefully) finish up. Oh, and I have a bit of laundry too. Boo. If this was a 'Worst Wednesday' post, I would show you a picture of that.

This here is Roger. He is super fluffy and snuggly.

Here's Ben waiting for his bus. He was pretending to be bigfoot in the forest.

I took Alice to the Taylor Swift concert 2 nights ago. She had the best time! I loved that I was able to give her that experience. Here she is, with her fancy new Taylor Swift shirt on:

And here we are getting ready to get in the car and go!

And... something crafty! Remember the stack of Parisville I showed last week? Well, here's a little something I made with it:

Head over to Sharon's Blog to add your link and join us! Just write a post with your favorite 5 photos from the week. Fun and simple!

Misfit Quilters DQS

Have you noticed that there are so many swap groups out there that seem clique-ish? It's more like a popularity contest. They have a million rules and the same people swap all the time, while so many others who have been waiting for a long time to participate, are passed up yet again. I believe that swaps should be for fun. And apparently, other people do too. A couple of my twitter friends decided to start a group for misfit quilters. You know, like the misfit toys? The ones that no one loves and sends them off to their own little island to be pathetic while not bothering others with their pathetic-ness? Well, we don't have our own island (damn it), but we do have our own swap now.

Our first swap is for a doll quilt (since that was the swap most of us were discussing not being allowed to participate in). A doll quilt is about 13" x 19" and I just love how adorable they look hanging on the wall. I got started on my doll quilt a couple nights ago. It took a little time to figure out what I wanted to make for my partner since I don't know anything about her. I have been reading her blog, and looking at her favorite photos on Flickr. After I got an idea of what she might like, I started cutting and sewing.

I decided to make a Dresden Plate (gasp). I know. I thought it was a little ridiculous since I've never made one - and quite frankly, I never planned to make one either. But I found a tutorial HERE that made it seem really easy. And you know what? It was!

Sewing the top of the wedges together and turning them right side out is ingenious! I used a pencil to poke the points out. The tutorial says you need 20 wedges. That's if you use the special ruler, which I did not. I made my own template by guessing on a size. So I ended up needing 31 wedges based on the size I made them.

I made a giant yo-yo for the center. That was the hardest part. I still have a bit more to do before I can start quilting it. I'm unsure of the quilting design I want to use and I'm also undecided as to whether I want to machine or hand quilt.

When all is said and done, I hope that my partner loves it and I hope that all the other swaps that didn't want us, regret passing us up. Just because we don't have thousands of photos on Flickr or haven't participated in hundreds of swaps, doesn't mean we are bad quilters. As a matter of fact, I have seen the work of my fellow Misfits, and I have to say, we are damn good.

Selina