FWQAL

I made three more blocks for my Farmer's Wife quilt.

I'm glad to say that I'm starting to have a much clearer vision for this quilt.

First, instead of making 111 blocks I'm going to make "only" 83. My daughter has claimed this quilt from the very beginning and she needs it to be twin sized, thus less blocks are needed. It gives me luxury to skip some of the blocks if I don't like them, or maybe they are just too difficult and fussy to make. Not bad.

I made a small change to my fabric choice, too. I thought I would use plain white fabric in each block. Then I realized that some blocks use only 2 colors and that would mean too much white. So I decided to go with fabric that's mostly white, with some small pattern instead of solid white in some of the blocks.

Here are my three newest blocks in more details:

block# 5 Bat Wing

 block #6 Big Dipper

and block #12 Broken Sugar Bowl

Have a wonderful summer day.
Svetlana

Finish it up! update

Hi everyone,
just wanted to pop in and share an update on my Finish it up! challenge.

Last week I worked on my HST quilt. I had no idea it was going to be such a lengthy project,  especially trimming those triangles, when I started. I'm about 1/3 done. I know, I have a long way to go but at least I know exactly what design I'm working on and I started piecing the quilt. This is what I have so far

I have also turned this 

into this

This handbag / purse is going to be a present for a friend of mine whose birthday is coming soon.

I can't even tell you how great it feels to see these projects getting done. Have you been working on some unfinished projects? I'd love to see your pictures.
 
Svetlana

FWQAL - 12 blocks down, many more to go

So far I've managed to make 12 blocks altogether for my Farmer's Wife quilt. 

Here are my 4 newest ones.

block #84 Spool

block #81 Snowball

block #69 Practical Orchard

and block # 70 Prairie Queen

This is my favorite block so far. I think it's the bright colors that I like so much.

Are you taking part in FWQAL? I'd love to see your blocks.

Also, you can check out Farmmer's Wife Flickr group. It's lots of fun and I'm always amazed at how wonderfully different all the blocks look.

Have a great rest of the day.

Svetlana

Sew-in frame pouch and another Ouch Pouch

I'm currently working on two major quilts and have a thousand more quilt ideas swimming in my head.  I really, really love all that cutting fabric and then sewing it back together, but sometimes I find it a little tiring to work on the same project day in and day out and need to work on something less complicated. That's where pouches and bags come in for me. They are so cute, quick to make, and make nice presents.

So, I wanted to share two more pouches I made.

Do you remember my original Ouch Pouch? It's a pouch where we keep our first aid kit. And I have to say it came in handy many times since I made it. My son wanted to be put in charge of our Ouch Pouch (not a good idea since he is only 5 and misplaces stuff all the time). The best solution was for me to make his own Ouch Pouch, which he was so excited to get and a few minutes later could not remember where he left it, and we did not see it since!!!!

I did manage to take pictures of the pouch before giving it to him, though.

Ouch Pouch front

Ouch Pouch back

Ouch Pouch inside

 I used linen and Laurie Wisbrun Pickups and Pooches collection fabric.

My second pouch is this sew-in frame coin pouch.

I love how this little guy turned out. I found a wonderful tutorial here . It was so easy to follow and the whole pouch came together rather quickly.
I used Michael Miller fabric both for the outside and inside of the pouch (I just love those bicycles). I'm sure I'll be using this fabric again soon.

Have a wonderful day, I hope your weather is better than our Chicago craze. We definitely do not like those tornado sirens.

Svetlana

Finish it up!

Meg over at Fashioned by Meg had a wonderful idea. She came up with a challenge called Finish it up! The idea is to finish at least some of our WIPs, projects we have started but for whatever reason never finished.

I thought this was just what I needed to get me to work on some of those forgotten projects, plus, it's always more fun when others do the same thing. What I didn't realize was that in order to find my WIPs I'd have to clean up my "fabric area" which really is a storage room that I took over a while back. That by itself was definitely a project that desperately needed to be done. Two days later and lots and lots of sweating and complaining, here are a few shots of my "new", organized storage sewing space.

some of my fabric

sock organizer used to keep ribbons in place

I was surprised to find out that I had quite a few projects that I cut all the material for and never got to sewing.

1. This fabric was cut a few months ago and the plan was and still is to make a handbag.

future handbag

2. While cutting fabric for my Single Girl pillow I cut 2 layers at once to have enough fabric for 2 pillows. I made one, second one looks like this:

single girl baby quilt?

I'm thinking of making a baby blanket since I don't need another giant pillow. Note to myself, if you need just one pillow, cut enough for one, not two.

3. I love half square triangle (HST) quilts. I've always admired them and just recently found out how difficult it is to trim all these little guys. I had no specific plan for my blocks when I started (not a good idea, since I worked on some blocks I'm not going to use now). I played with the blocks I've made so far and came up with these layouts

scrappy concentric

cold - warm

cold - warm / warm - cold

scrappy

 But my most favorite was this one. I've decided to use only green and blue blocks (red, pink, and yellow will have to wait for now).

my favorite

I have a few more projects like the hexies I'm working on, a pillow, and a quilt using Sherbet Pips. Phew!

I'd better get to work. Have a wonderful evening,

Svetlana.

Cosmo bag by Amy Butler

I LOVE BAGS!
I do, small ones, big ones, pouches, I love them all.
And I have a lot of them since I went through a bag producing stage when I first started sewing about a year ago. But I still needed a large bag. With three children, I need to carry a lot of stuff when we go places. So I decided to make a Cosmo Bag from Amy Butler's book Style Stitches. It's funny, the reason I didn't make this bag before was that it was too large, exactly what I needed now. Go figure.

Well, here it is

As you can probably see from the pictures, I used laminated fabric so I don't have to worry about getting the bag dirty all the time. I used Ty Pennington Kimono and some red polka dot I had in my stash.
I was surprised how easy it was to saw with laminated fabric. I used my walking foot and there was no slipping (oh, how I love that walking foot).
I guess I'm ready for an outing, and so are my kids, so off I go.
Enjoy your day, Svetlana.

FWQAL continued + some simple embroidery

I have two projects to share with you today.
First, let me show you 4 more finished blocks for the Farmer's wife QAL.

Block #109 Windows

Block # 111 Wrench

Block # 108 Windmill

Block # 92 Streak of Lightning

And here's the picture of the 8 blocks I've finished so far.

Are you also participating in FWQAL? Leave me a comment, I'd love to see your blocks.


Another project I've been working on is doing simple embroidery. I needed something I could take with me to  park or to my kids swimming lessons, so this is what I came up with.

I decided to use running stitch around each leaf and flower to give it some texture.

I also used french know for the inside of the flowers.

I'm almost done with the whole piece of fabric. I think I'll make it into a pouch after all the embroidery is done. Hopefully I'll have my pouch ready to show you soon.

Svetlana

A new house for Lola

Yesterday was a very special day in our household. Lola, our sweetest ever Himalayan cat, turned 1. So, for the first time in my life, I threw a birthday party for a cat. Wow! I never thought these words would ever come out of my mouth. She got some new toys, of course, and I made her a new house (her old one looked ugly and pathetic, the girls said), and was not girly at all.
I came across this awesome pattern by Penny Layman  from sewtakeahike for a cat house in the summer 2011 Stitch magazine and I used heavier weight fabric from my stash, which the girls helped me pick out.

 What can I say? Lola loves her new house, especially peaking through the window.

And the kids love it, too. I am so glad I gave it a try. It was not that difficult to make it, the hardest part being trying to keep the whole thing straight while sewing.

Svetlana