Bye Bye 2011

We had a lot of fun together and made a lot of stuff this past year. Here's my looking back mosaic. 

I've updated my project list for 2012. Every year I start with a little list and find I add to it so much during the year I never finish it all. I'm also easily distracted by shiny new crafting ideas. This year, I'd like to focus more of my time on completing things (the things I really WANT to finish, other things just need to get let go) before I start on lots of new things that will also need to be finished. In short, my goal for the new year is to tackle the stack before adding onto the pile.

What are your 2012 goals, craft-wise, or otherwise-wise?

Family Tree Quilt

All the hours of cutting, sewing, sandwiching, quilting and binding are worth it when you have a finished quilt you love. And I sure love this one! I'm calling it the Family Tree quilt. It's been gifted to my parents as an anniversary present. :-)

It all started with Joel Dewberry's Modern Meadow fabrics. I knew I wanted to highlight the pretty trees. And I loved the play of the light and dark fabrics. Log cabin blocks seemed to be the way to go.

There's so many ways to lay out your log cabin blocks! I had to decide before I got too far in since it would matter how I placed my trees. (No upside-down trees in this quilt!) I chose to do diagonal light and dark stripes.

The back is simple. Pieced from a large IKEA sheet and some of the dark brown fabric used for the border on the front.

For the quilting, I did straight diagonal lines to go along with the striped front. I'm not gonna lie, I had a few problematic puckers happening. I pulled out the worst offenders and re-quilted, but there are still a few tiny imperfections. Just keeping it real!

As predicted, my mom loves the trees and the pattern of the front, while my dad prefers the simple look of the back. As long as they're both happy, I'm happy. AND I have enough fabric to make a matching one for me. Keeping it all in the family. :-)

It also feels very fall-ish to me, so I'm entering it in the Celebrate Color event!

Something Red for art-o-mat

Kerplunk! That noise you hear is the sound of my art being dispensed from an art-o-mat machine. What is art-o-mat, you ask? It's a neat project where retired cigarette machines are converted to dispense art instead. I love the idea of small, affordable art and am so happy to be a part of the project.

I had all kinds of different ideas I wanted to try, but for my first edition I decided to go with a photo project. With a Lomo fisheye camera loaded with redscale film, I went on a sort of photographic scavenger hunt, capturing familiar things in a unique way.

The resulting images turned into 50 art-o-mat blocks and got sent on their merry way. So far I know my art has been dispensed in Chicago and Las Vegas! I'm not sure where else it got sent or where it will end up. SO if you happened upon my art in an art-o-mat machine, I'd love to hear where it ended up. And which photo you got!

If you don't have access to an art-o-mat near you, or if you got one of my blocks and want to see more of the images, check out the zine I made with all my photos from the project. It's up in the good ol' etsy shop.

I'm so excited to get my work out there through art-o-mat!

Out of chaos, order... and a hoop bag!

 

Quick Fall Fix

The weather's been gorgeous in my corner of the world this past week. The leaves are all changing but the temperature's been rather warm. Bright blue skies and vibrant fall leaves are so pretty together, don't you think?

So I made a trip to the Arboretum the other day and felt like doing some autumn crafting afterwards. I decided on a quick fall fix and knitted up this leaf dishcloth from a free Ravelry pattern.

 

I love how fast dishcloths knit up and how you can put them to practical use right away. Eventually I'd like a rainbow of dishcloths, and this will be my orange.

While I have some bigger projects in the works, this seemed like a good fit for Stitched in Color's Celebrate Color event. Bright orange leaf? Very colorful and  autumnal-y. Check out the event, it's fun seeing what everyone is inspired to create by the loveliness of fall colors.

Hope the weather is great wherever you are and that you're enjoying the fall!

Two, Two, Two skirts in one!

Confession: I have a lot of trouble sewing clothes. I don't know what it is. I pick out pretty fabric and what I think will be a cute (and hopefully not too difficult) pattern. In theory, all should go according to plan. In reality, I always struggle. Perhaps it's the fact that I like to change things around from the pattern. And that I'm often trying to squeeze the most I can out of a small amount of fabric. And maybe easy patterns are really meant to look like maternity wear. (Not a problem if you're expecting of course, but I'm not!)

 

Take this skirt as an example. I loved the look of Anna Maria Horner's Flirting the Issue Skirt. The pattern's a free download, and it looks so easy and cute! I also had been wanting to try out sewing with voile, and I love Anna Maria's Innocent Crush line. Seems like a perfect match, right?

Well. The voile is gorgeous. So gorgeous that I couldn't decide which one to choose. But then I hit upon this happy thought: why not get two patterned fabrics instead of one patterned and one solid? That way I could make my skirt reversible!

It all worked out in the end but let me tell you it was a bit of a pain getting there. Mostly I tried to follow the pattern, though of course it changed things making the skirt reversible. I also changed out the band a bit since I had a different elastic at hand. And of course I waited until almost the end to try it on, and it was HUGE. Like a small panda could have fit in there with me. I debated leaving it extra poofy but decided I'd be happier taking out some bulk. And I was.

It's funny, I was especially drawn to the little flowers on the "Maybe" pattern. But as a skirt I kinda like "Turn of Events" and its bold floral print. I like that I can wear it with a shirt tucked in or out. And that I could do a fast change in an elevator like in the opening of  The Pink Panther. (The Peter Sellers Pink Panther... the scene where the inspector's wife has to make a quick getaway so she reverses all her clothing while in an elevator to throw the police off her track! I always thought that was too cool.) So, all things considered, I'm happy with my finished reversible skirt. And the next clothes I sew? I'm not getting cute or clever with them!

Summer Crafting

Summer's a fun time for crafting. This summer I found myself working on lots of little things as I had time. I picked up this great storage case at IKEA and filled it with craft supplies for an on-the-go crafting kit! It worked great, especially for doing little projects away from home, like with my niece and nephew.

We made friendship bracelets and shrinky dinks! (BTW, all you pin-it-wherever bracelet makers: TRY A CLIPBOARD! It's so much nicer for making friendship bracelets.)

AND I got into something new: hand carved stamps. I was inspired especially by the tutorials here and here to try it out. It's a bit challenging but quite fun. Just remember to do your letters backwards so they stamp correctly! (You'll be so mad if you forget.)

I'm keeping my kit loaded for more crafting on the fly with friends, but I'm ready to tackle some larger, more long term projects, too. Farewell summer. It's been fun.

Fabric Destash

So I've had to admit to myself that I will never get around to all the projects I've fleetingly wanted to do, that I will never use up all my crafting supplies.

Rather than just leave things in the closet without a purpose, I've decided to do a little destash. Hopefully my supplies can go to new homes where they may actually get used!

As the picture shows, I've got some fabric listed in my destash shop so far. That's some Alexander Henry Maxfield (I think this would be lovely for a black and white quilt!) Echino Scene in purple (alas, poor dress I had planned, you were not meant to be) and some of Denyse Shmidt's Katie Jump Rope in Green Ribbon. Look for more in the coming weeks.

The farmer takes another wife

 

What is it with that farmer? Is he a bigamist? A polygamist? Whatever he is, he sure has a lot of wives sewing quilts right now. What am I talking about? The Farmer's Wife Quilt-Along, of course!

Started by Amanda and Angela, the flickr group has grown from 19 when I joined to over 500 people! Yikes! At first I thought I might just cheer everyone else on, but seeing all the beautiful blocks was quite inspiring. And I had a gift card to use at a bookstore, so I ordered the book myself and got to sewing.

It really is quite addictive; while the group is a go-at-your-own-pace sort of thing, the idea is to do 2 blocks per week. Yeah, so, I started with five. I'm having a lot of fun figuring out the math for these, although the book comes with a CD of templates. Once I get to some blocks with more than squares and triangles I'll be printing those out for sure.

I've never done a quilt-along before, never really was tempted to until now. Those ladies that started the FWQAL are very talented and inspiring, and somehow knowing there are hundred of others out there sewing the same thing is motivating!

Many in the flickr group are going scrappy, but I have another scrappy project going on at the moment, so I decided to work with my little stash of Innocent Crush. I'm not ready to commit to making all 111 blocks in the book, but I think I may make a smaller version. It will be my Farmer's Crush quilt. :-)

I really like trying out these traditional blocks. I don't have a lot of experience making these, and so I'm hoping it will help me become a more precise piecer. I also really like not being stuck with one repeating block for a quilt, that gets tedious to me and has already slowed me down on other projects. Always having a new block design to work with keeps things interesting.

Want to join in? There's always room for more!

Cross Stitch is Cool!

Years ago I used to cross stitch. I made several projects for wedding presents, you know, with the couple's names and wedding date in some pretty pattern. But for some reason I got out of the habit of cross-stitching for a while.

Now, I think cross stitch is cooler than ever! This is helped in great part by all the fun patterns I've been discovering lately. One shop that has tons of cute patterns is The Frosted Pumpkin Stitchery. I made this Toast BFFs project from one of their patterns.

Another fun cross stitch project I made is this super cute and geeky one of the Star Trek TNG characters. The pattern was not made specifically for cross-stitching, but is one of iotacon's  pixel designs. The simplified and squared off characters work great for translating onto aida cloth.

 
I really love all the geeky patterns out there for cross-stitch. Here's a free one for Doctor Who's David Tennant. And another one I want to make from Day of the Tentacle. There's lots of Etsy shops with great patterns, too. I love the pixel people of weelittlestitches (new Star Wars ones available!) as well as the nerdy stitch options of bombastitch (like this TRON one).

Ah, the simple pleasure of stitching tiny Xs that turn into fabulously cute and geeky things. Don't you think cross stitch is cool?

Snew

Did you ever do that obnoxious joke where you start talking about "snew" just so you can get someone to ask: "What's snew?" and you can be silly and say back "Nothing, what's snew with you?" ;-)

Here's what's snew with me: My birdie embroidery was a runner up in the Fat Quarterly "WIN IT TO BE IN IT" Reader's Competition! There were some amazing projects featured, so I was very pleased to place. (If you're wondering what Fat Quarterly is, by the way, it's a neat e-magazine filled with patterns and interviews and lots of inspiring projects. Good stuff!)

There's some other little finished projects I've been meaning to post about... Firstly, I made another ereader cover. This one was a gift and I made it scrappy to match the receiver's interests. The French sheep were a big hit, as part of what my friend is doing with her nook is listening to French .mp3s while reading French files to learn the language better. Neat, huh?

Also completed a little outfit for my LPS Blythe. And decided on a name for her, which took almost as long as it takes some people to name their children! This is Cecily. Part of why I wanted an LPS Blythe was that when I see everyone's big Blythes I love all the custom clothes that get made for them. I wanted to test it out on a smaller (in size and investment) Blythe to see if I would like it. But honestly, I think it would be easier to sew for the regular size dolls. I did manage to make a tiny tunic and denim skirt, and I crocheted this little hat. I had meant to make boots, but it's ridiculously challenging creating clothes this small and I gave up! (This may be Cecily's first and last custom outfit.)

Finally, here's my incredibly easy fix to a sewing problem: I've been meaning to make a scrap bag or bucket for when I sew. But the thing is, I have a place where I store scraps, I really just needed a little container of some sort for clipped threads and corners and bent needles and the like. The solution? This nifty tray! It was about the easiest thing ever to make, as it's basically a square with the corners sewed up. So simple and so useful.

So, that's what's snew with me, what's snew with you?

Guess where I am...

Wendymoon Designs is now on Facebook. Check out my new page for a special offer on my gocco bunting thank you cards. And while you're at it, hit that like button! :-)

Swap Round Up

Recently I completed a couple of swaps and I wanted to post some pictures of what I sent and received.

First, for round 3 of the Scrappy Mug Rug swap group on flickr, I made this Dresden mug rug for my partner (with Innocent Crush, of course):

  

I also added in a pincushion made from hand-stitched hexagons, and a few shrinky dink pins!

And this is the mug rug package I received. Isn't the embroidery great?

 

I also shared in the {Urban} HOME Goods swap.

 

One of the things on my partner's wishlist was a Kitchenaid mixer cover. I was nervous to make it since I don't have one myself to test it on, but I found this tutorial and went from there and it seems to fit! I used my partner's favorite green and gray colorscheme with some stripes for fun.

 
 

I also included a couple of potholders, another partner request.

  

What I was really hoping to get was something I've been meaning to make myself but haven't gotten around to, and the sewing machine cover I received really fit that bill! I love the Hope Valley fabric and colors. And the inside is corduroy! I also got this super cute raccoon needle book. So sweet!

 

Here's the cover on my machine in my teeny-tiny sewing corner.

Swapping can be a lot of fun: getting inspired seeing what everyone is creating in a group, trying to guess what you will be getting, stalking your partner and trying to come up with something perfect for them. But it's also a bit stressful: working on a deadline, hoping your partner will be happy with what you create, hoping you'll like what you get. While I think my swaps have gone pretty well, I think I'm taking a little break from swaps for a bit. Maybe it was just doing two at once wearing me out, or the nagging feeling that I should be working on my project list first!

What about ya'll, do you swap? I'd love to hear your best (or worst) swap stories!