Just in the nick of time...

Does this look familiar? It should. This is my entry for the Moda Bakeshop Monthly Contest for March. I started on it in early February, and should have had plenty of time to finish it before today, but there was that trip out of state and me getting sick...



The contest for March was to recreate a tutorial from the Bakeshop blog with Charm Packs (5" squares). I chose the Lolipop Quilt
but instead of making the applique lolipops, I chose to follow the original intent of the tutorial and enlarge the floral motifs from the Fresh Flowers line. The idea struck, and once I saw the little swirls in the centers of flowers that echoed the embroidered swirls in the Lolipop Quilt, I knew that I had to do it!



Originally, I tried sketching my floral designs on graph paper to make sure all of my flower petals were perfectly proportioned. It only took a couple sketches for me to realize two things. Number one, I was sketching in a 5" X 10" field and leaving myself no room for seam allowances, and two, the perfect graph paper petals took away from the hand-drawn quality that I loved so much about the fabric design. (By the way, it turns out that the reason the flowers had a hand drawn quality is that the designer, Deb Strain, actually hand paints her fabric samples! Amazing!)



And finally, just a little close up collage of my interpretations. Check out all of the contest entries (and get an idea of the scope of projects at the Bakeshop) in the Flikr group here.

Monday Moments: Retro Edition

I have been really, really absent here lately. First my computer died, then I was travelling, and then (now) I was sick. I was absolutely fine when we got home from South Carolina, but in less than a week I felt like I had been hit by a truck. I couldn't eat, I did a ton of sleeping...honestly, I'm still not up to par. There are some serious goals that I set for myself this week, though, and I WILL accomplish them.



Back to the death of the computer, I was so sad to realize that among the photos I hadn't backed up yet were nearly all of my son's baby pictures. We're still hoping to find someone who can go into our corrupt hard drive and try to grab the pictures out, but in the meantime I've been scouring my photo accounts on different sites to see what I can piece together. This one is from a Photobucket account I haven't touched in years. I was so glad to see this sweet little face again!

Monday Moments

My husband and I spent roughly the last week in South Carolina (or traveling to and from South Carolina) for my step-son's graduation from basic training for the Army. It was exhausting for everyone I think, especially the new soldier. Today he hopped on a plane to finish his training in yet another state. Not as far south this time, but I still think he'll see the trees blooming again (the above photo was taken on his Army base) long before we see it happen here in Michigan.

New Baskets

I bought another Amy Butler fat quarter bundle in blue this time (it had the most number of prints that I didn't get in my Christmas bundle). Then I added the green Temple Doors, the pink and brown Passion Lily prints, and the green Delhi Blooms to kind of even out the color scheme.

Plus, adding the pink and brown prints means that the pink polka dots and the brown Disco Flower at the top of this photo aren't focal points anymore when I mix them in with the old blocks. Yay!

Birthday Cupcakes

I mentioned that it was my sister's 16th birthday last week. She takes after me in the crafty department, and my mom had mentioned that she was running out of fabric. I got her a half a dozen pieces of felt to make little softies out of, and made her a charm pack of some of my favorite fabric scraps. I found these little cupcake buttons in the scrap book section of Hobby Lobby. I figured she could sew them into the hands of her little animals to make them look like they were enjoying a yummy dessert. Of course, I'm sure she will come up with some amazing way to use them that I never would have thought of.

Here is the only picture I have of her creations. I think it may have been the first one she made and she has gotten much better since. They're adorably primitive and fun!

Monday Moments: Tuesday Edition

Have you ever tried to look up your favorite barbecue chicken recipe on your phone? You've made it half a dozen times and you should know it, but you don't. So you rush over to the computer to check your bookmarks for it and half way there, you realize the computer died days ago. Okay, maybe that's a bit specific...

That sort of thing happened to me a lot over the last week. You would think my Monday Moment today would just be a photo of a shiny new computer, but believe it or not, the new computer was not the best thing that happened recently.



My youngest sister turned 16 this weekend (wow, does that make me feel old, it's never good when someone you remember being born is old enough to drive). I took a trip to see her and got to see my sweet baby niece for the first time since Christmas. She's so much bigger! I hate living so far away from those kids. After about eight hours of driving this weekend I was ready to take a few naps and set up the new computer. That was yesterday, today, the sewing machine will come back out...

Hiatus

For the past two weeks or so I would leave the room and occasionally come back to a blank computer monitor. I told myself that it was my three year old messing with the power button, but I had a sinking feeling it wasn't.

My suspicions were confirmed yesterday when I turned around in my chair for a second, and turned back to find nothing. Ironically, I was trying to post a status to Facebook about what a bad day I was having. It got worse. The computer wouldn't come back.

I don't know how long I will be without, but I appreciate you sticking around. And I promise to spend plenty of quality time with the sewing machine, so I will have tons to show you when I can.