Instagram?

I've been sewing! I just haven't been posting about it much, but I've got a couple in the queue.

Meanwhile, though, I've gotten a smartphone (yes, I'm waaaaay behind the times, I know!) and I got myself an Instagram account! I'm @wandering.minstrel -- are you over there? Let me know! :)

A Monster of a Tiny Pillow!

Big exciting news here last week: My six-year-old daughter finally lost her first tooth!

I didn't manage to get a tooth-fairy pillow made before it happened, but now. Now we are ready for the next one! Yesterday I spent a couple hours and managed to get this little gem together:



I first saw the idea for this little monster of a tooth-fairy pillow here, which includes a link to the Etsy shop where I bought the pattern. I resized it to 85% of the original size to make this one. Zoe helped me pick out fabrics, and the two main fabrics in the monster are leftovers from a pillowcase I made for her. I especially like this one because a teeny monster is just up my daughter's alley!

I don't usually do applique, so this was a learning experience for me. I used heat-n-bond to fuse almost everything, except the mouth I made from a folded piece of fabric so it would be a nice pocket for lost teeth and money:



The first tooth earned my daughter a rare $2 bill; I don't know if the Tooth Fairy will remain so flush with cash for the rest! ;P

I won! Now to February...

Hello, loves!

I'm very glad to have gotten involved in the Lovely Year of Finishes -- and what a reinforcing surprise I got this week, when I got an email that I was one of January's winners! I'm going to pick out a pattern from SewBitterSweet designs. \o/!

And that just makes me want to set some goals for February! But first, I have to share this, my very first go at foundation paper piecing: A mug rug, all for me at my office!



And yes, that IS the same mug that Greg House used to drink from -- well, the same brand and color, anyway.

Two Babies, Two Quilts!

This past fall, near the end of the semester, two of my colleagues in my department had babies! Within about a week of each other! SO of course, I took the excuse to make a couple of wee quilts. :)

The first quilt I finished I made using a kit that my own Z and Mr gifted me for Christmas, back when Z was 2 (she's 6 now, if that gives you an idea of how long this kit has been in my closet!):



Crayon Confusion
40" x 40"

A finish and a goal

Hello, lovelies!

I've been sewing, but I haven't been talking about it much, alas! The semester went well, and I'm enjoying the lull in between by doing some more sewing. (I'm in Wisconsin, where we're hunkering down for some serious cold. What better way to deal than by quilting?)

First, a major finish to share! It's been done for a while now (since mid-October, 2013), but it's the biggest quilt I've yet made, a sizeable queen-size that we've been enjoying on our bed. Based on the Line Art pattern, I adapted it to a giant queen size and used Origins jelly rolls to make:

Forest in the Air



I don't use all the panels on my sewing table all that often, but for this beast, I did!



I'm also hoping to join in with the Lovely Year of Finishes for 2014 -- I think it'll be a great way to keep myself with some sewing momentum on a more regular basis!



So, for the month of January, I am hoping to finish this baby quilt, for one of my friends who recently had a new bundle of joy:




It's pin-basted and ready to quilt; I hope this will be a fun and speedy finish. I hope y'all are staying warm!

Finishes galore!

WOW -- when I decided to put energy into finishing quilts this year, I wasn't sure I'd get this many projects out of my closet, but I managed! In the past couple weeks I've finished one, and I've got photos of another that I finished back in March.

Here's the Kaleidoscope quilt, made as a top right along with Don't Call Me Betsy's Kaleidoscope QAL :



I'd had the top complete and hanging in my closet (for an embarrassing amount of time) before I decided I should just quilt it by checkbook and get it DONE. I'm so glad I did!



I love the stripy border, and the summer's other big project has been our deck. My husband has been hard at work on that, and I repainted our chairs. Sweet, eh?

The other big finish is the Quilt of Valor I've been working on -- although it's not quite ready to send, as I have a label issue that I'll need to address:



I really love how the quilting turned out on this one:



I've got a few more things in the works, but the queen-sized line art quilt is off to the quilters, and so my big projects are now mostly DONE! Which means I can start some NEW stuff.

...Yeah, this is going to be dangerous.



Linking up with:

FINISH! YAY!

I had vowed, this year, in my head, that now I am getting back into sewing I need to finish some of the projects that have been weighing on my consciousness, and I'm pleased to announce that I've got one done!

Here it is, the Layer Cake QAL quilt: Dream Cheerful!



I wasn't 100% thrilled with the border, when I added it, but after I got it back from the quilter's I decided I liked it! The quilting really made the difference with this one.



I replaced a couple of the blocks in this one with blocks from other sources, and I love how they turned out. Here's a close-up of the quilting, which was done at Loose Threads in Milton.



The back is a cheater print, and I like how it turned out, along with the stripy binding.



It's going to its new home tomorrow. I'm so glad I finally got it done!