WIP Wednesday #31

Um, how it is Wednesday again already? (In case you're new around here, I'm following along with Freshly Pieced's W.I.P. (Work In Progress) Wednesday series as a good way for me (and you) to keep track of what's going on around here.)

In progress:

Les Amis quilt

I stitched up all of the blocks for the quilt top this week!

I'm using this Lattice Quilt pattern from Mommy by Day Crafter by Night, but I needed to downsize it quite a bit for my project (I'm making a baby quilt).

So, I eyeballed about how many blocks I thought I needed, but after cutting and stitching them all, I realized I definitely had too many.

No worries. I'm sure the extras will find their way into the backing. 

I think I've decided on this layout, so now I just need to get them all sewn together. What do you think? 

On the "to do" list:

Early Bird/Kitchen Window quilt 
New pillows for the downstairs bed and two chairs
Table runner
iPod workout strap
New quilt for the living room (thinking of doing a sliced coins quilt)
A mug rug for me

T-shirt quilt
Winter hat for B
Picnic quilt
Ironing board cover 
Re-cover downstairs chair

Hope everyone has a great rest of the week. Be sure to click on the button to check out other great WIPs!

Fox and the Houndstooth Pants

I'm so glad I finally made these pants!

I've been planning to make B some pants basically since he was born, and they just kept getting pushed to the back burner.

 

After snagging this fabulous fox fabric (Foxy Too from Monaluna's Fox Hollow collection, purchased from Pink Chalk Fabrics, though it's now sold out), which I so dearly love, I couldn't wait to put them together.

I used the Quick Change Trousers pattern from Anna Maria Horner's Handmade Beginnings. I've used the pattern twice before (for baby shower gifts here and here) with great success, and this time was no different. It's really a great pattern and set of instructions. So clear and so easy.

The coordinating fabric is a red houndstooth I found on clearance in the Christmas fabric section at Hobby Lobby. It's super soft, almost like a flannel, and was a great lining fabric to address the stiffness of the fox fabric.

 

It also led our clever friend Buddy to dub these B's "Fox and the Houndstooth" pants. Love it.

 

The pants are designed to be reversible, and I think the houndstooth side is pretty cute, too. Still, it seems like a shame to hide all those fabulous foxes.

They're bold, but that's how B. Fox rolls. Add them to the quickly growing list of fox-themed items B now has. There will never be too many as far as I'm concerned. :)

WIP Wednesday #30

Happy, happy Wednesday to you all! So, my last WIP Wednesday post was back in October. Yikes! Many WIPs have come and gone since then, so let's just move on and start anew, shall we? There's plenty on the agenda right now, so let's get this show started. (In case you're new around here, I'm following along with Freshly Pieced's W.I.P. (Work In Progress) Wednesday series as a good way for me (and you) to keep track of what's going on around here.)

Completed this week:
Lots of stuff for the B man! All of these were projects I'd been meaning to tackle for quite some time, so it was nice to finally finish them off so I can move on to more exciting things.

Fox and the Houndstooth pants (I'll have a post up about these later this week.)

Hooded towel for B

New slicker place mat for B

Oh, I also knocked out a new set of coasters for our living room, finally! Our old set was one of my first sewing projects ever, and while I still loved them, Matt was ready to move on, and I was happy to oblige. I'm sure the conversation when something like this: "What's that, love? You'd like me to sew something? Well, I'll see what I can do."

I used half-square triangles, like the coasters I made for our bedroom, and I love the colors (which match the rug in the room). The fabrics are all from the Lucky Penny collection by Alison Glass.

Still working:

Les Amis quilt: I got the fabrics in for this one late last week, and I'm so excited to get started on my first quilt of the new year. Here's to challenging myself a bit more this year!

On the "to do" list:

Early Bird/Kitchen Window quilt 
New pillows for the downstairs bed and two chairs
Table runner
iPod workout strap
New quilt for the living room (thinking of doing a sliced coins quilt)
A mug rug for me

T-shirt quilt
Winter hat for B
Re-cover this downstairs chair (pretty bad, huh?)

Hope everyone has a great rest of the week. Be sure to click on the button to check out other great WIPs!

Cuties for a cutie

Quick post about a few of the small projects I've been wrapping up for the little one lately. I have so many things on my to-do list (what's new?) that it's been nice to knock a few off.

 

First up, one I've been planning to do forever. B outgrew his baby hooded towels months ago, and I felt bad every time we wrapped him up and his little feet and calves were hanging out the bottom, especially now that it's winter and there's always a bit of a chill in the house.

At one of our baby showers, some friends of Matt's parents got B this super cute towel from Land's End, but it was an adult size, so I'd set it aside for him to use down the road. It finally occurred to me that it would be perfect for converting to a big boy hooded towel.

I used this tutorial from Not Just a Housewife, slightly modified, and it worked great. I didn't add any of the embellishments because the main towel already had the applique work, and it's for a boy, after all, so ribbons and what-not seemed unnecessary. So at the end, instead of flipping the edge of the hood to the outside and covering it with fabric, I just flipped it to the inside instead, and I think it looks fine. The first time we wrapped B up in the towel, he just cuddled right into it with a contented sigh. I'd say that's two thumbs up from the B man.

The other little project was a new and improved place mat for B. The first mat, as it turns out, was filled with flaws. I used regular cotton for the top, which was silly, of course, since a baby place mat is going to be covered in juicy, saucy, messy foods, which always soaked through or just made it a total mess. My attempt to make the back "sticky" by using shelf liner was also a total fail. It didn't hurt anything, but it definitely didn't work as I'd intended and also made it so the place mat couldn't go in the dryer. Oh, and the fabric was so "busy" that it actually made it hard for B to see his food sometimes.

His new mat solves all of those problems. It's made from slicker fabric (I was so excited to find these Ann Kelle monkeys in the slicker fabric at my LQS) on both sides, so it can easily be wiped down and flipped over.

 

You can't machine wash or dry it, but since it wipes down so easily, that shouldn't be a problem. I used a hair tie again so it can be rolled up and secured, then thrown in the diaper bag so it's always on hand.

I think it's time for a dinner out...

2012: The year in projects

I know it's almost the end of January, but I was looking back through some pictures of old projects, and I didn't want to miss out on the chance to reflect just a bit on the year that was 2012 in sewing. Turns out, I sewed quite a bit last year, maybe more than I realized, especially considering I had a new baby (I do almost all of my sewing at night and on the weekends).

In making up my project collages, it was also interesting to see the kinds of things I made. The vast majority of my projects fell into two categories: bags and baby. The bags were mostly gifts; the baby items ran the gamut from items for B to gifts for friends' babies. I even made two quilts, which were also baby gifts, but I decided to keep them in the quilts category.

So here's a look back at everything I made in 2012.

Bags

Home

Quilts

Baby

And since we're looking back, I also wanted to take this opportunity to look forward a bit, too. I'm not big on resolutions, but I have a few sewing goals I'd like to reach for in 2013:

(1) Finish my Kitchen Windows quilt (finally, it's been long enough)

(2) Make more quilts and challenge myself to try some harder patterns. For some reason, quilts are the one thing I tend to chicken out on. I can conquer a really difficult bag pattern, but if I'm making a quilt, I always go toward something easy, fearing I can't do the harder things. I have a whole board of pins of great quilts, but when push comes to shove, I usually run from even the medium-difficulty things. This year, I'd like to try some of the harder things. Maybe I'll start with some quilt blocks as pillows. :) Or I have this pattern in mind for a friend's quilt I'm starting soon.

(3) Write more tutorials. The success of my Kindle sleeve tutorial has bolstered my confidence, and I have several ideas in mind.

(4) Sew more for myself, especially clothes. Top of my list: the ubiquitous Washi dress

Alright, it's out there. Now, let's see how I do. 

Parkin' it in Dallas

Okay, this is the last travel post, I promise. On New Year's Day, our last day in Dallas, we decided to check out the cool new Klyde Warren Park, which was recently built on a huge overpass across Woodall Rogers Freeway.

 

A lot of its design and features reminded me of City Garden in St. Louis and the Brochstein Pavilion at Rice University in Houston (if that means anything to you), and I hope the construction of the park over I-70 will ultimately be this cool.

The park is meant to connect downtown Dallas (specifically the Arts District) with Uptown. So far, it has a dog park; a performance stage; some trails and open garden areas; places to knit, play games, and read; and lots of food trucks, not to mention an awesome kids' area, which is where we spent the most time.

 

  

B loved this climbing rope thing, although, of course, he doesn't yet climb. He was just happy to stand there and hold it. :)

 

And, oh yeah, it was really cold.

It also had this cool wooden climbing structure, which provided some great downtown views.

In these pics, you can kind of see that it's on an overpass.

 

 

Beckett practicing his Shakespeare

 

My silly sister and brother-in-law with their silly dogs

 

 

Dallas folks, if you haven't been yet, I highly recommend it.