love notes

So, I started another project. This is what happens when I get upset. :) I cut out all of the pieces and sewed them together when I woke up disgustingly early this morning. It's from the Bareroots pattern Love Notes.



Obviously, I haven't done much embroidery yet, but I'm having fun. I've already marked the embroidery lines, but you can't see them.

my sword and shield

Tomorrow I am driving to Charlottesville after work for a long needed day of vegging on the couch with my sister. The last week and a half have gone from relatively bad to......well, ickier. I have done some sewing, however, not on anything that I've started on here. I made some birthday presents for the aforementioned sister, and I have pictures, but they are on the camera at work. I've got all the stuff together to start on some Artist Trading Cards for Sunday, but I don't think they're gonna get done. Oh well. C'est la vie.
Until I get my act together and actually post pictures of stuff, enjoy the picture above of our legs. :) I know that some people might not get it, but somehow that picture just screams friendship to me.

more stuff!!!!

So, I haven't done anymore work on the quilt, but I've been working on a lot of other fun stuff. I've been at work a lot for the last few days, so all I've done is work on small projects. Here's a picture of the newest shop sample I've been working on. It's from one of the Valori Wells Sewing Cards called Project Bags. They are so quick and easy (and cheap! Each sewing card costs $3, I think) - I will definitely be making one for a birthday present this week. For the small and medium size bags, she calls for 3/8 of a yard of two fabrics. I discovered that I could get two different small size bags from 3/8 of a yard, so I decided to make two of the small one out of the blue and brown fabric, which is from House by Annette Tatum for Free Spirit Fabric. The brown one with the elephants is the large size which takes 1/2 yard of each fabric, and is Ellie Fun by Karen Neuberger for Quilting Treasures.



Here's a closeup of the blue and brown bags. They don't have the drawstings yet because I didn't buy enough. I'm using twill tape. On the elephant one I ran a line of green stitches down the middle of it, which adds a little pop.



This is some little embroidery that I started the other night. I left the ruler in the picture to give you an idea of the size. Obviously it's not done, but I wanted to show you what else I've been working on. I've suddenly gotten the urge to do small embroideries of cute characters - I've already got another one that's all marked.

'

Alright, I've got to run these bags to work and then drive to Dulles to pick up Kristal and John. Their plane is already 70 minutes late! Which means that I get to drive through Washington at rush hour - Woo Hoo!!!!


PS - The car is fixed, and it didn't cost me to amazingly much; and the car accident thing is being dealt with in the best way I could come up with.

"you've also made a fool out of me"

Okay....so my life has effectively become a living hell. Lots of bull crap involving my boyfriend. I know that the next couple of months will be really hard and right now I'm just trying to live day to day. It's especially hard as my two best friends are gone - to UVA and England. On top of that I got in my first accident the other day (just a fender bender) and the following popped up on the way home from lunch yesterday:



On the other hand, I suddenly have a lot of time to do whatever I want. I have all this time off of work, so I decided to work on a quilt for myself. I've had the fabric for a little while, and I had already designed the pattern, so all I had to do was cut! The fabric is all from Pop Garden and Bijoux by Heather Bailey. It makes me so happy! It reminds me of springtime.



I made a few miscalculations, but at least they were over estimates, so I was able to just trim things down. Here is the progress on the sewing so far (it will not look like this when put together):



When I'm upset, I usually get this deep urge to clean. So, I suddenly have part of my room back. I had started working on this a little while ago, but now I have on whole corner of my room organized. It helps me feel better about my life, even if it is a corner that I hardly use. (I didn't realize how beat up the floors are - the house is 120 years old) I also get this weird urge to watch movies, especially kids' movies. Which means that in the last 36 hours I have watched Mulan, half of Singing in the Rain, half of Princess Diaries, Honey, Charlie's Angels, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (In case you actually wanted to know) I guess that isn't to many kids' movies, but all the other movies in the stack are, in fact, kids' movies.



I found this cool lamp packed away in a box the other day, and I hadn't ever had the chance to hang it, so I decided to hang it over the stairwell to my room. I rigged up an elaborate electrical contraption which boils down to it being on a timer, so it's only on from 5:30 PM to about midnight or so.



Don't you just love the half of the hex sign you can see on the left? Hex signs always make me so happy and they are a huge inspiration for me. Here is what Zook's Family Crafts says about that particular hex sign:
"This more simple design is quite typical of older geometric designs. A large, six petal rosette forms the design's center. The rosette is one of the basic "good luck" symbols of the Pennsylvania Dutch. Red hearts are prominently placed between the rosette's blue, red and gold petals. The rosette ensures luck and success in love. The hearts, carefully placed in a closed circle, provide endless enchantment and happiness. A decorative, scalloped border completes the design. A life filled with love and romance is offered to all."
I have another one hanging directly across from it at the other end of the room....

So, on to another totally different subject.....
I made quite a few holiday gifts this year, and had every intention of taking pictures of them to show off on my blog. However, that didn't quite happen. I think I'm gonna go back and demand to be allowed to take pictures of all gifted items. Here are some pictures of the gifts I gave Kristal.

The embroidery on this bag was inspired by the fabric that is the main part of the tote bag. She had asked for something with little birds on it....so, TA DA!





Since she is in England right now, I decided that she needed a fun, warm scarf to take with her. More birds of course! With the heart in honor of her recent engagement. The back is a flannel that is actually part of one of the Olivia the Pig collections.







With the leftovers from the project I made this quick and easy card. You just take a piece of card stock and fold it in half to make the card shape. Then you unfold it and sew pieces of fabric on the front. I didn't pin or glue them down, just held them in place while sewing. I went up and down each piece first and then came back across the whole thing with the big zig-zags. It was inspired by some cards that one of our customers had made.






PS - The title to this post is actually a quote from a movie. Can anyone name the movie?