Sunday afternoon...

After making a trip down to The Yarn Lounge for some new organically grown Blue Sky cotton yarn, my fiancee and I are spending the afternoon with Mr. Harry James Potter and his adventures in fifth and sixth year. Plus I'm going to spend some more time on my new embroidery sample!

I made.....

Details - Marti Michell Block of the Month - Set L Medallion. Fabric is Red Rose Farm for P & B Textiles. Custom quilted by Michelle Eno of Country Quilter.

Finished.

I finally finished a few things! Don't be deceived, however, I was was just using it as a technique to procrastinate on the Apple Cores quilt.
First is this table runner. It's the Goose in the Pond pattern from Piecing the Piece 'O Cake Way by Becky Goldsmith & Linda Jenkins. The original quilt is much bigger.... 57" x 73", which is closer to a lap size. I'm teaching this as a class, so we wanted it to be a slightly more manageable project. That being said, this is still a pretty big table runner.



Next up is just a fun little zippered pouch from Terri Atkinson's Cash & Carry pattern. I just taught this as a class at Quilting Adventures, and needed a demo piece. I adapted the pattern slightly to give it 5 strips instead of three, and it's made from the fabric that is the inspiration for our wedding colors!



I'm mostly caught up on samples for the shop. I REALLY need to finish a Storm at Sea and the Apple Cores by Friday morning, but I'm fully aware that it isn't going to happen, and have made peace with it. I've also got a Seashore Sundress by Oliver + S to make, but we decided to not do it as a class, so it's not quite as urgent. I've also almost finished my bowties quilt from the pattern Fit to be Tied by Karie Patch Designs. Again, I'm teaching this one as a class, but didn't buy enough for borders, so it only has three borders right now.

Since I'm almost done with all that stuff (no, I really am!) I've been daydreaming about what's next. The Russian Rubix quilt by Prairie Grass Patterns has made it to the top of the list!

Fireworks!

We were almost asleep Monday night (okay, I was wide awake, my fiancée was asleep, which equals almost asleep), when we heard an extra loud bang. After stumbling around for a minute, I realized that some of our genius neighbors were setting off fireworks in the parking lot behind our apartment. We sat there and watched for awhile, and I got some awesome pictures. I turned the flash off, which meant that I ended up with really long exposures.





This one was taken earlier in the night - we can see the fireworks from the local baseball stadium from our kitchen window:



Right after taking this picture, lightning forked across the sky. It was incredible!

That's all for now!

Review of Mollie Makes

On to the promised review - Mollie Makes. I picked this up at the local Barnes & Noble a few weeks ago. We'd lost power at home and needed a quick outing, so of course, where else would you go but the book store? The magazine is published by Future Publishing. They also do Britain's Cross Stitcher, another favorite (side note - the cool thing about Britain's Cross Stitcher is that they do contemporary cross stitch patterns in fun, bright colors).







Some of the things I loved -
Mollie Makes is full of wonderful photographs! Even the articles I didn't particularly care for had beautiful photography. In my opinion, wonderful photography is what often makes a magazine fun to look through. The magazine is also full of inspiration. The editors took some time and looked through blogs, websites, and pinterest to find the best of the best for inspiration. There are also a few how-to articles. One of them is pictured above - the eggs. The crocheted apple cozies on the front cover are also in there as a how-to article. Even better, all of the pattern pieces are in the back of the magazine, to scale. I love that I don't have to find a copy machine to resize any pieces. That can be one of my biggest pet peeves in the sewing world. That being said, I haven't actually made anything yet, so I'm not sure how good the directions are (although they looked good on the first read-through).

Some of the things I didn't love -
While full of inspiration, Mollie Makes was a little low on the how-tos and articles. There are a lot of interviews with artists in here, and it is so awesome to see how other people work, but there are not so many articles on techniques, or... photography, or... anything else. Even just one article on a new technique that could be adapted for multiple uses. Or some tips on photography. In their defense, I will say there is an article on places to visit (in Spain! Someday...) and an article about beautiful summer parties, with beautiful summer photographs to go along with it. I also have a little bit of trouble with the way it is laid out. It's almost as though someone looked into my random brain and said "this is a good layout!" There seems to be no clear train of thought here. Which I guess isn't necessarily a requirement for a magazine, I just found it to be slightly random in this magazine.

The upshot of all this? I liked it. With an $11.99 price tag, it was a little bit of an investment, but I wasn't disappointed. I will probably re-read it again today, to see if there was anything I missed, and I will definitely pick up the next one. However, I won't subscribe to it yet.

Time to go sew...

Something pretty....

Okay, so I know I said that I would do a review of Mollie Makes, but, well, it ain't gonna happen tonight. We had a wonderful dinner, largely (wonderful) organic produce from Ellwood Thompson's, but I just wasn't in the mood to write after that. So here's a little bit of progress on the apple cores quilt. It's supposed to be about lap size when it's done. Those apple cores are about 6-7" long.




Maybe you can catch a review tomorrow... :D