Sew Serendipity Giveaway

For anyone interested in another giveaawy, here's one offered by All Free Sewing.  Get your own copy of this great book!  

Click here to go to the giveaway

Single Girl Quilt Quilt-a-long: Getting Started

Last night instead of my usual put the kiddos to bed/head to my crafting corner routine, I brought my baby up the mountain for an evening of love poetry with my sweet sisters of the Alma Branch Relief Society.  I must admit I didn't think I was much of a poetry buff but sitting there listening to the poems people chose to bring, I was sucked in and think I might have to investigate this thing called poetry.  It was delightful.

And while I was there our Relief Society president asked me about heading up two little quilty projects.

I'm excited and I'm sure I'll be sharing more about them in the weeks to come.  Should be fun.

Anyhoos, I got home at a late hour because I can't seem to tear myself away from good conversation with good women.  But I also can't seem to head to bed lately without doing something a little creative so I pulled out my single girl pattern and started tracing and cutting out some templates.  I chose to make my own templates out of craft plastic because I hate cutting up original patterns.  Plastic templates are easier to work with for me than paper ones.  So there.

This morning I asked Wonder Pets to come by and entertain Carver while I laid out my fabrics and templates and got things organized.

Carver was curious as to what mama was up to and came over to inspect my progress.

I divided all my pieces in individual ziplock baggies to keep things organized.  Don't you love my project organizer?  Quite the quality box.  But it gets the job done.

I think I've decided to go with a colored background instead of white.  Even though that sort of forces me to go buy more fabric which I wasn't going to do for awhile if I could absolutely help it.

But after cleaning out and organizing the last of my stash boxes from the garage, I've decided that my stash wasn't quite as wild and overgrown as originally thought and I might not have to be so stingy with my purchases.  I doubt the husband would agree but what can you do?

So everything is all set and ready for tonight when the kiddos hit the sack so I can get to tracing and cutting out pieces. Yesterday was free play day around here since I had to sit at the computer and pay bills all day (blah blah blah) and things were a little zooey because of it.

I think today I'll be playing with these rascals instead.

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And remember you've still got till Thursday night to enter our GIVEAWAY for your very own copy of Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson!  Remember extra entries for posting the giveaway on Facebook and/or your own personal blog:)

Click here to go to the giveaway and enter.  

Single Girl Quilt Quilt-a-long: Got my fabrics!

Last Thursda,y since I was already half way to San Jose after playgroup, I headed over to Jo-Anns to see if there were any sale prints to get to add to the pile of fabrics I had pulled from my stash.  I was quite pleased with what I found and here is my pile, waiting for me to start cutting out pieces.  With all the birthday-ing and Valentine-ing that was going on yesterday, I haven't gotten much farther than what we see here in my little pile, but the forecast this week calls for rain till Saturday (see, its not ALL sunny days here in California) so it looks like my crafting time just grew a little....

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And remember you've still got till Thursday night to enter our GIVEAWAY for your very own copy of Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson!  Remember extra entries for posting the giveaway on Facebook and/or 

your own personal blog:)

Click here to go to the giveaway and enter.  

We've been birthday-ing around here...

First of all I feel like we should do a shout out to all our new friends in Europe!  Hellooooo Hungry and Russia!  Wow!  Thanks to everyone who has entered our giveaway so far!  Its been so fun to check in all day  (really ALL day every day since Friday morning, its basically my new addiction) and see the little comment number go up and up and all your sweet faces filling up my little followers box.  FUN FUN!!  Hello to you all!

Today is my first baby's birthday and this weekend we had his party.  It was low key, just family, presents and cake.  I think I've mentioned before how Carver has recently become interested in drawing and so I wanted to add a little homemade mama gifting into all the other Dora, Thomas the Tank Engine and T-Ball presents that were happening.

I made him this colored pencil case from Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted gifts.  I used the pattern in the book as sort of a starter point and then sort of did it my own way.  Its a very simple project and quite easy to put together.  Even for people like myself who seem to have a hard time taking the time to read directions and follow patterns.

 How awesome is that sweet face seeing his present!  That is the kind of thing that makes a mama's heart go pitter pat.

Am I right or am I right.

I was a little worried that this quiet time gift would sort of get lost in the shuffle of ALL the presents he got (I mean his mormor and papa were here after all)  But he really liked it and toted it around for quite awhile.

Well before Papa and Daddy took him outside to fly his helicopter and play some T-ball. 

I'm most excited to see how long it keeps him engaged in church.

That really is the true test.

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And remember you've still got till Thursday night to enter our GIVEAWAY for your very own copy of Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts by Joelle Hoverson!  Remember extra entries for posting the giveaway on Facebook and/or your own personal blog:)

Click here to go to the giveaway and enter.  

A heads up on another GREAT giveaway!

If you're like me and can hardly wait to get your hands on Aneela's Sherbert Pips, here's your chance.

 Check out this giveaway over at Lily's Quilts.

Good luck!

Featured in Quilt Story and a GIVEAWAY!!

Today my Color Wheel quilt is being featured on Quilt Story!  Whoo hoo!  

I'm sort of a little, tiny bit, majorly honored and excited.

In honor of the feature, I'm doing a giveaway today!

You're very own copy of Joelle Hoverson's Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts which is where the Color Wheel pattern can be found. You can make your very own!

I really love this book.  It has great patterns, both quick and simple to more complex.  One of my favorite things about the way the book is organized is that it is divided into sections based on how long the projects take.  Very nice.

So here are the rules....

ENTRY 1: Become a follower here and leave a comment in the comment section letting me know.  If you are already a follower, you can just say that in the comment section.

Optional extra entries (extra credit?  yes please!):

Option1: Post about my giveaway on your own blog with a link back over here and leave a comment in the comments letting me know.  Let me know your blogsite as I'd love to visit:)

Option 2: Post about my giveaway on Facebook or twitter with a link back to my blog and leave a comment letting me know.

Giveaway closes at midnight Thursday, February 17th and 

winner will be announced next Friday here on the bloggeroo.

I've joined up..

I've been waffling back and forth for the last two weeks about joining this.

And a few days ago I was at the fabric store getting backing for this and I casually asked if they carried the Single Girl Pattern.

And they did.

So I took the plunge and bought myself my very own Single Girls pattern and even signed up for the flickr support group.

Even though I was feeling all curved-edged-piecing confident after the Color Wheel, I admit, I was still a little intimidated by all that curving.

But here goes nothing.

I've yet to decide on what my color scheme is going to be.  I'm sort of tempted to break my stash pact and buy some really cute, coordinated fabrics.  It just seems like its going to be a good amount of work and so I want it to really end up being a quilt I love.  No deadline yet on this so I'm just going to percolate on it a bit.

I've been sitting here putting off tackling the mountain of laundry in my bedroom by perusing Quiltstory's block party blocks.  Its getting so bad that I think laundry that my husband fished out of the pile to wear at the beginning of the mountain has cycled itself back.  Maybe twice.

But in my defense with potty training still happening daily here, we've got a lot of laundry cycling through.

But I digress.

Loving the inverted star blocks

and the scrappy pendants blocks.

and the dresden plates. This one too. I'm loving Dresden plates as I've seen them around a bunch of blogs lately and it really makes me want to try my hand at them.  Maybe I'm not so scared of curvy things after all?