Fresh Sewing Day!

Welcome March! This month, I'm celebrating the 1-year anniversary of my blog! I can't believe how quickly that flew by! I've given my blog a face-lift with a new header (than you Aimee) and I'll have a give-away for my readers, look for more on that soon!

Today I'm happy to finally be able to join in Fresh Sewing Day @ Lily's Quilts. Every month I mean to do it but then the first of the month comes up and takes me by surprise. This time, I was ready! I wanted to recap some of the sewing fun that I had the past month (with January squeezed in there too since I took a blogging break).

I chipped away at a New Year's sewing resolution: to work on my free motion quilting and long-arming skills. I took a couple of classes at the Road to California quilt show recently and returned so inspired to experiment with new quilting designs!One of my instructors was Marilyn Badger, who also happened to win first prize at Road 2 CA in the "Best Large Quilt" category.

Marilyn Badger

Road 2 CA "Best Large Quilt: "Super Star", Marilyn Badger

Close-up of the quilting on "Super Star"

Also, I had the pleasure of a 4-day retreat (what?!) with the ladies of the LA modern quilt guild in Temecula. What a great time we had! It got me back into my sewing groove and I was happy to finish WIPs, continue along with others, and start a couple of new projects.

One fun part of the retreat was our "charity quilt challenge" each person blindly picked a handful of scraps from a bag and had 30 minutes to sew together an improv 12.5" block! Here is our finished quilt, gorgeous! I was the first to finish my block in about 15 minutes (mine is in the second row, all the way on the right).

Here's our group picture taken the last day - see how happy and rested we look?

LAMQG retreaters

Work-in-Progress Wednesday

Hi all, happy Leap Day! In addition to being pregnant myself, I have several pregnant friends and with all the showers and baby birthdays approaching, I've been inspired to sew some baby quilts! And since I'm sewing for kids, I happen to be cutting into my American Jane fabric stash quite a bit right now.

I've just finished this quilt top, which I'm calling "Child's Play" It's made with a Pezzy Prints charm pack and some Kona Coal. I'm going to finish this on a long arm. I got a "driver's license" to rent the longarm at my LQS, but since these are so small I want to finish one or two more tops and quilt them all at once.

It's always a challenge trying to sew before my son's bedtime. But I had this idea to get a roll of butcher paper to see if he would be content to color at my cutting table while I sew... and tada! It works (for a very short period of time).

Here's a new project I just cut into and started piecing. It's mostly Punctuation by American Jane, I love the alphabet print! This will be another baby quilt with pinwheel blocks.

I'm linking up to WIP wednesday, check out the other things people are sewing!

Sunday Stash

I have news: I'm pregnant!

My absence from this blog the past couple of months has been largely due to a first trimester that absolutely zapped my energy. Instead of going to my sewing room at night after my 2 year old son went to bed, I would often go straight to bed too! I'm happy to share that things have otherwise been going well with the pregnancy and now at 19 weeks along I'm feeling better.

At the Road 2 California  quilt show recently, I came across the Pinwheels booth and she had these BEAUTIFUL Oakshott shot cottons from the UK. Oakshott makes a collection of both solids and subtle stripes stripes (called Longshott) as well as shot cottons with accent threads woven in (called Lyon; check out the one in the middle of the pink stack!).

I bought these two stacks because I fell in love with the softness and colors of the fabric and wanted to use it for my baby's first quilt, but at the time I didn't know whether I was having a girl or a boy, so I bought both!

Well I found out this week that it's a girl!

The whole family is very excited about the news. My husband was a bit baffled because there hasn't been a girl born on his side of the family for almost 20 years. My mother-in-law was also speechless since she has only sons and grandsons and has wanted a girl for so long.

So does anyone have any suggestions for a pattern that requires eight fat 1/8ths?

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! I gave these away today filled with chocolates to my son's preschool teachers. He approved of the "co-co-late" hershey's kisses and kept asking for more! I had a fun time making them at the recent LAMQG retreat - it was my first time free motion quilting with my featherweight! I have to thank Saffron Craig for these beautiful fabrics which I won from a giveaway on her blog. I hope you enjoyed some love and chocolate today too!