It's Giveaway Time - Winter's Lane!

Hey y'all! So, it's giveaway time again - woot! Once again, the lovely folks at Fat Quarter Shop and I have teamed up to bring you some pretty awesome swag.

This time around we're giving away a fat quarter bundle of Winter's Lane from Kate & Birdie Paper Co. for Moda. This is a really great winter-themed collection, but one of the things I really like about it is that many of the prints could easily be incorporated into sewing year-round. The greys are my absolute favourite! It's been awhile since I've seen a winter-themed collection that doesn't scream "CHRISTMAS!", so this is just great.

Yep, super-pretty. I think I definitely need reams that print that looks a bit like pine branches, especially in the grey (and the ice-blue).

Okay, so I guess you want to know how to enter, right? You have two chances but please be sure to leave separate comments for each entry. Here's what you've got to do:

1. Leave a comment letting my know which item (fabric, pattern, bundle, etc)

is your favourite from FQS' Coming Soon page.

2. Leave another comment if you are a follower of my blog.

That's it! Two easy-peasy ways to enter! I will close the comments in a week (on May 28th) and announce the winner here on the blog. International entries are, as always, welcome! Also, please remember that I have comment moderation enabled so if you don't see your comment right away it just means that I haven't had the chance to approve it yet (duplicate comments will be deleted).

Sewing Summit 2013: I'm Teaching!

Hey y'all! Some of you may know about this already if you're following me on Instagram or have been reading the Sewing Summit blog, but I've got some pretty fun and exciting news - I'm teaching this year!!

Yay! I will be teaching English Paper Piecing and the class will be based on my own pattern. Although not available yet, the pattern will also be made available on my blog as a tutorial. I'm very excited to be teaching this class and I think it will be a lot of fun - you should definitely join me! *wink*

Here's a little screenshot of my bio for you! In case you haven't heard of it, Sewing Summit is a modern sewing and blogging conference held in Salt Lake City, Utah. This year the conference will be taking place September 19th - 21st and I think (unlike last year) that there are still a few tickets available.

I had a really great time last year and am so excited to be seeing some friends again, and hopefully I'll be making some new peeps too! Make sure to check out the teachers page on the Sewing Summit website, but take note that all of the teachers haven't been announced yet - there will be more goodness to come!

To Boston With Love

Hey y'all! How's everyone doing? I have been quite the busy bee lately and have so much to share, but for today I just want to share one thing because I think it's important and because I want everyone to have the opportunity to participate if they so choose.

Have you heard about To Boston With Love? If you're on Instagram, I'm sure you've seen something about it. To Boston With Love is a project spearheaded by Berene and the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild as a means of uplifting the city of Boston after the events at last month's marathon. All of the Modern Quilt Guilds (and individuals as well!) have been invited to participate in making flags that will be hung over the Memorial Day weekend in a prestigious Boston location. I've made two so far, but am hoping to get at least one more done before they need to be mailed (which is soon).

This is the first flag that I completed. I used the paper piecing pattern from the original To Boston With Love blog post and went scrappy with the letters using colours that match those in our Toronto Modern Quilt Guild blog banner along with white Kona.

The second flag is a scrappy heart. I figured out the measurements for this one on my own using the HSTs I already had done as a guide. All of the outer HSTs are the corner cuts from my Poppy quilt which I had sewn into teeny HSTs many months ago while making the quilt. For both flags the binding is from Lizzy House's Constellations and the backing is from Anna Maria Horner's Innocent Crush.

These little flags are such a great project because not only are they super quick and simple, but I'm hoping they will also brighten up the city of Boston for many people.

And for a bit of a laugh (and in case there was every any doubt):

Yep, thug. A crafty thug, but still.

Socks, one of my favourite things!

Last night I commented to Alex's youngest nephew that socks are one of my favourite things, to which he promptly replied "no, they're not!" (which in turn caused Alex and I to start singing These Are a Few of My Favourite Things while chasing him around the house). But really, they are. Ask Alex. Or my Mum. I have all different kinds - plain ones, colourful ones, wool ones, cotton ones, fleece ones, and, of course, hand-knit ones. So far I have knit three pairs of socks (one chunky and two fingering weight) and am working on my fourth pair now.

This will become a pair of Hermione's Everyday Socks and I'm loving them already! I modified the pattern to be toe-up rather than cuff-down: I cast on 28 stitches using Judy's Magic Cast On, increased two stitches on each needle every other row for a total of 56 stitches, and I'm reversing the chart so that I work from rows 4 to 1. The yarn is Fibranatura Yummy which has, unfortunately, been discontinued.

Working on these socks reminded me that I haven't shared these socks that I finished a while ago.

These are my By the Sea socks in Madelinetosh Sock in Iceburg (this colour is discontinued I think). The sock pattern is actually available for free on Wendy Johnson's site and is called Seaweed but I renamed them because of the the names of both the pattern and the yarn colourway.

This yarn is so hard to photograph - it's a really nice blue in real life. I actually have a lot of completed knitting that I've never shared on the blog (including my first adult-sized cardigan) because it's hard getting a picture of myself wearing it all - socks are much easier!

In case you didn't already know, I'm a little bit of a closet Potter head and I have plans to turn all of Erica Leuder's Harry Potter themed (free) sock patterns into toe-up socks for me! I cannot wait for my Hermione socks to be done!

Home is Wherever I'm With You...

Hey y'all! How's it going? I have been working really hard to make time for crafting in my new routine (which is why I haven't been around these parts in the past couple of weeks) and have managed to get a few things finished in the last little bit - hurray! My brain is finally starting to get adjusted to my new normal which I am so grateful for. I've made a few things as gifts which haven't reached their new owners yet, but I've also finished a quilt-wall-hanging-thing for our apartment.

I made the top for this back in the summer/fall but got stuck with how to quilt it. After making another little mini quilt using this same alphabet (which I'll get to in a moment) and doing semi-straight line quilting on that, I decided that straight line would look great for this one and would also give it a little structure for hanging.

This wall hanging was inspired by the song "Home" by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros which is a song that Alex and I both really like (you can listen to the song on their website if you want haven't heard it). We haven't decided exactly where it's going to go yet; options so far include: above our bed, above our couch, or in the hallway near the front door.

I used Elizabeth Haugh's Refrigerator Magnets alphabet pattern for the letters, but with a few changes. I used the 5" templates here but paper-pieced them rather that using freezer paper as she specifies in the directions. I found paper piecing the letters was less time-consuming and I only had to adjust a couple of letters to work as paper pieces - as far as I can remember, only "s" had to be cut to work for paper piecing and I was able to follow the numbers on the templates for the rest.

The letters were all pieced using various prints from Anna Maria Horner's Little Folks collection - I didn't have any problems paper piecing with the voile but I wonder if using freezer paper with it would be a problem. Both the background and binding are Kona Charcoal and I used a purple toile I had hanging around for the backing. I still have to make some little hangers before we hang it up. I should probably also put a label on it... ya, I guess it's not technically done yet.

Home

For: Me! (and Alex!)

Finished Quilt: 28x40"

Completed: April 08, 2013

PB&J Giveaway Winner!

Hey ya'll! So I am a total dope and forgot to announce the winner of the PB&J fat quarter bundle during my last post (I'm blaming it on sleep deprivation)! Here we go - the winner is...

Congratulations Amy! Please send me an email with your address and the lovely people at Fat Quarter Shop will send your bundle out! To everyone else: If you haven't stopped by Amy's blog, The Needled Fig, I highly recommend you do - she makes cute things!

Also, I just wanted to say thank you so much to those people who left comments on my last post with suggestions on how to work around my new schedule and get some crafting done. There are some really great tips there and if anyone else has any ideas please feel free to leave a comment on that post too!

Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold. -Herbert Spencer

Hey y'all! So I'm still settling in at my new job and getting used to my new schedule (the time change helped nothing here!) and I've been having a really hard time fitting crafting into my life right now. With the travel to and from work I'm out of the house for 10 to 11 hours a day and frankly, I am just exhausted by the end of it. It's been really not fun, and I know that it will become easier once I get used to it again, but does anyone have any suggestions in the mean time? How do you fit crafting into your already full life?

I did manage to get a bit of sewing done on Saturday since I needed to finish a birthday present for my friend Kim. I decided to make her a pillow and thought that it would be an excellent chance to try making some X and + blocks which have been all over Instagram lately.

The finished pillow was made to fit an 18" square pillow form so I made 4 blocks (which finish at 7.5") and then added a border. The pillow has an envelope back and I used my Not Your Traditional Log Cabin Pillow tutorial from Sew, Mama, Sew to figure out all of my measurements. Since I wasn't quilting the pillow front this time around I added a piece of canvas the same size to give it a little more stability and to cover up the patchwork seams on the inside.

I used a bunch of different fabrics for this one and I just love the look! For the background of each block I used either the grey or white "sewing guide" print from Mama Said Sew; the added border around the blocks is black & white Sketch.

Most of the printed fabrics come from scrap bags I bought at The Workroom - I have blues, purples, and yellows (I also have greys but I didn't use any here). And I love how scrappy and fun it is! For the squares at the bottoms, tops, and sides of each plus I used a black and white print to set off the colours and bring everything together. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out and I think Kim is too!

I've got a couple of other backlogged projects to share but I'll wait for another blog post. But seriously, if anyone has any suggestions for crafting with limited time or for getting used to a new schedule, let me know!