I feel so guilty.

Oh dear, I can't believe it has been over one month since my last post. We were away for 10 days and then all manner of life things intervened (read: rampant illness and summer activities). I don't know if anyone is actually reading this thing (aside from my mom - hi, Mom!) anyhow so perhaps it's a non-issue.

Since we returned from Toronto a few weeks back, I have actually done a fair bit of sewing.

First, I thought I had better get started on a quilt project for my Niece. I am planning on giving her a twin-sized quilt and pillow sham for Christmas this year. She will be almost 2 and close to moving into a "big girl" bed. Since my last quilt took me eleventy-million years to complete (ok, well a year), I figured I better get going or it wouldn't be done in time.

Well, I started cutting and sewing, and by some magic process, the whole entire quilt top was cut and sewn in a matter of about 5 evenings!

I'm totally amazed. And happy. And now wondering how I'm going to quilt it. Isn't it a cute pattern? The snowball blocks in the centre are 10", which probably explains how fast it went together. It will be perfect for my Niece; her parents' house is very old - apparently Sir John A. Macdonald used to live there! It is a nice mix of traditional and modern.

A close up of the cute fabric. The fabric line is called "Flutter". The pattern I used is called "Spice Cake". 

Riley continues to be a dress-only girl this summer and so I have sewn yet another one of those dresses that she loves. This time, we used a meter of this amazingly cute Michael Miller fabric with adorable Hedgehogs on it. We popped in at Spool of Thread and she went nuts for it.  They have some outstanding fabric at that store.

I attended my first Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild meeting last week. So many nice people with fantastic quilts. I am so excited to be a member!

One of the members, Paul, issued a Challenge Block. We picked up a small square of fabric that had an image of a sock monkey on it, plus a 1" wide strip of white. We were challenged to make a "freeform" quilt block - the only restrictions being that the white strip had to go around the monkey and that it had to finish to 12.5".

I was totally terrified to make a block with no instructions, being a total newbie at quilting, but once I looked up a few tutorials (thanks, Quilt Dad), I just dove right in. It was completely liberating! To make a block without worrying about having the pieces exactly the same size! To not stress about sewing exactly 1/4"! To just grab scraps from the left-overs of other projects without too much thought!

I can see this being something I do on a regular basis. I have a mountain of quilting cotton scraps left over from sewing quilts AND clothing. Scrap-busting, here I come! (Turned out really cute, right?)

Oh, and remember that blouse I was going to sew way back at the beginning of this blog? I did actually make one up but despite my paranoid over-measuring and fitting, it ended up about 1" too small at the waistband. So I gotta either drop 10 lbs (which I could totally stand to do) or make another (which I will probably also do). 

xo

Heather