Baby Life Quilt

Over the past year, there have been quite a few babies born to friends and family.  At last count, there were 4 new babies born within the year.  One of these sweet babes is little Lily.  Lily’s mom, Becky, and I are cousins and we grew up together.  I probably spent just as many holidays with Becky and her sisters, as I did at my own house.  Actually, this is still true, since we head over to Aunt Aida’s (Becky’s mom) every Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. 

Even Piper has a special connection with Becky and has told both of us that if something were to happen to hubby and me, she wants to live with Becky.  The pool in the yard might have a *little* something to do with it, methinks.  I was a little concerned (teeeeeeny bit) to learn that my 12 year old already has a contingency plan in case of our early demise.

Tangent, sorry. 

When Becky announced she was pregnant, I knew I wanted to do something special.  I searched through a lot of patterns, but when I came across the Baby Life quilt, I knew THAT was the one! 

Making the quilt was a collaborative effort.  Piper wanted to help trace and cut out all the letters.   As much as I have come to love appliqué, I am not a fan of tracing and cutting, so I wasn’t about to turn down the extra help.   The only thing she asked was that I tell Becky that Piper helped make the quilt too, which I was happy to do. 

Pi and I decided to use a bunch of purples for this quilt.  As much as we both love pink, something just screamed purple.  Now this is where it gets ESP freaky.  I hadn’t asked Becky what color her nursery was going to be.  One day, while over for a BBQ, she showed me the nursery that had just been painted… purple!  Uh-huh…that is some freaky cousin connection there. 

Loved making this quilt and I love love love the way it turned out. 

 

For the back, I pieced together the leftover purple fabric. 

As pretty as it is alone, a sweet baby always makes a quilt look better.

Seriously, who couldn’t love that face?

It's been awhile...

Wowzers, has it really been 16 months since I last posted?  Talk about being a major slacker! 

A lot has happened in that time, so I’ll just give you the 3 second version.  After months of searching and interviewing for an internship, I finally landed one last November at a facility that treats offenders.  This is a PG blog, so I’m not going to say what kind of offenders.  After the mandatory background/fingerprint stuff, I was finally able to start in January and interned there until July.  I got hands on experience doing group therapy, assessment, and psychoeducational classes.  I officially graduated in May, but stuck around the internship a few extra months because I enjoyed the work so much.     

Fast forward to now.  I’m currently looking for a position in my field, so I can get the experience hours needed to get licensed.  The economy is making this a bit of a slow process, but I’m being patient and hoping that something great will pop up soon.  In the meantime, I’m still at my regular job and enjoying life without research papers or late night classes. 

Seems like Pi is on fast forward mode too.  She started 7^th grade yesterday!  Insane how time flies. 

I didn’t craft much while in school, but I managed to finish a few small things and even though I wasn’t blogging, I took pics of everything.  I was hoping to be back eventually.  Since school has ended, I have been on a roll.  I can’t craft enough, it seems.  Let’s see how many Christmas gifts I can squeeze in before I slow down again.  :)

I’m obsessed with sewing right now and have even gotten Pi into it.  She went to sewing camp for a week and has become the queen of patchwork squares.  My scrap stash was raided and I helped her cut 3 inch squares, which are slowly becoming 16 patch squares.  She plans on making enough to make herself a quilt.  No small goals for that one, but  gotta give her credit for confidence.

 

And because no post is complete without a picture, here is a little Owl Coin Purse from Michelle Patterns (formerly known as KeykaLou).  It was made with the teeniest of scraps and was such a quick project.  Perfect for an instant gratification fix. 

So, I can’t promise I’ll post as regularly as I once did, but I’m around.  Hope the last 16 months have been good to you too!   

Ahhh Spring.

Spring is finally here! On one hand, I feel like it took forever to get here, but on the other hand, I can't believe it's already May.

I've been on Spring break for a few weeks. Not having to go to class has been nice, but I'm still up to my neck in papers. I'm finishing up the last one that's due and then it will just be finals. I'll be a free woman in 4 weeks.

Not having to go to class has meant a little extra time crafting time. One of my co-workers asked me to make her granddaughter a hat. She didn't care what kind, so long as it was pink and brown and had a flower.

Piper's bear Teddy was willing to model a pink hat, since Piper was asleep and unable to protest.

I found the pattern on Ravelry and of course, forgot to que it and now I can't find it to share. I'll have to dig up the paper copy to figure out which one it is and I'll post it when I find it. I used THIS pattern for the flower, but left off the picots.

No sooner did I start knitting when I realized that I needed new stitch markers. I asked Andrea over at Knits and Knots if she made any, because she'd sent me a great set a few years ago. She pointed me to Endless Forms, which is run by her sister. Crafty talent clearly runs in the family.

Look how cute the stitch markers were packaged! The stamping on the paper is such a nice touch.

Aren't they pretty? They work like a dream and I love them. She sells really cute jewelry too.

I'm uber late on posting our class project for Easter, but here it is anyway. I saw this idea HERE and fell in love. Cheap, easy, and cute. Plus Piper said it wasn't too "babyish" which is a requirement for 5th grade crafts now. I wish you could see me rolling my eyes now. Ha!

We made over 40 of them with a bunch of different peep colors. Piper said they were a hit. I hope the teacher will forgive me for all the little sugar bits that were probably all over her floor.

What's Easter without dyeing eggs? My neighbor had a party and we were told to BYOE (bring your own eggs). She covered the table in newspaper and let a bunch of rugrats go nuts. She's a braver woman than I! The kids had a blast and we ended up with dozens of cool eggs.

Hope everyone is doing well! Hoping to be around more in a month or so, when school lets out. In the meantime, what have you guys been up to?

A Plethora of FOs

So, another month goes by and I have the same excuse: school! Although it's busy (and hard), it's going really well. I'm in the process of interviewing for internships, so please keep your fingers crossed I land one!

I've been sporadically crafting over the last few months. I started a lot of these projects in December and worked on them slowly until they were all done.

My good friend Ellen planned a trip to Mexico to celebrate her 40th birthday and she invited me and a bunch of her friends to go. Unfortunately, I couldn't go, but I was happy to help when she said she wanted to give the girls personalized travel bags for the trip.

She bought all of this wild fabric and picked the Weekend Travel Bag from Weekend Sewing by Heather Ross. I made them assembly line style which helped to make them go pretty quickly.

I embroidered everyones name on their bag, which took some time, but was totally worth the effort. The only regret I have is not using a stronger interfacing. The fabric was a little soft and even with interfacing, they weren't as stiff as I would have liked. No worries, though because Ellen loved them!

Of course, as I was making of all these bags, a certain (not so) little person decided she HAD to have one with a flower. She drew what the flower should look like and it was simple enough, so I obliged.

She picked out this great home dec weight polka dot fabric in the clearance section for the outer bag. The pink lining is from my stash... it was a clearance buy when I visited Philly a few years ago.

With a home dec weight fabric and interfacing, this bag turned out much stiffer and with better corners than the first set. Love it!

Piper mentioned that she wanted to use the bag when she went bike riding (she claims she's too big for a basket now), so I added some cotton webbing to the side seam. Now, she can fling it right onto her bike handles.

Last, but not least, one of my sweetest co-worker had a baby shower in late February. Since I've been pressed for time, I went with simple squares and white sashing.

Do you recognize the pink fabric? It's the same stash fabric I used for the lining of Piper's bag. Piper also found this great turtle print in the clearance section and it matched the pink flowers perfectly! Meant to be, wouldn't you say?

My favorite part is the green Minky on the back. It was my first time sewing with Minky, but with a few tips, I didn't have any problems. First, I pinned, pinned, and pinned some more. Then, I used my walking foot and voila, no puckers!

The teeniest of scraps were left over and I didn't want to throw them out. So they got pieced together and became a matching bib. Swoon! I love sewing for babies.

Well, that's the end of show and tell for today. Hope all is well with you guys!

Happy Valentine's Day!

*Pi's Valentine Mailbox from a shoebox project.

*Butterfly template found HERE

Hope your day is full of sugar!!

Go away winter!

A whole month since I've been to the blog! Craziness! January has been a crazy busy month and I just haven't had the chance to sit down and write down an entire post. I'm guilty of being more active on FB lately, which probably doesn't help with getting to the blog as often as I should.

So January in a nutshell... Happy New Year! Wishing you all a year full of happiness! Happy Birthday to Mom and my twin sisters Jennifer and Tiffani (they're 18...holy cow!). Piper and I got sick, got better, went ice-skating, fell on our butts and read James and the Giant Peach (so cute). School started again for me and it's going to be quite the semester. I'm looking forward to it though, because the classes seem really great.

Anyhoo, if you're anywhere except California, then you know all about the snow and ice we've been getting. This pic is from last week when we got another 18 inches of snow in our 4th snowstorm since Christmas.

But that's old news compared to today's ice storm! I tried to go to work this morning and turned right back around when I realized that walking down my driveway would take some major ice skating skills. The entire area is a full sheet of ice. Not long after I went back inside, I heard a nice big CRACK
and looked to see that the tree above our garage cracked right off. We're lucky that none of the falling branches have hit power lines yet.

Not a whole lot of crafting going on, but I did manage to make this mitten. Yes, only one, haha! My co-worker and I decided to make our boss a pair of mittens for Christmas. Our boss is awesome and loves handmade things, so we try to throw something handmade into her gift every year.

We figured we could both tackle one each. After a bunch of re-dos to try to match gauge, we were finally able to start them (a month late, ha!).

Being my first knit mitten, I was confused by the thumb, but thanks to some patient knitting buddies (thanks ladies!), I figured it out. Can I get a woot woot? ;)

The pattern is called the Agatha mitten and can be found HERE. I used a half skein of Bernat Alpaca for this one. My co-worker has the other half skein and is cranking her mitten out now. With luck, my boss will have both mittens by springtime. ;)

My family also started a new "snow day" tradition. If it's a snow day, we bake a chocolate chip coffee cake! Yum!

THIS recipe never gets old!!

Hopefully I'll be back before another month is over.

30+

We received over 30 inches of snow the day after Christmas! Poor Pip was stuck in Bklyn, so I trekked out there on Monday to bring her home.

I'm not a big fan of snow, but seeing Pi having so much fun makes it hard for me to a hold a grudge against the snow.

I'll admit that snow is good for a few things, like igloos...

And tubing!

What are your favorite snow activities?