Craft-A-Little

Thanks for all of your sweet comments for the Sew Mama Sew giveaway day!  I will be doing the drawing in tomorrow, but may not get a chance to post until tomorrow night.  So please be patient!

I have been on a blogging hiatus for the last week or so.  Things have been so crazy here at home!   We moved this past Thursday and I have been unpacking and reorganizing and doing laundry like crazy for the last few days, trying to get this place in order before I have to go back to work tomorrow!  Fortunately, I work only part time, so I have only 3 days out of the house before I am back home and able to (hopefully) finish organizing and unpacking!  We have done a pretty good job at unpacking.  There are really only 2 rooms that are in need of additional work- the master bedroom and my husband’s office.  Oh- and the garage.  But let’s not talk about that!

There are 2 really good things about our new house.  Well, more than just 2, but I am going to focus on 2 right now.  the first one is the kitchen.  I love to cook and this one is WAY bigger than my last kitchen.  Plus, I think that I have tripled my counter space.   And I have a dishwasher now.  Awesome. 

The second thing is that I now have room to set up things for all of my crafting.  For example- we now have space for our big dining room table in our dining room.  So if I ever figure out how to machine quilt on my sewing machine, I will have more space for that.  Also, this table is level so I can more easily and accurately cut fabric for quilting.  Will’s office is HUGE here too.  So there is room for me to put a table in there if I want to.  I also have an evil TV watching vice.  I can see the TV from the dining room table and kitchen.  So now I can do more than just knit while watching TV.  And I have room to store my fabric stash (which is growing quite rapidly!) and all of my yarn.  And it isn’t in a basement. 

This crazy week has also prevented me from finishing anything else for Tallgrass Prairie Studio’s Spring to finish giveaway.  So that leaves me at finishing only 2 things.  I did finish parts of things, but I don’t think that counts.    Oh well. 

I have finally started a quilt that I am making with my cousin.  I made one of the blocks that I was supposed to make this month.  Now I am going to have to get moving and get my other May block done in the 1st week of June!  Anyway- here is a picture of the block that I have completed.  I used mostly Heather Ross fabrics from the Mendocino line.  There is one Joel Dewberry print in there.  I have to be better about remembering what the fabrics are called!  At least I remember the designer!

Here are the 2 blocks that my cousin sent to me last month. 

(Those were the first pictures that I have uploaded on our new internet.  We had DSL at our old house and now we have some super fast cable speed (Will had to call the company and ask if they had a faster speed than was listed on their website) and those pictures uploaded so quickly!  It is awesome!)

Back to the quilt- I am excited to see how this quilt comes together will all sorts of crazy fabrics together!  I am already having fun and I am only1 block in!

Happy Giveaway day!  Today is the day of Sew Mama Sew’s giveaway!  I am so excited to check it out and see what everyone is giving away! 

Well, for my first giveaway, I will be giving away a small handknit bear!  Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture right now (I am having camera trouble- as in, I can’t find it!  We are in the midst of a move and maybe it was packed??).

(I found my camera!!)

Anyway, he is a small brown bear that I knit using a pattern from Susan B. Anderson’s Itty Bitty Nursery.  There are a few slight adjustments to the pattern, but he is quite a cute little guy!  I will try update this post with a picture later tonight. 

So- onto the business end of things!  What do you need to do to enter?  Leave a comment with your favorite brand/designer of fabric/yarn/crafting supply and what you like to make the most.  Please leave your comment by the end of the day on May 31!  I will be drawing the winner on the morning of June 1.  Good Luck!

**Sorry to all of you international readers, but I am not able to ship outside of the USA.

Ok, this one is a giveaway, but I am not the one giving!  There is a new line of yarn being launched by Blue Sky Alpacas called Spud and Chloe.  It is launching in June 2009 and various bloggers are getting their hands on some and doing giveaways!  The latest one that I found is over at Skeins Her Way.  Hurry up, because you only have until Monday at midnight!

(Oh- and make sure you tell her that I sent you- we will each get an extra entry!)

A loves to play with dolls.  I love to make things for her.  So naturally, when I decided that I wanted to make my first quilt, I decided that a doll quilt for A to play with.  I found this Zippadee Zoo fabric online in an Etsy shop (that I just love!) and I bought 3 yards of it.  I was inspired by this quilt.   I have pieced the tops and now I just have to go to the store and pick fabric for the back and the binding.  Since I am new to sewing/quilting, I don’t have much (ok any) fabric in a stash to pull from. 

I made the patches and I had enought that I thought I could get 2 quilts out of it.  So in the end, A is going to have 2 quilts.  She loves them already.  She sees them and she insists on playing with them.  She gets so mad when I put them away!  I can’t wait to finish them up this weekend!

Here are a couple of my favorite blocks-

Of course, figuring out the quilting portion of this project will be quite challenging.  Particularly since when I asked about quilting at a nearby fabric store (it was one of the large national chain stores- not my preferred shopping location, but I needed thread and that is the easiest place to get to) they told me that I needed a special machine in order to be successful.  I am not sure that I buy that, especially after reading crazy mom quilts. 

I think that I need to figure out what a walking foot is and I need to know if I have one.  I learned last weekend that I have a buttonhole foot- maybe I have a walking one as well!  Wish me luck!

Sew, Mama, Sew is hosting a giveaway on May 27!!  I am excited to participate.  Now, to figure out what I am going to giveaway…

I have been knitting for about 2.5 years now.  In that time, I have aquired a lot of knitting needles.  I have only one set of straight needles, 3 or 4 sets of double pointed needles, and probably 10 or so sets of circular needles.  They have been piling up in my knitting basket taking up space.  The double pointed needles are always falling out of the packages that they came in which is very irritating.  So I finally decided that I needed a holder for all of my knitting needles.  I started searching around on the interet to see what my choices were.  I found some that I liked quite a bit, but cost a bit more than I wanted to spend.  Plus, I didn’t love any of the fabrics that I had to choose from.  I also didn’t really think that any of the styles would quite meet my needs for needle storage. 

That was last fall sometime.  Then, for Christmas, my mom gave me a sewing machine.  Now I had  a new idea- I could make my own case!  So then I started searching around on the interet and found a very nice tutorial(but I can’t find it again to link to it), but I still really like the style and the look of the expensive cases that I found.  So that left me making my own pattern. 

And here is what I came up with! 

I am so pleased with how it turned out!  The was only my second sewing project and I didn’t have a pattern for it.  I just kind of made it up as I went (well, after I drew out a plan on graph paper anyway) and I love it!  All I want to do is get out my knitting needles and then put them away!  I did take a lot of pictures as I went, so maybe someday I will put up a tutorial.

I am really excited because this is the first project that I finished for Tallgrass Prairie Studio’s  Spring to finish drawing!   

I have been quietly participating in the online crafty community for a few months now.  I enjoy reading quite a few blogs and I love seeing all of the fun things that people are making.  I just feel left out.  I want to show off what I am making too!  Yes, I get to show them to my friends and family, but I am proud of what I am doing and I get so many ideas from what I see out there, that I want to share what I am doing too.  Maybe I will inspire someone else!