Craft-A-Little

I have been busy!!!

Today, during Little Helper’s nap, I thought it was time to try to catch up on Quilt Bee Blocks.  I am officially caught up now!  Well, I have my May ones left to do, but since May is not over yet, I am not behind yet.  Here are my blocks for Becca in A Piece of Work B.  She sent all of us different fabrics and told us to do whatever we wanted- just do not follow a pattern.  One of our fabrics was the focus fabric.  My focus fabric was the hippos. 

I have been sewing colored pencil rolls.  It all started as a going away gift for a friend’s daughter because they were moving to Texas.   The first one I made (no photo) had a plain linen exterior.  My seam allowances on the inside color strip must be a little larger than 1/4 in. because my color strip ended up being too long.  With the first one I made, I (foolishly) trimmed the ends so that it would be the right length.  This made it really difficult to fit the end colored pencils in.  So when it came time to make my other 2, the linen pieces that I had cut were too short.  So I had to dip into my fabric stash to find something else that would work.  And I found frogs! 

Little Helper likes hers.  She chose the one with the pink and orange frogs.  The one with green frogs will be going into the mail to another little girl right around Little Helper’s age. 

The pattern for this is from the book Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts.  I did a couple of things differently than they said.  It said to hand sew in a part and I chose to edge stitch with my machine instead.  I don’t really like hand sewing that much and I am not very good at it.  I think that the edge stitching looks just fine too!

I also finished the 2+2 Blouses that I showed you fabric for a while ago.  I LOVE how they turned out!  I finished them (except for buttons and button holes) last Sunday.  Then, Wednesday night, I finished sewing the buttons on one of them- and Little Helper wore it on Thursday.  I washed it and she found it in the laundry basket this morning and decided that she wanted to wear it again.  I love that she is choosing to wear the things that I make for her. 

Here is the other one that I made:

I gave Little Helper a choice on which one she wanted.  She picked the one that was just faces.  Although, I think that I would have picked the other!  She tells me the other is for someone else.  So…looks like this goes into the gift pile!

I expect to be working on a few more gifts in the coming weeks.  So, lots of little projects.  But that should also mean that I will have lots of pictures to share!

As a side note, I am currently between good cameras.  We decided to upgrade our DSLR camera and we sold our old one yesterday.  We expect our new one to come in the mail tomorrow.  In the mean time, I am stuck with my point and shoot and the quality of photo is really not very good, particularly after looking at my DSLR camera pictures for the last year and a half!