4 Seasons Play Dress

What a thrill it was to receive these photos today from Amanda of my 4 Seaons Play Dress pattern.  I feel so lucky to work with her.  

 

 

 

Um, she caught that petal in mid-air!  Now that takes some skill!

 

Wow!

 

She captures the essence of sweet, innocent, imaginative and free so perfectly.

Sewing, sewing, sewing! Te quiero y tu lo sabes!

I've been sewing.  Sewing A LOT!  Sewing so much that my beloved sewing machine decided it didn't want to go forward anymore and got stuck in reverse. I took the machine down to the sewing machine repair shop and learned that the repair would cost almost as much as a new machine.  It was time to move on.  This sewing machine was given to me as a gift from my aunts and uncles on my birthday way back in January 1996.  At the time the machine had been my aunts who used it a ton herself.  Although the machine has sentimental value to me, it had lived a good long solid life. The happy news is now I have a brand spanking new solid workhorse of a sewing machine.  Drum roll please!!!!

TAH DAH!!!!  It's a Husqvarna Viking Emerald 116.  It's basically the cheapest least frilly GOOD machine around and needless to say I LOVE IT!  Cuts through layers of denim like buttah.  No quilting foot?  Not even close to an issue!  Smooth, quiet, cooperative, beautiful, simple.

I had pieced a quilt before my machine tanked and now I just needed to quilt and bind it.   I finished it off with the new machine:

The Contraband Quilt

It's a scrappy log cabin quilt that I made using a combo of my husband's old shirts, a few fat quarters that have been laying around for years, thrifted fabric from Goodwill (purple striped fabric used for the binding) and a stolen napkin.  Yes, you read right, a stolen napkin.  See that orange Kaffe Fasset fabric in there?  That was the fabric my cousin used for the napkins at her wedding!  I mentioned at the table how much I loved the fabric and what do ya know, but my uncle swiped the napkin for me!!!  (Mags, I know you're reading this so I'M SORRY!  IT WASN'T ME!!)  This quilt is going to be forever known as the contraband quilt.

The quilt was inspired by this book and this quilt (which I believe was also inspired by the same book) I used free motion quilting for the border.  The new machine made it a breeze!!!

Ooh, Stippley!

But alas I hear the crochet hook a callin'.  I'm hoping to get my girly cardi finished and ready to test by the end of next week.  Fingers crossed please!

Sometimes I quilt too . . .

I finally finished my baby boy's quilt.  Never mind he's almost three and I started it probably about a year and a half ago.  My first born's quilt was finished before she was born.  Hey, I got busy, mm kay?

I chose a simple friendship star block made with coordinating scraps solids and prints.  The white background is made from a high quality old duvet cover that we just never use anymore.  My piecing skills are definitely improving!  No major gaffs in the piecing department this time.  I'd love to say that the green block is the wrong way on purpose, but it isn't. But, I do like it and I'm glad I made the mistake.

And are we liking the new camera?  I sure am.  I have been told by a number of people (all with sweet cameras mind you) that you can get great shots with a point and shoot.  Hmm, how should I put this delicately?  They are LIARS!  All of them!  You want to improve the look of your photography instantaneously - get a decent camera!  I saved up pattern sales for what seemed like an eternity and bought the Sony Nex C3 with a pancake lens.  It's not even a DSLR, just a step up from point and shoot.  Fabulous fabulous fabulous shots just right out of the box.  I still wasn't getting that nice in-focus object, blurry background effect I was hoping for so I sprung for a f 1.8 lens. 

I have also been practicing a ton.  Just taking the camera everywhere, snapping photos at work, at the kids' activities, at home, at the park, etc.  I still have a long way to go, but we're getting there!

On the crochet front - I'm working on a bunch of patterns at once!  Got what you may call "pattern bottleneck."  One of the patterns is a design I made for Galler Yarns.  The design is a secret and will be published by the company this winter!  So happy they chose to work with me, what a thrill.  I also have a cute girly fair isle style cardigan coming down the pike.  Hopefully we'll get that published very soon.  I'm also working on a few others including the felted ankle tab bootie that was a best seller as a finished item on my Etsy site.  Can't wait!