DQS9 received!

A few days ago, my Doll Quilt Swap 9 quilt arrived in the mail!



Isn't it lovely?  It was made for me by Nichol (HardyPartyof5) and it looks beautiful against my green walls in my sewing room.  I love it! Thank you again Nichol!

I also packaged up my quilt and sent it off to my partner yesterday...



I hope my partner loves it!

I'm also working away on my items for the Urban Home Goods swap.  I'm doing a little Orla Kiely inspired embroidery for a placemat set.  I am going to do two embroidered like this below, and two with fabric applique in the same design.  It will be set against a Kona Ash for the main background.



All right, I've got to get back to my stitching if I'm going to be done in time!

Sew and Tell Friday - Doll Quilt all finished!

I am happy to report that I have a finish to report for this week's Sew and Tell Friday!

I finished my Doll Quilt Swap 9 quilt!  And I have to say, I think it turned out beautifully!



I decided to use a black and white Kei honeycomb dot for the binding. I think it sets off the rainbow of colors in the quilt nicely!  The label is already attached and it is ready to go to its owner. I just need to add a few little goodies to my package before I mail it out!

In other swap news, I've started working on my projects for the Urban Home Goods Swap!

My first project I've got planned is a set of placemats.  I'm imagining the background in Kona Ash, with a strip of white somewhere along the placemat, with a pretty little embroidery on the strip.  As you can see from my picture below, we've got some Orla Kiely inspiration going on here.  I used one of her lovely designs and created the drawing I'll be using for the embroidery.  I hope it turns out like I'm envisioning in my mind!



I'm hoping to get some work on these done tomorrow at the modern quilt guild sew-in I'll be attending! Can't wait, I'm so excited!  Hopefully I'll be back soon with pictures of lots of progress to show.

Catching up!

I need to catch you all up on what I've been doing over the last two weeks.

First up, in my last post I showed the hexies I had made for the Handsome Hexie swap over on Flickr.  In addition to the hexies I posted, I also made a cute hexie holder for my partner.  I combined the gathered clutch pattern over at Noodlehead, with the cute hexie holder tutorial at Comfortstitching.

Here's my hexie holder.  Cute, isn't it?





And everything all together!



I have also been working on my quilt for the Doll Quilt Swap 9.  You may remember this post about my start to the quilt, the pink and grey spiderweb.  Well, I abandoned that project.  It was just taking forever and I knew I wouldn't be able to get it done before the deadline without completely forgoing any and all other projects, and I didn't want to do that.  So I went another route.  Based on my partner's preferences, I thought s/he might like something like the Colorwheel Quilt from Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts.  So I used my dresden plate template ruler to make a giant dresden plate color wheel. I think it turned out great!



I did simple quilted lines 1/4" on either side of the stitching line between wedges, and a circle around the center.  From the back it looks like a sun and its rays.  Simple, but I love it.



Now I just need to finish up the binding and label, get a few little other things together for the package, and I'm done!

Now I am off to work on a pincushion for a swap at next week's meeting of the local modern quilt guild. I've never made a pincushion before!  A first time for everything...

New fabric storage!

I am excited to report that I am the proud new owner of an Ikea Expedit bookcase for my fabric storage!  A coworker/friend of mine traveled to Atlanta this last weekend for a trip to Ikea and told me if I wanted anything to let her know.  I asked her to pick me up the bookcase if she had room in the back of the truck after getting all her stuff, and lucky me, she had room for my boxes.

Hubby and I put it together and set it up this week, and I've thrown my fabric on it in an attempt to start getting organized.



It nicely holds all my books and magazines on the bottom, without fear of shelves bending and breaking and everything falling, and I've tentatively placed my fabric and other bits on the rest of the shelves. Right now they are kind of broken down by color, or style, etc.  I have all my precuts on one shelf, all japanese fabrics on another, all solids on another, and the rest of my cut fabric separated by color.  It's still in the organization stage so it's likely this will change a bit.  I am also planning on refolding my fabric to uniform sizes so right now it's kind of haphazardly thrown on the shelves.  But I am happy to see that even with all my fabric on there (well, not ALL, I do have bunches of fat quarters in some boxes that have yet to be pulled out) I still have lots of room for expansion.  I think this is going to help immensely as far as keeping track of what I have and having everything out where I see it and use it.

In other news, I've started my DQS9 quilt.  I'm doing pink and grey spiderwebs.  Here's my progress as of a few nights ago.



Just a little bit. I've since sewn a bit more and it's about double this size.  The plan is for there to be 9 full spiderwebs, so I've got a way to go.  I'm still not sure about how it's turning out, or whether my partner will like it.  My partner has been quite silent since the swap started, not much input lately, and none really on the swap itself and so I just don't know whether s/he will like it!  The plan is to finish it up, see what I think, and if I don't think it's good enough/the right style/etc., I'll just keep it for myself!

That's all for now.  I'm planning to head upstairs for a little bit of sewing tonight, and then enjoy the rest of the three day weekend!  Happy 4th of July to all my American friends!

*Tap Tap* Hello, is this thing on?

I know I seem to have fallen off the face of the earth lately!  Life has been super busy.  I have been busy and preoccupied with work, traveling quite a bit over the last couple of weeks, and my husband and daughter returned from their trip about two weeks ago, so they've been home and occupying my time (which is a good thing!) and so I just have not had much spare time!

I have been doing some sewing and quilting related things!

First, last weekend my chapter of the Modern Quilt Guild went on a shop hop!  This past week has been shop hop week in East Tennessee and we decided to all get together and shop hop for our meeting this month.  It was TONS of fun, we visited six stores in one day (!) and I bought some yummy stuff.  Unfortunately, no pictures.  Part of that whole busy-with-life thing!

I have also spent most of the little sewing time I've had over the last week or two getting my siggy swaps done and out in the mail.  I finally finished a day or so ago and put them in the mail today!

Here they are, all signed and ready to go, all 101 of them! I am super excited to receive back the siggy blocks, from 101 different quilters, and assemble them into a neat little quilt!



And I've also been thinking and thinking about the quilt I will make for Doll Quilt Swap 9!  I have been stalking my partner's Flickr and blog, and trying to come up with a good idea.  I think I've finally got one.   I've pulled these fabrics, and am thinking about a spiderweb quilt.  What do you think? Are you out there partner? Do you like?



So that's what I've been up to.  I'm hoping work will slow down a bit (at least I won't be traveling so much, I know that!) and I'll be able to have more time for sewing.  Next weekend is a three day weekend and so maybe I can get in some sewing time then.

Hopefully soon I'll be back with a post about some of the lovely fabric I've acquired recently... :)

Doll Quilt Swap 9

I'm very excited to be participating in the latest round of the Doll Quilt Swap over on Flickr!  I've watched the last few rounds from the sidelines and when signups came open this time I decided to just jump in, having more confidence now that I've partcipated in some other swaps.

We were just assigned our partners a few days ago, and I've commenced to stalking my partner! I also need to start dropping some clues for my own stalker.  So I made a mosaic of inspiration pieces, which hopefully gives them a place to start.  And as time goes by, I will try to add more posts with more inspiration, as well as sneak peaks of my own quilt I'm making for my partner.

I'm so excited!  The anticipation is so much fun!



1. The Modern Flying Geese Quilt, 2. Scrap X quilt, 3. Circles and Waves quilt, 4. Cobblestones, 5. dqs7 quilt maybe?, 6. The Princess and the Pea embroidery, 7. The Lady of the Lake Quilt top, 8. Fat Quarterly E-Zine Flying Geese Challenge, 9. far far away 2 quilt top, 10. a wonky anna maria horner string quilt, 11. 1st attempt at Dresdens!, 12. Color Wheel Mini Quilt, 13. DQS8 Received!, 14. dqs8 received, 15. Flea Market Fancy hexagon quilt, 16. My Doll Quilt from katiejeanbags