busy bag

As always when I quilt hard all week,

I have only a few weird photos to share of what’s going on around here.

This is the second “Quilt for Boston” that I free-motion quilted (I’ll share a better photo of the quilting soon–I’m not *proud* of it, but I’m OK enough with it not to rip it all out. Positivity! Confidence! I exude it!). And, my toddler’s laundry.

I’m up to ten Liberty x-plus blocks. I am DYING to make clothes from several of these prints. Conveniently, I started making clothes in earnest AFTER this line is pretty much already gone from the shops.

And speaking of making clothes, I’m bitten. I finally received the Tsuru Motif Madness yardage I’ve only wanted since, oh, February. (I’m the worst about piddling around about buying fabric–do I really want it? which color? what for? blah blah and this sold out immediately, and I had to wait for it to re-ship. When Koi comes out I’m on it like a duck on a junebug.) I had wanted to make this skirt, but asked around about favorite skirt patterns on Facebook. Immediately Samantha (founder of the forthcoming A Gathering of Stitches in Portland, ME) responded that she’s made a bunch of Colette Ginger skirts.

And, well. Who can resist that high waistband?

A printing mishap kept me from getting this sewn up in time to pack into my suitcase–but as soon as we get back from the beach, I’m on it.

 

I’m taking all of this with me to the beach so I can have books to read and socks to knit while I’m chasing my toddler ah hahahahahaha.

While I’m on vacation, the 2013 Let’s Get Acquainted New Blogger Blog Hop is still going strong! This week’s hoppers include some of my favorite blog people–again! (are all of you blog people my favorite? perhaps):

Friday, June 28

Green @ So Sew Green

Gwendellyn @ The Rainbow Revolts

Jessica @ Stitched In Thyme

Amira @ Little Mushroom Cap

Kathy @ Kayak Quilting

Michelle @ Factotum Of Arts

Paula @ The Sassy Quilter

Kris @ Sew Sunshine

Camilla @ Faffling

Catch you in July! X-pluses, Ginger skirt, a post about that Lizzy House Washi that I Instagrammed twice, a better photo of that Boston quilt…all here.

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finished: strawberry jam quilt

Tags

kokka strawberries, strawberry jam quilt

You can almost see the heat in that photo, huh?

and that one. 85 degrees at 9 am? (95 at 2 pm.) North of Boston? Being under a quilt is the last place anyone wants to be.

So in the interest of time, and in the interest of NOT being under this quilt at the sewing machine any more,

I wimped out and straight-line quilted it, even though I am currently on a “eat-your-greens-and-practice-your-fmq” kick. Looks nice, though, I think.

Now it’ll sit for two weeks before I mail it off to a lovely June bride–our guild meeting isn’t until the first Saturday of July, and isn’t one of the chief pleasures of the quilting life showing off one’s finishes at quilt guild?!

Pattern: just some framed squares I dashed together. I talked about the sizes I used in this post.

Fabrics: The pink in the top and back is Timeless Treasures Sketch in Lipstick. It’s awful I promise you don’t want to go and hoard it at all. 😉 Kokka strawberries left over from my mom’s Washi (so if you buy 3 yards, and cut a size L Washi, you’ll have enough left over to make an awesome quilt). Low volume prints from Comma, Architextures, and that Memoir print from Violet Craft’s Madrona Road (which is also the binding). Chat Noir Lizzy House Pearl Bracelets. Sketch in Charcoal. Kona Coal. Other, random grey prints. 🙂

Now, back to the grind–I have another quilt to quilt and bind by Saturday!

nothing to see at all

Tags

tiny tea leaves cardi, washi dress, x plus

Only, everything, all at once.

Putting some sleeves on some things: Tiny Tea Leaves cardi for Lucy, in madtosh DK twist, April mag society colorway doe eyes.

And, another Washi (for me!) lacking only sleeves, bias tape, and a hem. I’d like to wear it tomorrow so I’d better get a move on.

Trying to figure out which one of these x-plus blocks is my favorite. (Tutorial here, using these cutting directions to achieve a 12” finished block.) Six down, only 30 more to make!

Helping out just a little bit with Quilts for Boston. (I heard they got enough blocks to make, like, 100 quilts.) (100 quilts. That is crazytown. I make a lot of quilts, maybe 12-15 a year–I can’t even think what 100 quilts looks like!)

And Instagramming like my life depends on it. (I’m littleandlots over there, too! Would love to see/hear from you!)

Finally, I’m still hopping in the Let’s Get Acquainted New Blogger Blog Hop. I’m meeting so many lovely people (hello!) and having fun learning about some people I’d already met. Below is the list of this week’s featured bloggers; visit them and say hello!

Friday, June 21st

Leigh Anne @ Ella’s Cottage

Stacey @ The Tilted Quilt

Sarah @ Quilt Candy

Jackie @ NW Patchwork

Liz @ Beadqueene’s Bits And Baubles

Erica @ Happy Fabric

Stephanie @ Simple Sewendipity

Lauren @ Seraphym

Amy @ Cloud CouCou Crafts

ETA: linking up with the Plum & June Monday LGA link-up, hosted this week at Ange’s Heart of Charnwood. She has a seriously bucket-list kind of hexie quilt on the go…come check it out.

finished: liberty makeup pouch

Tags

liberty makeup pouch, no guts boxie pouch

I finally jumped on the wagon

and made my first zip pouch. I know! My mom has forever made me afraid of two things re: sewing. 1) sewing over pins (“You’ll hit the pin and the needle will break and HIT YOU IN THE EYE.”); 2) installing zippers. She makes that face, with the breath suck-in, that says, “not the best idea.”

But I reeeally needed a new makeup bag. The old one is ca Christmas 2004 and is filthy.

And we are going on vacation in two weeks. I bought a zipper, found the No Guts Boxie Pouch tutorial on Craftsy, found the Liberty I had saved for just this purpose, and dove in.

Not so bad, for my first try! I can’t think of anything that I wouldn’t want made out of that print though.

If you decide to try this tutorial, I’d suggest using a longer tab length than recommended in the pattern (she calls for 3”, I think 4” might be better). I used medium-weight fusible interfacing, where the pattern calls for lightweight, and I think the bag could be even stiffer. I’d go heavyweight next time.

I did not have to use a zipper foot, my regular presser foot worked fine.

Finally, follow the photos in the tutorial carefully. I typically rely heavily on written instructions (a word person) and the words led me astray at least twice. HINT: don’t sew the sides of the pouch when you sew the bottom! The instructions aren’t clear, but JUST SEW THE BOTTOM.

I think that when my fabric budget resets hahaha I will be making an order from Zipit. I’m seeing many more zip pouches in my future.

strawberry jam top

Tags

kokka strawberries, strawberry jam

I lied, like, a little bit.

The x-pluses didn’t really want to be first.

Really, the x-pluses want 1) more grey fabric (I am making the 12” size and I need 5.5” squares of grey! Not effective to cut from fat quarters, so I have a pile of half-yards coming); and they want 2) me to keep them. For myself, forever.

Really, this quilt is, I think, Samantha’s fault. I whined to her about having had to give away the Washi Dress I made out of the precious, can’t-find-it-anywhere-anymore tiny Kokka strawberries-on-navy print. Pragmatically, she responded, “Don’t you have scraps? Make yourself a pouch or something!”

Oh, I had scraps. A whole pile, wadded up on my bedroom fabric-catcher table. (You know you have a place where your fabric and blocks that you’re not QUITE ready to put away yet land.) I took that scrap wad and made not lemonade but

jam.

I really do have to give this one as a wedding gift, though.

One small note on block construction: You absolutely do not need any kind of tutorial or whatever to make these. You can do it yourself. BUT, but. It is kind of nice when the measurements you choose make it easy to cut one nice width of fabric, selvege to selvege (WOF) strip per block, yeah?

I started with a 4.5” center square

sashed it with a 2.5” strip

and sashed again with a 2” strip. That last 2” strip I was able to cut just WOF, and had a teeny rectangle leftover, like in the second photo (improv block for the back, anyone?).

The blocks are 11.5”, 11” finished (such a nice easy number to multiply to figure a final quilt size).

(A final PS, for the weirdos: I wanted to call this quilt “For Reverend Green,” my favorite song off of Animal Collective’s Strawberry Jam, but my husband made a face and said no one would get an Animal Collective reference. ONE OF YOU GETS IT, right?)

indian summer baby quilt start (with apologies)

Tags

charity quilting, indian summer fabric

I came home from my guild’s June meeting with this bundle:

It’s a few prints from the lovely Indian Summer for Art Gallery Fabrics by Sarah Watson, donated to our guild for charity quilting by the designer herself, plus some pitch-perfect solids chosen and donated by Peg @ Sew Fresh Fabrics.

Those of us who had the bandwidth to work on a baby quilt during the summer months divided up into four groups, and four fabric bundles. I took my group’s bundle first, and we agreed to do a round-robin-style top (well, as well as we can with two of us piecing and the third of us quilting), so I was to make a “medallion.”

I wanted to stretch my improv piecing skills (isn’t that the spirit of round-robin quilting?). So I sat down last Friday and came up with this:

And here is where we apologize to Sarah Watson, because this is an incredibly inadequate iPhone snap of her gorgeous materials. (You can also see that I sew at our small dining table–Janome and “Cinderella mat” coexist in a fragile peace.) In the center, I did three Oh, Fransson! interlocking sparkle punch stars, but with 2.5” squares instead of her tutorial’s 3.5” squares.

And then, I borrowed the tent-mountain-tree motif of one of the prints and did an equilateral triangle border. I took a glance at this tutorial at about dot com about rocking your plain old straight rotary ruler back and forth to cut equilateral triangles. Guys, it’s so easy, that I didn’t even screw it up the first time I cut. I’m no longer afraid of 60-degree triangles, so watch out, world.

And mostly, I kept my points intact too, when I sewed them up, so yay.

I took one more naptime-sewing session and finished up my part this past Monday. There are feathers in the dark teal print I used as a border, and, of course, that calls for some Anna Maria Horner Feathers. I spent an entire three-hour nap cutting and piecing these two darling feathers. I don’t think the feather-making process is usually this difficult, but I was trying so hard to conserve fabric that I did some little funky things–see the top left side of the vertical feather, for example.

And then I rushed the whole bundle, top, fabrics, and all, five towns north of me, without ever getting out my real camera once.

Here’s hoping I will have real photos to share of a finished baby quilt. I can’t wait to see what the rest of my team does with this bundle!

now go on about your business

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bloglovin

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

(You’ll note that it’s June 14th, and I did NOT wait until the last POSSIBLE minute.)

let’s get acquainted: new blogger blog hop, 2013, littleandlots ed

Tags

lga blog hop

It’s my stop on the blog hop!

You’ve landed here, in the place of little things and lots of them.

(above, a mosaic of some of my projects from May 2012-last Friday, reverse chronological order. Crappy iPhone snap of the Indian Summer improv stars is most recent.)

When I started this blog in May 2012, it’s fair to say I didn’t have a clue what I was even doing here. This is about the fourth blog I have started. I’ve started and abandoned: 1) a cooking blog (ONE post! because actually I’m not that great a cook); 2) an expat blog (got pregnant, and in my surprise-you’re-pregnant state, the foreign country became terrifying rather than charming–and then we moved back to MA); 3) an Open Salon blog where I tried to hang and talk all smart about books (there is a REASON I dropped out of English grad school, yo).

I’m a stay-at-home-mom now, with a background in word-y things. There was the English grad school, there was the few years of publishing grunt work. I needed something to do, and I needed to blog. I kind of thought I might be a mommyblogger, and talk about some books and some baby stuff and some food, and just try and post a little bit of a lot of different things.

I also thought that my life isn’t likely to be the BIG, monumental, world-rocking thing that I thought it was going to be when I was 21.

Instead, my life is going to be a lot

of really little things, and little moments, all strung together

to make lots of joy.

Other reasons I love my blog name, littleandlots:

I have a little. She’s lots of fun.

She’s an L name, I’m an L name, we’re L&L, little&lots.

And, more practically, I have a LOT of stuff crammed into a very little apartment.

Most of all, I like my blog name because what all of we quilters do, at the heart of it, is make something that is so MUCH out of things that are so little.

So, stick with this Southerner-stuck-forever-in-Massachusetts (yes, my header image is from coastal GA, and yes, I tried to change it and it broke my little heart). Happily, I know where I’m headed now: modern quilting, with some knits and dresses thrown in for fun.

You may not always find the cleverest tutorials or tips around these parts, but I try my best to share pretty things and thoughts about what I’m working on. (Mostly so you won’t make the same goofs I do.) I promise also to always enable fabric and yarn purchasing. I’m a great enabler.

Up next (please stop by again!): Kokka strawberry framed square quilt obsession; a little Indian Summer charity quilt I got to start; Liberty Stile x-plus blocks.

Hop on over to the next new blogger on the list this week!

Julie @ Jolie Maxtin

Melissa @ Melia Mae Quilting

Adrianne @ On The Windy Side

Molli @ Molli Sparkles

Laura @ Little And Lots (you are HERE!)

Sarah @ Duck Egg Threads

Kelly @ My Quilt Infatuation

Cari @ There’s A Thread

Valerie @ Between Quilts

finished: lucy’s low tide cardigan, lansbury cowl

Tags

finished knit, lansbury cowl, low tide cardigan

Knits ahead!

This might be it (haha, might be “knit”!) for awhile. I always go through a little spell of finishing ALL THE THINGS AT ONCE, and then I start a whole bunch of new things, and then there’s dead wasteland middle time.

(If you are good about cycling your projects more skillfully, so you’re not doing a ton of block-piecing-stockinette-knitting all at once, holler, please, and teach me ALL YOU KNOW.)

1) Lansbury Cowl: pattern by Shannon Cook of luvinthemommyhood; can be purchased on Ravelry here. Last Friday, I was feeling rushed and weird and disoriented. Crazy stuff kept happening! And it was 95F hot hot hot. I couldn’t settle down to work on any of my ongoing projects.

So I wound my lonely skein of The Plucky Knitter Primo Aran in the April Classics colorway Whistlestop, and put it to excellent use.

The irony of knitting with aran weight yarn, in an around-your-neck-keep-you-warm pattern, on the hottest weekend of the year did not escape me, but this pattern was easy, and soothing to knit, with just enough texture and cabling to feel fun. And now I have a new super-soft luxury cowl ready for the first whisper of cool weather!

2) Lucy’s Low Tide Cardigan: pattern is by Tin Can Knits, and can be purchased at Ravelry here.

I was nervous to start this sweater, I really was.

Lace charts! (The simplest-ever lace chart.) Kitchener stitch! (For like, four stitches.) Crochet buttonholes! (I downed a glass of wine real quick, watched two YouTube videos, and dove in, no problems.)

I knit it in The Plucky Knitter Primo Fingering, colorway Frostbitten (retired colorway! Such a shame–it looks fantastic on my little, and I know it’d look great on me too). 20% cashmere in the mix, so it’s baby’s first cashmere.

Again, I royally messed up the short rows on the sleeves, so if you do make this, your sleeves will look much better. But the end result is still pretty cute and Lucy LOVES it. Her favorite color right now is blue!

Both of these projects are Ravelled at my Ravelry page. If you’re a Raveller, I’d love to see you over there too!

they’re coming to take me away

Tags

x plus

I did some of this today, waiting for inspiration to strike:

I had a pattern and a concept in mind, but no color scheme. How, out of all this lovely fabric, can’t I find something to do a house quilt with?

And then I realized

that the x-pluses? Resistance is futile. They’ve come for me.

Have they come yet for you?