Have you seen me around?

I'm working on expanding my scope a little bit. Growing little by little. 

I have joined the Instagram crowd. I have to admit I really like instagram. It's a lot like flickr was back in the early days. I love all the WIP action going on there, as well as the general awesome friendly support. So if you're on Instagram follow me so I can follow you back! 

I've also recently added a facebook page for my blog. It's another way to receive updates. I'll be linking to all my new blog posts there, as well as announcing any giveaways. 

Finally I've been doing some twittering. Not a ton, I feel really restrained by the character limit! But I do LOVE joining in for Talkin Tuesdays (#talknt2 is 1-3pm est, #talknt is 9-11pm est). Join in tonight - it's always fun! Follow me over there on twitter!

And as always I'm on flickr. Flickr is my go-to time killer. I'm always taking part in or leading a swap (or two) on flickr, and I find a lot of inspiration there. 

I'd love to follow your pages too - leave me a link in the comments so I can find you! 

Mini Quilts: Mug Rugs

I've always been a huge fan of mug rugs. They're tiny, fast, and useful. It has only been recently that I've begun to really think of them as mini quilts though. I can put some intense piecing and quilting into a 5" x 8" mug rug - so why not recognize it as something more than a coaster?

I'm rambling.

What I'm trying to say here is that I made a mug rug recently. But I haven't been able to bring myself to use it yet. Actually I considered giving it away - I have the intention of making a mug rug soon for a friend - but this one isn't quite perfect enough. 

I love this little guy though. Scraps of some favorite fabrics, bound in the most perfect orange fabric (my last bit of it!)

Then there's the back. The back!! I wanted to test out my skills after long arm class, but the mug rug top didn't want fancy quilting... so I quilted the back separately. These are the best flowers I've ever made! Now I need to work on getting some consistent swirls! 

All this rambling, for a sweet little mug rug. I love it though, that's what matters. 

Impulse Sewing

Do you guys sew on impulse? Tonight my husband was out with friends, so once Allie was asleep I was left to my sewing - only I couldn't decide what to work on. 

Maximum capacity (one pouch) = 7 OB Tampons!

Naturally I scrolled through facebook/flickr/instagram while I decided. (naturally). My friend Susan had mentioned on one of our quickie swaps that we should swap pouches to carry tampons/pads. Susan has mentioned this before - so light-bulb moment - that's what I sewed tonight. I made a "PonTom" pouch for Susan. Lucky that she uses the same brand tampons as I do!

Tiny zip pouches!

I made an extra to post in my upcoming Etsy shop - but my sister already called dibs (do you think I could charge her for it?) LOL

If you'd like to make a teeny pouch of your own the tutorial is right here. It really isn't hard. 

By the way, these were made from oilcloth, the leftover bits from making these pencil pouches - four pouches came from those teeny samples from the QuiltCon swag bag! 

WIP Wednesday

It's been a while since I did a WIP Wed update. Since the last one I have managed to finish two quilts and a mug rug. 

Finished this quilt last week! Tutorial for Pellon coming soon!

My major WIP's right now involve editing photos and tutorials, and working on blog layouts etc. I'm hoping to make a few changes to my blog here - and to work on picking up a couple new blog sponsors. I have big goals. 

Finished this one last week too - blogged about it here.

I also have a lot of formatting / organizing / etc going on. I have just taken on the role of co- technology communication officer for my local modern guild. We've grown a lot in the past year, and the Tech position is a new officer position, so we have a lot of coordinating and cross referencing to do (we use several social media outlets: blog, facebook, flickr, and bigtent). 

One of many projects that needs to be finished! I STILL haven't bought more Kona Coal! 

Aside from all of that boring computer stuff, I decided to clean up my sewing room last night -- which means I have all my unfinished projects right in front of me. So I'm going to spend the next month and a half finishing. If you'd like to join me feel free!! I'll be blogging about it a bit more specifically soon - but as for now I want to challenge myself to finish several projects by the end of May. 

Linked up with WIP Weds.

Project Night Night - String Quilt

This winter my guild has set to work making quilts and stuffed animals for an organization called Project Night Night. Project night night gives tote bags filled with a quilt, a stuffed animal, and a story book to children as they enter homeless shelters. Their hope is to provide some consistency and comfort for these kids. 

Emily and I with our donation quilts.

Our guild managed to fill nearly 50 tote bags for Project Night Night!! 

I pulled out this old (OLD) quilt top to finish up for Project Night Night. I doubt anyone remembers this quilt from the blog (read about it here) Hello, project started in January of 2010! LOL! Well it was going to be a big quilt but I lost interest. I'm glad I took the excuse of this service project to pull it out and give it a fulfilling life in the arms of a child!

The quilt finished at about 36" x 45" and I quilted it with a meandering stipple (with a few hearts and stars included). I used Pellon Legacy Batting in 100% Polyester (left over from a little project). This was my first time free motion quilting using poly batting. It was pretty interesting! I had no problems with the batting at all, but it was surprising as I quilted because it's poofy-er than the cotton. Considering the poofyness added with all those bias seams on the string blocks I expected to have more issues with quilting it - but it really was no big deal. :) I quilted it using Aurifil - that spool of thread lasted SO LONG! 

I'm glad this little one has made it out of my WIP pile of shame and into the arms of a kid in need!

For a bit more about the Chicago Modern Quilt Guild's meeting check out my post over on the guild blog!

Whew! What a Week!

Our household is finally back to normal after the crazy storms / lightning strike issues of last week. Our internet / water / heat / etc are all working. So what do I do? Stay up until 2am blogging and editing pics! 

I haven't been at my sewing machine in a few days due to all that weather related drama, but tomorrow I surely will be back to it! 

Tonight I spent some time typing out and editing for a future tutorial - It's always amazing to me that writing out and editing tutorials takes about 5x as much time as sewing the actual item! I've got a couple tutorials coming up soon - so stay tuned. :)

Another major thing happened - as of yesterday's guild meeting I'm now an official Chicago Modern Quilt Guild officer! I'm sharing the post of "Technology Communication Officer" with my guild friend Peta. We'll be in charge of keeping track of the guild facebook page, big tent page, flickr account, and blog. It's going to be a fun year but for now there's so much to do and so much to get used to! 

Oh and since the last time I really shared anything here I've finished 2 and a half quilts! There's a sneak peek of them up there... but I'll share them in full soon!

Under Construction.

As many of you mid-westerners know, we had a big storm blow through this weekend. Several inches of rain fell in my neighborhood. The big kicker was that a bolt of lightning hit our tree in front of our house (terrifyingly this happened while my husband and kid were about 10 feet away inside the house!).

Thankfully no one was hurt, but the whole day Wednesday was spent with city construction crews tearing down the rest of the tree. It was a huge ordeal to say the least -- I'm sad I didn't get any decent pictures of it -- that tree was about 60 years old!

Then later that night we realised our house was a bit chilly -- our gas line was damaged by the lightning too. We've spent the past two days without hot water, heat, or stove. (Frozen waffles for dinner?!) The guys are back at it today trying to put a new line in.

On the bright side the lightning didn't do much else - it fried our wireless internet router, and even though many areas around us are under serious flooding, we only got about 2"in the basement. That's not enough to damage anything we have there (it's all up high on shelves.

I hope this week and this storm have been better to you guys than it has been to us!!

I'm leaving you with pics of Allie playing on her new stump, with the gas company digging in the background. She loves that she was a construction worker just like them!