On babies and more

 Hello friends, 

It has been a long time! One of the friends in my facebook group reminded me the other day that I hadn't written a blog post since July....I didn't mean to be absent that long!

I hope you are all enjoying your summer? Ours has been busy doing everything and nothing...does that make any sense? And while I have not spend a heck of a lot of time sewing, because it has been such a long time since my last post, I do have a whole lot of projects I can share with you! ( See, there is an upside to everything!)

( this post contains affiliate links for your convenience; please see my full disclosure in the sidebar)

So let's get right to the projects, shall we?

Remember that PLUS quilt that I was doing as a sewalong in the Facebook group? I finished it and am sewing on the binding in the evenings. I will share a photo of the completed quilt as soon as it's done. 

I am super happy about the way this one turned out, and used the cutest background fabric, which I will share a pic of soon too. It turned out to be a nice-sized lap quilt, which are always fun to drape over a chair or sofa.

I had picked up these red and white orphan blocks at my local re-use store and sewed them together "as is". Then I added iron-on embroidery transfers and embroidered those in red perle cotton, right through the batting and backing ( so I had to do a very neat job on the back!) ( click!). 

I am super pleased with how it all turned out, and it definitely has a story to tell! 

Over the summer I also decided to overhaul my sewing and crafting space. The mini-split has a very hard time reaching all the way across the other side of the room ( I think partly because of the weird ceiling angles, but also because half of the space is over top of the garage), and I was dying of heat in the summer, and freezing in the winter. So I flip-flopped my room and furnishing so that I sew much closer to the temperature-controlled side of the room, and just spend time pressing and taking photos and other not so time-consuming projects on the not so comfortable side. I also added another bookcase, because one can never have too many of those in my opinion, and that forced me to sort through my vast collection of books once again. Always a good thing to do once in a while! Here are some pics of the new set-up:

Cleaning and reorganizing certainly inspired my creativity and I soon found myself making some more new projects! First there was this baby wall hanging ( pattern by Amy Bradley designs): 

Isn't she just the cutest? I happily dove into my scrap basket for this one! And then decided to use my huge amount of scraps again to make this table runner: 

The appliques on the borders were made with my newest accuquilt die ( click here). These dies make it so simple to do appliques, especially when you pre-fuse the fabric! 

I treated myself to a new book and it is filled with cute projects. 

 These scrappy fabric bags were so fun to make! (click here for a link ). I loved choosing just the prettiest squares for these, and adding little pieces of lace trim! 

As you know, I love to do hand stitching in the evenings, and finished this embroidery ( from a pattern in a magazine) and turned it into a pillow....I even added button-holes on the back, how adventurous am I?? 

I continue to work away at my various hexie projects in the evenings too....

 

And finally I want to close with some touristy photos of places we have visited this summer....

Now that school and work are both back in session I am hoping to get back into a more regular blogging routine, so.....

Until next time~happy creating!

Monique