Happy Valentine's Day!

6:45 am:

Later:

Breakfast:

(and just so you don't think it's all sweetness and light all the time, this offering was greeted with a wail of "I didn't want that!!" She will be three tomorrow, after all.)
8:00 am:

(valentine's boxes)
Morning snack:

10:00 am:



Lunch:

Here's hoping your day was full of love, too.

Gifts, revealed: an embroidery basket

For a 6-year-old, I put together this little basket of embroidery supplies: a hoop, scrap fabric, a needle, and several colors of floss. She'd been asking me to teach her to sew, and this seemed like a good starting place. And she took to it immediately! I showed her how to make a running stitch, and within a few stitches, she decided to freehand a heart shape. When it was finished, I wrote her name on the fabric and taught her the back stitch, which she picked up right away, too. She spent a good part of Christmas day curled up in an armchair, stitching away.

In the works...

I haven't been sewing much lately; been too tired to do more than the regular evening clean-up and prep most nights. But I have started a few little projects...

For Lucy's birthday (can it really be only 2 weeks away? It feels like she was born weeks ago!), I've started a birthday bunting (based on the one in The Creative Family).



(That's my wild 60s tablecloth they're on; maybe I should have found a neutral background!)

And to make this drafty, freezing old house a bit warmer, I'm planning to make some draft dodgers. It's a big project: each window will need two. I went back and forth about fabrics: one beautiful fabric? a patchwork?, plain white to match the windows? In the end, I decided on plain white, because we do NOT want to draw attention to our windows. (What? You're supposed to scrape the paint off the glass after you paint? That's not how they're supposed to look? Just take a quick peek and then look away. That's right. There's something shiny on the other side of the room...)



I used the plain white fabric of a dust ruffle I'd bought for the skirt fabric. To make them a bit more interesting and to add to the "warmth" factor (if only psychologically), I decided to embroider them with warm-ish words. Cozy. Warm. Roasty. Toasty. (Got some ideas for me? I have a lot to make.)

A few last gifts

Ok, I finally gave our last Christmas gifts tonight (yeah, a bit late). So now I can feel free to show them.

More "discards" inspired by Denyse Schmidts's Quilts:



This set of them included a lot of vintage fabrics, and I found that I really liked the contrast of the modern style with those sweet vintage patterns.

One last 10-minute headband:



And, best of all, the pencil pouch that worked! (Bless you, Noodlehead.)





This last was a gift for a four-year-old. I used his own handwriting as the pattern for the embroidery, and included a pencil and a pen and a sketch book (of course, his mom is the one who really loves it, with that precious handwriting).

edited to add: I can't take credit for the pencil-pouch idea; that was from my brilliant friend Julie, who gave embroidered pencil pouches to her friends' children, using her daughter's handwriting and drawing. Shamelessly stolen!

Presents, revealed

It's been a sad Christmas around here. Lucy was sick, and my family, all gathered together nearby, didn't want to be exposed to the germs. So we had a quiet Christmas at home with a miserable baby. Happily, the fever is now gone and she's on the mend.

But I do have a few more finished-at-the-very-last-second gifts I can show.



The only good thing about Lucy feeling sick is that she'll actually snuggle a bit (a rarity for our on-the-go baby). So while I was working on a gift for my sister, she settled in on my lap and said "oooh!" as she touched the stitches with one little pointer finger and helped pull the floss through.

This turned out to be one of my favorite things I made this year. I love it so much, I wanted to keep it! It's the bookmark from Handmade Home (sized a bit smaller: I cut the fabric to 7 1/2 rather than 8 inches high). I used pieces of that same linen dress as the scarf I shared earlier, and some trim I'd gotten on that same Goodwill trip (yards of this heart trim and tiny white rick rack, sewn to the ugliest red felt I've ever seen--now liberated). I'd asked my nieces to do self portraits and signatures the last time they visited me, and I transferred them to the fabric, embroidered, and then sewed them back to back.





Also from Handmade Home are some potholders I made for friends. I'm not as thrilled with how these came out. Apparently, I am terrible at applying bias tape. I hand sewed the back side of the first set (badly), as directed, but gave up and machine sewed the next one. I don't like either result. But I do like the pattern--the potholder fits your hand nicely, and the diagonal quilting lines make it fold just as you'd like it to in your palm.





I'm going to have to work on applying bias tape better. It doesn't seem like it should be that hard! My other comment on this pattern is that the first (failed) attempt I made used batting, and I hated the look and the feel. It is much better with a piece of towel inside; it gives it a vintage-y feel and more heft.

Enough for now. But I have more to share over the next few days. (And time to do it; I'm on vacation!)

Home Sewer's Exchange

Ok, let's ignore the fact that we spent 6 hours in the ER last night and didn't get home until 2 in the morning with our poor, pitiful red and blotchy baby. (Allergic reaction? Virus? It's still unclear. But she's in good spirits, and we're in wait-and-observe mode.) We're going to move on to happier things, stopping every few seconds in the writing of it to watch her play and wonder in awe at her amazing disposition (she was still making friends with everyone in the ER at 1 in the morning...)

So, today, when Lucy seemed to have made it through the night ok and she and Andi were all set to spend the morning in bed, I left briefly to go to the annual "Home Sewer's Exchange" at a church around the corner. Why, oh why, have I never gone before? For some reason, I thought it would be cheesy sewing crafts for sale, or maybe for trade; I couldn't quite figure it out. But this time, they'd added a big new banner to the front of the church, shouting out "fabric! notions! patterns!" Oh, my gosh--2 full rooms; tables and tables; and church-rummage-sale prices! Look what I got:



I grabbed a bundle of sewing magazines, not sure what they were, but for 25 cents a bundle, how could I pass them up? (All the other sewing ones got snatched before I could get to the pile.) And I chose some bits of fabric, trying to be careful not to go wild grabbing everything. Do you see those prices? Some were a dime. Some were a quarter. One was a big "splurge" at $2.

I liked how these two looked together. Maybe a top and bloomers for Lucy? Or maybe two layers of a tiered skirt? 60 cents!



A pile of miscellaneous who-knows-what-for:



This one's heavy, and I envisioned it as pants for Lucy. Then later I thought maybe a jumper would be cute. Maybe I could squeeze out both?



And those embroidery patterns! Oh, what joy when I found those! The woman at that table said, apologetically, "I want a dollar for those; does that seem fair?" Fair? It feels like I'm ripping you off! I'm hoping I'll find some time to do some of these this winter.




I can hardly wait for next year's sale! In the meantime, I'm going to go rock my sick baby to sleep.