quickly crafted

The Dearest and I had tickets to the Ducks' game on Sunday night. I'm *always* freezing at hockey games, so I had a plan to make a patchwork scarf to help keep my neck warm. Remember this fabric? Saturday night was spent cutting, sewing and quilting while watching "Monster In Law". Here's the result:

I made the scarf 60 inches long so I could wrap it around my neck doubled if I wanted. It's five inches wide- just perfect to keep the back of my neck nice & warm.

All of the fabrics are from Amy Butler's line. The backing is yellow chenille...nice and cozy against the skin.

I didn't really follow a pattern for this- the original inspiration was the patchwork scarf in Denise Schmidt's book. But I made mine up as I went along. The only thing I should have done was pay more attention to how the fabrics were lining up at the ends. Not too happy with how they are a bit too matchy matchy.

The scarf worked really well to keep me warm during the game. We were sitting way up in the nosebleed seats, but it was still fun.

crafty FO

Monkey Boy's train-themed quilt is finished:

I ended up using 6 inch squares sewn together with green and yellow borders. Since Monkey Boy really likes to play with the tags on his 'lovey' blanket, I sewed a couple tags into this quilt as well.

These are placed at the top, near his head so he can find them easily. I also sewed one smaller tag into the foot of the quilt just for fun. I also wanted to personalize it, so I got daring and tried some embroidery for the first time:

It's not quite that wonky in real life- I promise! LOL Everything went together really well- the only problem I ran into was mis-measuring the green border fabric. I ended up not cutting enough and not having enough fabric to go all the way around the edges (I was barely 6 inches too short- ughhh). After thinking about how to salvage the border, I came up with adding small patchwork squares so they would be the right length.

day 51 of 365

I'm sure that the more experienced quilters out there are rolling their eyes at my noob mistake- but I was pretty happy that I was able to solve the short borders pieces without too much gnashing of teeth on my part. And the result turned out quite cute IMO.

Monkey Boy was really excited to get his train 'pinkie' and wanted to use it right away so I guess it is a hit!

birth day

-Saturday night dinner with the Dearest, followed by a massage at the local chi-chi day spa (heavenly)

-not having to do the dishes AT ALL- for one whole day

-uninterrupted craft time so I could cut and arrange this:

-wearing my new Noro Silk Garden Light socks while knitting with good friends at LPK:

-smooches and tickles from Monkey Boy (who is finally feeling much better).

-"birthday gift flowers" picked by Little Man himself:

All in all, a nice way to spend a birthday!

got your sunglasses handy?

Today passed in a blur; both the small men are sick (low grade fever & croupy cough, but that's it- they're still running around) and I am just tired for no reason whatsoever. Ok, maybe sitting up with Monkey Boy for half the night might have tired me out some, but I really was useless today. The only chore I got done around the house was managing to get the dishes out of the sink & into the dishwasher. Some days you just have to take what you can get.

I should have laid down for a nap this afternoon, but I was sidetracked by the arrival of this:

An assortment of train-ish fat quarters from Bear Paw Quilting. Aren't they cute? I know they're super busy and I'm not sure how I'm going to deal with all the busy-ness.... But the important thing is that Monkey Boy LOVES them all. He pet them and kept saying "pinkie? pinkie?" (his version of "blankie").

After playing with the fat quarters and the fabrics I bought previously, I came up with two possible combinations for the quilt. The first uses yellow as a binding & the second uses red for the binding:

Right now I'm leaning toward the yellow binding; the spotted fabric will be combined with blocks of the train fabrics for the center of the quilt. Not sure yet if I'm going to do actual pieced blocks or just strips.

And just to complete the overall busy-ness of this quilt, check out the backing fleece I found:

Are your eyes bleeding yet?