Velocity Girl Bag

At the beginning of this year, Sara from Sew Sweetness put a call out for pattern testers and I jumped at the chance! Along with garments, she also designs bags, which I have been wanting to try for a while. I was kinda bummed that with grad school and work, my schedule didn't allow me to test her first three patterns, but thankfully I had enough time to try out her latest pattern, the Velocity Girl bag. Can you believe that she has already released four patterns since the start of the year?!

This bag was so much fun to make, especially since I was able to use fabric from my stash! The exterior fabric is leftover from the dress that I made for our Black History Month luncheon last year at work. Who knows why I had two yards of the blue cotton that I used as a lining, but it worked out perfecly. I LOVE the African print so I'm glad that I'll be able to carry it around more often than I wear the dress (which I still declare a dud, but wore last week anyway).

Being the procrastinator that I am, I took until the last day that our comments were due to finish my bag. Of course I wasn't able to finish before the sun went down, so I was stuck taking photos indoors. Thankfully the lighting isn't too terrible thanks to our new recessed lighting!

The slim side pockets will be perfect for holding pens, which seem to always swim around in my purses. The exterior has three pockets and there are three more on the inside, as well as a zippered pocket.

I had so many sewing firsts with the purse! This was definitely the thickest project that I've sewn, due to the stabilizer between the layers. I love how nicely the purse stands up because of it (Sara uses By Annie's Soft and Stable). This is the first time I've ever really worked with hardware, such as the magnetic closure or the strap accessories. I was pleasantly surprised to see that inserting the zipper was essentially the same as inserting the zipper on the collar of the Minoru!

I'm so pleased with the end result that I keep staring at it like it's one of my first sewing projects. Check out Sara's pattern shop for this pattern and the others! I'm excited to see what she comes up with next!

Maximon Embroidery

I finished another embroidery for our embroidery wall! This one is of Maximon, a Mayan folk saint of the people of Guatemala.

Before our trip, we were told that upon arriving in Santiago, a small child would approach us and ask us if we would like to be taken to see Maximon. Our response should be yes! The Maximon figure is passed between houses throughout the year and the local custom is that tourists pay the children to take them to see him, where you give a small offering in exchange for a picture. 

I kept the embroidery pretty simple because I thought it would just get muddied if I included the textures of the scarves.

I think it captures the essence of Maximon without getting distracting. We only need a few more finished before we can start hanging them up!

Mixtape Quilt Top

Greetings, anyone who still has this blog in their reader! I finished the quilt top for the first quilt that I'm keeping for myself earlier this week. This quilt has been two years in the making! I'm using Elizabeth Hartman's Mixtape pattern, the Greatest Hits version. I have had the blocks finished for awhile but I finally got around to piecing them together in the past couple of weeks.

I was so excited to start piecing them that I failed to closely consult the instructions, completely missing the part about adding sashing in between each block. Oops! I didn't even realize this until I was about to sew the rows together. There was no way that I was ripping all of the blocks apart, so I decided to just go with it and see what it looked like all together.

This is a happy ending story, because I think I like it more without the sashing than with! It is definitely chaotic, especially with the crazy 90s-esque Habitat prints, but I feel like leaving the sashing out embraces this chaos even more. I added a white border to give a visual break between the blocks and the border, which will be dark purple.

The quilt top ended up being about 10 inches smaller than if I had followed the pattern, but since I'm just making it as a lap quilt this isn't a huge deal.

I have no idea how I want to quilt this, so I think it's going to go back in the "in progress" bag until I decide. I'm thinking I want to venture outside of my normal straight line quilting, but I'm not sure what would go with this pattern/fabric combination. Any suggestions?

This is Not Route 89

Remember that embroidery wall that I started working on back in April? For our 3-year wedding anniversary in October, I made Nick another element for the wall: an embroidered rendition of a hilarious, yet helpful, sign we encountered somewhere in Utah on our roadtrip last year.

The helpfulness of it came in because we thought we were on Route 89! Apparently to stay on the route you have to make a left turn at a traffic light, and in our search to find a lunch spot, we missed the turn. It's one of our favorite memories from the trip, making it a perfect candidate for the embroidery wall.

Happy 2013!

Even with my lack of attention to last year's goals, I can't resist making a few goals for the coming year. What can I say, I'm a list kind of girl! For the most part, I decided to go less specific this year so as to not limit the goals.

1) Make some things for charity.
I'll start with making those two quilts that I had intended to make last year, but I don't want to limit myself to only those two items. In 2011, I had fun making small things for charity, such as birthing kits that were sent to Haiti and a quilt block that was to be part of a larger quilt for injured soldiers. Small projects help just as much as larger projects, so I'll be on the lookout for those opportunities as well.

2) Use my camera more often.
Back in 2011, Nick and I bought fancy shmancy cameras to bring with us on our Great Western Adventure. Although I love this camera, I somehow managed to barely use it in 2012. I'm not sure how this happened, but this year I am going to make a conscious effort to use the camera and continue to try and learn how to use all of the fancy settings. Here's hoping for more (and better) shots like this in the new year.

3) Learn how to reupholster.
In March 2012 (I can't believe it's been that long), Nick and I bought our very first brand new couch, and ever since then I've intended to start reupholstering our hand-me-down chairs and ottomans. To make this whole process easier, Nick got me some upholstery tools for Christmas! We're still not sure what color/pattern we want the chairs to be, but this needs to happen. Although the room already looks so different because of new floors and lamps (don't worry, I'll share before and after pictures of our renovation once it's completed), I want this view to be completely different by this time next year.

 

4) Knit something new.
Up until now, all of my knitting has been in the shape of scarves. I've knitted Nick a scarf, myself a scarf, a scarf for a co-worker, 14 scarf-like panels for an afghan, scarf-like panels for Baby G's blanket, and scarves for my mom, sister, and mother-in-law for Christmas (which I also completely forgot to take pictures of). That's 21 scarves/scarf-like items if you're keeping count. I'd say, at this point, I'm pretty comfortable with scarf knitting and it's time to try something new. I have the supplies for the Aidez sweater, which I actually started but stopped because I think I messed up somewhere in the first few rows. I'm going to revisit that but I'm not getting too specific with the goal because I just want to try something new knitting-wise. If I end up knitting a hat or learning how to knit in the round, all the better.

5) Continue to live healthier.
This is kind of a catch-all goal, which includes, but is not limited to: exercising regularly, eating well, keeping a garden, and cooking more instead of eating out. Nick and I loved cooking and baking before, but now that we have a brand new kitchen, it is so much more fun, even cleaning up. We've been cooking and baking our way through our Christmas break and that trend will continue this year. This past week alone we've made chili, biscuits, tuna ceviche, pizza, chicken tortilla soup, vanilla bean ice cream, filet mignon, french fries, and a salted caramel apple pie, all from scratch. OK, some of those items aren't the healthiest of foods, but at least they were made from scratch without any preservatives. Now that we can access all of our wedding gifts easily, there shouldn't be any excuse for not continuing to plow through our many cookbooks. It'll be even better when we can use items from our garden in our meals!


So that's my big list. I still want to sew and embroider regularly, but refrained from setting any concrete goals because I know that my time is going to be limited because of grad school and I'll want to be able to pick up whatever project I'm in the mood for at any given time.

Hopefully I'll have more success with these goals than 2012's!

I was supposed to be working toward goals?

I can hardly believe that another year has gone by! This year didn't turn out to be quite as productive as I would have liked, sewing/crafting-wise. I guess I should have revised my goals in April when I decided to start taking classes online and study for the crazy hard certification exam that I just took a few weeks ago, but I apparently have completely unrealistic expectations of what I can accomplish in my free time. That being said, here's a recap of my goals for 2012.

1) Make two quilts for charity.
This is the one I'm most disappointed to not accomplish. I didn't even start them! My original plan was to whip these up in September and October, but that didn't happen because during that time I was busy studying for my exam and any extra time I had was spent making gifts for my adorable new niece.

2) Say no to new fabric purchases.
Due to my lack of sewing time, this one was an easy accomplishment. The only new fabric that I bought was for the two knit dresses that I made during my sewing classes, and I only bought that fabric because I didn't have any other knit fabric in my stash. I was able to use a lot of cute fabric that I already had for the gifts for my niece and was super pumped that I made her entire quilt using only fabric from my stash! My stash is still  unruly and insanely large, so I'll still be focusing on completing the many projects for which I already bought fabric.

3) Make one quilt for myself.
I actually did start this quilt! All of the blocks are pieced and stacked in the order that I want to sew them for the quilt top. They have sat in this nice, neat pile since August. The good news is that I'm still just as excited about this quilt as I was when I picked out the fabric in May 2011 (ugh.)

4) Learn how to knit in the round.
The furthest that I got with this goal was to buy a book on how to knit in the round. I did pick up a circular needle to knit Baby G's blanket, so at least I have the tools that I need to start getting going on this.

5) Beat our time in the Broad Street Run/exercise regularly every week.
I'd say that this was half accomplished. Nick and I did beat our Broad Street Run time by running a whole 10 minutes faster than we did last year, finishing in 1 hour and 45 minutes! And to celebrate, we decided that this would be our last year running. Ha! We love running the actual race, but the time it takes to train is just too much to commit to, especially now that I'll be going back to grad school again starting in January. So we're ending on a high note, which is good timing since this year they're switching to a lottery system because of how quickly it has sold out in the past couple of years. It would be a bummer if only one of us got selected to run. Don't worry, we'll still be running our many 5ks throughout the year.

I consider this goal to be half accomplished because my daily exercising dropped off in the last quarter of this year. In September I got smacked with a brutal sinus infection that lasted for weeks and then our home renovation/cramming for my exam came into full swing and somehow we ended up at the end of December and I haven't exercised regularly in months. The good news is that I haven't really gained any weight, just lost most of my muscle mass, so at least I still have a youthful metabolism on my side. I know that it is fleeting though, so I'll be back in the gym starting tomorrow.

Even though I had a poor showing as far as my goals are concerned, I did accomplish a few unplanned things this year. I grew a pretty decent first-time garden, but somehow managed to not take any proper photos of it. The tomato plants fared the best, growing crazy big and producing tomatoes well into October.  Forgive me for the sad phone photo. The plants ended up about two feet taller than this picture.

The second best performers were the wildflowers that I planted behind our patio fence. They were tall and beautiful when in bloom and I managed to take only one single phone photo of them. Craziness!

The herbs grew third best, although I don't have any photos of them at their biggest. Here they are when sprouting.

I also tried to grow spinach (which I got a few leaves from), a lettuce mixture, strawberries, and red onions, but none of them grew well. I'll be trying a new spot for the strawberries next year, but I think I'll be passing on the rest.

And of course, as I have mentioned a dozen times already, I completed an online certificate of courses and PASSED my certification exam. Thankfully all of that hard work and studying and neglecting my many hobbies paid off and I can now add three letters after my name in my email signature. Just kidding. It's a good certification to have for my career.

I'm so happy that 2012 ended on a positive note! I'll be back tomorrow with my plans for 2013. Have a safe and happy New Year's Eve!

Gifts for Baby G

I’m back! I can’t believe I made it to Christmas break. The last few months have been madness, in between taking online classes, studying like a crazy person for a certification exam, and renovating the first floor of our house. But now my classes are done, I passed the certification exam (which was very exciting since it only has a 58% pass rate!) and the renovation is almost finished (the kitchen backsplash and the painting still needs to be done after the break. I'll share pics soon). And, more importantly, we’re officially on Christmas break until January 2^nd!

I haven’t done much sewing since Halloween, when our house started being ripped apart and my hardcore studying for the exam started. But I did get some sewing done before Halloween to make sure I was ready to welcome our new baby niece into the world!

For my sister-in-law’s shower, I made a simple quilt entirely from fabric that was in my stash!

It’s a pretty simple pattern but I love how happy it is, especially those owls and polka dots on the back!

 

I am such a sucker for fruit prints too.

I also made the usual giraffe toy and tag blanket with the leftover fabric. A quilt, giraffe, and tag blanket are starting to be my signature gift for new mothers!

To greet baby G in the hospital, I made a knitted baby blanket courtesy of the pattern from The Purl Bee.

 

I love how simple it is and how plush it feels. Plus it can be machine washed and dried!

I’ve been looking forward to Christmas break for so long that I can’t believe it’s here! Lots of cooking, baking, crafting, reading, and relaxing are in store for the next week or so. Even though I’m starting some online courses in January, I expect to be back more often than I have been to update you on what I’m working on! Here’s to the start of a new year!