Hello Friends!

How's it goin' at your house? I've been crazy busy prepping for a craft day at my church. Making costumes... that aren't finished yet. Stressing cause I lost a PIF... then excited cause I finally found it! I'm late on those by the way, how can someone be late when they have 365 days? Good question, I'll think about it.

In the meantime, here's a little pillow set I made out of some Valori Wells, Moda dots, and a few other pieces I can't remember the names of. By the way this is my first truly wonky quilted piece. What do you think?


I love the little birdie pillow. That's Katie Hennagir Designs, Chirp! for Robert Kauffman So cute! And now, it belongs to Catania :) Happy Birthday!


I don't know about you but I'm off to go wipe some runny noses and calm the crying hordes! Happy Sewing!

The Online Quilter's Market!

I posted a tutorial a little while ago on the Online Quilters Market!
This is a site created by the Missouri Star Quilt Co. Crew that allows quilters the opportunity to display tutorials, reviews, and fun new quilt happenings :)

By participating here it's your chance to be a star! There are some great things going up already... such as... my broken breakfast tutorial! I'd love it if you could go and vote up my post!

The great thing for anyone who posts is, once a post gets to 20 votes you get a gift certificate to the MSQC shop! Who doesn't want to get paid for blogging! There are lots of posts that go up over there but the really good ones deserve to be noticed so on top of the gift card a post with atleast 20 votes also gets posted on the MSQC blog for all of there readers to see and then come see you! It's a win for everyone!

So go help me out and then post your own! Have fun!

I love inspiration!

I follow a girl you may know, Nova from a cuppa and a catch up, and she just reminded me how much I love inspiration! Check out this inspiration trail!

It started here, with a wall hanging from liesl at disdressed...
It's gorgeous and understandably inspired the wonderful people at House on Hill Road
Then House on Hill Road created this one which inspired Nova...
Finally Nova from a cuppa and a catch up posted this inspiring set of blocks,
I love the little birdie in the tree and I have some of those bunnies in the star (random piece of fabric that just gathered it's self into my hands, during some random fabric shopping trip) that I have been trying to figure out what to do with! I love them.

In fact, I am inspired by all three blocks. What a fun trip I had following the trail, it's all about the joy of the hunt! The inspiration moment!

I think I'm gonna have to try something new!

Back in the swing of things, from Far Far Away

So glad school is started and... not.
It's been crazy busy the last 2+ weeks since the start of school and just before it :) But I'm forcing myself back into my sewing (should that require forcing? I think not!) with a baby shower gift! I've been dying to use this Heather Ross Far Far Away fabric that I got at quilt market last fall! And since my wonderful friend had a beautiful baby girl I was reveling in the perfect moment and put this together yesterday!

I love the fairy tale images Heather created! I really want to get some Far Far Away 2 I have a friend with some in home dec weight... aah! It's so pretty :D
It's a changing pad so of course I had to give it something soft and fluffy for the backing!

I've got a boy one I'm finishing up for my etsy shop and then I'll have to see about finding some more minky and chenille backing fabric!
*thinking in your best fairytale accent*
Alas, a girl's work is never done!
Fair thee well my good friends. I wish thee much joy and sewing! Or joy in sewing :) which ever comes first!

Sew many distractions!

Summer is officially over according to the school calendar :) and I'm quite excited to be home with my 2 little people underfoot. I've done a little sewing recently, along with some roller coaster riding, anniversary celebrating (in-laws :) ), party planning, landscaping, phone shopping (haven't bought one yet), and preparing for school.
Sewing was by far my favorite.
(Roller coasters might be in the running too, shhh... )

I have a couple things I'm pretty excited about, first
-I'm finally making progress on my pif! I'm using every bit of my 365 days *blush*
-I did a great little embroidery for my in-laws for their anniversary! Along with 280 reasons we love them! It was their 40th anniversary so we did 40 reasons (or close to that amount :) ) we love them from each of the grandkids. They're all scrolled up behind a snap closing pocket on the back of the embroidery.
-And last this is a swap block I made a dozen of on the last day of summer!
They are a pattern of my own design. They had to go together quickly and I think I'm going to keep working on the pattern to fine tune it but I like the colors and design!

Inspired by the hunt!

I found these owls over the summer at a random garage sale. They were rusty, iron, and plain,

and I still liked them!

So I bought high gloss, heat resistant spray paint and now I love them!
I've also picked up a couple aqua fabrics for a swap I'm participating in!
My owls are excited :D

Yay!!

I have never been so happy to be posting!

I've been working on this quilt for more than a year now. I made it last summer during my first, eye opening, self hosted, quilt along. Phew. and then it sat on my shelf. and sat some more till last month I decided I would finish it no matter what well that didn't inspire me as much as it should have and it still took me another month to finally finish it! The good thing about having a project on your machine that isn't getting done very quickly is that you get a lot of other things done!

I've rearranged bedrooms, and visited friends, and helped a friend clean out her art room, and more. All because the projects I wanted to sew on I couldn't because this was on the machine!

I'm thrilled to have it done though and I love the way it looks! I love the hidden cars and the trees and houses!

I even added a sun next to one of the smaller houses :D Can you find it? I'm excited to have something that my little boy will be able to play on and that my girls can have pretend barbie adventures with! I just hope they're as excited as I am! Oh well, I'll enjoy tracing the cobblestones while I eat popcorn if no one else does :D

I'm in the trenches.

I've decided I have to finish my log cabin quilt.

*sigh*

I still love it. I'm just not excited about it. And pebble quilting takes a long time.

Ok I'll quit whining. But next time I am sending my big quilts to the long arm wonderful people that I love *cough* MSQC *cough* It will be wonderful!

Now it's time to stop dreaming and stop quilting. Oh and I can't find my cameras cable to get my pictures off my camera. No worries I will use my old picture it still looks the same. A little further down the quilt but as a picture. About the same.

Oh I hope this goes quickly.

See you on the other side!

It's moving back in day!

I've been having a lovely weekend!

I hope you have too! That would make it all the lovely-er *I'd raise my eyebrow here if I could (I try but I don't know if I really succeed... besides who really needs the eyebrows I know lovely-er isn't a word anyway.)*

I've been off galavanting around with the lovely ladies of the Missouri Star Quilt Co. We've had a great weekend! I took my sewing stuff, then left it at my brother-in-laws house so I couldn't use it. Dang.

So after a weekend of sewing for my mother (not me) and playing with her and my sisters around Kansas City (this is mom being kidnapped, sort of, for the trip and loving it!)

I am now home unpacking and re-moving in to my sewing space.

That's got to be the worst part of a sewing trip is packing and unpacking everything you thought you might possibly need or use!

I have bags of projects to re-sort, supplies to replace, and plugging the machine back into it's permanent spot. Which is bigger deal than it sounds. It involves hanging cords just so and hoping they don't slip as I climb over tables and lay across them so I can reach between the wall and a desk to hopefully get the cord if it's still in the right place so I can plug it in. I need an extension cord. :)

After I finish moving back in I'm finishing up some curtains for my girls and then maybe a project or two that was in the bag of to work on last weekend :)

One other super cool thing happened last weekend,

my pattern was the daily deal at the MSQC website!

I'm sad I didn't get to tell you about it because I was out of town and I don't have a laptop but don't be to sad as I am developing new patterns I will be continuing to send them over there and we will keep seeing more Designing Happy on the Daily Deal site!

What do you call this shape?

I don't even know.

But I like it and I cut almost a hundred of them which puts me with a little over one hundred done. I need 240 I think. I cut until I ran out of steam a seam, so, I'll be heading to the quilt shop soon I think!
I can't wait to start putting blocks together!

Here's the link to my last post about my lovely Arcadia blocks and the fun pattern they will soon be :D

Happy quilting!

Little Red and Nicey Jane are on there way to Market

Ha if only.

That started as a childrens rhyme joke and then I capitalized Market and my brain went straight to Minnesota. I'm not even going to explain what the joke would have been it's just depressing now. At this point I may or may not be going to market, though it seems to be leaning towards not.
Sad huh.

On a happier note, let me show you my cute swap things.I made these for my wonderful swap friend. She's amazing and she was looking for some fun things for her home I chose a sewing machine cover and then threw together this Nicey Jane pillow. It wasn't one of her color combo choices but she had the color's in her inspiration pics and everyone loves Nicey Jane right?

Here's a close up of Little Red herself. I love it it's a drawing done by my very good friend Catania I think she could sell some of her artwork as embroidery patterns. She's great, so is Red.
I also love her gnome friends :) Tiny gnomes make life happier I think.

This is part of the swap gift I received. It's awesome!!! I don't know how I managed to get some one with just the right stash or maybe just the right fabric taste for me! But I now have several projects I want to do that involves finding some of the fabrics she used :) It's way to super cute! And the pillow she gave me was amazing (go check out all my pics on flickr then check out her's :) ) The front is adorable & the backs blue is perfect for my living room! She used a daisy chain fabric and a solid gray to pair it with on the back and I don't know how I got so lucky but it's really one of my favorites!

Last, I was asked about the mailbox I said I was building...
Well it killed my wrist, almost. I can still sew :) but here it is in all it's not perfectness what can I say but I'm sure glad I can still sew. I'm a lot better at that.If I could not sew we would be having some big issues. As it is, it only makes it hard to do push-ups which I'm not really sure I'm upset about :)