my small part

A heartbreaking story with a miraculous ending.  While praying for my dear friend Teresa, I've been working on this picnic quilt to donate to the Healing Maggie Grace Raffle that some sweet ladies have put together.   

Please visit the Healing Maggie Grace blog frequently and if you can please buy a ticket or two or three to help Teresa as she continues to heal.  Isn't this what is so amazing about our blog community?  Coming together to help someone we call friend, even though we've never met.  I love it!

Multiplying Pouches

I seem to have an overabundance of zippers.  Odd, I know.  I can't pass them up when I see them at thrift stores or garage sales.  I remember making a fleece vest for Sydney when she was a baby.  I was so proud of myself and how inexpensively I had produced a wearable garment.  Until I went  to buy the 7" seperating zipper the pattern called for!  So now in my quest to never buy a zipper retail ever again, I snatch them up second hand every chance I get.  My last score was a gallon size ziploc full for $2.  How could I pass that up? :)

Anyway, all that to say that I had too many zippers and needed to use some up.  Hence the multiplying pouches.

I've made a few to give away for prizes at our knitting group...

And a few for myself to use (the other one is already in my bag!)...

And three for baby use someday (a diaper & travel wipes container fit in here)...

And there will probably be more.  I've learned these are much faster to make it you do several at a time.  With all this practice zippers hardly even seem scary anymore! 

Wedding Quilt

Some close friends of ours got married in March.  Do you ever struggle with gift giving at weddings?  Should you stick to the registery, give something personal, or just give up and stick some cash in a card??  I decided that since we were close friends I could forgo the registry list and do something personal.  Plus both the bride and the groom are in their 30's and well established, so I wasn't worried that they desperately needed that cake pan I was going to buy them.  So I made them a quilt!

(Sorry in advance for the bad photos...this was just moments before I shoved it in a box and walked out the door to the wedding!)

The design was inspired by about 10 different quilts I found on flickr.  I knew it needed to be modern, and I wanted the blue/brown combo somehow.  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, and they liked it too!  That's always the scary part, isn't it?

My sister was kind enough to quilt this for me on her quilting frame.  And she even hand sewed the binding for me!  She did an amazing job - I love the free form swirls.

So, did I make this all with stuff I had on hand, saving me tons of money on a gift?  Well, no.  But I'm pretty sure I still spent less than I would have on a store-bought gift and hopefully they will enjoy it much longer than that cake pan.

HELLO!

Hi there! I'm alive! Sorry for the ridiculously long blog break. Lots going on around here and I just seemed to lose my blogging voice in the middle of it all. Then once I was gone for so long, it was hard to really get back into it. But hopefully I'm back. I have lots to share!

First of all - our big news - we are expecting a new baby at our house! And it's a boy! I am due August 10th. We are all very excited.

So, on to the crafting!! I finally made it into my craft room on Monday. I threw open the windows and pulled out some fun springy fabric (vintage pillowcases) to make a small tote for Sydney. She has been crazy about drawing pictures lately, mostly nature inspired things like birds, bugs, trees, etc. So I decided to make a little tote to carry some colored pencils and a drawing notebook with us on trips to the park, the lake, or just the backyard. She loved the idea and the fabric, and insisted on a pocket on the front.