Recent Small Projects

I became interested in sewing about 6 months ago, but the thought of making a queen sized quilt right away makes me a little nervous.  I've been practicing with scraps and such until I could get up the confidence to actually sew something real.  So here are some of the small projects I've completed in the last month or so. 

This is my first fully completed project was a pin cushion caddy from a pattern in Anna Maria Horner's Seams to Me.  I made it in an evening (probably 3-4 hours) at the beginning of the month.  I was a little intimidated by the amount of hand sewing (since I'm pretty bad at it!), and sewing curves, but I just had to have one after I saw pictures of them on Flickr.  It's not perfect, but I think it turned out pretty nice.

Ryan calls it my "beachball" because of the color scheme.  Some of the fabrics are from the scrap packs I bought at Hawthorne Threads and a few are from my stash.  I really love the gray Bella on the bottom :)

I also finished two swap items this week.  The first one is a Herringbone Hotpad.  My old Singer that I bought used on Craigslist had a hard time handling the extra layers of batting so I ended up hand stitching the binding so it took a little longer than 60 min!  Overall I'm pleased with the results and I hope my partner likes it.  Both of my partners had the same color preferences, so since I had some extra herringbone sewn I decided to use that for the center of the mug rug too.  The hotpad is 10" square, and the mugrug is 5x7".  These were my first experiences quilting and binding :)  it was a lot easier than I was anticipating.

Finally, now that I feel a little more comfortable with the process of piecing and quilting, I decided that I can allow myself to cut into my Flea Market Fancy stash.  This is the fabric line that inspired me to start quilting.  I haven't mixed this line in with the rest of my stash because I just love looking at the entire line together.

 I'm about 3/4 of the way through piecing the top using the Random Reflections pattern.

I'm hoping to finish up the table runner when I get back from vacation, I'm still debating how I want to back it.  I think I will make the placemats more monochromatic.  I will definitely share when i finish.

I'm trying to get more involved in the sewing community on Flickr, and sewing groups on swap-bot.com.  Maybe one of these days I'll actually finish a quilt -- I gotta say, I'm really tempted by the #xplusalong especially after seeing Holly's stunning quilt.  Hopefully I can be disciplined enough to stick with the blogging.  There are so many inspiring women (and a few men) whose blogs I have been reading for months, I'd love to be able to contribute something meaningful to that community one day :)