Welcome to another week of running with scissors, sewing over pins, and leaving rotary cutters open. Don’t you love me? Let’s go!

A Happy Belated Valentine’s Day to you– Valentine’s Day is appropriately my sweetheart’s birthday, so that took part of my attention this week. In the spirit of the season, I then threw myself right into Harlow’s birthday quilt.

If you have little kids in your life, this is the perfect quilt project to make a little wall hanging to pull out on those special days. I’m whizzing right through it! The difficult part is some tiny pieces– once you get down to a 1″ cut size, you know you’re in trouble. The row of hearts was like an accordion, but here’s a tip– pin those edges to their adjoining pieces right on your cutting mat. Not only can you straighten the edge easily, but you can ease it right into the correct size.

Here is mine all pinned and ready to stitch–

And in no time, I had the whole layer cake pieced.

I want more of a baby quilt size than a wall hanging, so I’m now stuck waiting for a border and a background fabric. This was a Fig Tree collection from some years ago– Strawberries and Rhubarb? If you know the designer of a fabric, you can usually find something to match, so we’ll see what comes in.

Uh-oh– lots more hearts, upcoming! I’m planning to put a #1 on top of my cake. May will be here before we know it!

Not to leave out our little grandson on-the-way, but I have some reservations about his mushroom quilt. I have never before purchased a kit where the colors are so OFF in the photograph! Those big leaves look like they are three different colors of green, but on the right is what’s included in the kit.

I figured they put the wrong greens in the kit, so I went on Esty and searched for the fabric collection and ordered the lighter green, just to give myself some variety. Guess what I got another half yard of?

The mom-t0-be seems happy enough with it, so off I go. Last year, she gifted me the entire collection of Lori Holt plaids– I hope I didn’t give a bit of a side-eye as I opened it, because it’s a collection you wonder what to do with!

I finally figured it out– any quilt would do well with a bit of gingham, so I’ve already picked out a couple to add some variety that I’m not getting from the original fabric. Ginghams are so perfect for baby quilts, so I also pulled out some pink and red ones for my upcoming Candy Cane Lane start.

On Friday, I had my Sit ‘n Sew class. I’m happy to report that another fourteen Posh blocks are underway, all served up on Dixie plates. I’m all signed up for March’s class. My homework between now and then is to finish these and also cut up the last fourteen. I am really enjoying making some new friends– they are all very interesting people. You never know who you are sitting next to, so open up your ears and eyes! I have a friendly competition going with someone in the class who is also making Posh– I was ahead of her last time, but she made 20 blocks last month! If you have made even one Posh block, you’ll know she really accomplished something and I’ll have to be content to let her win.

I’m working on a new Irish Village for March. This was a monthly series I started last year. Expect to see more Lori Holt ginghams used to finish it– I’m adding a new wooden board display for this set, too.

Here are January and February:

You can also make a soft village with these sets– so cute! Harlow will have a little village to play with, any month of the year.

Look for it later this week.

On the longarm:

Because I just can’t get enough sewing. This is for a friend’s baby, “Vera,” due any minute!

And here’s my hand stitch. Big moment. I finished all the greenery and now I have my choice of what to work on next. I wanted to start these sweet little birds in the trees, but I need more colors. I went to Walmart– I knew they had DMC floss, but they only had about 50! Is this different from other Walmarts? Does your Walmart have them all?

Instead of getting stuck, I searched through my stash to see what I have, and I was able to find about a dozen other colors in the piece. It uses FIFTY in all, so I was bound to have some of them! I started this beautiful red. It was so satisfying to work on something new.

I even counted my way up to the very upper right– last week, you found out how good I am at counting chickens, so I am 100% sure that top red border is in the right place. ❤️

And finally– did you know a needle and thread can be used to fix clothing? If you have friends who have seen your sewing machine out, I’m sure they have already asked you to hem pants!

I’m a hard no on that– but what could I say when my dear SIL brought me his jacket with the tear in it! It wasn’t even on a seam– is a tear ever on a seam?– so my initial thought was to buy a new one. 😂 But wait– this is the “lucky maple sugaring jacket!” I’m glad I understood that before I said anything. So here it is, all fixed.

One of the first things I remember about meeting my husband in high school– he had this cute blue down jacket, and I was standing at my locker admiring the view when I noticed the back of it had a huge machine-darned patch over it. Even in my teens, I knew the difference between fine sewing and production sewing! So how did I handle this mending? I threw it under my machine and zigzagged the heck out of it. It is humbling in later life, how I find myself doing all the things that appeared so wrong to me with my younger eyes.

SIL was so happy to get his jacket backet– he was beaming. My thought– if we can make someone happy that easily, surely we should be doing it more often.

Have a wonderful week!

xox
Carol