Tuesday, August 17, 2010

praising the sewing gods

not sure exactly how long it had been since i had sewn before sunday. well over three months, i believe.
when i say "not sewn" i mean just that. haven't touched a needle. at ALL.

so when i finally got my new sewing room all (well, mostly) organized last weekend i did so mentally preparing myself for a couple of frustrating first "back to sewing" sessions.

much to my surprise, the past three days of sewing have gone incredibly smoothly! the sewing gods must be forgiving gods.
i expected for my machine to meet me with a good bit of anger in her face and thought she'd let her hurt feelings after having been left abandoned for so long out on me. instead, i feel a little like the lost son who's welcomed home with a fancy party and lots of good food.
so i'm thanking whatever powers are in charge of lending me such wonderful creative karma! praise to the sewing gods!


first on the (now longer than ever) sewing to do list was trying my best to catch up with the bee europa quilting bee. i had missed three full months there and getting all those wonderful sewers their fabric back, preferably pieced together perfectly, has been my number one priority.

so i dove right back in working on the perfect "getting back into the swing of things" project, some totally free form blocks made from gorgeous (but slightly challenging to work with) linen and what i assume must be a linen/hemp blend?
here's the result. oh, yes, the pictures in the post are going to suck. germany has been acting like november the past few days. no sunshine whatsoever.

P8173396



next on the bee list were these two blocks for a gorgeous spider web quilt by kaffe fassett .
this is where i for sure thought i was setting myself up for failure. the contrary! i absolutely loved working on these blocks and it's further strengthened my plan to make a spider web quilt for our bedroom some time soon. i have to admit i'm at least a wee bit proud of how nicely these turned out. the centers aren't a perfect match but i got those little corners to look a lot neater than i ever thought i'd be capable of. so that's pretty good. given how i haven't been practicing at all.

P8173393



last night before going to bed i got out the next quilting bee envelope and read through the instructions. the plan was to work on these blocks today. but after a very rough night and out of the ordinary morning i realized i was just feeling way too puffy eyed and cloudy headed to work on somebody else's project today.

when i came back from dropping joon off at kindergarten, i found a yucky old pile of fabric on our front stoop. it was the seat of mika's little doll stroller. it had been half torn off for a while and eventually fell off altogether a couple of weeks ago. that thing was always ugly, navy blue with little brown bear claws, and when i bought it for joon the plan was to immediately pimp it with some nice fabric. as life goes that never happened. but then this morning these stroller remnants basically jumped my leg on the way into the house and i thought "well, maybe this is what i should be doing today!"
there's no before picture, but here's the after...

P8173383

P8173381



ironically, when i grabbed the stroller frame to bring inside and try the new seat on i realized that the frame, too, is broken. so i suppose i could've just bought a new stroller altogether. yup.

mika is in love with her old new stroller though and i feel pretty good knowing i'm still able to whip up my own creations, too.

joon was sad though that she didn't get anything and i had to promise her i'd make her something special tomorrow morning. ideas?