Fruit Cocktail Tree

Today we went out and picked the last of the summer's treats from the fruit cocktail tree. It was a battle with the birds for yummy territory, and they got away with a lot, but I believe this bowl proves we won.
(I realize i haven't been posting as regularly lately... Chalk it up to the fact that I'm "doing the summer thing" - driving the kids all over and in my off time, I'm doing small organizational house projects. We are getting ready to step back into foster care *PRAY FOR US!* and I believe I might be nesting a little)

Quilt - Made for baby Cade

My pal, Christy, gets lots of love here for being a fun and talented creative pal to me... This week was the baby shower for her long-awaited precious little "snowflake" baby. 

Since Christy is one of my sewing pals who has recently taken on quilting, like me, she had to be the recipient of a special baby quilt, right? 

I had a lot of fun making this for her... 

I make mistakes - free charms

Hey. I make a lot of mistakes. The ones that are the biggest bummer is when I make a mistake while hand stamping a sterling silver charm. It feels like throwing money away. And though I've been making these for over 4 years now, I still make mistakes.
I'd love to get rid of these. Do you know anyone who wants one? Know someone with one of these names?
Send me an email and I'll send it to you.
In case you can't read the names in the pics, they are: ELIA, GRACE, BLAKE, ANDREW, HOPE, BRODY, NOAH, and SIENNA.
Just be warned, they aren't my top quality or I'd sell them...

Just desserts - bee happy quilting bee

I love being a part of a quilting bee. Every month I get a homework assignment that challenges me creatively. Each month I get my package in the mail from my bee partners and I have a small amount of creative panic (the good, deadline kind... Deadlines motivate me... In my corporate design days they were my best creative motivation.) I'm always nervous also that i will have the worst square in a quilt and the motivation to not let the gal of the month down also really inspires me to think through what I'm making.
This months' squares are for Lori, a very creative and vibrant artist who is a really inspiring person to follow on flickr (link later). She's also super nice. So I loved getting such a creative assignment, using these yummy Anna Maria Horner GoodFolks fabrics... And I did my best to make some yummy treats for her Just Desserts quilt.
I used a little appliqué, a lot of piecing and fussy cutting, and as much color as possible. (I cant wait to see the other squares for the quilt... So far I've seen one and it's amazing! What a quilt this will be...)

Vintage Corelle

I was taught growing up to not like Corelle. My mom has a funny lip curl she does when she doesn't like something and Corelle dishes are one of those things deemed worthy of a lip curl.
Still, as I thought about the cute, but very PLASTIC and not so healthy melamine plates we were using for the kids, I knew I didn't want to use them for long. And even though i have to handwash everything, and never microwave plastic, i eventually found the melamine flaking one day and threw out the whole lot.
I went onto eBay that night and bought a bunch of different vintage Corelle dishes in different "clashing" patterns (um, they're from the 70s, everything was brown, orange and yellow... They all match)
Corelle is great. The kids can drop it and it doesn't break like my nice dishes do. You can microwave it, cook it, freeze it and even lose it (it's cheap). And hey... It's got that vintage flair, which I happen to think is nothing to snarl at.... (mom).
... My patterns shown are Indian Summer and Butterfly Gold ...

Bee sampler

So as I've been settling back into life on the ground, making friends with my sewing machine again, I've been catching up on my quilting bee squares that I've been behind on... And while I was doing research on those, i realized that all the partners in my bee are making a quilt-along sampler - where each months blocks get sent to the gal whose they are, but then they make one out of their own fabrics to keep as a reminder of the year. At first I thought that was too much extra work, but then I realized that i would love a keepsake of this experience, so today I decided to catch up on the previous 4 months' blocks. I picked fabrics I knew I would never otherwise use - that's kind of a fun game for me.. (can i use a bunch of fabrics I don't love and make something I do love?)... And here we go.

The next question that i have to figure out is once I run out of these scraps, what will the next blocks bs made of that will coordinate? For me, these are fun challenges that stretch my creative muscles. (and they're great at "busting my stash"!)

Green quilt done

Well, it only took a few months and getting packed on 2 separate vacations to make it to completion, but this green quilt is finally complete. I'm really pleased with it. I actually still love the color palette and don't feel "done" there yet, so we may have a partner quilt in our future. Who's future? I don't know... I still haven't parted with even one of these.

Mimi sewed this on her own

She made the purse, using handstitching and the machine (all by herself) and she even made the video.

Coco In Love goes to Sweet Home Chicago

This may not be a completely "Chicago-style" pic to anyone else, but to me it is highly sentimental and perfectly captures a feel and memory. We took the pic standing right in front of the first place we ever lived in Chicago... A greystone 2-flat in Logan Square. And now you can finally get a good glimpse of my favorite side of my second fave skirt.

Sore throat

All of this travel has left me hanging onto my health by a thread. Last night instead of spending the night sewing, I made myself a spot of "throat coat" tea and spent the evening writing and resting.
This weekend is another family reunion , which leaves me still unable to get settled back into my happy creative patterns until next week. *I really miss my machines!* (though I am planning on bringing the nearly-finished green quilt and it's binding to work on over the weekend). I just hope that i can fight off this impending cold...