Did I tell you I'm in a quilting bee?

By going to the Los Angeles Modern Quilt Guild meetings, I've met somegals who've formed a modern online quilting bee. Here are the submissions I made for my first two months' assignments... I love the orange and grey color combo and the other (grey and patchworky) square is part of a spiderweb quilt - (look it up on flickr... the end result is beautiful!)... I really want to make one now!
I have a few months to decide my color scheme and pattern before having everyone sew for me... Lots of time to think...

Spring Ruffle Top Dress (#2 of 3 for the week)

Still a little too chilly to wear the dress like a sundress, but here's the dress which is the elongated top with a ruffle attached.

Spring swingy top (1 of 3 in a week!)

This week I've been following through on a idea I've had for a year... Remember when I made the green spring ruffle top and a matching dress for Mimi last May? (will post that later)...

I just love that tutorial (found on Sew Mama Sew) and after making a dress that I wore in Italy which looked similar, but was fussy and not fun to make, I thought, "I need to revisit the swingy top with some fun variations... No ruffles, no contrast, longer like a dress..."

So I spent all last weekend working on those ideas. The weather isn't cooperating for me to wear them as spring tops yet, so today I found a way to wear one of them. This red one is made with some fabric Amy sent me from Thailand.... It's been in my stash for a while and I'm so happy to have the perfect use for it.

Pajama scarf

Tonight mimi's favorite jammies broke. (tears ensued) The zipper was not to be fixed... So I cut out two long strips and turned them into ascarf that won't ever be outgrown.
"Now I have a FAVORITE scarf!"

Socialite Dress

This week's project was Anna Maria Horner's Socialite Dress. Tif came over and we worked on them together, making the major mistakes on mine and then doing hers. =) We both finished ours yesterday and were planning on wearing them today, I told her she should not plan on running into me, we'll look ridiculous!

We used the measurements on her website for not just the finished garment size, but the actual body size (which isn't mentioned on the pattern itself) and both of us opted for the Large. I used a heavyweight Amy Butler fabric and found it doesn't look good belted as I'd planned to wear it. Tif's is a lighter weight fabric and she found a belt she's happy wearing with it. At first, though I enjoyed most of the sewing part (didn't like doing the rather fussy neckline), I didn't like the fit at first - so I cheated and cut two inches out of the back of the dress around 11pm last night. I like it now.

A highlight is that the dress has pockets - which I've never sewn before and rather enjoy having on the dress.

I also had intended to make it longer but spent some time on Flickr last night looking at other people's versions of the dress and figured that it looked less like a housedress when it was shorter and cuter.

These pics were taken by my 4 and 5 year olds. Not too bad after a little editing.

Our Easter pics

The past two days in Los Angeles have been summer weather - we spent today having a spring break lemonade stand with the kids and yesterday included a trip to the beach, but Easter weekend was very "spring-like" and I think we're headed that way tomorrow, too... Here are some sweet pics from our weekend.

Sewing in the car

There's a first for everything. Today in between having 2 of my nieces over for a spring break sleepover, "sponsoring" a lemonade stand and generally being crazy Auntie Lala... I'm sewing in the car. I told my sister that I'm trying to be the auntie I couldn't be over the last few tired months. So today I'm carting around 4 kids between 4-6.5 years old. (getting lots of awesome looks) In my 4 and a half down minutes in the car, I'm working on the final (hand stitched) portions of a dress pattern (Anna Maria Horner's socialite dress)... Hope to finish it today and wear it tomorrow.

Bergamot outing

We visited daddy today at one of his offices and since we were in Santa Monica, and it was spring break, and mommy was craving the green mint lemonade you can only get at bergamot station... Well... I pressed our luck and we had a great outing. We practiced our "museum walking" in the tiny non-threatening galleries (we only visited 2) and saw some art that actually really inspired the kids. Mimi wants to go home and draw "right now"! And we didn't have any tantrums or mishaps, we were even complimented on good behavior by a curator...
And I got my mint lemonade.

The design director and art

Mimi looked at this just now and asked, "hey mom! Where is the other half of her?" I explained, well, mommy's friend, Tori, made it for me... It's inspired by a picture mommy took (show her the pic)... "so then, that's you?"

Salt and pepper shakers

How sweet are these? They just arrived at my house (via www.PotteryBarn.com)