Tada! The ScrappyTripAlong quilt

It's not finished yet... Still have to baste, quilt and bind this puppy, but the long awaited top is complete and a certain little girl is pretty excited about that.
Next on the agenda (that is, in addition to getting my gear together for 3 straight days of classes and learning and fun with my girls at Quiltcon... Slumber party!!) is loads and loads of quilting. Both kids are currently awaiting their finished quilts for their beds. And I've got another one basted and in line.
I realized tonight that before I can get into some new creative ideas, I need to clear the decks a little... Get some of these works in progress off my table.

Then who knows what may happen?
I'd like to play with some patterns a friend gave to me. Maybe try something from one of my zillion books. Definitely need to make more curvy quilts, for sure. Gotta keep cranking....

My sewing machine

Sure it's just a sewing machine. But then again, it's not. After all... I am actually the owner of 6 other machines. (3 antique Singers, a Pfaff that I hate, a trusty little roller skate of a Kenmore, and even Mimi's Hello Kitty Janome). None of those machines are really capable of what this new (to me) Janome 6600 can do. There are loads of features that have made it a favorite of many of my friends for years... There's a reason it's been my dream machine.
But this machine is far more than features to me. It was Yolanda's machine. Her dream machine, too. She asked her family to give it to me as a gift, as a memory of our friendship when she passed. The weight of that is big to me. Out of every other person in the world, she chose me to give this to. What can I do but feel the honor and love when I sit down to sew? My sweet friend, who was so much fun even to visit in the hospital... I'd rather be sewing on my roller skate Kenmore to have her back, but she is gone. Her memory is very alive with me, though. I put scraps of her fabric in every project I make these days. I treasure the conversations she and I had. There seems to be more aqua and yellow in my world than there used to be. I check in with her fiancé every few weeks - he's doing really well, as much as he misses her. (What a gem she had in him.)
Even writing this, my heart aches. It's funny how much a little machine can carry love and history, creativity and sadness and joy, all wrapped up in a bunch of parts.

Little things basket

I've been meaning to make a little basket to keep my makeup in (the sewing tools here are just modeling). Then tonight after a rough afternoon with the kids, my sewing machine was looking very attractive to me. Something I could control!
An hour later, this little basket existed. Sometimes it's the little things that help us navigate the big things.

Knitting again

After a 3-4 year hiatus, I've picked up knitting again. Encouraged by my friends to join Ravelry.com, and wanting to make a few hats, I picked up some scrap (nasty) yarn that I had lying around. I quickly made 3 hats since Jan 1. Okay... I'm hooked (pardon the pun) again. Then my friend, Lori, invited myself and another friend to come pick through her monstrously large yarn stash (NOT NASTY! Gorgeous!) and I brought home a haul of beautiful projects-to-be.
My next project is a knit cap for J though I have already pulled out the first FIVE attempts. (Sigh) I'm not discouraged yet, though. I'll keep you posted.

It's done! It's done! Yolanda's final quilt

Well. Here it is. The final Yolanda quilt. All completely hand quilted and heading off to her fiancé this coming week. It was very important to her that this was hand quilted and so when Chris asked me if I would finish it for him, I couldn't help but to say "of course".
I've been working on it for months.
Yolanda, I hope you can see this! I know you love it.

Sketch and music

Listening to a little Mumford today.

Five things you may not know about me

This happened on Instagram recently, so I thought I would post it here and add a little more too... :)

Five things you may not know about me

1- I spent a summer doing archeology in Israel.
2-I have permanent eyeliner tattooed on
3- I once used my rusty Spanish skills to get a Spanish man who knew no english through customs in Thailand (after a 4 hour layover and flight spent talking together)
4- I had a huge scar on my forehead as a kid that was so bad it was usually the first thing I had to explain to other kids
5- there was a 4 year period of time where I wore black almost exclusively (I did it to avoid the suits my corporate company wanted me to wear). I remember the first brightly colored shirt I bought. (Funny fact if you know me now and see how much color I wear)

Five more random facts...
1- I was born on Leap Year day. Yup. February 29th. Which means I turned 9 last year and don't have a birthday this year.

2- I refuse to wear sweats or shorts anywhere other than working out if I'm out of the house. But if you catch me 10 minutes after being home, I'm in pajamas with my hair in a scrunchie.

3- I grew up in suburban Los Angeles in the beach cities. Moved to Chicago for 5 years when we first got married and had kids, and now we live in urban Los Angeles. We don't think we will ever move again.

4- I spend a lot of time sewing, but I really really really just want to make and sell my paintings and collages. Haven't ever sold a quilt, because they would be too expensive to sell, but have sold some fine art. I often entertain thoughts of doing another show someday.

5- I'm crazy good at the huge laminating machine at my kids' school. The TAs tease me about it.  I'm also the lunch lady on Tuesdays and if you saw me yesterday, I was not only doing both of those, I mopped the stairs and swept the entire hall. (Life in a charter school ain't glamorous, but we love it!)

Yolanda's last quilt

This is the final quilt for Yolanda. It's the one I basted for her and brought to the hospital for her to hand-quilt in her bed. She didn't get very far on it, but she carried it with her to every room she had for months. I think each stitch must have been hard to complete.
Her fiancé asked me to finish it for him and I gladly took it on. I've been working on it for about a month now. I'm very close to finishing it. It wasn't finished when I took these pics of it in the snow in Mammoth, but they were so pretty I had to take them. I'll post more when I am done.

WIP - scrappy trip along

We were up in the mountains away from my sewing machine for New Years. I brought hand sewing and quilting projects along. (And knitting)
...and then the weird Instagram phenomenon knows as #scrappytripalong happened.... I kept joking with J, "it's Jan 2 and I've already missed out on the biggest thing of the year!" One or two bloggers decided to use up scraps and make this fun, fast quilt. Then everyone else joined in and there were suddenly hundreds of pics all over Instagram. So when I got home, I decided now was the time to chop into my treasured AnnaMaria Horner fabrics - ones I have bought and basically just looked at for years. One from this line, one from that line. (Was I ever going to use them?) well, my friend and bee-mate Janice, at Betteroffthread, decided this was the time to use up her AMH collection (in supersoft voile) and when I saw that I knew I wanted to use my hoard. Of course, I didn't have enough for a whole quilt, so I supplemented with lots of other complements and solids too... And managed to get 16 blocks sewn together that first week of January. Mimi immediately claimed the quilt-to-be for her new bed - which meant the size was gonna be a full size quilt.
I'm only 1/2 done now, but you can see how colorful and fun this is going to turn out. It's funny that an old fashioned quilt pattern would get a sudden massive resurrection due to social media. Go figure.

Mimi is so creative she makes me cry

Recently, my pal Amy came in town to visit with her newborn baby girl for a visit. Mimi took one look at the tiny baby and said, "mom, can I go sew? I have an idea" ("are you inspired?") "Yes, can I?" ("Of course")

20 minutes later she emerged from the studio with a t-i-n-y bag. She explained it would make a perfect sleeping bag for baby Nadia. Amy graciously explained that Nadia would probably be sleeping with her mom in the bed, but thank you so much!

Then a few weeks later, Amy sent this email to Mimi:

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Hi mercy!
Nadia is growing so fast that she is already too big for the nice sleeping bag you made for her. But we are going to use it for her monkeys ;) here's a picture. Thank you!!
Love, 
Amy, Johnny and Nadia 

Sent from my iPhone