Wonder Girl :)

Early in the month, I finished a doll/dress combo for my 2 year old cousin. It was quite stressful and I didn't sleep the night before her party-I was having issues, I made some design changes, etc.
I wanted to make a little Waldorf style doll that she could cuddle, but I didn't just want to make a generic doll-she was going to be Wonder Woman! Abby's mom is obsessed with WW & Abby knows who she is :) Instead of the leotard look, I planned for her to have a star printed skirt...that's when I decided to add a dress. I haven't made a child's dress in FOREVER. I wanted something simple & adjustable, hoping she could grow with it a bit. I printed off the Itty Bitty Dress pattern, found the bodice adjustment for a 3T and went to work.
Here's the finished doll & dress and as a bonus, a smilified pic of the Wonder Girl & her older brother in their "superhero day" outfits for daycare :)

My fun!

I have a bunch of half-finished projects (duh-probably required to be a sewist). When I housesit, I like to take something along to work on because I have no internet access out there.
About a week & a half ago, I was going to have 3 nights of housesitting to look forward to-I knew Olivia's floppy was on the list (my sister hadn't finished the 4th panel yet, but I had a LOT of HSTs to make & trim, so why not?) I also took along the gray/orange/teal brick pathway quilt to work on. I was gonna put those rows together, dangit! :)
I had Olivia's floppy put together (except for the spot where the 4th block would be) by 10pm-9 more hours to fill before I needed to start cleaning up my mess before the housekeeper showed up! (when I housesit, I usually stay up all night because, honestly...it's a bit country out there. Lots of strange noises at night :P)
I started putting together my brick pathway-4 of the 6 pairs had been joined, so I had 4 individual rows to sew. Unfortunately, I didn't plan this well-2 that were left were gonna have matching rectangles next to eachother! So I had to lay out the other 5 sets to see if I could make the pairs into a threesome. After those two rows were added onto established pairings, I had to lay it all out and see if I could get a nice look. One reason I like laying quilts out at this house is the tile floors. There's usually enough room to lay them out without my cat disturbing everything-the dog is a nice, lazy one who sleeps all night :)
I sliced up the rest of my gray solid (I got it CLOSE-only about 1.5" left of the yardage!) and joined everything. I got much better at almost perfectly lining up the bricks across the sashing. Dummy me didn't take pins and really, it wouldn't bother me if they were slightly off :) This was established as "my quilt" quite early on in its development. The twelve columns were bordered by a thin solid gray, then a slightly wider teal dot. I'm not sure what the wider border will be, although I'm tempted to use the teal dot if I can find something gray for another round. Maybe 2" gray print then a 4" teal dot? That would make the borders about 8.5" on all sides. This will definitely be the largest top I would attempt to quilt!

I write so much sometimes, and I'm not quite sure why :) to summarize other housesitting projects: I continued work on my Sugar Pop blocks, I experimented with star blocks using a similar method as the Charming Stars project on MBS, and I finally started to put together blocks from a red/teal disappearing nine patch swap from a few years ago. I'm back & forth if I want to complete this for my sister's best friend. If it wasn't for the block that had the character Olivia (and her name), a crab print (she's from Maryland), and a boat print (she loves everything water), I wouldn't have even considered it. I might discuss pushing this back to either an anniversary or birthday present because I'm already pretty busy for Christmas-I don't know if I should add a queen sized quilt to the list :/

At some point, I'll get this down :)

I tweet constantly, I update Facebook every other week or so-why is it so hard for me to remember to blog? :) With baseball season pretty much over for me (the home season ended on Wednesday), maybe I can get into this more regularly.
For sanity's sake (since I can't place pics properly in Blogger's mobile app), I'll separate all the postables into 2 posts. I'll start with the presents!
After Noah's quilt was finished and I was planning Zach's & Jackson's, my sister asked if I needed any help with the embroidery. She had helped on Noah's and she wanted to feel "useful" again. I ok'd it, then she had a bigger idea-she wanted to make quilts for her best friend's 3 kids. I'm not exactly sure what possessed me to say "yes", but I did :) So I had to design 3 different quilts that would fit 4 or so embroidered panels. Olivia would have pink, Jaylen red & Gabriel green (initially his was blue). It was pretty easy to agree on superheroes for the boys after she saw I picked that as Zach's theme-mine are from a coloring book, hers from chibi versions we found online (simpler & easier for her). Olivia was originally going to get something princessy or Hello Kitty-then she told her mama she wanted to be Darth Vader for Halloween. Bingo-she gets Star Wars :)
My sister's been pretty good at keeping up with her end of the commitment-my part is obviously much harder/more time-consuming. As of today, each boy has 2 embroidered pieces & Olivia's floppy is completed!

For Zach & Jackson-Zach has 2 completed pieces (of 4). I'm sort of designing as I go because the colors are actually very muted for a 3 year old. Originally he was going to have dinosaurs & use the same layout as Olivia, but now his has 20" stars. I'm considering upping his to 6 blocks so it starts as a 40x60 base, but I might stick with the 4 and add a panel with his name on it to add some length. These aren't bed-sized by any means-just a snuggle-in-the-car type.

Design Wall Monday 8-27-12

Busy wall. Nothing is a current priority though...
A doll & dress for my soon to be 2 year old cousin is taking priority this week :) But next week-the bricks sashed with gray *will* be a top. Depending on how long it takes me to finish the dress/doll, it might be my project to take housesitting!
Newest addition is the muted peach/blue zigzag piece. I'm figuring out what size to cut the initial squares for Zach's Christmas present. These were leftover charm squares & this block will join all the other offcut blocks I enjoy making :) They don't coordinate or have a similar style-just leftover blocks, pieced chunks of fabrics...

Sleep is for the weak...

...or the employed/parents/otherwise has commitments to meet. I'll be back to that someday.

But for now-5am quilting :)

Finished! :)

I've been really sporadic about posting, so I have no clue if I've mentioned this project ._. Anyway-finished quilt!
Don't have the greatest pics, but I'll post what I have. It's ~48x56 inches and meant for a 3 year old cousin. 16 patches in a pretty limited color scheme for me (red/orange/yellow with black/white/gray) but definitely not a limited pattern range! :) There are 4 embroidered blocks with different firefighter things & a pieced back. The brown hydrant print was too cute to pass up (since there's no brown on the front), so I stretched it with yellow sashing, more 16 patches and a strip of red on one end (last second recovery attempt). Machine quilted in a grid except for the echo quilting around the embroidered parts. Machine sewn red/white houndstooth binding (LOVE).

Chugging along :)

Noah's quilt is moving along quite nicely. I'm seeing I overestimated the amount of fabric I really needed for this size of quilt, but better too much than too little! It's a pretty crazy mess of patterns when you look up close, but the controlled palatte & 2 print 16 patch blocks hopefully helps :) From a distance, it isn't too bad at all!
Now for the "meh" news-my machines are dying on me. My Brother just had some ridiculous & unexplainable high pitch whine while sewing, my Kenmore now won't turn (the flywheel is stuck). Of course this happens when I'm too broke to get them fixed and in a time crunch (can't afford to lose a week or more). Trolling CraigsList seems to have some promising options. I can't afford the $500+ machines-hell, I can't even really afford an $80 basic, barebones machine from Walmart. But if I can find a solid workhorse, all metal machine for like $50? I'll make it happen :)
Back to Noah-I have less than 2 weeks to finish. Should be more than enough time-would definitely be if I hadn't insisted on adding hand embroidered blocks. I'm making more 16 patches than actually needed so I can swap out some to get a good color balance-not sure what I'll do with the extra blocks/strips, to be honest.
OOH-wanted to mention my sister final had the "moment"!!! :) That moment when you see a fabric and just KNOW it's what you need-it's something that has never happened for her. She always overthinks presents, paper/color matching in scrapbooking/card making, etc. She doesn't think she can combine patterns & color like I do (and my skills are elementary compared to some!$ So when we were walking to the back wall of calicos to look for a binding fabric, it was a proud moment for her to grab a bright pink/green floral print on black & say, "THIS is Juliana's!" with a big smile on her face :D It's busy and gorgeous AND the pink & green actually match the shades on the front of the quilt! The absolute confirmation it was meant to be was when I looked at the receipt after we checked out-the pattern is named "Jacqueline". Juliana's mama is named Jacquelyn :)