Drago[knit]fly

First of all - Happy Birthday, Mom!   Hope you enjoy your special day! It’s rare that I can receive fabric and cut into it within a day or so of receiving it.  I like to gaze it from afar, pet it, imagine all the good times we’ll have – you know, normal stuff.  Not this fabric.  I couldn’t wait to slice into it and make it into something.  It helps when you have the perfect project in mind.  In this case, Anna Maria Horner’s swaddling blankets.   My one concern about jumping in – I didn’t prewash my fabrics and I have little experience working with either flannel or voile so I’m unsure of the shrink factor.   Working with the flannel and voile is like working with butter and um, melted butter?  Both so decadent, both so perfect to have cuddle your baby’s perfectly soft newborn skin.  As proof, when I opened the package Alice quickly snatched a piece of the voile and proceeded to wrap herself up in it.  It appears I’ll b...

February 2009 – buy fabric. February to Summer – pet fabric, envision gorgeous quilts, remain paralyzed in fear of cutting beautiful fabrics.  Scour flickr for quilt inspiration. Summer – Select quilt pattern.  Engineer how to make quilt.  Cut bazillions upon bazillions of little triangles. Get sick of cutting. Fall to Winter – Forget about quilt. Spring – remember fabric half cut for quilt.  Dig out pieces.  Remember plan.  Finish cutting other bazillion triangles.  Start piecing.  Interest in other projects surpasses interest in quilt.  June/July – In fit of motivation, finish piecing quilt.  July – Momentum continues! Quilt top finished, sandwiched, bound, and quilted.  Now the real question is how do all you flickrites manage to post freshly finished quilts on a weekly (or less!) basis?  Pattern:   No real pattern. I found a couple photos of kaleidoscope quilts on flickr and fell in love.  I bought a 45 degree ...

When I got pregnant with Alice , we converted our office/craft room into her room.  My sewing machine and piles of associated sewing / craft stuff was relegated to the guest room and closet.  While picking up a sewing machine and carrying it downstairs to the dining room doesn’t seem like that overwhelming a task, I dread it and will knit a sweater or bake ten pies before I carry the machine down a flight of stairs. Of course when I do drag the machine downstairs, I take over the dining room and often spill into the kitchen, much to the chagrin of my clean-freak husband.  And of course since Alice was born and we have another on the way, there are eleventy billion cute little baby projects that I must sew.  During my maternity leave, I spent hours sewing during Alice ’s marathon newborn naps, the sewing machine humming along while she slept peacefully in her little swing.  Sewing these days requires much more planning and usually onl...