How cool is that…I’m one comment away from 1000 comments! Awesome. During my brief blogging haitus due to moving from CA to TX, lots of people have been finding my free hex templates and my hand sewn hex tutorial. I love link backs (hint hint) - seeing new hex projects is super fun.

Look at this little bit of awesomeness - if Betty Draper Francis could sew, she’d be a member: http://midmodbee.blogspot.com/

My sewing machine, tv and tivo are all in storage. Sad, sad, sad. The upside to our extended wait for our house is that I haven’t bought any new fabric or craft books for almost 3 months! Personal record, my friends. I’m still watching a considerable amount of tv online - thank goodness for hulu.

I do have my eye on a few new books though - namely The Practical Guide to Patchwork by Elizabeth Hartman (a.k.a. Oh Fransson!) and Dare to be Square Quilting by Boo Davis. Super original designs. Very, very cool.

Also, my new addiction is my nook. I’ve been blowing through all of Karen Marie Moning’s books - both the Fae and Highlander series are muy excellente!

I’m sure you mod quilters and crafters are all over this already, but it’s been a while since I’ve just wandered the internet in search of crafty goodness. Did you know Denyse Schmidt had a new line of fabric coming out? Put me on the waiting list, Free Spirit! This will be worth a trip to the Purl warehouse. Here’s what Denyse has to say about it. I think I’ll need to see it in person…the style is kind of 40s reproduction with a really unique palette. I’m loving the Piney Woods color family - here’s one swatch:

Fun time at the Long Beach International Quilt Show today. So much treasure seen, just a little purchased. There were some truly awesome quilts on display, but sadly, I forgot my camera. Well, I didn’t forget so much as I forgot to charge the battery beforehand. Anyway, I did take one blurry picture of my most favorite quilt of the day, Red Owls by Karin Pierce.

And here’s an even blurrier picture of the whole quilt.

I’m not sure where my love of owls comes from. It may stem from my lifelong need for glasses. Or my total acceptance of my own nerdiness. HOO knows :)

I also finished a sweet little baby quilt for some good friends of ours. They had the most kick-ass baby shower this weekend. There must have been 100 people there - and that was only the wife’s family. They’re having another shower with the husband’s family in a few weeks. I can’t imagine that they need ANYTHING else for that baby. I’m so happy for them that they got so much loot.

So here was my contribution. A little quilty, based on these by Ashley over at Filminthefridge.com.

Here’s the back:

I also made a couple “everything” cloths - cloth diapers with cute dino fabric down the middle…

And wrapped it all up in cute drawstring bag.

I was pretty happy with how it all came out. But I always feel wierd giving my cornball homemade gifts. Doesn’t make the making part any less fun, though.

My sweet husband let me sew all weekend. It was awesome. I made a whole quilt - start to finish. Well, I still have to hand-stitch the binding, but still. I used a pack of 12 fat quarters (fabric is Medetai by Hoodie for Blank Quilting), trimmed them down to 17.5″ square and sewed them together. Super simple and easy. And nice for showing off cool fabric. I think the finished size is about 60″ x 80″.

Then, from the scraps, I made a little purselette from a pattern I had from Fig Tree quilts. The finished product is much bigger than I expected, but it was a pretty easy pattern, and I love how it came out.

Surprise, Stephanie, these are for you. But I couldn’t wait to post the pictures. :)

One major drawback - I free-motion quilted the whole thing, and after one of the bobbin changes, the tension was off. I didn’t realize this until the NEXT bobbin change, so the back of the quilt was a huge mess. Even I, the sloppiest quilter ever, couldn’t leave those awful stitches, so I ripped them all out. SO much wasted thread. But no biggie. It looked much better after I redid the quilting. Here are some pictures.

Anyone else sad to see the TV seasons ending? I’m going to have to start getting creative if I hope to find TV to fill the empty hours left by the lack of prime time. I especially enjoyed Fringe and Dollhouse this season…I hope hope hope they come back! I also loved watching the craziness of Coach on Survivor. What a kook. Very entertaining. I think we’ve still got some finales to go, right? Private Practice? Brothers and Sisters? We’ll see what they come up with. I’m happy that the cable networks offset their seasons…In Plain Sight is back, and I love it. Looking forward to The Closer next month. And of course, SYTYCD starts soon!!! Woo hoo!!!

I’ve been getting more comments from people who have downloaded my hex templates. (Thanks, Ida and Susan!) I hope they’re helpful! I love to hear that people found just what they were searching for at my little home on the web :) I need to add something new to the free download page, don’t I? Maybe an embroidery pattern…I’ll work on it.

I got a little sewing done last weekend. I finished up my contribution of pinwheels that will make the border around our little dresses quilt. I forgot to take a picture of my second little dress, my friend Pauline posted this photo on facebook, and I “borrowed” it. Thanks, Pauline! My blocks are the plaid dress (2nd row, 3rd dress) and the lavender dress (3rd row, 4th dress).

And here are my pinwheels…everyone is making six using scraps from our dresses.

I won’t lie…I did not find making pinwheels very fun. My centers are really bumpy…Lynn, our fab group member and long-armer will probably be cursing me when she goes to quilt these.

I also finished up my first draft of the flier for our quilt show. I drew the little applique flowers in Illustrator…my first attempt at creating new images, rather than using stock images. I am happy with the outcome. BUT, I haven’t gotten any feedback yet, so it might not fly. Last year’s flier was a lot more elaborate, but I never liked it. I thought it was way to busy. We’ll see if this one makes the grade…

In other news, William got a light saber…that was fun for five minutes. And we redid the train table yesterday…almost two hours of assembling and reassembling what must be yards of track pieces and buildings. But he’s playing quietly in there now, so it was well worth all the trouble. Have a great week, everyone!

I finished a baby quilt and a few of those little everything cloths, made with a cloth diaper and cute fabric. I’m going to mail of the package tomorrow.

Now I’ve just got to finish my little applique dresses for our sewing group’s quilt.

In the middle of doing my first real attempt at free-motion on the baby quilt, my Singer Confidence machine grownd to a halt. I took it right into my guy (after I tried to pry the casing off, with no luck) and he fixed it up. But when I picked it up, he said, “how long has the computer screen been out?” I was like, “what?!” That dumb screen is totally necessary…you need it to know what stitch you’re using, length, width…if you want to sew letters, you have to program them in on the screen. Ugh. Not cool. So my machine is basically worthless unless I want to sew an auto-width and length straight stitch.

Then, he says, “well, I have another Singer…it’s missing the power cord and pedal, and the bobbin plate - but it works fine…you can just have it.”

Wait, what?

Here I was, all distraught over no more sewing machine, and he hands me a perfectly good one for nothing. He wouldn’t take any money - he said he wouldn’t be able to sell it anyway.

So, happy ending! I finished up the baby quilt on the new machine, and it’s great. Here’s a photo.

Oh! And I got a bunch of awesome new books!

Look at this! A virtual quilting bee filled with a bunch of my favorite contributors on Flickr! Score!

It’s been a while, but since I’m in search of good baby patterns for a slew of new babies on the way out, I’m finding some real treasure on the old www. Here are some links worth following:

• SewTakeAHike’s Changing Pad Tutorial
• Chickpea Sewing Studio’s Diaper Burp Cloth Tutorial and Bib Tutorial
• Make-Baby-Stuff.com’s treasure trove of free baby stuff patterns
• Simplicity.com’s free baby wipes case pattern
• TipNut’s 50 free patterns for baby (to make stuff for babies, not for babies to make!)

To sum it up, I can’t believe I buy so many patterns. There are so many free ones on the internet. It took me longer to copy and paste these links into this post than it took to find them.

Enough looking - time to get sewing. There are two baby boys on the way - one by induction tomorrow, and one in a few months. I’m thinking quilt, wipes case and a couple burp cloths. Sound good? Now I need to buy some fabric. The best part.

We’ve been a whirlwind of activity around here. From 3-year old sports classes every day, to a possible impending move, there’s hardly been time to sew! That’s not to say I haven’t been preparing to sew. Which means buying stuff - fabric and books! Here are my newest books…all of which I’m dying to dig into. There are at least 3 projects in all of them that I love.

The third book is a new Aranzi Aronzo book called Cute Stuff for Babies. There are the cutest little appliques in there. My favorite pattern is a bottle holder pouch in the shape of a little quilted bottle. Oh, and the little diaper covers with a bear and bunny face on the baby’s booty. Awesome.

I did finish a couple bow tucks bags. Well, I finished one and one is almost done.

And did I post this already? I’ve just been working on hand sewing all the bit down since I really haven’t had time to sew.

We’ve also been spending time at this lovely place:

• Amy’s undies
• Rebecca’s slippers
• Heather’s new book!!!
• New Indigo Girls CD

I’ve pre-ordered Heather’s book and the new Indigo Girls cd already…I can’t wait for their arrival!

This weekend is my quilting retreat! I thought it was Thursday for a few minutes this morning and I got so excited that my retreat was tomorrow. Then I realized it’s only Wednesday :( Crushing sadness. But then, I thought, it’s already Wednesday! Only one more day to go! How’s that for glass-half-full?

Speaking of retreat, I need to go purchase my wine contribution today!