Snow Day, Sew Day

Another snowy day in New England means another sewing day for me.

It was a nice. lazy day.  DH ran a few errands in the morning before the snow got too bad, then we spent the rest of the day indulging in hobbies.  We both did some reading.  DH spend some quality time on the laptop entering interesting places to visit.  I machine quilted the heart scroll table runner and got the binding stitched.  DH brewed some beer and I baked red velvet brownies (alas, without red food coloring).

I'm very happy with the table runner.  It's about 36" x 13" and fits the table just fine.

The rest of the week I finished up a few smaller projects.  I enlarged the pattern for the little pouch and made a sample.  I like that size a lot better.

It's small, but large enough to hold my nail supplies.  I still wanted something to hold a hand piecing project for the road.  I won't have a lot of extra room in my bags on the bike when we go south this summer, but I like to have a stitching project with me.  I've been wanting to make these bird applique's for some time now.  I've made the chickadee a few times but have gifted them.  They are the right size for this little bag.

I guess the bag could have been slightly bigger.  It's pretty stuffed with the spool patches I have cut out so far.

The other accomplishment this week was ripping and resewing the green background for the frog quilt.  When I showed it to DH, he said it looked skewed, and indeed it was.  The problem came from sewing all those long strips from the same edge.  Being off by even 1/32 of a inch meant that sewing all those strips made one edge 1/2" longer than the other.  I took off 7 strips and resewed them making sure the top and bottom edge were even.  It resulted in a better finish.  Now it's time for frogs.

Real Snow Day Activity

Yesterday we had a real snow day.  It was snowing when I woke up and snowed most of the day.  We got about a foot of the really light, fluffy snow.  We (and by we I mean DH) cleared most of it late yesterday afternoon and we (and by we I mean both of us) finished the job today.

But, while it was snowing, I used the excuse to spend a good part of the day sewing.

I started the day with this little bag.  I saw the pattern offered here and stored it away because I thought they were cute.  They are adorable.  I was looking for a little bag that I can use as my portable bag for the spools.  I want something about 8" square to fit the fabric, a few needles, a small pair of scissors, a thimble and some thread.  This bag is only about 8" x 3 1/3".  I need to find something larger to fit my needs.

This heart scroll is all hand applique'd and will be a table runner for us.  I would like to have this completed before St. Valentine's day.  I expect to complete the applique this week and am planning to machine quilt it, so the deadline seams reasonable.

This green quilt will be a gift for the newest grand nephew who is expected in March.  This will have colorful frogs applique'd onto it.  I'm probably going to do machine applique to make it more durable, but after the heart scroll, I don't have an applique project planned, so hand stitching the frogs sounds appealing.

And these 9-patches are the next round in the 9-patch exchange for my guild.  This has been going on since October.  I should have over 100 by the end of the guild year calendar and I will do some sort of scrappy quilt, but I don't know exactly what yet.  That's pretty far down on the to-do list.

Yep, four projects.  That seams to be a comfortable number for me.