Falling Maple

A few weeks ago, our friends welcomed a new baby girl to the world, so of course I need to make her a quilt! When Heather saw this on Instagram, she asked me if I could do a tutorial on enlarging this specific quilt block, so that post will be coming this way soon!

 

I used the traditional maple block and enlarged it by about 200%. Since the baby was born at the end of October, I thought that the maple was a nice block to choose since it just screams Fall to me!

I used Mind's Eye in Toast from Anna Maria Horner's Field Study collection for the maple, Kona white for the background, and quilter's linen in plum for the binding (or maybe it's purple...I have both and I can't remember which is which).

For the backing I used two prints from Tula Pink's Parisville and a strip of the same golden shot cotton that I used for my Birdie Sling. I machine quilted it on point, using a light yellow thread.

Name: Falling Maple

For: Vivian

Size: 40x40"

Completed: November 03, 2013

Sock Sacks!

Just before Sewing Summit in September, I went into a bit of a sewing frenzy (no doubt aided by the crashing of my computer). I made quite a number of things, including matching a couple of Sock Sacks - one for me and one for my super-awesome Sewing Summit roomie.

The Sock Sack is a pattern available on Craftsy from Ramona Rose and it is awesome! This is the one that I made for DD featuring the cutest bunny fabric from Modern Whimsy and a little Lizzy House. The purple accent fabric on the zippered divider and bands is Kaufman Quilter's Linen (one of my absolute faves!).

This one I made for me and it lives in my purse. I keep both my knitting and EPP in it at the same time. For mine I used the transistor fabric from Melody Miller's Ruby Star Rising (gifted to me by the lovely Debbie, who you might all know from the workroom here in Toronto) and Riley Blake's Saddle Up. The Saddle Up fabric is facing the wrong way (the FQ can only be cut a certain way to get the right fabric amounts), but I just got it into my head that I absolutely had to use this fabric for the interior. I used the same Quilter's Linen for the band but swapped it out for some pearl bracelets for the pocket. The only thing I changed from the original pattern was to omit the interior tabs and to make my own drawstrings rather than using ribbon.

The original Sock Sack pattern only has a divider in the middle but Ramona Rose put a tutorial up on her blog for turning this divider into a pocket, which is the addition that just sends this pattern over the edge! Although the pattern is meant for accommodating knitting two-socks-at-a-time (where you have two balls of yarn, one can go on each side of the divider so as not to get tangled), I thought it was fabulous for just knitting in general or for carrying more than one project. I keep my knitting on one side of the divider and my EPP supplies on the other, with all of my notions and tools in the little pocket.

Sock Sack in action! I took this picture on the plane on the way to Sewing Summit; I knit and did a little EPP on that trip. Trust me, I got some weird looks from some of the other passengers! The flight attendant asked me what I was doing and she gave me the blankest look when I tried to explain it.

Even if you don't knit, you could definitely use one of these little sacks to carry around other hand projects!