The only journey is the one within. -Rainer Maria Rilke

Hey y'all! So, it's been awhile. The past few months have been a little rough for me, but I'm jumping back in with both feet! I've felt for the last little while that the quilting world is moving on without me and like I had lost my footing. Some things have happened (or not happened) that have made me feel a bit invisible and I have struggled with what exactly my place is now. I have thought long and hard over the past few months, had many chats with quilty friends (including with the master of dissection and perspective, Thomas Knauer, while I visited his family in Cambridge), and have come to the conclusion that, while my place in the quilting world has shifted, there still is a place for me. I need to always be grateful for the opportunities that come my way, take rejection less to heart, and be prepared to aim high even if it means that I might fall and fail sometimes (if not most of the time). To that end, I will be attending Quilt Market once again this spring in Pittsburgh. I'll be rooming with the ever-awesome Jeni, and I am going to try extraordinarily hard to not let my anxieties and insecurities get in the way. Wow, I just got all kinds of introspective there for a minute.

As you may have noticed, I now have my own domain (check it out, woot!); as far as I know right now, this should in no way affect how you view this blog or see it in a reader (such as Bloglovin). If that is not the case (i.e. if your link from the old blog no longer works or if new posts are not showing in your reader), please let me know and I will do my best to figure out where I went wrong. I'm also working on a whole new design for the site and I'm hoping to have that up and running soon. I feel like I need a fresh new look as I move forward with my quilting/sewing and my pattern business.

So that this post is not completely devoid of pictures (and to prove that while I may not have been blogging, I have managed to fit in some sewing time), let's talk about the Boxy Pouch I made using Bonnie's tutorial.

I made this last month just before heading to LA for two weeks for work (see, that's the other thing, work. It does have a tendency to get in the way). These cute boxy pouches kept popping up all over Instagram and I just had to make one to carry my extra knitting project to LA with me.

My idea was to use lots of low volume/neutral prints and then throw in a few brighter colours for a little pop. As you can see, most of the colour pops are Lizzy House Pearl Bracelets.

For the interior I used some of my most favourite print from Heather Ross' Briar Rose. That little mama bee just makes me so happy every time I see her!

Just in case you wanted to get a better look, here are the quilted panels I made for the pouch. I have a tendency to take lots of Instagram pictures to document process (generally late at night) so please forgive the not-so-great colour action going on here.

If I had thought about it a little more, I would have made sure that the aqua-green prints from both panels weren't at the top, but oh well.

Okay, I think that's it for today, but you can expect to see me around these parts very soon! If you have any ideas, or something you'd specifically like to see when I redesign the site, please let me know and I'll take it into consideration. Much love peeps!

Holiday Catch-Up + the Giveaway Winner!

Hey y'all! So I guess I took a bit of an inadvertent break there! With Hanukkah, Christmas, and our anniversary (and the fact that I made most of the presents for each and have been applying for jobs), the time just slipped away from me. But I'm back now, woot! I thought today that I would share some of the presents I made for Alex for the holidays.

We'll start off with Hanukkah (since it did come first and all). But what could this be?!

Why, it's a guitar strap, of course! Alex has been playing guitar for a number of years, and I thought it would be pretty fun to see if I could make him a new pretty strap to enjoy. I pulled out a bunch of Denyse Schmidt fabrics from both Hope Valley and Chicopee in colours that I thought he'd like and told then him to pull out any he didn't like particularly.

I used his old guitar strap as a basis for my measurements and pieced the patchwork part together (it's backed in Kona Medium Grey with a heavyweight interfacing in between); both the brass buckle and ring came from an old messenger bag of Alex's that I bought him almost four years ago but that broke about a year ago. I cut the brown leather end bits from an old purse of mine and based them on the ones from his old guitar strap. It works perfectly!

Now onto Christmas - these slippers took me almost four Harry Potter movies to knit and man did the chunky yarn and big needles make my hands hurt!

I used the Non-Felted Slippers pattern which can be found free on Ravelry and only made a couple of changes to make them bigger (the original pattern is about a ladies medium) - my pattern notes can be found on Ravelry here. I really like these slippers because I think they have a more masculine feel than many other slipper patterns I've seen and they are super-chunky and cozy.

I also made him this zipper pouch! The white wood grain fabric is Ikea and the denim-y looking fabric is actually wool suiting in sort of a grey-blue; the deer is an iron-on patch that I bought ages ago with Alex in mind and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to finally use it!

I'm starting to get the hang of this zipper thing (this was only my third I think), so this time I decided to be a little adventurous and try zipper tabs - seemed to come out alright I think! I also used a metal zipper because I thought it would give the pouch a little more ruggedness.

And these photos (except this one of course) have all been brought to you by this baby - my new DSLR! It was my anniversary gift from Alex and I love it; Alex's anniversary gift is sitting under it not quite done. I'm making Alex his own quilt but couldn't get it all completed prior to our anniversary since he works from home. I just wrapped up the top and gave it to him. I'll show the whole thing when I get it all quilted and bound.

Now I bet you want to know who won my Blogger's Choice bundle from FQS, right?

Congratulations Jenelle! Please get in contact with me via email with your address and Fat Quarter Shop will get your bundle sent out to you!

Phew, alright, I'm done. That was a long post but I'll be back soon with even more holiday gifts and even more crafty happenings around here!

TMQG Holiday Scrap Swap + the Giveaway Winner!

As many of you know I am President of the Toronto Modern Quilt Guild and this year I thought we should have a little bit of fun to celebrate our last meeting leading up to the holiday season (we don't hold a meeting in December because that would be crazy). Back in August and September guild members brought in sandwich sized ziploc bags full of scraps and we swapped them out. We each then made some small giftie type items using the scraps and held a secret Santa/mystery gift swap at this month's meeting.

I received Doris's scraps and made these three small items. I originally was making a tote with patchwork pockets but somehow managed to totally jank it up, so I cut the pockets down to make the mug rug and the pincushion. The tree ornament is loosely based on Anna's tutorial, however I didn't use her template and just free handed everything (I'm sure yours will turn out much nicer if you actually follow the tutorial). Doris's scraps aren't really my style but I wanted to try really hard to use the scraps that I was given and not much else (which wasn't part of the rules for the swap but I wanted to challenge myself). The only things that didn't come from Doris's scraps were the felt and baker's twine for the tree.

Funnily enough, the mystery gift I received was actually made from my scraps! Sheila made me this lovely (and giant) zipper pouch and used a few of my scraps to create a rainbow effect across the front.

Sheila boxed the edges of the pouch so that it can stand up on it's own. In the picture it's got reusable shopping bags stuffed inside, but I'm planning on using it to hold either sewing supplies when I need to travel (I think my Clover mini iron will fit well in here with a slew of other things) or to hold knitting projects that require longer straight needles. Now didn't Sheila do a fabulous job? I love it!

And then...

I totally got photobombed! Yep, that's Alex. Oy.

So I bet you want to know who won the Down Under chevron and Kona bundle sponsored by Sew Sisters? The Winner is (drum roll please)...

Congratulations Lesly! Please get in touch with me with your mailing address and I will have Sew Sisters send your fabric out to you!