Knit All the Things!

Hey y'all! Last month I participated in a little Instagram swap with friends called Knit All the Things - it was super-super-fun! Not only did we swap yarn, patterns, and other knitting-type lovelies, many of us made a little something for our partners as well.

I decided to use Shannon's free pattern and made a Reversible Box Tote for my partner, Meg. Instead of adding the pocket, I decided to paper piece this little "knit" insert. I realized after mailing my package that I could have actually turned this bit of paper piecing into a pocket, which not only would have been easier but also more practical. Oh well, c'est la vie!

Here is the finished tote. I used an Art Gallery print for the outside and paper piecing, and a print from Zen Chic's Comma for the interior. I quite like how it turned out and Shannon's pattern is fab! Of course, I forgot to take a picture of everything else I included in the package (Hazel Knits and Madelinetosh yarns), but I did get a picture of what I received from the lovely Jennifer!

Eeep! Isn't this the best package ever?! I love everything and I am super-excited to have some beautiful sock blockers of my very own. Gosh, I am one lucky girl!

Bag Making + the Giveaway Winner!

Hey y'all! How's it going? While going through pictures on my iPhone today, I discovered that I hadn't shared any pictures of the Super Tote that I made before heading off to Quilt Market. Frankly, I think Instagram is having a detrimental effect on my blogging - I take pictures of the things that I make (or am in the process of making), post them to Instagram, and then completely for to post them to my blog! Bad.

With that said, I'm going to share a few of the pics that I took that day while making it!

I watch a lot of Harry Potter while sewing (I also tend to drink a lot of coffee)! Anna's Super Tote pattern is absolutely one of my most favourite bags to make - the pattern pieces go together so easily and the instructions are just fab!

The Clover Wonder Clips make this stage of making this bag soooo easy! The first time I made a Super Tote I didn't have Wonder Clips and just used pins - it was super frustrating. I also use these while hand sewing binding and they work great!

I used fabrics by Sarah Watts and Jay McCarroll for the outside, along with some wool suiting for the sides and outer handles. The interior (lining, pockets, zipper bands, and reverse of the handles) features three prints by Anna Maria Horner.

I still carry this bag everyday and just love it! I was going through my Quilt Market pictures, and it's quite funny, but my Super Tote doesn't show up in any of the pictures - it's always hidden by someone else!

So, I bet you want to know who the winner is, right? Well, without further ado, the winner is...

Congratulations Adrienne! Please email me with your details and FQS will ship your thread box out!

Spring Quilt Market 2014 - Part Two

Hey y'all! Let's get back to the Quilt Market action!

This is Thomas's booth - it was fab! I spent quite a nice time, sitting with Thomas in his booth and just chatting. As we do, we chatted about ideas, theory, and his book Modern Quilt Perspectives. On the night that I arrived, Thomas threw a little party in his rented loft to celebrate his book and it was a great time.

This is Alison Glass' booth - as with the Cotton + Steel booth from my last post, it was really hard to get one picture of the full booth because it was always full of people eager to see Alison's new work. I have one tip for you: see that blue solid in the quilt at the back? Get it and get it now, it's called Celestial and it's Kona. It is frickin' fabulous!

This is a shot of the other side of Alison's booth - just as fabulous as the other side! Look at all the pretty things!

Quilt Market, for me at least, is also about seeing the friends that I don't get to see very often since we're spread all across the world! We were out every night of Market (as a matter of fact John, Sukie, Lee, and I all went clubbing on the Friday which is something I have not done in years!) and it was so great to just catch up and relax with each other. On Saturday night, we had a big dinner and then headed to a bar where we chatted until the wee hours. Not everyone made this picture, but let's see... there was John, Katy, Brenda and her husband, Sara, Violet, Tula, Tula's brother Cameron, Angela, Ali, and I'm sure a few other people that I'm not thinking of right now.

Speaking of Violet, her booth was amazing! I can not get over this paper-pieced quilt - it blew my mind! I am definitely going to need the pattern. Her new fabric line, Brambleberry Ridge, is absolutely gorgeous and I will be getting all of it.

Photo courtesy of Violet

I tried really hard to steal this pillow (tentatively called Stan the stag), but Violet caught me! It's hard to see in the photos but Brambleberry Ridge has these really great metallic accents that will work great in a range of projects.

As always, the Echino section was gorgeous and full of wonderful linen-cotton prints. The Nani Iro prints were right by these and I nearly swooned!

Photo courtesy of John

Just before John left for home on Sunday, Angela, him, and I took one last photo together - I miss these guys so much already!

Photo courtesy of John

He also took this one of Angela and I at Art Gallery and I think it's my favourite photo of the two of us from the whole time! Angela is one of my favourite people and it was so wonderful to spend three whole days with her!

Well, that's it for the Market pictures I guess, but I still have some swag pictures to share and I'm going to try and review at least a couple of the books I got. Tune in next time!

Spring Quilt Market 2014 - Part One

Hey y'all! How's it going? I've been back from spring Quilt Market in Pittsburgh for about a week, and am only now beginning to wrap my head around it all and the great time that I had. I've been to two Quilt Markets before but I haven't been for a few years, so it felt a bit like a new experience all over again. I have so many pictures and got to sorting them out tonight; the one big difference that I noticed was how many more pictures there are of friends rather than booths this year. Sure, I saw and admired a lot of booths and talked to a lot of people, but I think the times that I remembered to whip out my phone (or other people whipped out their phones) were the times that I wanted to capture memories with my awesome people.

Picture courtesy of Amy Smart

So many awesome peeps all in one photo!! Here we've got Melissa, Amy, Angela, Me, Anna, Allison, Ashley, Faith, Amanda Jean, and Lee - wow!

Jeni's booth was my first stop on the first day of Market because I love her! Jeni, Anna, Amanda Jean, and I all roomed together over Market which was pretty fun. Jeni's new collection with Art Gallery called Geometric Bliss is just awesome and I love the colours.

Photo courtesy of Angela

Wandering around, I ran into Ali and Angela, and we basically ended up spending the rest of Quilt Market as a threesome. This super-awesome photo shows Ali using Angela's back as a table to sign a copy of her book, Quilt Lab, for me. Also, note the tote made by Amanda of TheCraftJunky; it was my Christmas present from her and I carried it around everyday. I totally pimped her super-geeky awesomeness to anyone who would listen.

Of course, I had to find the awesomeness that is Cotton + Steel and it did not disappoint! I didn't get very many pictures of their booth because it was constantly packed with people, but I managed to snag a couple including this one showing their award for best first booth - wonderful work ladies!

This is another one from Cotton + Steel; one of my favourite things about their booth was that they melded all five of the collections together rather than keeping them separate - really brilliant!

Photo courtesy of Ali

While we were hanging out at Angela's book signing (for her book A Quilter's Mixology) we were approached by a couple of ladies from The Electric Quilt Company who graciously offered us some copies of EQ7 - how cool is that?! I got the PC version and Ali got the MAC. Thanks again EQ!

Photo courtesy of Anna

I'll leave you for now with this kind of hilarious picture of me in Heidi Boyd's booth! I was super-excited about meeting Heidi since I love her book Stitched Whimsy, but I think this pretty much sums up my face for most of Market!

I've got tons more to share so tune in later in the week for more Quilt Market antics!

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!

A Little Catch-Up + the Giveaway Winners!

Hey y'all! How's everyone doing after the holidays? I'm pretty much wiped out, but it was nice to see everyone. I'll post all of the crafting I did for holiday gifts soon, but I've got something else to share today. This should tell you exactly how behind I am - this particular project was finished in mid-October and I'm only just getting around to blogging it now! Since my computer is still broken, I am just getting further and further behind with sharing everything.

It's a tablet case! I bought the Nexus 7 in October as a birthday present to myself and it's what I've been using for email, internet, etc during this time without my computer. It's very similar to other cases I've made using Amber's tutorial before but this time I included a patchwork pocket on the front (and again, it's re-sized from the original tutorial). The main body of the sleeve is yarn-dyed Essex and the patchwork pocket features a bunch of scraps from my bin.

I used an Art Gallery print for the interior because the cotton is really soft and I thought it would be nice next to the tablet. I accidentally made the tab closure too big but didn't notice until I had the whole thing sewn together, so I just doubled it up over itself and tacked it down by going over the topstitching line again.

Now, this is super-late but (better late than never) I thought you'd like to know who the two winners of the Botanics Roll Ups from Fat Quarter Shop are! Here we go...

Megan from A Little Bit of my Life
and
Jessica from Quilt Habit

Congratulations ladies! Please email me with your addresses and Fat Quarter Shop will get your Roll Ups out to you! I'm a wee bit jealous since I don't have any Botanics and want some sooo much!

That's it for now. I hope you all recover from the holiday madness quickly!

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!

Sewing Summit 2013: All the Friends!

Hey y'all! So I debated with myself for awhile about whether my first post-Sewing Summit post should be about my class, the general experience (lost luggage *cough*), or everything else. But I realized while going through pictures, looking at Instagram, and seeing some other blog posts pop up, that all I really want to blog about right now is my friends and all of the super-cool people I got to meet.

My awesome roomie came bearing gifts...

Dinner with a great group of girls who laugh when I curse or say something a little irreverent...

We've got Angela, Lindsey, Deedrie, Jeni, Me, Elena, Amy, and Kati here at Brio - yum!

There were great friends that I only get to see very occasionally (come to Toronto!)...

Christina and I: by Christina

Christina and I: by Jeni

Jeni and I: by Christina

Elena and I: by Angela

Although, this can occassionally lead to fisticuffs too...

Elena and I: by Deedrie

Or inappropriate pictures of Kaye trying to take a picture of friends at dinner...

by Deedrie

See? Inappropriate!! And occasionally friends say things like "I like people who like me" and strike a super-cute pose...

And you get to meet some other people for the first time in real life...

from Jess

Ale (sitting beside me) and I talk HP all of the time on Instagram and Jess (in the red Mickey Mouse sweater) is always so positive towards me that I just want to smooch her! Jana was almost my roommate and Jessie (who is awesome) taught a class at Sewing Summit too! And yep, that is indeed Heather Bailey standing behind me.

I had a wonderful time hanging out with all of the ladies and I'm a little sad that I don't have more pictures of everyone else that I met! I'll be back soon with more pictures and stories from Sewing Summit!

Poof! What do you need?

Hey y'all! See the title for the blog post up there ^? That's for my mum! That's her favourite line from Aladdin, but I also thought it was pretty funny because...

Poof! I made a pouf! Oh boy, I slay myself! Alex and I are working on redecorating out living room and we were looking at poufs and ottomans to brighten the space up and to give a little bit of extra seating, but man, all of the ones we found were ridiculously priced. I figured, hey, I can make that!

The pouf is currently paired up with our new Strandmon chair and new bookshelves. We've got a new couch and coffee table on the way too - pretty exciting!

I used this tutorial - which was totally awesome! I expanded the size of my pouf (which is why you can see a break there in the fabric by the handle). Both the mustard home dec fabric and royal blue piping are from Fabricland (a bit like JoAnn in the States but their home dec fabric is all really nice quality). This was the first time that I've ever put in piping and I'm pretty proud of how it turned out.

"But, oh! to be free! Not to have to go 'Poof! What do you need? Poof! What do you need? 

Poof! What do you need?' To be my own master, such a thing would be greater than 

all the magic and all the treasures in all the world! But what am I talking about? Let's get real here. 

It's not gonna happen. Genie, wake up and smell the hummus." - Aladdin

The only gift is a portion of thyself. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Well now, I'm finally getting around to sharing some of the things I made my mum for Christmas! I made most of the Hanukkah and Christmas presents this year, which was fun, but also a bit stressful and time consuming!

I started this Ship Shape Tote in Alexia's class at Sewing Summit - I love it! Originally I was going to go for a more neutral colour theme, but my mum likes colour so I decided to go a bit bolder. I included prints from Tula's Prince Charming, Joel Dewberry's Modern Meadow, Paula Prass' Woodland Delight, and a few other collections. The handles are Kona Medium Grey and the inside is a grey leaf print from Ikea. The pattern is well-written and came together really easily. It is super roomy and I would recommend adding a pocket or two to the inside so that you won't lose smaller items in the bottom since it is so big.

I also made her this manicure kit following Rashida's Nice and Neat Manicure Kit tutorial featured on the Art Gallery Fabrics blog. The outside is a print from Joel Dewberry's Deer Valley collection (I always seem to use a lot of Joel Dewberry when making things for my mum).

And the inside and binding are all Tula (again! One thing that has always struck me about Free Spirit is how well they match collections together over a season or two... anyway...). I picked up a couple of manicure items and slipped them into their little slots, unfortunately I was having no luck finding one of the shorter nail files but hopefully my mum can find one - there is lots of space left over for her to add whatever she wants. This tutorial was really well written and I pretty much always love any pattern that Rashida comes up with!

These little oven mitts were made using fabrics from the Blush collection by Basic Grey and they are lined with both quilt batting and Insul-Brite. These are a little bit bigger than your standard finger mitts because my mumma has big hands! She was pretty happy that I made them bigger and I hope she uses them a lot.

Now onto the knitting!!

These are the Camp Out Fingerless Mitts (a free pattern on Ravelry) made using di.Ve Autunno - the yarn is so hard to photograph but is really pretty. It's a mix of green and black but the green variagates throughout from light to dark. Again, I made these bigger because of mum's big hands (went up to 6mm DPNs) and I added a garter cuff to keep them from rolling.

Using the same yarn, I made Calorimetry to match (a free pattern from Knitty). It is shaped using short rows and the construction is so cool! Check out the Knitty pattern to see it being worn - it's really neat! I thought my mum would like it because it's less likely to mess up her hair than a hat or standard headband, ha!

And last, but not least, I also knit her a set of leaf-shaped washcloths (again, a free pattern). My mum has been crocheting dishcloths for years but I thought she might appreciate someone else making her a set for a change - and they're shaped like leaves so I couldn't resist! These went into her stocking with a few other bits and bobs.

Phew, just posting all of those brings back frantic memories of trying to get everything finished in time! I'll be back on Thursday with the debut of my new quilt pattern, just have to put a few finishing touches on the write-up and it will be finished, hurray!