Double wedding ring scrap test block

Hello  again, I'm back! Last weekend I made progress with my sewing room re-arranging. I'm not quiet done yet so pictures will be up on the blog later.  Besides the sewing room "makeover" I had some time to try out a new recipe which I found on Pinterest, pinned from Food Snots' blog. It's called the Cinnamon and sugar pull-apart bread, and the recipe can be found  here. I took some pictures when I was done, here's how it looks:

I've put my 2 cents about the recipe in the comments of the blog, but  will tell them here too.

• I'm not sure about the amount of the flour/liquids, but my dough was not sticky at all at the end, so I had put  a little bit of extra milk while kneading to make it sticky
• The amount of melted butter and the cinnamon sugar for spreading was way too much and had half of it left

Luckily I bake regularly so I know what a sticky dough should look like and I could adjust the recipe accordingly. The bread came out really delicious. We had it warm with hot chocolate for dinner :)

The other thing/sewing I did yesterday afternoon while watching Transformers 3 and Something Borrowed was the double wedding ring, this time in scrappy version. I did not follow the template version (how surprising), but decided to strip piece the scraps and cut the ark out from the strip pieced fabrics. I'm not sure if I like it this way so I might just have to try the template to see if that appeals to me better.

The points are not exactly as matching as I would like them, but it's all right I guess.

Here's a picture:

So I'm asking you now. Which version do you like better? The scrappy  or the not scrappy? Don't mind the fabrics, they're just leftovers from the log cabin quilt I'm making. Please leave a comment!

Thanks, until we meet again! :)

Spring giveaway!

Mary Jane's Tearoom is hosting a spring giveaway!  Feel free to hop on over to comment on Her blog and have a chance to win  these:

OR  if You're a knitter or you crochet, these:

Make sure when you comment to mention which prize would you like to win! Her stuff is wonderful so check out the blog and She also has an Etsy shop! Good luck!

Which collection am I going to sacrifice?

I read about My Precious QAL at Kelly's blog today. The rules are basically that you'll have to  use fabrics that are already in your stash, not the newest collection you've purchased. It's going to go all through this Summer so I'll have plenty of time to come up with something. It doesn't have to be a huge finished quilt, but if it's a small project it'll need to be finished. She'll draw a winner every month. She has a few more details, so if you're interested in doing this, just click on the button and hop on over to her!

I have plenty of hoarded fabrics, I'll just have to dig them out. I know I have a lot of red and white fabrics from Alex Anderson which I got for Christmas a while back ago (I think the collection is Redwork Romance?) and a collection called Annabelle by Leslie Gladman for P&B Textiles. I know I also have some yummy French country style fat quarters that I got a few years ago at a quilt show. What a better opportunity to empty and re-arrange my sewing room. I've been  procrastinating on that one for a few months now waiting to have a full day that I can spend on it. By now I realized that it'll take a lot more than a full day to do everything, so I might as well just start.

I don't have much to report on right  now, it's a nice rainy day outside and I'm catching up with my Google reader. Does that count as quilting? :) Have a wonderful rest of the weekend!

More fabrics! And some gardening :)

This week I haven't got much sewing done besides the tote bag in my last post. BUT, got two packages in the mail. One  from The Intrepid Thread, the other one from Zippit from Etsy.  I've found a cool 15% off   discount code on Kati's blogpost  From the Blue Chair.  Marion ordered some zippers from them and I went to check out the Etsy shop and was drooling all over :) I  ended up getting some sample packs of 7", 10" and 14" zippers. They are in all the colors of the rainbow, I'm really happy with just looking at them :)

The fabrics look beautiful, I ordered the  ones that were on sale and I'm really happy with the purchase.

The stack as they looked together:

Yes, I got this one again:

And this one too!

I'm in loooove with the swirly pattern on this one!

And this one feels like I'm touching a batik fabric. Fabulous!

And of course the bonus patches:

We also got some Petunias at Home Depot yesterday afternoon and I planted them in our front yard close to  the sidewalk. Fiance went fishing with his friends so I had plenty of time. I  took a picture with my phone so the  quality is not as good as my camera's, forgive me!

Spring tote bag with some frustrations

Yesterday was a really nice day so I thought what better time to spend it than sewing :) I started a tote bag on Saturday night and got stuck. I was trying to use Tilda's Sew Sunny Homestyle beach bag pattern, but I just could not get through the beginning. I had to cut a 35.5"x39.5" piece of fabric and I needed to iron a fusible interfacing on the wrong side. Done. Then the directions said that I had to fold the fabric in double from top to bottom and side to side, right sides together. Now with the side to side folding the fabrics weren't right sides together since the right side of the fabric was in the top to bottom fold and after that all I had was to fold from interfacing to interfacing. I just couldn't pass through the next step which said to cut two 4 inch squares in the two corners on  the bottom through both layers. The problem is that with the folding method I had 4 layers of fabrics. I just could not see how it will work out to do it this way so I sewed up a little sample from a different cheap fabric. I ended up with 2 layers on the front and 2 layers on the back, without the lining. 

I emailed Jean from Quilted Cupcake because I  know She made the same pattern a few months ago and her bag looked really pretty. She said she used the pattern and measurements so I just don't know where I went wrong. If anybody else made this bag and could explain to me how in the world will I get through that 4 folding I would be really happy. Anyway, I cut the width in half and used the single width of the bag and double the height, folded in half. I sewed the bag in a different way which I used before with my zipper pouches and used the turning inside out method. I sewed some pockets in the lining and it turned out really cute. I did not do editing on the pictures since I took them outside and it is a beautiful morning.

Here are the pictures:

I'd like to say thank you to my new followers and to Marcia to arrange the new blogger linky party! I'm linking up this blog post to Sew Can Do's Craftastic Monday and Sew Happy Geek's Manic Monday linky parties!

New blogger linky and more adorable receiving blankets

Last night I wanted to work on something, but didn't feel like starting a new project. I still had a big piece of flannel left uncut so I decided to make the 2 more blankets I had fabrics for. I started around 9 and finished around 11, had both of them stitched and turned inside out. Of course I learned a lesson again when I didn't pay attention to the grain line at the first one and the backing/border fabric just stretched on me making mitering the corners a little more difficult than usual. At the second one you bet I made sure to match the grain lines on the top and backing. 

We visited the Auto Show in NYC Today and after getting home I pressed and sewed down the edges with a cute zig-zag stitch, they came out pretty  nice. I took them outside to take pictures of them on the grass in our front yard before it got dark.  I don't know  what I'm going to do  with them yet since I don't have any friends expecting at the moment.

I'm linking up to Sew Happy Geek's Manic Monday Linky Party

The other thing I did today was trying to catch up with my blogs since I didn't have time to read them in the last few days. I'm following a LOTS of blogs, right now I have 800 something unread blogs. Yes, that much... I wanted to see what happened today and just refreshed the whole list and found Marcia's blog on the top of my list. She was talking about how hard it was for her to get new readers, which I can totally associate with since I only have 8 followers at the moment :) I'm not saying that I want to be uber-popular because the followers I have are quality people and are commenting on my posts regularly. So I decided to add her button and link back to her blog and hope to get some more readers :) If You know anybody who is a new blogger please give them the link and anybody can link up to her website. Thanks so much!

http://marciascraftysewing.blogspot.com/p/new-quilt-blogs-for-2012-add-your-link.html

Click on the link to take you to Marcia's blog and good luck!

2012 FAL Second quarter

Since I was so behind in the podcasting world I just started to find quilting podcasts on iTunes at the end of last year. I downloaded all of them and slowly catching up with everybody. It's very hard to select who I sill tackle next :) That's what happened with Rhonda's Quilter in the Gap podcast. I finally caught up with her a couple of weeks ago, but it was way too late to participate in her 2012 FAL first quarter. I decided that it's OK, there will be a second quarter, so here I am.

The projects I would like to see finished this quarter are:

Queen size Log cabin quilt for Fiance:

Since this picture I've put borders on it and pieced the back so it only needs to be basted, quilted, and bound.

I need to finish this twin size monkey  quilt for Nikki:

I still need to piece the backing for this one, baste, quilt, and bind it.

I'd like to do something with these roses that are laying around:

I started it for a rose topiary quilt which I saw on Simply Quilts years ago. Since then I bought some more beautiful ribbons and would like to make some more roses out of those. They're really fun to make.

And of course those that I haven't even started yet :)

• a tote bag (got fabric for it at Jo-Ann on sale last week, will use pattern from Tone Finnanger's  Sew Sunny Homestyle book)
• double wedding ring quilt for my cousin's wedding
• and all those in my tab quilts and gifts to make :)

Receiving blanket

Sandy  from Quilting...for the Rest of Us posted on her blog about a video by the Missouri Star Quilt Co. in which Jenny shows an easy way to sew a receiving blanket. Even though her video is 12:38 long (with some sewing time edited out)  She says that it's a 10 minutes project which took me around an hour with the cutting and the final pressing. Since I don't have a big enough cutting mat I had to bump up a 36"x24" and a 24"x18" cutting mat next to each other and count on the markings on the mats. Hands down it is and easy blanket if you  need something in a hurry. Jo-Ann had a great deal on flannels so last week I went out to get some. They were $2.79 a yard which is the lowest price I ever bought any fabrics for. I pre-washed them to make sure they won't be shrinking a lot  next time they'll be washed. 

I made only one  just to test the waters. 

I have two more in the works with the backs needing to be cut. It helped a lot that Sandy gave some tips about flipping and all that jazz. If You're interested in making one of these I suggest to go to  Sandy's  blog and read her post first. I could totally use Her tips while I was working. Thank You so much, Sandy!