Friday Night in Cleveland, Ohio

Tonight I went to a Hillary Clinton rally at Brush High School with Kathy, Linda and Susan. Unfortunately, we were not able to get into the school, so we stood out on the street hoping that her motorcade would drive by and we could at least see her. After several trips to the car to warm up our feet, she finally arrived around 7 pm ..... we think. A bunch of cars and a bus pulled up, surrounded by police cars, and we guessed that she was in one of them. All in all, a little disappointing (and I didn't get there at 3pm like Kathy and the girls did!)

Kathy's Art Quilt

On Friday, Kathy took me to the opening reception for the Lake Farmpark Quilt Show. She entered her art quilt that she made of the hot air balloon flying over the vineyard! Here's a picture of Kathy with her quilt.

Old sweaters never die.....

Here is a picture of two scarves I made out of old wool sweaters. We did this at our craft group meeting last week. I'm going to send them to Lauren and Rob for a Valentine's Day gift - Robbie's is made out of a bunch of his old wool sweaters. When he moved all of his stuff out of our house, he left a pile of sweaters on my sewing table with a note attached that said, "Scarf for Robbie, please." The more colorful one is for Lauren, and Kathy provided me with a lot of the wool for that one. We had a great time and everyone left with a mostly-finished scarf.

A cool blog

Hi guys,
I was searching for vintage valentine instructions and came across this awesome guy's blog of all the crafts he does. You've got to see it:
http://franknotes.wordpress.com/2007/11/25/happy-thanksgiving/
That's just one entry; once you're in there, take a look at the cakes this guy makes, as well as the sewing projects. Beautiful.
I want to be adopted by him and his partner.
Diane

Pajama Pants

Another project over Christmas break was making Pajama pants from an old pair of sheets. These great sheets were a gift from my mom and Izzy recently ripped them right down the middle. I was sad about it until I realized that the sheets were 7 years old!

Inspired by Soule Mama , we used the fabric and Amy Butler's In Stitches book to turn the sheets into pajama pants. The legs are VERY wide but I haven't tripped on them yet. And my roommate was impressed that my new pants still match my old pillowcases.

Bags!

Our Christmas project was to make tote bags. The first one was the "with love tote", a pattern from Kathy with such a terrible name that I almost didn't want to make it. The other two are variations on the pattern which I probably couldn't duplicate if my life depended on it.




I gave the red one to my friend Jen and the blue one to Jan. Jan and her boyfriend Nick came to Baltimore to spend New Years Eve with Brian and me and we tested the bag by using it to carry rum, coke, a bottle of champagne around that night (as seen with Nick below).

Secret Project #1: Diaper Bag

One of the projects I finished when I had Sarah's sewing machine was this bag for my pregnant friend, Monika. It's Amy Butler's Nappy Bag and was complicated but fun to make. Unfortunately, I got frustrated with the cost of materials and bought cheap interfacing that was too thick and the bag is kind of crunchy as a result. Other than that (and a lot of threads I didn't trim), I love it.