Here are two new quilts that I just finished. I want to start to try some artsy stuff, so I'm making more wall-hanging-sized quilts, but it still doesn't seem right to make a quilt that I can't cover up with! I quilted the blue and white one with silver thread, so it's kind of sparkly, and I finished it last week so it was still seasonal to hang it for our last (I hope) snow. I hung it up for about three days, and changed it for the bright one today.

On the bright quilt, the flowers in the center section are painted, with Paintsticks. They were really fun to work with. I think I'll do something with them again.

potholders

These are a couple of the potholders that I made at home over Christmas break. I sort of thought that I'd be posting about the amazing crafts that I created during my 6 days recovering from gallbladder surgery last week, but instead I watched TV and slept a lot and am instead posting old pictures.

Lauren's First Quilt

I posted this to brag about Lauren's first quilt! She made this several years ago, I think while she was in high school. At the point where she had the top all finished and pinned to the batting and backing, somehow Jessie (the dog) discovered it in the basement, and took a few naps on it and otherwise abused it. A couple of times, we had to un-pin all of the quilt pins, wash everything, an re-pin it. But, she eventually finished it, and it now looks beautiful in our little porch room.

Sashiko Embroidery

These are two pieces of Sashiko embroidery that I recently finished. It's a Japanese style embroidery done with cotton floss on a solid cotton, in a running stitch. These two pieces I bought as kits (for my first try) where the stitches are printed on the cotton. I also bought a book of designs and now I'm going to try transferring some designs on to fabric and try the stitching "free hand". I might make some different size blocks and incorporate them all in to a small quilt. I could also make pillow covers out of these, but I don't really need any more pillow covers! The book I have has some really pretty things made out of embroidered pieces, like purses and table runners, so I'll see how ambitious I get!

Disney costumes

My friend Evan hosted a Disney theme party on Saturday night. I reprised my role (last seen when I was 3?) of Peter Pan. Izzy, our 7 month old puppy, went as one of the 101 Dalmations. The dog costume was sort of a disaster since I made it before she came down from Baltimore and I didn't know how to fit it to her properly. For Peter Pan, I dyed some cheap old navy leggings, altered a XXL t-shirt so much that I probably should have made it from scratch, and hot-glued a hat out of felt. The picture includes the other Peter Pan (who looks more like Robin Hood if you want to get critical), tinkerbell, Wendy, and myself.

My latest creation

I finally finished something to post here! I've been thinking about this since last August when I first saw the striped fabrics and the pattern. I started working on it about a month ago and just finished it today. I think it has quite an impact in spite of being pretty easy to make. What do you think?

Jeff and Mary's cabin quilt

You've all probably seen many pictures of this quilt at various stages of development. Here it is in its finished form, on the night that we gave it to Jeff and Mary.