Little pincushions

A while ago I had found a tutorial about making little tiny pincushions from plastic lids. I can't find it right now, but will update the post with a link when I can. Here are two that I made. They are so simple, probably took about 5 minutes to make the pair. I need to save lids so I can make a bunch more. I think they would make great little gifts.

Quilt Retreat

My local quilt guild had our Spring retreat. My sister and I went, and I am just so glad we did. It was a blast to get to be away with no distractions and just SEW! There were some fun little activities scattered throughout. The theme was Back at the Barnyard. We had a hat contest, the only requirement was to use the flowers provided. I won most creative with my upside down planter/chick hatching hat. I won a cute little jar lantern. There were some really creative ideas. We also played barn yard games, an egg toss, hot potato, and a cow chip tossing contest. I won the cow chip tossing contest, and won some brown (manure) colored fat quarters. I worked on a pinwheel quilt (they are doing pinwheel quilts on ORBC flickr group), and actually got the top all put together. Now I'm trying to decide if I want a border on it or not. I also made my guild name tag. After those two things were done I started a circle quilt. We actually got to know the ladies in our guild. It's a challenge to get to know people at the meetings, but this was great. There are so many wonderful ladies in our guild. (I have more pictures but am having an awful time uploading, will try to add more tomorrow) I joined a flickr online quilting bee, called The Stitchin Bee. We just started, and Kelly is up first. Kelly is making a quilt to use at the beach so she wanted it really colorful. The only requirements were to make a 12 inch block with the fabrics sent, and include the little comic piece of fabric. The only way I could think of was a string block. So now, I just need to mail it back to Kelly.

I finished my potholders for The Potholder Pass 2 swap, so I just need to mail them off to my partner. The only thing I had to go on here was a list of colors my gal likes.

Birthday

Yesterday was my husband's birthday. Because we still have chocolate cake with peanut-butter icing here I thought I should make him something different for a birthday treat. He loves fastnachts(A Pennsylvania Dutch treat). I thought that would be a perfect idea. I've never eaten one so I really don't know how they are to taste. I'm not exactly sure why I never ate one, but I haven't. I followed a recipe that was in the Lancaster Farming a couple weeks ago. They weren't too hard to make although quite time consuming. I was told they were pretty good.

I have been having fun making dolls the last couple days. Since the dolls I made are for my nieces birthdays this summer, and I am having trouble keeping them until that time, I decided to make them some tiny dolls for their Easter baskets. They aren't finished but just wanted to share a little "in progress" picture. These two little dolls are about 2/3 the size of a pair of scissors, maybe 6 inches tall. They were a real challange to turn, especially the arms and legs. I imagine I won't be making too many of these tiny ones.

This and That

I've been in a sewing mood lately. I finished two doll quilts this week. One was a scrap quilt from Sew Mama Sew. I just stitched scraps onto a fabric sandwich and put a binding on it. The other is for a friend's daughter. The quilt is made up of fabrics left over from a larger quilt I made her. I added smaller versions of the flowers that are the same as what is on the larger quilt.

A while ago I came across Black Apple Dolls. I'm not even sure how I stumbled across them, probably browsing from blog to blog. After some more research I found that the creator Emily was on Martha Stewart and that you can get a free pattern to make the dolls for your own personal use. Since I have no little girls I figured they would make great gifts for my nieces. I dug out the scraps and got to work. First I picked fabrics that I thought would be cute for the dolls and laid them out. I decided they needed pigtails so I had to tweak the pattern a little.

I put one of the dolls together to see how it would look. I think she is cute. She's not quite complete because she needs a face. I'm also thinking of trying to make some little clothes so they can change them. They are really fairly easy to make.
I need to finish stuffing the one with the pink dress yet. I have a feeling I'll be making a few more of these. I would like to make the arms and legs a little more substantial in my next version. I feel like they are a little too skinny for my taste.

Hopefully I'll be able to get the second one complete later on. Well complete minus the face. That part scares me a little because I'm not artistic in that way.

Now I need to get out to the kitchen and make one of my husbands favorite meals. We will be having pork from the pigs we raised, and homemade saurkraut. So thankful that my Aunt Jean told me how to make the saurkraut. It's so easy, and absolutely delicious. I've used just about all I made so I really need to try to get cabbage and make another crock full before it gets warm out.

Experimenting

The other day I was looking on the Sew Mama Sew website and saw a tutorial for this bag listed. I thought it was pretty cute and decided to give it a whirl. Thankfully there is still plenty of cheap Moda fabric to be bought at Fabric Mart so it makes trying something new affordable in case you don't like it. However this turned out adorable!