plans.

I have tonight off. I'm very excited.

Mostly because it's technically an "extra" night, and I have a lot of things I've been putting off.

There are the obvious things, like cleaning. Vacuuming - which was once a bi-weekly thing, because I'm lazy - is now a twice-a-week activity due to rambunctious, couch-eating dogs. Sweeping/mopping, taking out trash, etc etc - all those boring activities we all wish we didn't have to do.

But there are OTHER things I'm going to try and do today. Like:

- detail a dragon in chalk.

- finish some Denyse Schmidt stars, finally (in green, because that's my favorite color).

- box my fabric up, not by COLLECTION but by PROJECT.

- FINALLY gather all those things I've been meaning to give away and do so. Goodwill, here I come.


This is ambitious for me, but between work and life I think I've been in a bit of a funk. Here's to getting out of it and tidying myself up.

Later days!

- Katie

Wow! It's been a while!

It feels like forever since I posted a blog. It's one of those things where you have every intention of doing so, and then that idea disappears. Where does it go? My money's always on Narnia.

March is always a busy month in the restaurant business, so that accounts for part of it. There hasn't been much machine sewing going on, but here's a bit of what has:

I watched "Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension" for the first time. I came for Jeff Goldblum and left with a crush on Buckaroo and a chasm of respect for Peter Weller. Be still my beating heart.

This is one picture of Sulli where she isn't giving me her usual side-eye. The only thing I can compare this picture to is catching a hummingbird in slo-mo. She is almost NEVER this still.

This guy is getting SO BIG! He is such a lover-boy and so affectionate. To think that when I first got him I felt a disconnect seems almost unbelievable. One of the best parts of coming home is this guy falling right in my lap!

It's been a long ambition of mine to make a star quilt like my grandmother's, and so I began one (despite having a million OTHER projects that could have used completing. Oh, well). Initially I started out doing JUST florals, but rich jewel tones called to me and now it's going to be a rainbow quilt. Go figure!

And here's a picture of the sewing half of my closet, all neat and clean. I live in an area where hurricanes are pretty prevalent, and I thought about what I'd take if that occurred. Of course it was my puppies, my fabric, my quilt tops and my sewing machine! My can't-live-withouts.

That's all for today. I hope to get back in the swing of things and start posting more! (And maybe have a few quilts done eventually... a girl can dream!)

Later Days!

- Kait

Do the Harlem Shake

Or don't. I haven't, but make sure you check out the videos on Youtube because those are RIDICULOUS.

Valentine's Day was yesterday! I celebrated it with these chocolates (thank you customer!) and my dogs.

I dyed these fabrics this week! I really love the saturation of the colors, although I will say that the iDye leaves the white parts of the fabric a bit whiter than the RIT dye (but that's not a deal breaker!) I'm still trying to decide what I want to do with them, but for now I'm content to just oogle :)

Of the four I picked out here, I dyed the two "green" hues, Olive and Emerald. I will say that the Olive ends up dyeing a shade or two darker than that - it's really a brown/green, which is to be expected, but you have to dry it out before it looks that way! When the fabric is dyeing it looks black! The Emerald is a lovely color, though :)

I started watching this. I'm sort of in love with it and if you don't hear from me again it's because I couldn't stop watching it...

I love, love, LOVE these Martha Negley feathers. Again, I don't know quite what to do with them, but I'm ecstatic that they're mine!

There was also Tres Leches this week, which makes me infinitely happy.

I'm hoping to get a quilt top finished this weekend (only two more seams to sew!) and another little cross-stitch character done. (As well as much puppy cuddling and sandwich eating). (Because I gave up pizza which was a silly, silly decision).

Later days!

- Katie

new adventures

I knew I wanted to get another puppy as soon as I got Sulli. I had siblings - lots of them - and we never had just one doggy family member. They always had a doggy companion to be buds with.

And I have always, always wanted a Corgi. Aren't they the cutest, sweetest little dogs? Sulli is the sweetest little girl, but I think I got lucky as far as Chihuahuas go. And even she has her moments. A friendly, eager-to-please dog like a Corgi is perfect for a stubborn little Chihuahua.

Enter Niko!

I was so psyched to have the opportunity to take this little dude home. He's fussier than Sulli was - cries a lot more, but I think it's just going from one atmosphere to another. He used to live on a farm, and now he lives on an island.

But he is super cute and definitely awesome, and I think he's the shiz.

You'll be seeing him a bit more about this space!

Other than puppy times, there's been little sewing going on. (How can I sew when I've got this cuteness to look at?) 

I picked up these magazines at Barnes and Noble. Some really cute stuff in here!

Can't wait to start on this simple strip quilt and using up my long-hoarded Wonderland Jelly Roll. Once I saw this pattern in the new issue of Quilty, I couldn't help but want to try it!

Attempted to finish this guy in time for a visit with my nephew, but alas I could not. I'll ship it to them with some tasty treats later :)

Got these pretty fabrics for bindings! The tartan is for the Weasley Blanket, the Sea Flowers in Blossom is for the Tea-Dyed Floral, and the Leopard is for the Field Study/Cocoon quilt. The other three fabrics are stash-builders; Lizzy House always includes really effective ones in all of her lines, so I tend to lean towards those.

Which is why I've collected these Pearl Bracelets since 1001 Peeps! Knew they'd come in handy for the quilt I plan on making with my Lizzy House scraps, and when she released some new colors I had to get them!

Plans for the weekend? 

- Sleeping in (hopefully)

- Watching Arbitrage and Captives (I'm on a Tim Roth binge this weekend, so sue me)

- Piecing together that Wonderland Quilt.

- Finishing my first Dwarf on the Hobbit Cross stitch (Balin!)

Back to the grindstone for me! 

Later days,

Kait

It's friday, everyone. Yayyyy.

Can you sense my enthusiasm? It may be a bit muted because I am beyond tired this morning. I had a surprise (okay, not really, but it was surprising because I forgot) from our hood cleaners and had to wait another three and a half hours for them to finish their work. So a 12.5 hour day became a 16 hour day, somehow, but at least I had a plethora of SNL videos to watch and my brother to keep me company.

Here's a picture of him huddling in the fetal position. Two words: Crystal Gravy.

I got these in. I think they're the bee's knees. Twenty-four different colors, all in stars, stars, stars! It's the Little Star Sampler from Connecting Threads, and at 35.76 it's not a bad deal, if you need some stash builders!

Cut up all my plaids! Those shirting materials are nothing but trouble. I guess I could have starched them, and if I work with plaid shirtings again (since I still have a bit left over) I think I might.

It did not help that I had a puppy sitting on my shoulder because I would not let her sit in my lap. She's persistent, that one!

Also, this happened. I pulled my Field Study by AMH and Cocoon by Valori Wells and put them in rainbow order, and all of a sudden I was in love! Funny how that works. All my moth-related fabrics in one place (this stack includes a few prints from Patty Young's Flora and Fauna and some solids in royal blue, teal, gold, fuchsia, and brown). I'm planning on cutting into these babies tonight when I figure exactly how I want the pattern to look!

I have a goal for my apartment this year, and it boils down to three words: more efficient storage. There's got to be a way to move everything around so that it works better! (At least, that's what I hope!) My first task is to get rid of the big, hulking dresser I currently own and get something smaller, possibly from Ikea, and then refigure the room so it better suits my needs. I'd love a sewing table, but that'll be a project for the future!

And now I need to clean my office. I like to think of it as currently "moreganized" - because it ain't there yet, but it's more organized than yesterday. It's a work in progress (and has been for awhile. My coworker says that it took us nine years to dirty the thing and it'll take more than a few days to clean it, and I'm inclined to agree).

So on that note, later days!

- Kait

A great weekend and some quilting progress.

But then, all weekends are great when you spend them with the right people!



I prefer to spend my weekends with this fool, with whom I have many ridiculous adventures.

(we couldn't resist the tiny chairs).

I bought this Hobbit pattern to cross-stitch from Gracie Cross Stitch on Etsy. I am pretty much in love with this movie and I was so, so happy to see something this awesome! I'm going to switch it around a bit, but she did a beautiful job of capturing these characters (with whom I am a little obsessed).

So I immediately went and bought thread (a lot of which I was missing, surprisingly) and cross-stitch material. I tea-dyed the cross-stitch material, since I wanted it to be an old-looking, parchment type color. To do so, I used a mix of Bigelow "Peppermint" and "Earl Grey".

I bought some more plaids in anticipation of my Weasley blanket. (Along with some cute DS Quilts prints).

And when I finished all of those blocks, and discovered that it wasn't quite as large as I wanted ...
(An idea that I think Sulli shares...)

I bought some MORE plaids.

It seems I have a bit of a thing for them. Personally I believe you can never have TOO many...

I also drew this picture of a Corgi, because God willing, I'll be bringing a little fellow home in less than two weeks, and I am unbelievably excited!

Sully knows nothing of my dastardly plan (or she is choosing to ignore me when I mention her little brother).

Dolmades were eaten (and they were delicious!)

I also worked a bit on my Outfoxed Quilt. My goal is to finish at least three quilt tops before I get our new little buddy, because I'll obviously be ridiculously occupied with the adorableness. Obviously.

And this quilt top has been mostly pieced, although there needs to be a border ... 

... although it is, again, Too Small by my standards. (I like big quilts and I cannot lie!)

So that's what I'm working on this week: finishing an Outfoxed top, some Weasley blocks, and a Floral top. 

And possibly getting started on a Hobbit cross stitch.

And now I leave you with THIS lovely image:

She's as cute as her Mom. (ahem).

Later Days!

- Katie

Works in Progress

We haven't seen "The Hobbit" for the fifth time yet. (YET.)

But we did buy these ridiculous ass Lord of the Rings Pez because we didn't think we could live without them. Dear Walmart: thank you for these!

After deciding to downsize the amount of blocks I was going to have on the first tea-dyed quilt, I finished them last Monday night!

This pic is a little blurry, but this is my favorite block. Mad props to Joann's for having such pretty white-on-white prints! 

Sometime these next few weeks, I plan on piecing these (should be easy enough) and then figuring out where I want to appliqué the doilies, etc. I'm thinking perhaps some flowers, too, but I'm undecided about that at the moment.

Saw these patterns in a McCall's quilting magazine and I'm kind of psyched to try them out! I'm thinking AMH Field Study for "Saddle Tramp", which seems rather easy to do (or so I hope).

I dragged out all of my Denyse Schmidt prints and got a wild idea for a sawtooth star quilt. I'll be picking up a few more tomorrow for a total of an even hundred! I can't wait to get started on this one.

This area was clean (once upon a time)...

... but I did manage to make some progress on this front! I've got about 80 more triangles to do (which is about 640 more selvedges) (and 160 more pieces of scrap fabric) to have a complete quilt top. I'm pretty sure I'm going to exhaust my selvedge collection by then (which is the whole point!)

I'm off tomorrow, and we're headed to Joann's so I can blow my gift card! After that, I have some crafty plans for January:

1. Piece my first tea-dyed quilt.

2. Piece the rest of the Weasley blocks!

3. Cut out all the pieces from the DS Quilts sawtooth star.

5. Double check my stash for selvedges. I get a feeling I'm going to run out ...

6. Finish as many selvedge spiderweb blocks as I can! 

7. Piece Outfoxed blocks quilt top.

That's a pretty ambitious list, but I plan on staying up late late tonight to finish a little bit of something. Right now it's back to the grindstone ... so later days!

- Kait