Pink and Red

Do you know how excited I get when I hear that a coworker is having a baby girl? :o) I love making little crib quilts and it's always fantastic to have an excuse to whip up a girly pink tiny quilt. Here's one I made last week to welcome a new girl. It's very simple, just a charm pack with a few extras mixed in, and a crib size piece of batting. It went together very quickly since it's so small.

Here's a closeup of some of the pretty prints in this charm pack.

I also recently stumbled over some University of Alabama quilting cotton on fabric.com and almost had a heart attack from excitement. My dad went there and is quite possibly the biggest Crimson Tide fan on the face of the earth. So I had to buy two prints, and I made him up a little sofa cushion and a little grocery bag. I can't wait to give them to him.

And finally... I am at last catching up on the Minoru Sew Along!

My fabric is a very very heavy water resistant outwear cotton from BJ's. It's definitely one of the most expensive fabrics I've ever bought, but I really wanted something that would keep some rain out without being a nylon or poly. The fabric is very stiff- pretty much a canvas- and it's been a bear to sew. My top stitching and gathering could be better, but this is as good as I can get with my machine, which is just not cut out to sew really heavyweight fabrics.

The zippers are metal ones from Pacific Trim. Hey, if I'm using $25/yard outwear fabric, I'm not tossing in cheap plastic zippers; I'm going for the theory that using good fabric and notions here will make it come out nicely. Wish me luck. ;)

Here's the shell so far on my dressform

So far I like it, but we'll see how it comes out in the end!

Bags

I didn't realize it had been a whole month since I'd updated west 38th. Oh my. I do have a smidgen of sewing to show off, although it was for an online swap instead of for me. But it was fun, especially this little kitty cat zipper bag!

This is the L2 bag from Sewing workshop - lined with laminated cotton so that it's a good grocery shopping bag. The print is by Sandi Henderson - one of my favorites from her latest line. I have some extra of this fabric to maybe make pillows from.

I still love this bag pattern, because it holds a lot of stuff. I haul around way too much nerd nonsense all the time. Here's a pile of all the stuff that was in my purse today - this is minus the lunch bag and lots of random papers I had crammed into my bag.

I haven't done much other sewing, but I have been doing a bit of bread baking! We got a fantastic wedding present from one of my aunts who is a very accomplished cook - a cloche for making crusty breads in. It's the Sassafras La Cloche, and it works REALLY well. Sad that it took me months to get it out and use it, but -wow! It was worth getting it out. I've been working on the master recipe whole wheat bread from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day, which is the whole wheat & gluten free bread book by the famous Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day folks.

Here's my third ever loaf of whole wheat bread...

You can see that the cloche really does give it a super nice crust. Mmmm.

Happy sewing :o)