A Little Fabric Therapy ;)

 

 Well, after all the stress of yesterday, I'm due for a little fabric therapy - lol.  Actually, I've gotten back into sewing as I mentioned before thanks to Karen's blog, as I mentioned a few posts ago.  So now I can't seem to stop the stream of projects I want to start - ha.  I should be finishing some - like a quilt I made for my niece that still needs to be quilted and bound.  Maybe I'll get that one out too.  The fabric above is for a quilted tote bag I'm making.  My daughter asked me to make one like her friend has.  Problem is, she's in North Carolina, and I'm in Wyoming.  The solution? Skype!

She held up the bag, turned it inside out, and so on, and I snapped pictures.  (it's inside-out in this picture). She didn't have any way to measure it, so I had her hold up her three ring binder next to it so I could get the right size.  Then I set to work creating a pattern.

 I figured out as long as I was making one for her, I could easily make one for me at the same time.  The library fabrics are for my bag.  These two are my favorites.

She requested brown and black - or one or the other.  So these are her fabrics.  I got everything cut out on Monday, but I haven't had a chance to sew it yet.  I can't sew during daycare, and last night the eight year old and I went to a fine arts council performance (the Turtle Island Quartet - a strings quartet) so last night was out.  I doubt I'll get to it tonight either as we have AWANA club at church. So maybe tomorrow.  I'm hoping to get hers into the mail by Saturday.  That's the goal anyway.

The other day, my Connecting Threads magazine came with this adorable arrows quilt pattern in it.

I immediately thought of the fabric I bought at Christmas ... one print had all kinds of trucks on it.  I bought it because my husband drives a cement mixer and I thought it would be cute for the boys, but I had no idea what to do with it.  This pattern just screamed for that fabric.  It even has arrows on it :P So the car fabric will be the arrows, and the dark blue will be the background.

And when I saw this on the Quilt Taffy blog last week, I had to have it :)

 Is this superhero fabric cute, or what?!  And the price for the kit was decent, so I just went ahead and order it.  (Lest you think I'm being undisciplined, I should tell you that I actually have a budget for fabric - lol.  Of course, originally I had planned on saving it all for after-Christmas sales, which are always amazing, but what would the fun be in that?  May have to increase the budget ... lol. May have to get more productive first!)

I have had these charm squares for a long time.  I got them on a ridiculously good sale, and wasn't sure how many it would take to make a quilt so I think I have something like six or eight packets of them.  I'm thinking half-square triangles with these, then play with the layout on a design wall.  It only just occurred to me that I can use the flannel board cover I made for my toy storage cabinet in the daycare (formerly known as my living room) as a design wall. Duh.

I think I won one of these small jelly rolls, and had them add another on as I didn't think it would be enough to do anything with.  I think I'm just going to start sewing strips together and cutting them up and re-arranging them until I get something I like.  Fun and no-stress.  Although it probably will be stressful because I'm an extreme planner.  I even lay out and plan with great care my "random order" quilts.  Lol.  It takes a lot of planning to make something look random. HA.  Yes. I am that obsessive.

So until I can get to the sewing machine, I'm back to hand stitching my hexagon quilt.  I think I'm going to start joining my diamond units together.  I'm about out of papers, so I need to connect some so I can re-use the papers.  I also think I'm going to try to make a diamond shape without the papers and see if I like that any better.  Sure seems faster if you could cut out a couple of steps...  We'll see.