First, I have to announce the winner of my Flea Market Finds giveway. I had Parker pick a number out of a hat, and it was #1! So Lauren, I’ll send you an e-mail to get your address.

I spent a lot of this weekend finishing up another quilt for our camp, this one for our bed. Though it is smaller than I thought it would be, so maybe I’ll end up just folding it at the end of the bed. The pattern is “Metro Link” by Paisley Pear Quilts. I didn’t follow the directions exactly because I wanted to use the charm packs (pre-cut 5″ squares) of solid colors I had bought a while ago so I figured out a way to cut those in 1.5″ strips, sewed them onto long strips of the gray background fabric and then cut them apart to the specified sizes. And I had a lot of 2.5″ “jelly roll” strips leftover from my first camp quilt. My original plan was to use up patterned scraps, but my husband wanted solids instead. I think I should’ve gone with my instincts!

I really tried not to pay attention to which color was going where, other than to avoid putting two of the same colors right next to each other. I copied the straight-line quilting design from Alex at teaginny designs, though hers is MUCH nicer than mine. I had a ton of puckers on the top of the quilt and after awhile I was just sick of it. And then my sewing machine was acting up and the needle kept just FALLING off. (I think my walking foot was loosening the screw that holds the needle in). But as usual, once it was washed and dried, I liked it a bit more

Here’s the back: I didn’t have quite enough of the polka dot fabric so I used some of the leftover solid color strips.

It was funny, I have been spending a lot of time practicing my knitting … but when I switched to sewing the binding on this quilt, it felt SO EASY. My hands definitely are not yet used to knitting…

The talented Matthew Mead, who does the photography for my husband’s cookbooks and AP work, has graciously given me an extra copy of his latest work: Flea Market Finds to give away. As with his other books and magazine work, it is gorgeous. I particularly loved the feature on using the colors from maps as inspiration for paint and decorating.

I actually have not been to many flea markets, but we do like to go to yard sales. (Here’s a story my husband and I wrote years ago about the World’s Largest Yard Sale, We had a challenge to spend $100 each but failed miserably. ) Closer to home, we used to go to weekly auctions, and our best deal probably was our $5 dining room table.)

If you’d like to a chance to win, just leave a comment below. It can be anything you want, but if you have a good yard sale/flea market story, I’d love to hear it. I’ll pick a winner Monday morning.

I know I said I was going to make swaddled baby dolls for all the babies my friends are having in the next year, but I could not resist this cute Lovey Dovey pattern by Abby Glassenberg at While She Naps.  Also, since I am now learning how to knit, I have visions of making tiny knit hats for the swaddled dolls, but I didn’t have time (or the skills!) to do that for the baby who arrived earlier this month.

This little bear lovey is heading all the way to New Zealand, for the new baby boy born to the pen pal I have been writing to since I was 14! Sadly neither of us is great at writing letters these days, but we are in touch a bit on Facebook … and we’ll meet again, I’m sure. (We have met twice, once when she was visiting the US and we met in New York, and once when we both happened to be in London at the same time. Someday I’ll get to NZ!)

This was a super easy pattern, using scraps of fleece and fabric I had leftover from other patterns. I’m not crazy about the way the fleece already looks a bit worn out… but I don’t think a newborn will mind!

Here’s my very first knitted item! I am taking an online course taught by Stefanie Japel at Craftsy.com, and so far, it has been really great. I really like being able to watch it at my own pace, and go back to review segments if needed. I think the only drawback compared to a real, in-person class is that if you make a mistake, there’s no one there to help you! I did make a few, and ended up having to unravel several rows of stitches at various points, but I managed to salvage the project.

I’m pretty impressed that this first project combines so many different techniques, it was a great learning experience. And I think it turned out pretty cute! If you look up close, it is a little ragged, but I was pleasantly surprised when I put it on to photograph it. Parker (age 7) told me he liked it, and then said, “But you look TOO good.” I wasn’t sure how to take that! I asked him if he meant “fancy” and he said yes. So I guess I’ll take that as a compliment?

Still not sure if I like this enough to give it to someone else… or if I should just keep it for myself and figure that I will get better with future projects. This took about a week and a half to make, just working on it for a few minutes here and there… and used just one ball of yarn (Knit Picks Comfy Worsted, $2.99/ball, 75 percent pima cotton, 25 percent acrylic).

My best friend recently took her 5-year-old daughter to Babyland General to adopt a Cabbage Patch Kid for her birthday, so I wanted to make some new clothes for the new baby doll. I borrowed my own Cabbage Patch preemie doll back from my niece and bought a 1980s-era Butterick pattern for Cabbage Patch preemie doll clothes, but it turns out the new dolls sold at Babyland General are bigger _ 17″ vs. the 13″ or 14″ old dolls. But I wasn’t sure where those extra inches were, and whether the proportions were the same. After thinking it over for a few days, I came up with a way to modify the patterns to fit the larger doll. Since I didn’t have the actual doll to measure, I went to the Cabbage Patch Kid clothing website and found a picture of both the doll and a separate picture of just a basic infant sleeper laid out flat.  I copied the pictures into Photoshop and enlarged the doll until it was 17″ and then enlarged the pajamas to fit. I then printed the pictures of the pajamas, cut them out and used that sort of as a basic shape I could use to make patterns. The little dress just has two pattern pieces, the back bodice and the overlapping front bodices, plus a rectangle for the skirt. So I used the outline of the pajamas as a guide to draw shapes similar to the smaller pattern pieces, then followed the pattern’s sewing directions. The only change I made was using a double layer of fabric for the skirt, since the fabric I used is pretty thin. This actually made it easier to sew, since I didn’t have to hem the bottom edge or sides where the dress overlaps.

For the bloomers, I just used the Butterick pattern as is, and added an extra half inch to the each leg elastic and an inch to the waist.

My friend received the outfit yesterday, and she said it fits perfectly! Yay! So now I can make variations and know that they will fit. For example, I think I could just length the legs on the bloomers pattern and get rid of the elastic around the legs to make shorts or pants. It’s tempting to make a bunch of clothes for my own (I mean, my niece’s) doll, even though I know she doesn’t really play with him much. I’m sort of embarrassed to admit how old I was when I got that doll (OK, I was 11 or 12), but it was a CRAZE. Did you have Cabbage Patch Kids? I remember we were on a waiting list for months at Toys R’ Us.

I’m glad I waited to post this today. It’s cheering me up after a very long, sad night … After working all day yesterday covering the vice president’s latest trip to New Hampshire, I spent the entire night covering a terrible police shooting. I got home at 8:30 this morning. A rough start to the weekend, but I am off next week and we are going to spend it doing home improvement projects at our camp. Hopefully I’ll have some pictures to share of that next week!

I’m so focused on looking ahead to summer and making stuff for the camp that Easter has snuck up on me and I didn’t even take out my old decorations, let alone make anything new this year. I’m in the middle of making another quilt (this one is for our bed at the camp), and cushions for all the porch furniture.

And I decided to learn how to knit, after spending way too much time analyzing it. On one hand, do I really need more hobbies? And won’t it be expensive?  And what would I even make? Scarves are always handy for New Hampshire winters… but I can’t really see myself making sweaters. I love some of the knitted stuffed animals I’ve seen, but Parker is getting older, and I don’t have a ton of toddlers on my gift list.

On the other hand, I am envisioning evenings at the camp, with no TV (not a big deal since we don’t have TV at home), no computer and no sewing machine. So knitting seemed like the perfect hobby to while away those hours … (My husband, by the way, has decided to teach himself wood carving/whittling so HE can have a camp hobby as well. You’d think we were 80 years old, rather than not-yet 40.)

My fellow crafting buddy Annmarie and I both signed up for Stephanie Japel’s Knit Lab class at Craftsy.com. (When I created an account, I got a welcome email that included any class for $25). So far, I really like her teaching style, and I think I’m starting to get the hang of it. But if anyone has any tips for beginners, I’d love to hear them. Particularly on yarn… is there a good, not-too-expensive yarn you really like? I really don’t want to spend a fortune.

Here are my Easter projects from past years, in case you need a last-minute project! (click on the pictures to go to the posts)

We had such crazy warm weather last week (in the 80′s, which is about 40 degrees above normal for this time of year!) that we have been dreaming a lot about returning to the summer cabin we bought last year. We bought it at the end of August so didn’t really get to enjoy it last year, given all the work it needed. But I’m glad we got all that done and can just enjoy it this summer. One thing I am NOT looking forward to is sewing cushions for the porch furniture. The previous owners left us some very large, maple furniture, probably from the 1950s or 60s, that we are going to use on the new screened-in porch, but all the cushions needed to be replaced. Of course, neither the chairs nor the sofa are a standard size so I will have to make the cushions. Ugh. Not particularly difficult sewing, but tedious and still rather pricey given the cost of foam, outdoor fabric, etc.

But, here is a camp project that I was much happier about. A cheerful quilt to throw over the back of the sofa. (We bought a sofa from IKEA and I dyed the white slipcover gray because the gray slipcover cost $200 more. It was not a complete success… quite a bit of it came out blotchy, so I’m hoping this quilt will cover up the worst of it).

I made this using the “Modern Workshop”  free pattern from the Oliver + S blog, and while it was quite simple given that it uses pre-cut “jelly roll” strips, the directions as written result in a HUGE amount of wasted fabric. This is what I had left over after making the quilt: (almost enough to make another entire quilt. Which I might do, but I would’ve preferred to have known ahead of time that there would be so much extra)

The problem is, the directions call for sewing each of 24 different jelly-roll strips to a 5.5″X width-of-fabric strip of white fabric, and then cutting the resulting strips into 17 2.5″-wide pieces. But there are only a few different colors where you actually need 17 sections.

So, if you’d like to make this quilt without wasting so much fabric, I made this chart to show how many time each color actually appears in the quilt. (Note: My quilt doesn’t actually look like this because I didn’t start with red as my #1 fabric, but you get the idea. If you want to have a rainbow/ombre effect, you need three shades of red, three oranges, three yellows, etc.) I did this calculation very quickly, but I THINK you only need about 2.75 yards of white fabric, and not the 4 yards called for in the directions.

Once you have all the necessary sections, you sew the sections into long strips in color order (A1-A2-A3….A8; B1-B2-B3) etc. so you end up with 27 strips. Then you follow the diagram to add pieces to the top and bottom, so the colors end up staggered. The shaded section below shows the 27 strips, the unshaded parts are where you add the other strips. (This won’t make much sense, but if you look at the original pattern, it makes more sense)

(Also, I just realized my quilt is upside down compared to this diagram. Oops!)

Since this quilt will be thrown over a sofa and used in the summer, I wanted it to be light-weight. So I used (pre-washed and dried) flannel instead of batting, which I think made it easier to quilt. I quilted lines roughly 1/4″ of an inch on either side of each long seam line. I was tempted to another line down the middle of each strip, too, but I was anxious to finish.

I find it easier to bring my sewing machine into the dining room for larger projects like this, which tends to attract my feline helpers.

Here’s Marmalade, who likes to flop down and demand belly rubs:

And even Tangerine, our eyeless, blind cat found her way onto the dining room table at one point:

I admit I am not much of a sports fan, but having graduated from the University of North Carolina, it is hard not to get caught up in the NCAA tournament “March Madness.”  This year, both my school and the school my twin sister attended  (Ohio University)  have made it to the Sweet 16 and are playing each other Friday night! So of course I had to make some t-shirts for Parker and my 7-year-old nephew to wear when we get together to watch the game.

I used the Silhouette flocked heat transfer material for both shirts. I didn’t have any white for the green shirt though, so I ironed the green design onto white cotton and then used light-weight fusible interfacing and stitching to applique it onto the shirt. I think the edges probably will fray a bit, but I don’t think my nephew will be too picky.

Go Tar Heels!

I have at least five friends who are expecting babies in the next six months or so, so I definitely am going to get my money’s worth out of this adorable swaddled baby doll pattern from Adirondack Patterns. I didn’t follow the directions exactly (I bought some organic cotton fabric for the “skin” instead of using a sock as the pattern calls for) and I made a little hat by reducing this free pattern by 50 percent.

This was a very simple project. In fact, I probably spent more time fussing with the swaddling blanket than I did making the  doll. (I kept tinkering after I took this photo and I think I achieved a better wrap). I was conflicted about whether to secure the blanket with stitches or leave it loose. On one hand, the future recipients might like to wrap and unwrap their baby dolls. On the other hand, the doll has no arms or legs, so it looks kind of strange unwrapped. My compromise was to add a bit of iron-on Velcro to the flannel so it will hold together but can be taken apart at some point.

The flannel actually is cut from one of Parker’s swaddling blankets that I’ve had stuffed in a bin of fabric for almost eight years! Though I sometimes miss that chubby little baby, I do NOT miss the swaddling phase one bit!

I’m starting to think that by the time I finish slipcovering my living room furniture I will either be sick of the “new” look or my cats will have destroyed the new covers. I finally finished the second slipcover a few weeks ago, and now just have to make one for the large, very beat-up “chair and a half” on the other side of the room.

This chair is the reverse of the sofa, which is gray with blue piping. I think I like the contrast, but am not sure I still like the red cushions I made for the sofa. Maybe something lighter is in order for spring…