New Sewing Adventures: Dressmaking

Hello everyone! I hope you enjoyed your weekend. So this is what I have been up to. At the beginning of the year I made a list of all my crafty goals for 2014 and one of them was to start  sewing my own clothes. I'm totally obsessed with Japanese sewing patterns and I finally acquired a couple of fabulous books by 

Yoshiko Tsukiori

. All the patterns are amazing so it is a bit hard to chose a favorite. However, as it turns out 

Nat

 and I have the same book and decided to sew the same pattern. We are going to show our finished project by February 15 for the February 

Le Challenge

. I'm so thrilled about this new sewing adventure. I hope I'm successful :)

Have a lovely week.

XX

Martha

Owl Project Bag and the Begining of My First Shawl

Happy Sunday! I hope you had a lovely weekend. My weekend was crazy busy, but I managed to fit in some crafting. If you follow my blog you might remember that I mentioned that my sewing machine was giving me some trouble while I was quilting my Feathers and Patchwork Quilt. Well, I had to take in for service and I finally got it back from the shop. I'm happy to report that it just needed some maintenance and now she sews again like new. So to celebrate the return of my sewing machine I decided to make a new project bag for my knitting. The fabric is a screen printed fabric that I got from fabric.com a while back. I think is very cute and whimsical, don't you agree? To make the bag more functional I added a zippered pocket inside to keep my knitting notions in place and to avoid loosing them in the bottom of the bag. 

Speaking of knitting, I also started to knit my first shawl. The pattern is called Boneyard Shawl and is available for free at Raverly. So far is going good and it doesn't seem too complicated, but I'll let you know how it goes...

XX

Martha.

Knitting Finish: Honey Cowl

I'm so excited to have finished my Honey Cowl. My first finish of the year, yay! You might remember that I started knitting it back in November. I'm totally surprised at how 'fast' it came together. I'm not a fast knitter and  I only knit a little bit everyday; usually in the car (when my husband is driving) or few rows in the evening while watching TV. But it goes super fast. It is not wonder why the Honey Cowl is so popular; the pattern is fantastic and such a joy to knit.  I'm sure this won't be the only one I make. I'm already planning my next one :)

For this one I used Cotton Ease by Lion Brand Yarn. The yarn is very soft and light weight perfect for the winter weather here in California. I think I will be wearing it all week. 

Have a lovely week!

*Linking up to Wool on Sundays at  Rainbow Hare Quilts*

XX

Martha

Feathers And Patchwork: My Christmas Quilt

Happy Sunday, I hope you are enjoying the holidays. I had a wonderful Christmas. As it is our tradition we spend Christmas Eve with our extended family. Then my husband and I spend Christmas day at home watching movies and relaxing. And this year was not the exception; we watched all the movies we had been 'saving up',  and ate way too much popcorn and candy. But this year I added something new to our tradition: a new quilt to snuggle under while watching our movies. As you might remember I started working on my Christmas quilt at the beginning of December (you can read more about it 

here

). I wasn't sure I was going to able to finish it. The piecing is very simple and the quilt top came together in no time, but the quilting is another story. I decided to quilt it with straight lines about 3/4" apart. The quilting was slowly progressing when my machine decided to act up (now I need to take it in for service). Luckily I have another machine: a

vintage Kenmore

that a friend gave a while back and I had never used. Well, the little machine came through: it sews beautifully and I finished my quilt in time. 

I'm so happy with how this quilt turned up. I love the random patchwork. If feels very homemade and the flannel backing feels so warm and cozy. It has quickly become a family favorite.

Have a wonderful week and see you next year!

XX

Martha.

Merry Christmas!

Thank you for all your support and lovely comments throughout the year. I wish you the best this holiday season.

XX

Martha 

Hello Feather

With all the things I have to do this month I decided to add one more to my list. I decided to start a new quilt. I've been admiring Ana Maria Horner's Feather Quilt for quite some time. It is aboslutely fabulous. However, as much as I love the original design I'm not going to do a whole feather quilt. I'm  just making a few blocks to use as accents for a simple patchwork quilt. The plan is to have it finished for Christmas. We have a tradition of spending Christmas Day watching movies all day and I thought it would be nice to have a new quilt to snuggle under. Maybe this will be the start of a new tradition: A new quilt for Christmas every year...
I hope you are having a lovely week!

XX
Martha. 

Getting Ready For The Holidays

Hello everyone! I hope you had a lovely weekend. And for all of you in the US happy belated Thanksgiving.  Now that Thanksgiving is over, it is time to start getting ready  for Christmas.

Last week I finished this table runner. I actually started it last year hopping to finish it in time for the holidays. But sadly that didn't happen so I put it away and forgot about it for most of this year. Until last month. I picked it up again and decided to finally finish it and put it to use. Now I'm glad I 'waited' to finish it. Last year I had planned to leave all  the negative space around the stars un-quilted, except for the hand quilting around the stars. However, that turned out to be a bit of a problem. It looked puffy as if the layers needed to be secured better. So I decided to quilt all that negative space with a pebble pattern; something I would never had tried last year (I was terrified of free motion quilting).  It feels really good to finally check this project of my list.

Have a great week!

XX

Martha.

Yay! Started a Honey Cowl

Hello everyone, I hope you had a lovely weekend. I had such a busy weekend, but I made some time to work on a couple of projects I've been meaning to finish for a while. But more on that later... let me tell you about the new knitting project I started. For a while I had been admiring the very popular Honey Cowl, and I finally started one. I'm really enjoying working on this project. I have to confess though, it took me a while to understand how to make the stitch. I must to have read the stitch instructions about twenty times trying to figure it out until it finally clicked in my head :) The stitch is lovely I just love how "puffy" it looks and now that I understand how it works it is actually very easy to knit. I'm really looking forward to finishing this one.

*Linking up to Wool Sundays at Rainbow Hare Quilts and New to Me in 2013 at Celtic Thistle Stitches*

XX

Martha.