At least someone’s been productive

Yes, I am still alive… just not finding any time at all for sewing. But there has still been sewing in my life, thanks to my amazing mom. When she visited me last weekend she brought me this beautiful gift:

I confess this was not a complete surprise, since she gifted me with the partially completed quilt-top for Christmas. Believe it or not, this is her first quilt! I think it’s totally amazing. She used the Mod Mosaic Floor Pillow tutorial from Oh Fransson and expanded it into lap-blanket size. The back is super cool too:

Man it is hard to photograph quilts! How do all you awesome quilters do it? And by that I mean both photograph them and, you know, sew all those teeny pieces together with perfect seam allowances and in a visually pleasing order and then pin and quilt and bind and… yeah, I don’t think I’ll ever be a quilter. But I am so in awe of all the beautiful quilts I see on the internets, and now I have one of my own! Thanks Mom, you’re amazing!

It’s kind of perfect timing, actually, as tomorrow is my 5th wedding anniversary and our wedding colors were black and white and yellow. I wanted to make a black/white/yellow dress for our anniversary trip this weekend, but my sewing mojo remained awol for basically the entire month of March, so it was not to be. But in an effort to kickstart myself, I decided to throw myself at an easy project and try to finish it before we leave tomorrow… and I’m pleased to say that this morning in about an hour I mostly completed a Vogue 1250 (you know, the ubiquitous three-piece-cowl-neck-slinky-dress that everyone and their giraffe has made), and it really is as easy as everyone says! I just have to hem the sleeves and the skirt, and I’m done, so I may have a new dress for our trip after all, even if it’s not yellow. Let’s hope the mojo’s sticks around til I get back!

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Finished!

Yes, I finished something! No, it is not something sewing related at all. Tricked you! I actually have had even less time to sew than usual; being in tech and opening a show is a real time/energy suck. Weirdly, what I did luck into some time to do was ride 70 miles on my bike. My finished item is the Solvang Metric Century!

This is by far the longest ride I’ve ever done. It took a while, but I did it and even felt great afterwards! Here is the route for anyone interested. Traditionally a “metric century” is 63 miles (100 km), because (as you may have guessed) a century is 100 miles. But this ride ended up a bit longer than advertised, coming in right at 70 miles. There were almost 5000 (!) riders participating in the event on Saturday, and it was really neat to just see that many bikes and cyclists all in one place. I ride mostly on my own, so it’s quite a novelty for me to join so many other people all doing the same thing. Makes me really want to go to a big sewing meetup or something!

Anyway, hopefully things are slowing down a little for me, and I’ll be able to get some, I don’t know, sewing done soon. It’s supposed to rain this weekend, so it’d be nice to have a nice new Minarou to keep me dry… we’ll see how fast I can put it together once I, you know, start it. I promise some actual sewing content soon!

Leibster season

Here at the tail end of awards season, I’m honored to have received my very first blog award! The amazing Amy of Sew Well, in a delightfully described Bloscar ceremony (get it? Blog Oscar? Bloscar? yeah, I know my coinages are never as good as I think they are), accepted her award and handed it off to five blogs, one of which was me! Thanks, Amy, I’m thrilled to accept the Liebster Blog Award!

I’m particularly honored to receive this award from Amy, who has a skill, dedication, and attention to detail that I am pretty certain I will never possess, and all her garments simply reek of quality craftsmanship and also just plain ol’ prettiness. Also, we’re kind of neighbors in real life (all right, we’re in the same state, but in the vast land of the internet that totally counts), and many of her fabulous fabrics come from a little fabric store in my city!

So now my task is to pass it on, and nominate my favorite blogs that not too many folks have discovered yet. Ostensibly these should be blogs with less than 200 followers, but of course that’s notoriously difficult to determine, so apologies if I’ve vastly underestimated your popularity… Also, a couple of you have already received the award from another discerning blogger, but I’ve made my peace with having extremely good taste (and always being late to the party) and I’m nominating you anyway. This also reminds me that I need to update my favorite blog links on my sidebar to include some newly discovered awesomeness! Anyway, here are my nominees, in no particular order:

• four square walls
• Pretty Grievances
• Darling Autodidact
• threadsquare
• Cation Designs

All you ladies inspire me with your ideas, finished makes, and most of all your unique voices and delightful senses of humor! Thank you for always making me laugh and brightening my day whenever I check your blog!

If you’d like to pass on the award, the terms appear to be: thank your Liebster Blog Award presenter on your blog, link back to the blogger who presented the award to you, copy and paste the blog award on your blog, present the Liebster Blog Award to five blogs (with 200 followers or less), and let them know they have been chosen by leaving a comment.

Thanks again to Amy, and thank you to this whole great, supportive, crazy awesome sewing community that I’m still discovering!