Where did October go?

Anyone? I'm not sure where the whole month went to! I've been so crazy busy that I forgot to post anything. Here's a snapshot of what I did in October:








I actually did this mini as a challange swap over the summer. I was given the house w/the number 5 door and fat quarters of the polka dotted fabric, some Rural Jardin (French reproduction fabric) and the numbers and newsprint/dictionary print from the Authentic line by Moda. This is what I came up with. The newsprint is on the back.



I added the Heather Ross gnome and mushrooms first and then it grew from there. Michelle suggested the clothes line, and then I felt the tree needed balance, so I made the tire swing. Then the tree was bare, so it needed a bird...... It's kind of like that book 'If you give a mouse a cookie'.

I named it 'No. 5 Privet Drive' at the time I was thinking that was the address given to Harry Potter, but then I double checked and he lived at #4 Privet Drive, so the gnome lives across the street from Harry.

Dumbo's Bath

I finished a baby quilt for the soon to be granddaughter of a friend of mine. The mom-to-be loved Dumbo as a child and had Dumbo on the shower invitations. I took one of those images and blew it up to extra large sized, traced it onto freezer paper and replicated it in Minky and Chenille.

During my retreat weekend, I made the blocks in a stack and whack, crazy block style. I originally made 25 blocks, and sewed them together in a 5x5 setting. Then I put Dumbo in the middle and he disappeared! The blocks were just too busy. I went into my stash and found a fabulous Moda plaid from a couple of years ago, and it was perfect, but I didn't have enough, so I decided on the pink hearts to border it to make it the correct size. I had to rip out the 9 middle blocks. Jennie suggested that I use them on the back, which I agreed would be a great idea. I surounded the blocks with a pink gingham minky and now the quilt is reversible!

There's nothing more fun then ripping out 3/4 of the quilt you just assembled! Oh well, it just confirms my favorite quilt saying "it's not a mistake, it's a design opportunity." I love how it turned out. I think it's just the cutest and has a lot of great texture for the baby.

WIP's

I have several projects going right now. The most urgent is a baby quilt that I forgot about and needs to be done by next Sunday. I chose the darling "Buttercup" pattern out of the new Anka's Treasure's book, "Stop, Drop and Roll." By the way, if you haven't checked out Heather Mulder Peterson's blog, you should, especially her house rehabbing narrative. Too Funny. Primarily because I didn't have to live it.
The baby's nursery theme is elephants, so instead of the bird and flowers, I'm doing an elephant w/a bird on it's back and a palm tree! I decided to do the top third in blues and the bottom two thirds in greens, kind of like a jungle going into a sky. I found a fabulous brown batik w/green, blue and tan dots for the zig zig portion. I'm seriously thinking of doing the elephant out of Minky, but we'll have to see how that works out. If I'm really feeling ambitious, I could do the palm tree out of Minky too!
I must say, I looked at this pattern and thought, sweet, it's a bunch of 2.5" strips, this should take no time at all to whip out! I even have a bunch of green and blue precut strips!
Boy was I ever WRONG!!! Even though the instructions are fabulous (as they always are with Anka's Treasure's patterns), this pattern takes a long time. The zig zigs take much longer than you would think, and you really have to be careful about the direction you sew them at since the diagonals have to go in opposite directions. It's not a big deal if you are totally random with the strip placement, but if you have an order, you have to watch it carefully. Still, I'm really enjoying how it's coming out and am hoping to finish it off this weekend. And as a bonus, I've been sewing together all the triangles that get cut off of the strips into half squares, so I'll get a mini quilt out of it as well!
I just received an invitation to another friend's baby shower for the second weekend in July, so that's another one I have to crank out. Then there's the bags , as well as a couple of Camille bags I started, and completely did a boneheaded thing while making, but those are a post unto themselves.

Happy Father's Day to all you dads out there!