Work in Progress: Valentine Sachets

A couple weekends ago, my husband and I argued about my messiness.  It was bad!  My clutter was shoved pell mell into that now-neatened shelf that holds my porcelain collection which you see in the photo above.  Hubs said he couldn't understand how I could devote so many hours to sewing and not even spend a few minutes putting things away to where they belong.  I felt guilty.  And so I tidied as best I could this past weekend.  Good enough for him.  Yay!  And I also resolved not to sew until I got my bookcase into some semblance of order.  I made two trips to Goodwill, and I plan on de-cluttering and organizing the contents on the shelves you see here even more.

(I harvested lots of French Lavender a couple summers ago with the intention of making sachets in this photo, and it's now winter)

I'd also cleared enough of my table to bring out everything I need for my February crafts.  I set out red and pink fabric as well as my dusty jars of lavender though it still smells like I picked it yesterday.  I've still yet to pull out my embroidery floss, beads, ribbons and fusible interfacing.

Work in Progress: Ombre Cubes Wall Quilt

I auditioned my English paper pieced cubes on two Kona solids today at Beverly's Fabrics in Daly City (and I was elated that the Robert Kaufmann fabrics are on sale for the rest of the month).  I bought both yardages, but I'll be using the Celestial blue (above) instead of the Nightfall blue (below).  Two friends said that they loved the cubes on the Nightfall blue fabric (below) more so than on the Celestial blue fabric (above), and they're right.

Work in Progress: Ombre Cubes Wall Quilt...Keep on Truckin' (umm...Sewin')

"The aim of our studies is to prove that color is the most relative means of artistic expression, that we never really perceive what color is physically."

-Josef Albers

Embroidery Wall Hanging: Floral Mandala

I think I completed this natural linen and cotton floss embroidery wall hanging last winter and then finally backed it over the summer with felt.  It's eventually going into my Etsy shop.

Ombre Cubes

There isn't a lot of value difference between my dark and medium diamonds in my row of purple cubes, but I think if I quilt the diamonds on top with lighter color thread like lavender--I might "correct" the imbalance.  Or add another row of purple cubes but with a lighter diamond at the "top."  I aim to sew a row each night.

My Favorite Tools So Far and Work in Progress

I read somewhere not to be redundant with blogging, which I ignored by blogging about this quilted wall hanging in progress on a WordPress blog I just created minutes ago.  As I continue to decide which blog to be loyal to, let me comment how much quilt rulers are my favorite tool even more so than a rotary cutter.  My first ruler is that 3 1/2" wide one with a pink edge--it's not an Omnigrid or Creative Grids but it's the one I use the most even though I was told by a tribe at the quilt studio that the Omnigrids binding ruler would become my favorite--it's not.  I forgot to include in the photo my new folding bias ruler which actually was handy for the tree skirt I recently sewed. The square ruler was really useful for squaring up the half triangles on a Tula Pink butterfly quilt, which I didn't think to use to square up the half triangle patches for the above project for which I bought the triangle ruler.  Dumb.  But that's what happens when you start to have too many sewing notions. And I used the half square triangle ruler for this wall hanging.  Really I should have used the technique of sewing squares right sides together, drawing a diagonal line and sewing 1/4" seams on both sides of the line and then splicing in the middle to be later trimmed with the square ruler.  Lesson learned.