a knitted treasure

It's hard to believe she'll be 18 months old soon. She finally started walking about a month ago. But really I wanted to show you this amazing dress that my dearest Allyn knitted for her (is the past tense of knit, knitted?)

I can't believe how perfect and tiny these little stitches are. I can't believe she frogged a cardigan she started to make this instead.  I can't believe she did this while taking care of 5 kids and getting ready to deliver her 6th.  She is AMAZING.

This will be a dress we treasure long after she outgrows it. Thanks dear friend.

sew & tell: v3.1 - super soft and girly ruffle scarf

I haven't been this excited to share something in a long time! I dreamed up this scarf a week or two ago and couldn't go to sleep the other night until I threw it together.

It all started when a good friend of mine, who loves the beach, started getting ready to move to Rhode Island for a year~where it is cold in the winter, much colder than here. I wanted to make her a scarf that would capture a beachy feel while keeping her cozy while she is out walking her dog in the cold. I bought some fleece at Hancock's during their 54% off sale last week and got to work. Fleece buying note: when you buy fleece make sure you get the most expensive kind - it's washes up the best and keeps it's softness. I can't remember the exact name, but it was about 9$ a yard before the sale.

I paired the winter blue fleece with Sandi Henderson's Dahlia (Farmer's Market) and Michael Miller's Dandy Damask for the ruffle. I also used this combo in this dress (which I love!) The scarf turned out so cute I have to make another one for me!

I think I'll take pictures of the process and maybe, just maybe write up a tutorial? Are you interested? I think I'll be making these for gifts this winter. Don't you want one? I'm thinking I need to make one with the new Joel Dewberry in aqua and orange **swoon**.

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In other news, I made up with this skirt (we were having a little tiff).  I was making it for another friend (more to come later) and am FINALLY getting it off to her in the mail.  It's just like mine.

See, I have been doing some stuff! It helps that my husband was gone for the last couple of weeks in training and I could totally take over the dining room and not worry about having to clean up to eat dinner in there.

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Now a few notes on Sew & Tell.  I've been mulling over a lot of things that I love about it and some things that I don't love.  I've decided to limit the number of entries to 30.  So when there are 30 linkies, that week's list will close.  This will help keep it manageable for visiting everyone who is sharing each week.  Yes, EACH week!  I'm bringing on some friends who will regularly post so that I'm not on the spot each week.

So please follow the guidelines as spaces are limited. I will try to monitor the links to make sure everyone linking up is playing nice.  :)

Linky Rules.  Please read carefully.  The delete monster will be eating non-compliant links.

1. Please write the post for sew & tell - or add a blurb mentioning sew & tell to a post written since the last sew & tell.  If you are linking to a post with your own tutorial, please make sure it was a finish from this week and that the completed project is shown first.

2. One linky per person. (please put multiple projects in one post.)

3. Link to your specific post.  (See here for permalink instructions - or email me.)

4. Link back here with a link or a button (HTML on my sidebar).

5. Be sure to visit and leave comments on other's posts!

merry fall!

Well, hello there friends! I know I've been in absentia for a little too long. As has Sew & Tell. Without boring you with all the details I'll just say this. I've lost my blogging mo-jo a little bit. I'm sure you are not surprised. Things have been busy with my oldest starting real school this year, mrlouwho being gone a lot in preps for a deployment, babies at home to take care of, and still not having that sweet spot in my house for taking photos.

Plus, I know there are so many blogs out there to read, and I only want to blog about things that are fun and encouraging, so that I'm not wasting your time when you come visit.

Along these lines, dear Kim gave me a little pep talk last week, and I think we came up with a solution for bringing back weekly Sew & Tell. More details to come. THIS Friday! So get your projects and posts ready to link up.

I have been sewing quite a bit actually. It's amazing when you don't blog as much you can get a lot more things finished! I wanted to share with you today what I chose for my month of my quilt bee, BeeTweet. My month was August and I have had some Christmas prints laying around~ I actually won them in a giveaway a couple of years ago.

 I sent my group this inspiration mosaic for what I wanted. I was thinking, whimsical and Christmas (obviously).

I was late (of course) sending my fabric out and they are starting to trickle back in.  These are the 3 I've gotten so far, and I'm so excited to get the rest!

I'm thinking of a square in square type of sashing. I hope it will be as cute in my head...

See you soon!  Sew & Tell on Friday!!

of bee blocks, hurricanes, head colds, and excuses

There is a reason I wasn't going to join any more bees or swaps this year. You want to know why? I am TERRIBLE with deadlines! I can blame it on the power being out during the hurricane, getting my first child ready for kindergarten, this horrible cold I've had for a week now, or downright fear of doing blocks I've never done before. And then there's the keeping up with 3 kids and trying to keep my house clean.

Okay, those all played a part, but the real excuse? Procrastination. And I feel REALLY bad about it. So to dear Darci and John, I'm SO SORRY!!!

I've actually had these stars done for a while. I love doing them - we used this tutorial.  I love the green background she chose.  It's a bold choice and one that will work well with all of her fun bright things!

I haven't sent them off yet, because Darci and I are doing another little separate swap and I have yet to finish up my part of that. UGH. The guilt. She already sent me what she made. AND IT. IS. AMAZING. I can't wait to show it to you.

Now John (aka Quilt Dad) asked for spider web blocks. And I. Was. Scared.  But once I read the tutorial and started sewing, I realized they aren't much different from a string block.  And I love the way they turned out!!

As always, I put off starting them because I was afraid of ruining them!  Especially since he sent this gorgeous Tula Pink Flutterby fabric which is out of print.

Once these are all put together it is going to be stunning.  I can't wait to see it.

So now that school is getting in full swing, I'm at the end of this cold, and I don't think we have a hurricane hitting us this week, I might actually be able to get some more sewing done.  Let's hope so!

post hurricane recap

Hey Everyone! We made it through the storm mostly unscathed.  Other than no sleep or power for 2 days and a post hurricane cold that has beat me down for the last two days we're doing well.

I snuck out to the beach on Friday morning as the surf was supposed to start getting rougher.  It wasn't as impressive as I'd have liked, but the waves were pretty consistent and big. It's hard to really see in the pictures but there are more beach photos on Flickr.

We lost power just after 10 Friday night.  At 11 the tornado sirens went off.  So we brought everyone downstairs and they thought it was a party.  The kids were all up for at least another hour.  And babylouwho decided to babble to herself well into another hour after that.  The winds started howling about 3 AM.  It was hard to sleep.  I'm so glad we had our emergency radio and Facebook on mrlouwho's smartphone.  They kept us up to speed throughout the day.

Since we didn't have power we didn't see any news coverage so I had to go out and see for myself what the damage was.

There was a lot of this Saturday evening as I drove around our neighborhood.

I thought our yard looked bad, but we just had a smattering of pine boughs and a couple large branches down.  The street behind us had trees down at about every other house.  The storm was only a CAT 1, but with the amount of rain it brought and the fact that the storm moved slowly through the area meant a lot of shallow rooted trees were simply water logged and blew over.  You can see more photos of what I saw in another Flickr set.

This was a nice sight as it was the first light we saw after the storm moved through.  It was about 7:00 Saturday night.

We spent most of the afternoon on Sunday cleaning up our yard.  There was debris everywhere. 

The kids helped out quite a bit. Even if the tools were way bigger than they were.

We were exhausted and HOT by the time we were finished.

We were VERY happy when the power came back on that night so we had a cool house to sleep in.  The kids were so excited that we thought they were going to jump through the ceiling when the lights all came on!

Then I caught mrlouwho's cold.  I'll spare you the gorey details but let's just say by Tuesday afternoon I was slammed in bed without any energy to do anything.  Good thing my kids behaved themselves and mrlouwho came home early with a pizza.  I'm feeling much much better today.  Maybe now I'll be able to finish up some things I've been working on.  I might even have some down time to blog about them!  It's nice having sisterlouwho in school.  She loves it and I've regained a little bit more time during the day.

See you soon!

batten down the hatches!

You might have heard about our little friend Irene who's coming, uninvited, to visit this weekend. I drove down to the beach today to check out the pre-storm surf and this is what the cottages on the beach looked like.

So, I'm hoping to get some sewing done. I like being housebound...I just hope our power isn't out for too long.

Maybe I'll even get some blogging done. Who knows.

See you on the other side of the storm!

remember when?

I used to blog all the time?  Well maybe I'll get back to that once school starts up and I have one less little person at home during the day.

Until then, well, it may be a little sporadic.

But I did start her on her first sewing project last week.