Quilt tops and circles

I was in my sewing chaos, sewing a quilt block for the first person in the online Quilting Bee I joined, when I realized I'd need some scraps of my own. Once I started poking around in my scrap bag, I found that I'd stuffed several unfinished quilt tops and a few unfinished other sewing projects in there as well.

The pastel one I show above is, well, not my style at all. I don't do pastels - they seem colorless to me. I'm much more into the brights.

These are more my style, but they're both unfinished. Well, the second one is closer. I could, at this point, slap some edging on it, back it and quilt it. It's a bit small, but it could be a cute baby sized quilt. I don't know any babies right now who need a bright quilt.

Now that I think about it, though, I do have a friend who's going to have a baby girl soon. I am planning on making the baby a pretty pinks and browns quilt - maybe her older sister would like this quilt if I made it a bit bigger. (I would have the added benefit of having finished another old project!)

I'm working on eating better and exercising more. I've been trying to lose weight for quite a while now and haven't gotten anywhere. Now I've signed up for a government website to track my daily exercise. Since it's public, I have to do the cycling every day or it shows! I did six miles at a hard push today and I'm hoping to get 12 in tomorrow.

Anyway, this breakfast is grits with some peach and a little butter and milk. Yes, those aren't low fat, but I'm counting calories rather than obsessing over every fat/sugar/carb I eat. It lets me eat a wider range of foods without having to feel deprived. I just eat less OF the higher calorie foods.

I've also been embroidering - I worked on this while in New Hampshire. I don't think I'll sell the pattern for this; it was just to be some fun with different stitches. I'd like to do something with it, though. What if I framed this and then did other geometric shapes - so one all squares, and one hexagons?

Anyway, it's late, so I'm for bed. G'night.

SongBird

Etsy Success!!!

After endless dithering and worrying (What if no one likes them? What if I put them in the wrong place? What if I can't write?), I've put my first set of embroidery patterns up on Etsy!

Go check it out: SongBirdGifts

I'm sorry to post something so self-serving, but this has been making me anxious for so long and it turned out to be really easy! Now to hurry up and make more.

I already have several other patterns I can finish - I have mermaids, pretty swirls, some round cats...

*glee*

And, so this isn't a text only post:

This is my old bike. I can't find a lot of information about these bikes online, but I know that I want to restore this. He has *headlights*!!

This is one of the local cacti - when I was growing up, my mom grew succulents. At the time, I thought they were silly and ugly, but now I want to have tons of them myself. I love the funny shapes and hidden curls they have.

SongBird

We had a nice, quiet weekend. Saturday Geordie had to go in to work, so I dragged my daughter out with me. We stopped off at a thrift store, then an art supply store (as opposed to a craft store - there's an interesting difference in what each one carries), and finally, a book store.

I got several nice tee shirts, two sweaters (a stripy angora one I'm wearing now and a pale blue cashmere one. Neither was over two bucks!) and a long black trench coat that fits me. This is amazing because I'm shorter than five feet tall. Really.

I also got some embroidery done, and I finished drawing two more pieces of art for embroidery patterns. Next up on the learning curve is figuring out how to make the patterns into PDF documents, so I can put them up in etsy.

On Sunday we spent several hours at a friends' house, where I ... sewed a giant curtain for her. The original plan had been for me to help her sew the curtains, but when I realized just how much she didn't know, I took over. It did make me realize how experienced I am in this area.

I ended up not having time (or a sewing needle) to sew the pleats into place, but at least there's something up in the window for now.

The tree up at the top is near the yarn store I teach in twice a week. A couple of years ago, when I still just had a terrible crush on Geordie, rather than getting to actually be his partner, I spent a happy couple of hours parked under that tree, chatting to him on the phone before going in to teach. I still get a little rush of joy when I see that it's flowering.

Aren't they pretty?

He's suggested putting rooting compound on the branch I cut off, so I can have one of the trees for my very own. I like that idea a lot!

What do you think?

SongBird

Embroidery

I've gone back to doing embroidery - I did it some as a little girl, but then not much after that.  However, I've seen such neat things that I wanted to start up again.

I'm almost finished with this one - I'll be taking out the bit curving to the left at the bottom and then adding a heavy black chain stitch
border around the whole thing.  I can't wait to see how it turns out.

Here's another view of it.

Also, I draw mermaids and other things, so the other one I've started is a mermaid!

I'm hoping to get these and a few others made into pdfs in the next week and get them up in my etsy shop. I think this might be one of the things I can really put out there.

SongBird