{ photo credts: 1, 2, 3 & 4 }

I have too many half-finished quilts right now to start a new quilt, so I’m going to sew just one Dresden Plate and frame it in a giant embroidery hoop, like in the first picture. I bought some fabric for it today because one of my favorite online fabric stores, QuiltHome, is having a sale this weekend for Memorial Day.

Here’s what I picked out:

I’ll post photos once I get it finished!

I used this tutorial from Warmth in the North to make the pillow.  Cathedral quilts involve a lot of folding & ironing (it’s basically origami with fabric) and a lot of hand-sewing, so it was a time-consuming (but fun) project.  It’s also a great way to use up those fabric scraps you might have sitting around.  I added the buttons to mine because I wasn’t really happy with the way the corners were coming together and I was able to hide some imperfections.  The backing is a fat quarter that my sister-in-law bought me – I thought it was perfect!

I’ve been trying to sew a little bit more lately – it’s one of my favorite things but it tends to get pushed aside because there are usually more pressing things to do. Such is life, I suppose.

I got a kick out of this book I saw there: “Knit Your Own Royal Wedding”:

I didn’t buy any yarn, but she had little bundles of vintage English fabric scraps for $2.  Once I got home and saw how much fabric there was in my bundle, I wished I had bought a second one!

Maybe sometime this winter (knitting seems like a winter hobby to me, for some reason) I’ll sign up for one of her knitting classes.  If you’re ever in Granville, check out Wisp!

100% of the proceeds will benefit Ethiopian Orphan Relief.

I finally broked down and bought a pattern for these precious little bunnies… they melted my heart with their goggles!

I’ll post photos whenever I get around to making them.

And P.S.  I’m hoping that later tonight (fingers crossed!) I’ll have an exciting craft-related announcement, so check back!

Here’s how mine turned out:

I worked on it while I watched “An Education” and “Return to Me” on Netflix. Crafting + movie-watching makes for a perfect Sunday afternoon.  I bought felt in a few different colors to make more brooches (and making them gives me an excuse to watch movies without feeling too guilty!)

Now I’m just waiting for my pizza dough to finish rising and Funnel to get home from work so we can make pizza together and enjoy the rest of our Sunday.

I hope you all had a lovely weekend!

I’ve been making a few things lately… and all of these (along with many others made by some lovely friends) will be available to purchase with proceeds going to a great cause…. more details to come soon!

This year, we saw so much stuff we loved and had a hard time deciding what we wanted to buy.  We decided on two prints from Mark Brabant:

We’re going to hang them together in our living room.  I especially love the bottom one.  (I always wanted a treehouse).

Right off of our kitchen is a large closet that was originally supposed to hold our washer and dryer.  But when we bought the house, Funnel and I decided that the noise and mess of a tiny laundry room spilling into the kitchen wasn’t such a great idea.  We thought the unfinished part of our basement would make a better and roomier laundry area, so we moved the washer and dryer downstairs, and the closet became my sewing nook (and will also be a little office area after the make-over!)

All we really did with it last summer was to paint it a pale yellow, remove the large doors and hung up makeshift curtains (made out of sheets from the thrift store).   It’s pretty disorganized and “blah”. 

Although the photo was taken last summer, this is more or less how the craft nook looks right now.  Behind the left hand curtain is a tall, industrial-type of cabinet that houses fabric, and my camera equiptment:

What I am planning to do is:

* Make new curtains .  I would like to do some simple, white, somewhat sheer, breezy curtains, that would go along with the white beadboard wainscoting that we have in the first floor of our house.

* Wallpaper the nook with maps.  I got this idea from the Anthropologie store several years ago and have kept it in the back of my mind.  In Rome, we bought a really cool, vintage Italy map, and just today I ordered 7 more maps through Amazon.  Here’s one of them:

I think the maps will give the nook a vintage feel and also incororate our love for traveling.

* Put up wall-to-wall wooden shelving.  The white wire shelving that is in there now looks very “laundry room” .. I am hoping to make or find shelving that is thick, white, wooden and clean-looking.   

* Buy a wall-to-wall desk/tabletop.   Right now I have a small antique sewing desk for my sewing machine, and while it is a really neat piece, it is small, and we would like to have a large, wall-to-wall desk that could also be used for our computer.

* Get some fun bins and baskets to use on the shelves for storage.  Since we were eliminating our current storage (a big storage cabinet and my sewing desk) the shelves will have to hold all our office supplies, my photography equiptment and all my yarn and fabric.  I want to get some really pretty bins and baskets to put them in.

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And here is my inspiration for the sewing nook…

This is basically what I would like the end result to be (but imagine maps instead of the tree wallpaper):

Here are a couple examples of maps used as wallpaper:

{via lovelydesign, apartmentherapy, &  yankee magazine }

I am so excited… I think it’s much easier to be creative when you have a pretty space to do it in. 

I have a free weekend near the end of June that I am hoping I can use to make some headway!  I will keep you updated on my progress.

Crafting + “Dirty Dancing” + homeade salsa & chips = a pretty decent night.