Making wine from grapes...

That's my take on the whole making lemonade from lemons saying.  New Year's Eve has NOT gone at all to plan...we were to travel this afternoon to Minneapolis for a friend's wedding this evening.  However, the weather seemed to decide otherwise for us, and ice and snow combined to make us stay home instead.  So with that extra time, I decided to take advantage of this unplanned day at home and wrap up some unfinished projects that had been laying around the craft room for a while.

First I worked on a curtain for our basement window...it didn't turn out quite as "finished" looking as I'd hoped using the serger on the ends, but that's easy enough to fix another day.

After that, I finished up a baby gift - a Hawkeye blanket - that has been sitting around for MONTHS.  It's embarrassing how long this one has been pinned together and waiting for me to finish it.  This was just a comedy of errors today, and while it's not perfect, it's done and will definitely work for the little one who is going to receive it. 

It even got the "Harley Sue" stamp of approval.

Now that those are done, I'm going to sip on some wine (and later champagne), make us dinner, and perhaps do some quilt cutting and crocheting.  While I feel horrible about missing out on the wedding, it is a relief not to have to deal with slippery roads.  And even if we hadn't decided to go, apparently our house decided for us as our garage door appears to have broken and we can't open it to get the cars out!  Hopefully we can get that repaired here soon.

With that, I wish you all a safe and Happy New Year!  Cheers to a happy, healthy and prosperous 2011!

Pink Squirrels - Part Deux

After getting as far as I did with last night's test squirrel, I decided to go for it this afternoon.  The girl in question wanted "pink" and "girly", so I made my fabric choices accordingly.

From there, learning from yesterday's mistakes, I cut and stitched and stuffed and sewed and ended up with a pretty good stuffed squirrel!  It's not perfect, but it's way closer to perfect than the sample one was.  I'm now brave enough to think about tacking other animals...in fact I bought a pattern today on sale for dogs and cats.

This here is the only part I really didn't like how it turned out.  It's not horrible, but not nearly as nice looking as I would have liked it to be.  I've been told that the friend it's for thinks it's fine, but I'm still thinking I may do another (and by the way, I LOVE the flying squirrel shot above, ha!)  Definitely a learning experience for me, but a fun one, and I'm thinking more of these stuffed creatures are in my future.

Pink Squirrels

I've been slacking on sewing projects lately, so I as excited today when a friend asked me if I could make her soon-to-be stepdaughter a pink stuffed squirrel.  Apparently it was the ONE THING on the Christmas list she really wanted that could not be found.  (sidenote - thinking about pink squirrels for some reason makes me think of that odd part in Dumbo where they get into the fun juice a bit...but I digress :)

So pattern in hand, I set out to make a tester...I've definitely picked up a few things to alter for the one I'll do tomorrow (like reinforcing all seams), but for a work in progress, and my first stuffed animal, I don't think I'm doing too badly!  This one here needs to be stuffed and eyes added, but here it is, my first stuffed squirrel!

Another Quilt Along

I'd love to join this Quilt Along as well, but since I'm not even able to keep up with my every other week one, I can't fathom doing one that is two blocks per week!  I'm excited to see ones that people post though, should be fun! 

National Sewing Month

I never realized how awesome the month of September was before...not only is it National Library Card Sign-up Month (which relates to my favorite hobby - reading), I just learned today that it is also National Sewing Month! 

According to the website:

The observance of National Sewing Month began in 1982 with a proclamation from President Ronald Reagan declaring September as National Sewing Month “In recognition of the importance of home sewing to our Nation.”

Sewing is a new hobby of mine that I've only picked up in the past couple of years, but it's quickly risen to near the top of the list (about the only store I love more than a fabric store is a book store!).  I have more fabric and projects that any reasonable person needs in my house...but it's just so much fun!  For some reason, out of the blue, during the winter of 2007/2008 I decided to buy myself a sewing machine and sign up for weekend classes at the local store.  It was wonderful.  I was quickly hooked and loved the thrill of completing a project.  I'm still fairly basic, but I'm slowly expanding into a few more novice projects (hopefully to be showcased here soon) and am even trying my hand at quilting.

I've been slacking lately, waiting and waiting for our basement to get done so that I could make myself a true crafting space, rather than working out of various other rooms in our house.  It's getting closer, and hopefully within the next week or two I'll be able to get my space put together.  In the mean time though, knowing it's National Sewing Month may inspire me to break out the machine yet this weekend and get some of my smaller projects done!

There are a TON of sewing and fabric-related blogs out there if you're interested.  Check out my blog roll for just a few of my favorites.  Happy Sewing!