Hi everyone! I’m finally done with my secret sewing, and I can’t wait to start making things again that I can show you!

Color Play Friday is hosted by Trina from In An Otter Life and me. If you’re new to Color Play Friday, head over to my Color Play Friday page to see the rules and my palettes and bundles from previous weeks.

This photo was taken several years ago at an 80’s themed skate party that my daughter went to. She wore her best 80’s-inspired neon look. It’s blurry, but I love the movement and mood of this picture!

I used Stash Fabric’s Design Wall Feature again this week to create my bundle. I love that I can play around with fabrics and a week later, all my choices are still there waiting for me!

I was obviously a big fan of Alison Glass this week!  Her palette worked so well with the bright and happy 80’s feel I was going for.

Here are the fabrics I chose:

Lizzy House, Natural History, Butterfly Box in Green

Alison Glass, Sunprints, Grove in Green

Alison Glass, Ex Libris, Tessellation in Ocean

Robert Kaufman, Metro Living, Metro Circles in Turquoise

Alison Glass, Ex Libris, Historical Fiction in Strawberry

Alison Glass, Sunprints, Feathers in Dahlia

A note about scale:

• While I believe scale is a very important part of fabric selection, the fabrics shown in my Color Play images are not always perfectly to scale. I do my best, by you should always double check scale before ordering!

Don’t forget to head over to the other blogs and see what they came up with! The fun of Color Play Friday is seeing the differences and similarities between everyone’s bundles.

Participants this week:

Laurel and Pine (that’s me!)

In An Otter Life

Quilting Mayhem

Shimmy and More

123 Quilt

Jennifer Lewis

Sew Not Perfect

Next week’s photo is a great look ahead to summer!  Have you started doing summer bonfires and s’mores yet?

Are you enjoying Color Play Friday? We’d love for you to get in on the fun and create your own Color Play post! You can create a bundle of fabric, select yarns or embroidery threads, or create a project inspired by our photo. Be sure to let Trina or I know so we can link up to you. You can get in contact with us at colorplayfriday@gmail.com

Click below to sign up for the monthly Color Play Friday newsletter. In it, you will find a recap of the month’s bundles from Trina and I, updates from both Laurel, Poppy and Pine and In An Otter Life, and announcements about upcoming special events.

I hope you can join us next week!

Happy Sewing, ~L

Whew!  It’s been a hot week! It may only be April, but in Washington it feels like July. I’ve been working on my secret sewing, so I’m sorry I’ve not been able to post anything here on the blog about my works in progress. In another week or two I’ll be able to move onto something new and will actually write some posts!

Color Play Friday is hosted by Trina from In An Otter Life and me. If you’re new to Color Play Friday, head over to my Color Play Friday page to see the rules and my palettes and bundles from previous weeks.

Here is our photo for this week:

 This parfait makes me think of a beautiful summer Saturday morning in a cute cafe with your favorite people.  I really wanted a bright, whimsical bundle to go with the picture.

Here are the fabrics I chose:

Sarah Jane, Sommer, Swans in Grass

Elea Lutz, Strawberry Biscuit, Biscuit Scallop in Red

Cotton and Steel Basics, XOXO in Clementine

Lisa Congdon, The Land That Never Was, Bunting in Multi

Elizabeth Hartman, Rhoda Ruth, Starlight in Mustard

Lizzy House, Butterflies in Butter

A note about scale:

• While I believe scale is a very important part of fabric selection, the fabrics shown in my Color Play images are not always perfectly to scale. I do my best, by you should always double check scale before ordering!

Don’t forget to head over to the other blogs and see what they came up with! The fun of Color Play Friday is seeing the differences and similarities between everyone’s bundles.

Participants this week:

Laurel and Pine (that’s me!)

In An Otter Life

123 Quilt

Jennifer Lewis

Next weeks photo is one of mine called ’80s Skate Party’.

Are you enjoying Color Play Friday? We’d love for you to get in on the fun and create your own Color Play post! You can create a bundle of fabric, select yarns or embroidery threads, or create a project inspired by our photo. Be sure to let Trina or I know so we can link up to you. You can get in contact with us at colorplayfriday@gmail.com

Click below to sign up for the monthly Color Play Friday newsletter. In it, you will find a recap of the month’s bundles from Trina and I, updates from both Laurel, Poppy and Pine and In An Otter Life, and announcements about upcoming special events.

I hope you can join us next week!

Happy Sewing, ~L

Hi everyone, I hope your week has been great. I’ve been busy! There’s been lots of school meetings this week and a fun field trip to the zoo.

Color Play Friday is hosted by Trina from In An Otter Life and me. If you’re new to Color Play Friday, head over to my Color Play Friday page to see the rules and my palettes and bundles from previous weeks.

I took this photo on a family outing to Seattle. The Experience Music Project is a museum right near the Space Needle. There’s a paved area and play structure out front that is perfect for kids to run off some energy. Seattlites have a love/hate relationship with the EMP. Some of us love it, and some think it’s freaking ugly and can’t stand it. I’m in the ‘It’s freaking ugly, but I sort of get it and it’s part of our city now” camp.  Plus, the monorail goes through the building, and that’s pretty fun.

The museum inside makes up for the strange exterior. My must-see exhibits if you visit: Fantasy: Worlds of Myth and Magic (props from some of the best movies of all time), Nirvana: Taking Punk to the Masses (mesmerizing for this teen of the 90s), The Sky Church (take some time to just sit on a bench and enjoy the music). And of course, Hendrix fans MUST take a look at the Wild Blue Angel: Hendrix Abroad exhibit.

This week I really wanted to get the surreal, artistic feeling of the EMP into my bundle. I knew the Alison Glass would be a good fit. Then I saw the Fibs and Fables print and was really pleased with where the bundle was going!

Here are the fabrics I chose:

Alison Glass, Handcrafted, Bouquet in Yarrow

Carrie Bloomston, Paint, Patina in Saffron

Anna Maria Horner, Pretty Potent, Aloe Vera in Butter

Anna Maria Horner, Fibs and Fables, Enchanted in Sleepy

Angela Walters, Athena, Draped Volute in Ocean

Carolyn Freidlander, Doe, Ladder Lines in Slate

I used the Design Wall Feature on the Stash Fabrics website to help me choose my bundle this week.

A note about scale:

• While I believe scale is a very important part of fabric selection, the fabrics shown in my Color Play images are not always perfectly to scale. I do my best, by you should always double check scale before ordering!

Don’t forget to head over to the other blogs and see what they came up with! The fun of Color Play Friday is seeing the differences and similarities between everyone’s bundles.

Participants this week:

Laurel and Pine (that’s me!)

In An Otter Life

Quilting Mayhem

Sarah Goer Quilts

Love Hazel Honey

123 Quilt

Jennifer Lewis

Here is next week’s photo.

Are you enjoying Color Play Friday? We’d love for you to get in on the fun and create your own Color Play post! You can create a bundle of fabric, select yarns or embroidery threads, or create a project inspired by our photo. Be sure to let Trina or I know so we can link up to you. You can get in contact with us at colorplayfriday@gmail.com

Click below to sign up for the monthly Color Play Friday newsletter. In it, you will find a recap of the month’s bundles from Trina and I, updates from both Laurel, Poppy and Pine and In An Otter Life, and announcements about upcoming special events.

I hope you can join us next week!

Happy Sewing, ~L

Happy Friday, everyone!  We’re just finishing up Spring Break around my house. It was a great break for the kids, and it was nice to relax with them while they were home.

Color Play Friday is hosted by Trina from In An Otter Life and me. If you’re new to Color Play Friday, head over to my Color Play Friday page to see the rules and my palettes and bundles from previous weeks.

This is one of Trina’s photos that she took in Oklahoma before moving up here to Washington. What a beautiful rose!

As soon as I started picking colors from this picture, I thought of the Tula Pink Fox Nap print. I really did try to bring in the green from the leaves on the lower part of the picture, but just couldn’t find anything I liked with the Tula.  And I wasn’t willing to let it go! Instead, I focused on the blue found in the very top of the photo and the green/gray in some of the leaves to get some nice contrast in my palette.

Here are the fabrics I chose this week:

Tula Pink, True Colors, Making Waves in Blue

Alison Glass, Ex Libris, Botany Chambray in Navy

Tula Pink, Chipper, Fox Nap in Sorbet

Erin McMorris, Highline, Hudson in Brown

Alison Glass, Sunprints 2016, Grow in Tangerine

Carolyn Friedlander, Doe, Ladder Lines in Flame

A note about scale:

• While I believe scale is a very important part of fabric selection, the fabrics shown in my Color Play images are not always perfectly to scale. I do my best, by you should always double check scale before ordering!

Don’t forget to head over to the other blogs and see what they came up with! The fun of Color Play Friday is seeing the differences and similarities between everyone’s bundles.

Participants this week:

Laurel and Pine (that’s me!)

In An Otter Life

Shimmy and More

123 Quilt

Jennifer Lewis

Our photo for next week was taken by yours truly on a family outing to Seattle. What you’re seeing here is the Space Needle reflected off of the EMP building.

Are you enjoying Color Play Friday? We’d love for you to get in on the fun and create your own Color Play post! You can create a bundle of fabric, select yarns or embroidery threads, or create a project inspired by our photo. Be sure to let Trina or I know so we can link up to you. You can get in contact with us at colorplayfriday@gmail.com

Click below to sign up for the monthly Color Play Friday newsletter. In it, you will find a recap of the month’s bundles from Trina and I, updates from both Laurel, Poppy and Pine and In An Otter Life, and announcements about upcoming special events.

I hope you can join us next week!

Happy Sewing, ~L

Spring has sprung in the Pacific Northwest! We’ve had a gorgeous week of blue skies and white clouds, the weather is warming up, and the tulips are in bloom. Lately I’ve been finding myself out in the garden more and more.

Color Play Friday is hosted by Trina from In An Otter Life and me. If you’re new to Color Play Friday, head over to my Color Play Friday page to see the rules and my palettes and bundles from previous weeks.

This week’s photo is of some rose petals from my garden. We have the old-fashioned kind of roses that are super hardly and smell SO NICE. We also don’t use chemicals on them, so the roses from our garden are edible! Each year, we pick the first blooms, rinse them off, and use them for rose petal baths or add them to a salad.

For a list of edible flowers (and warnings about eating them safely), check here.

After my super-pink Starbust Bundle, I was a bit ‘pinked’ out! So when Trina picked this photo, I knew I had to go another direction with it. I’ve also noticed my tendency to pick bright, saturated colors and wanted to stretch out of my comfort zone a bit. I focused on the burgundy in the darker petals, the little bits of green, and the grey and beige reflected in the colander. Everything is much more muted and dusty than my normal choices, and I ended up loving it!

I started with the Heather Ross print, but you can see that Cotton and Steel dominated my bundle this week!

Here are the fabrics I chose:

Kaffe Fasset, Shot Cotton in Pewter

Alexia Abegg, Paper Bandana, Painted in Grass

Heather Ross, Mendocino, Underwater Sisters in plum

Timeless Treasures, Sketch Basic in Berry

Sarah Watts, Honeymoon, Hot Springs  Purple

Rashida Coleman-Hale, Zephyr, Whirlwind in Dust

A note about scale:

• While I believe scale is a very important part of fabric selection, the fabrics shown in my Color Play images are not always perfectly to scale. I do my best, by you should always double check scale before ordering!

Don’t forget to head over to the other blogs and see what they came up with! The fun of Color Play Friday is seeing the differences and similarities between everyone’s bundles.

Participants this week:

Laurel and Pine (that’s me!)

In An Otter Life

Quilting Mayhem

Quilty Dream

Shimmy and More

Love Hazel Honey

123 Quilt

Jennifer Lewis

Here is our photo for next week!

Are you enjoying Color Play Friday? We’d love for you to get in on the fun and create your own Color Play post! You can create a bundle of fabric, select yarns or embroidery threads, or create a project inspired by our photo. Be sure to let Trina or I know so we can link up to you. You can get in contact with us at colorplayfriday@gmail.com

Click below to sign up for the monthly Color Play Friday newsletter. In it, you will find a recap of the month’s bundles from Trina and I, updates from both Laurel, Poppy and Pine and In An Otter Life, and announcements about upcoming special events.

I hope you can join us next week!

Happy Sewing, ~L

It’s time to show you this month’s blocks for the Bonfire Sampler Sister swap. I’ve been making three blocks each month and swapping with my friends Trina and Mindy. You can see the last two months here and here.

Let me just put this out there right away- these blocks are appropriately named.  With double the curve piecing units than the last two blocks, I really needed to give myself time and mental energy to get them done.

That being said, I can tell that my skill with curves has improved over the last several months. Getting a consistent seam and lining up those curves was much easier this month. I’m very thankful for that considering how many I had to do.

One reason I’m super thankful for this swap is that it’s showing me areas I need to improve. Making something all by yourself is very different than collaborating. I don’t want to give my partners anything less than a gorgeous block they can use, so I’m finding things as I go along that I could definitely do better.

One thing I noticed in the first two months was that some of my blocks were slightly smaller than they should have been. I thought that I was doing a proper quarter inch seam, and couldn’t quite figure out what was going on. After doing a little research and meticulously measuring my seams, I realized that I was making them slightly larger than a quarter inch- when they really should have been a SCANT quarter inch. I also started pressing my seams with steam in order to help my blocks sit flatter.

Both those improvements gave me the results I was looking for- these blocks are consistently the 9.5″ they should be.

Life lesson: Sometimes in order to get better we have to go back to the basics, relearn what we think we know and humble ourselves enough to correct our mistakes.

Along those lines, I started thinking about how on our blogs, Instagram (and now Ello!), we show a lot of finished projects and beautiful blocks, but neglect to show what went into making them.  So, it is my goal to show more of the process. The mistakes, bumps on the road and wonderful tedium of day-to-day quilting.

So let’s take a look! By the time I started taking process photos, my HST units were already done, but here is the method I used.

The first shots we have are the curved units. This by far took up most of the time making these blocks.  Once the pieces are cut, you notch the centers then pin them. While sewing, I kept reminding myself; “Slowly, Slowly, Slowly said the Sloth”. Sometimes my seam would wobble too close to the fabric edge and I’d have to go back over it. But taking time to do it right was worth it!  It helped me get better.  I set the seams, then pressed from the front. By starting my pressing on the outer part of the curve (white portion) first and then doing the inside (green part),  I was able to reduce the chances on making the unit wonky with my iron.  There are great instruction in the Sister Sampler book for trimming and squaring up these units.

Once all the units are done, it’s time to line them up and sew! Getting the curve edges to line up well is the biggest challenge of this block.  As you can see, I used glue basting to help keep things in line. Before setting the glue with the iron, I pinched the seam on the wrong side of the fabrics to the scant quarter inch point then turned to the right side to check that the curves lined up. Once the glue basting was set, it was only a matter of keeping my seam allowance in check while I stitched. I opened up the final seams on this block to reduce bulkiness.  Take care when separating the area where you glue basted. One final press from the front, and this block was ready to be trimmed up and photographed!

Here are the final finished pictures of the blocks.  

Happy Sewing!  ~L

This week, I’m linking up to:

As you may know, this year I’m participating in the Modern HST Quilt Along from Blossom Heart Quilts.

We are now three months into the year, and I wanted to show you what I’ve done so far!

In addition to the six blocks, I did a couple of extras as well.

(Side note: I am currently working on THREE quilts with white backgrounds and the are TOUGH to photograph! Every bend and wrinkle shows!)

Alyce is hosting a link-up on her blog for anyone who’s doing the quilt along to post their progress and enter to win some great prizes. There’s still time if you want to whip up some blocks (they don’t take long!) and enter.

Happy Sewing! ~L

This month, I had the pleasure of pattern testing the Megan Foldover Tote for Svetlana at Sotak Handmade.

It’s a gorgeous bag with lots of versatility! It can be made larger or smaller depending on where you clip the strap, or you could just remove the strap completely and carry it by the handles.

I made this bag for my daughter, and now that the pattern is released, she’s looking forward to getting to take it out around town! She and I selected the fabrics together.

Outer fabric: Bari J, Petal and Plume, Peacock Waltz Festal

Top trim: Benartex Metropolis

Inner lining: Kona Berry

Topstitching thread: Gutermann Color 938

If you’re interested in purchasing this pattern or another one of Svetlana’s gorgeous patterns, visit her patterns page!

Happy Sewing!  ~L

To everyone who participated in our Burst Your Stash giveaway -Thank you!!!

And on to our winner!!

Congratulations, Sarah S.! 

If you didn’t win this time around, don’t fret! Stash Fabrics has made Trina’s and my bundles into one big Burst Your Stash bundle. It’s available for purchase on their website here.

If you make something with these fabric bundles please use hashtag #burstyourstash so we can see them!!

Happy Friday!

Trina and I have some giveaway winners from last week that we will be announcing this afternoon- stay tuned!

If you’re new to Color Play Friday, head over to my Color Play Friday page to see the rules and my palettes and bundles from previous weeks.

This week’s photo is one of Trina’s.  I’ve been eyeing this one for months now, knowing it would be a challenging Color Play for me.  And of course, I waited til 10pm on Thursday night to get started. I procrastinated big time this week!

This one was tough. Orange, green and purple is not a go-to combination for me! But I really wanted to get all three colors together into a bundle. Thankfully, I found the Sarah Campbell Folk Birds print that had all three colors combined beautifully.  I’m still not entirely thrilled with the blenders I chose for this bundle and would love to work on it more in the future to get it just right.

I’m really looking forward this week to see how the other participants interpreted the picture.  I’m sure I’m going to be thinking “Why didn’t I think of that?!” when I see what beautiful bundles they come up with!

Here are the fabrics I chose:

Elizabeth Hartman, Rhoda Ruth, Starlight in Petal

Sarah Campbell, Melodies, Folk Birds

Karen Lewis, Blueberry Park, Dalmation in Kumquat

Timeless Treasures, Hatch in Papaya

Tamara Kate, Origami Oasis, Mountain and Valley

Patty Sloniger, Into the Deep, Mermaid Scales

A note about scale:

• While I believe scale is a very important part of fabric selection, the fabrics shown in my Color Play images are not always perfectly to scale. I do my best, by you should always double check scale before ordering!

Don’t forget to head over to the other blogs and see what they came up with! The fun of Color Play Friday is seeing the differences and similarities between everyone’s bundles.

Participants this week:

Laurel and Pine (that’s me!)

In An Otter Life

Shimmy and More

Sew Not Perfect

Love Hazel Honey

123 Quilt

Jennifer Lewis

Next week’s photo is one of mine. I can’t wait to tell you all about it next week!

You can also find it here.

Are you enjoying Color Play Friday? We’d love for you to get in on the fun and create your own Color Play post! You can create a bundle of fabric, select yarns or embroidery threads, or create a project inspired by our photo. Be sure to let Trina or I know so we can link up to you. You can get in contact with us at colorplayfriday@gmail.com

Click below to sign up for the monthly Color Play Friday newsletter. In it, you will find a recap of the month’s bundles from Trina and I, updates from both Laurel, Poppy and Pine and In An Otter Life, and announcements about upcoming special events.

I hope you can join us next week!

Happy Sewing, ~L