Well, maybe I’m being a little hard on myself, but this one turned out pretty yucky.  Good thing it’s a Christmas present for my own daughter, but then again I’ll be staring at it for the next __ years.  I was into a groove when I started it and it was going pretty smoothly. 

Then I attached my walking foot on my sewing machine!  Apparently I must have broken it because I had my husband tighten the screw on the back of the foot and it got a little too tight.  It took tiny little stitches and puckered and stretched the whole thing! 

It doesn’t help that I was in love with these fabrics.  My daughter loves red (although not as much as she used to), and the starling fabric is just perfect. 

I did hand bind the quilt, which is 36″x48″.  It was fun and the first time I tried it on a quilt.  It was nice to sit down and watch a couple movies with my husband while working on it.  Yes, it took a couple movies, hopefully I’ll get a little more speedy someday.

I’m moving on to make a similar quilt for my other daughter, wish me luck…

Oh, and I also decided to treat myself to a little present from Japan…you’ll have to wait until later to see what’s inside.

I’ve been waiting and waiting for the right thing to pop into my head about what to use this fabric for.  It’s a super soft cotton poplin, so I finally decided I had to make pillow cases!  I’ve always had a thing for bedding, I remember picking out my bedding in 6th grade even (which I still have by the way – it’s just tucked away).  I think it’s still cool and that doesn’t happen too often when you think about things you used to like in 6th grade.

So I hunted down some instructions for pillow cases with french seams.  I used Bari J.’s measurements for the pieces and then realized her instructions didn’t have pictures.  Not good when you’re trying to figure things out at 12 o’clock at night.  So I jumped on Little Birdie Secrets’ blog and used their great tutorial here (and just used the french seam instructions from Bari J.’s). 

I made 3 last night and they came together really quickly.  I can’t wait to give them away at Christmas.  That’s one project off my to-do list for Christmas, yay!

I also have some great books on my desk from our library (I think this is either the second or third time I’ve checked out most of these.  There are some really great projects in the Impatient Patchworker that I’ve already made a while ago.