work in progress

but there is progress! sorry it's sideways, I'll fix that in the morning. for now, it's a bouquet. ish.

Floral Beginnings

Thanks, everyone who left supportive comments yesterday.  I really appreciate it.  The more I put the binding on, the more I got to feel the weight of the quilt, the more it felt like a comfort blanket, the more I liked it.  I don't love it, but I feel like it might be acceptable to send to a 6 year old now.  I hope she likes it.  She requested princesses (I guess her dad writes her letters with stories about "Princess Emily" from prison so they can keep connected...how cute is that??) so she got princesses.  I even got some cheesy little tiaras for her and her mom. I hope they like them. 

Anyways. 

Moving on. 

Last night was way more productive than it had any right to be.  I mean, it was a Monday after all.  We went to talk to the priest about getting married, took the FOCCUS, and came out laughing.  We are SO ready for this.  Got home, neither of us was hungry so I just had a sandwich for dinner.  The Save the Dates came yesterday, so I started on addressing the envelopes...I got EVERY SINGLE ONE DONE!  Addressed, return addressed, stamped, and STD in the envelope.  Now I need to print out the "please book your room now" sheets, put those in, and ship them off.  Hopefully I can get those out the door tonight.

After that, I put the binding on Princess Emily's Epic Disaster and got about halfway through before calling it quits for the night.  I also took Kini on a good long walk. 

I didn't make any of this last night, I just finally remembered to snag a picture this morning:

 Here's a first glimpse of what could be a bouquet.  The one on the bottom is about the size of my hand, for reference.  That one might be a little big, I dunno.  I have a ton of ribbon and beads and such to add some extra oomph on these as well.

This!  I did this! By myself!  No tutorial!  I am quite proud of this one, actually.  It looks like a passable boutonniere, right? It needs some green on the bottom and some wire and green tape, but I think it looks pretty cute! 

Oh, and of course...

It turned out *ok*.  It's in the wash now, hopefully to be dried by tonight so I can put that in the mail with everything else.

Phew!

Can't wait to see what tonight will bring...

Design POS Monday

Dear Princess Emily of the Wrapped in Hope project (through Margaret's Hope Chest),

I sincerely apologize for the piece of crap quilt you are going to receive for your 6th birthday.  You deserve better.  Hopefully by the time I ship it tomorrow (pending successful binding completion tonight) I can remove a few of the curse words and violent screams that have thus far poisoned its existence in this world.  No 6 year old should be privy to that amount of swearing and screaming, especially from a stranger.

Signed,

Your quilt donor.

Remember this?

 It turned into this disaster:

 I swear, every possible thing that can go wrong with a quilt, did.  Nothing lined up right.  I sewed stupid stuff together. The back is horrific and puckered and..ARGH. 

 I kept screaming at the stupid thing all night.  MOTU kept laughing and telling me he was sure it was fine, but at the end of the night I just balled it up and threw it across the room. Stupid quilt.

 Here's what it looks like, more or less. I don't need to point out the awfulness of the center, or all the places that the corners don't even come close to each other...ARGH.

 But hey.  At the end of the day, there's still cuteness to be found:

That's right, Zucchini loves zucchini, especially when it's frozen.

Also on my design table are loads and loads of little squares waiting to be made into little flowers hopefully for my wedding. I made what has potential to be a corsage yesterday but forgot to take a picture this morning.  I'll post it later. 

Man that quilt pisses me off. For better design walls go here.

my own little sweatshop...

the current livingroom setup. wrapped in hope and wedding flowers, alternating based on who's asleep and who's not

The lighter fabrics right in front here are from the Wrapped in Hope quilt I'm making.  The graph paper was me trying to optimize the fabrics I have for that one.  The orange/yellow/red/green fabrics are for flowers for my wedding bouquets.  Hopefully I'll have a real bouquet to show off soonish.  

everybody say oooh ahhh

check it out, a new style of flower! me gusta.

UPDATE: 

By request of Inchworm Fabrics: 

The flowers are loosely based off of this tutorial: http://sewritzytitzy.blogspot.com/2008/11/from-annas-gardenfabric-flower-tutorial.html

I didn't cut the circles in half or do any sewing...I folded them into quarters and then followed the same steps of sewing the rounded edges.  The big petals started life as 3 1/2" squares and the small ones started out as 2 3/4" squares.  I didn't particularly like the look of two layers of same-sized petals, but the bottom layer ended up with a gaping hole that wouldn't have been covered by the button so I added a smaller layer of smaller petals.  I think in the future (ie, once I cut some red fabric) I'll use some reds to highlight the differences better. 

If that doesn't make sense, let me know...I can post a tutorial next time I make one. 

Holy Two Post Day, Batman!

Bear with me folks, I'm gettin' my creative on.

So last night, I came home to a darling (woah, did I say "darling"?  Seriously?  Yikes) thank you note from Matilda's momma-to-be.  It was clearly hand-made, happened to be in my wedding colors, and contained a challenge.  She said, "I can't wait to see what kind of creativity you use in your wedding."

Damn.

And yesterday I was looking at florists and online invitation printers.  Damn damn damn.

TODAY, I am looking at making the flowers, making the decorations, making the invitations...someone please stop me?

Here are a few of the ideas I'm toying with:

source

These little holders are so cute and so easy!  They would look so great for the ceremony, with maybe some ribbon instead of twine, and my autumn colors.  For reference, here's what the inside of the church looks like:

Maybe I'll nee to find a better way of attaching them to the ends of the pews.  I'm thinking I can make tissue-paper flowers.  I should probably practice that first though.

These flowers would make much better boutonnieres than the ones I made.  The ones I made look kind of like clown flowers when standing on their own on a man's jacket.  These remind me of carnations though:

If you look at the end of the tutorial, you can see them a little better.  Maybe adding a couple of those to the bouquets would work too.

This, I LOVE. I'm thinking I can find some battery-operated strings of white Christmas lights, then highlight the flowers from behind. Maybe use a different kind of vase (thinner, taller) and yellow/gold/orange/red papers. I think it'd make a really cute centerpiece.

I'm also loving these boutonnieres:

See the tutorial for separate pics...that's a bunch of them clustered together.



Here are some more ideas:

This is a super cute guestbook idea (and finally, something quilting-related!), but I have other ideas...I haven't decided if I'm going to clue my guests in to the fun that awaits them though, so I can't post those ideas yet:

Phew!  That was exhausting! 

I think I'm done for now.  I won't even bother with invitations until I hit up Joann's tonight on my way to Rising Stars Quilt Guild in Lexington...a friend from middle school (I don't think I've seen her since 8th grade!) invited me to come with her...should be awesome! I'm a little tempted to bring some squares to make into flowers. 


Anyways.  Enjoy the inspiration!

Infinite Awws

Get ready for some adorableness folks!  This post is just loaded with it!

 First up, Miss Shelby.  Yeah, she's the adorable destroyer of hard drives.  That computer no longer functions. Probably not related to her, but I can blame her anyways.

 It's a comfy quilt.

 The man of my dreams chillin' with his third ladylove.

 Asleepin'.

 Eater of hair.

 Nom nom nom.

 <3 Sun

 Purdy girl

 My design bulletin board.

 I have a few blocks for the princess quilt done.

Sort of playing with the idea of using these as flowers in my bridal bouquet...thoughts?