cut out and keep quilting

here it is, finished at last! the cut out & keep quilt that i made for kristina. i struggled a bit with this one. first, because it was for kristina and i wanted to get it "right," but also because i love the cut out & keep fabrics that heather moore did for cloud 9 so much that it felt like i had to do justice to them.  so suffice it to say that this one took me much longer than it should have, tho' if i'd thought about it, what i needed to do was there in the name all along - i just needed to cut it out and keep quilting! but, sometimes the muse is wily.

i was inspired to do some slightly random lines of quilting by the quilting done by filminthefridge on this quilt. the batting i used was natural cotton and rather thick, so this ended up quite heavy - it will be comfy-cozy for winter for sure. and i can tell you that after two days spent quilting it, my arms and shoulders were very tired.  quilting is more work than you would think.

next, i've moved on to a quilt in autumn-inspired solids. and i've got some bags along the lines of the one i made for sabin on the go. and a new stack of stitched-up photos. apparently once the muse was tamed, she got down to work in earnest.

to make room for the new stitched-up photos, the remaining ones in my shop are on sale - 25% off! - just typed in STITCHED at checkout.

getting out of my own way

i've been mulling these little dresses over for awhile now. they're very simple and they're reversible. and they're made of the beautiful organic cloud 9 cotton (this is from heather moore's gorgeous cut out & keep line) . this is my prototype, but i've cut out more fabric and i'll be sewing all weekend - making some modifications, adding vintage buttons, pockets and maybe something that's only a vague notion in my head at this moment.

i have a friend who has a toy store and she also sells children's clothes, so they'll be available there, as well as on beecharmer. and i'm even pondering turning a little room at the front of our house (currently where we house our couchsurfers) into a miniature shop (saying it here because writing is the new praying).

if anyone is interested, i'm happy to make whatever size you'd like. sabin wants one too, tho' this prototype is for a 2-year-old. (note to self: find a two-year-old to model it.)

the wind was blowing, can you tell?

this is one of the many things i've been procrastinating, waiting for precisely the right picture to appear in my head. today, i just got out of my own way and got stuck in. i'm pretty happy with the result. and working with these organic cottons is like a dream.

i should do that more often.

(thank you, michelle, for our chat last night, it helped.)

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by the way, this is awesome.