Random Recipe for Deliciousness

Have you heard of Rumble in the Kitchen? She's been cooking in a solar oven lately which is so rad! One thing she made recently was so incredible tasty sounding and (shock of all shocks!) I actually had all of the ingredients in my kitchen- so I made this chocolate cobbler:

oh my.

Not too sugary sweet- I think the ice cream was sweeter than the chocolate, Joe disagrees!- just cakey and cobblery and oozey and delicious.

Go make it. Now. You probably have all the ingredients.

Abundance Quilt, FINISHED!

OK! I'm finally finished with my first quilt ever! It took me a month, but then again, I was working within the guidance of a class, so I sort of had to go slow!

I'm linking this post to the Blogger's Quilt Festival over at Amy's Creative Side. When you enter a quilt into the Quilt Festival, you're supposed to tell as story about the quilt, why it's special, what you learned from it, etc.

This quilt doesn't have much of a story (it's all new fabric and nothing too terribly sentimental), but it is special to me because it's my very first one! As I mentioned before, I have been interested in quilting for a long time but I always thought it would be too difficult to get into- I was so wrong! It's not difficult! Expensive? Yes, ma'am (at least for me to get started!), but difficult, no! I hope that now that I have the skills to quilt, I can finally do the project that inspired me in the first place- my great-grandmother's unused quilt tops- especially this one!

What have I learned from this quilt- EVERYTHING! One thing that I will especially make sure to do with all future quilts is to cut my strings while doing the actual quilting!

My machine has a handy "cut" button that snips my threads while the material is still on the machine, which is wonderful, but it also leaves 1" strings all over the quilt. Which means I end up having to do this to see the whole quilt and snip all those teensy threads:NOT fun.

Super-tedious.

However, I did end up with an awesome (and HUGE, by the way!) quilt that I LOVE! It's 90 degrees out today, but I still want to snuggle up with it- is that weird?

The back is a cream Kona solid:

and here it is all folded up- beautiful!
What do you think?

I love this.

... but I HATE that stupid Mickey on the machine.

blegh.

Abundance Quilt, part 3

In the last post I showed you what it's been like around here this week,

but while the sickie sleeps....

our week in pictures.

... yup, that last one is The Wiggles.

Singing "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing" in Greek.

It's literally the only thing that will make him stop screaming for the nebulizer treatment.

(Oh and the first one needs explanation- the shot glass is to get the medicine into the syringe!)

Auction for Baby Sam!

See that new button to the right? The picture of the sweet bald baby that's right above the picture of my sweet bald baby? That's Sam. I have never met Sam in real life, but his mom Cassie bought some diapers from me once, so in the cloth-diaper-online-community-world, I'll say we're friends. :) Sam is 5 months old and on April 13, 2010 he was diagnosed with Stage 4 High Risk Neuroblastoma. This week starts his his second chemotherapy treatment.

As you can imagine, the doctor bills will be a huge expense to his family. Due to certain circumstances, his family is having to pay $1500 monthly for the COBRA payments. We want to help out with that! This auction on Hyena Cart will start May 20th and end May 28th, with new items being added throughout the week (I already have a few in there- can you guess which are mine?). You can also click that button to the right to donate to his family directly via paypal!

100% of the money earned from the auction will go directly to help Alex and Cassie with Alex's hospital treatment bills!


Don't miss this great opportunity to make a difference! All proceeds will go directly to help Sam!

Make Life Baby Quilt top

... because the logical thing to do when you haven't finished your first quilt is to start another, right?

I used this quilt pattern from Oh, Fransson! and it was so easy- and dang FAST! I was just planning on cutting the charm pack last night, but got a little carried away and pieced the whole top! Beginning to end it was maybe 2 hours! Love!

This might be my new go-to baby gift!

Now I'm just waiting for my backing and binding fabric to get here from Sew Dang Cute and I can finish it up!!

Is it still considered "re-purposing"...

... if said item has the same purpose, but you just made it cuter/more wearable? If so, I have two re-purposing projects to share!

(if not, then I guess I just have two... projects to share.)

Exhibit A- I made this shirt last night using this Tea Rose Home tutorial and these $6 Target shirts.

Overall I think it turned out cute- on a whim, I left the bottom flat instead of ruffled because I wanted more length and I wish I hadn't. When I went back to rip the seam and ruffle it, I (of course) tore a teensy hole in the shirt, thus forcing myself to put the ruffle back flat. Oh well. Moving on...

This was a halter dress from Old Navy. I thought it was fun but never wore it because, for one thing my chest+ halter tops = disaster zone. By the time I get myself into one of them, the pulling on the back of my neck is too much to handle! Also, it was cut entirely too low... for any woman.

(sorry so blurry- it's HARD to take pictures of your back over your shoulder in the bathroom mirror!)

So I put two button holes in the back of the dress to thread the straps through and tie together (orginially I had planned to put buttons on the straps, but I'm sort of lazy AND I thought the knot would be better since it's adjustable). For the front I folded over a piece of a grey t-shirt (hmmmm... aren't I supposed to be doing something with t-shirts?) and serged the edges. Then I just placed it where I wanted it and stitched along the neckline.

I feel like I will definitely wear these 2 pieces a lot more now that I've "tweaked" them!

Has anyone else seen any cool tutorials for re-purposing?

Wordless Wednesday

Abundance Quilt, part 2

... ok, so last night I got to sewing and couldn't stop.

The quilt top is finished and now I have to wait til next Saturday to be told the next step.

Lame sauce.

Abundance Quilt, part 1

Whew! Ok! I have officially started this quilt! My first class was Wednesday night and I LOVE it! It's from 6-9pm so I spend time with some wonderful ladies, sewing and learning and then I come home to a quiet house and snoozing baby- what more could I ask for?

I finished making the squares and started piecing the quilt together today (we did all the cutting in class).

Here's an example of a square:

(what's that? You like my new ironing board cover? Thanks- Tuesday Morning, $7. Score.)

These are the other fabrics I've chosen for the quilt. Random, I know, but I think it will look good! The pink is for the big fat stripe on the bottom, the off-white is the inner border, the green with teensy flowers is the middle border and the fat flowers will be the outter border.

Here's my stack-o-squares finished and ready to piece!

(excuse my dorkiness, but this really excites me!) Look at my scraps! I knew I'd have scraps, but I had no idea they would be USEABLE scraps! They are all the same size and perfect triangles- our teacher said that they are perfect for making some squares for a smaller project- a coordinating pillow, pot holders- whatever!

As of tonight, here are the first two rows of my quilt (you have to turn your head to the left to imagine how it will actually look when it's finished! hehe)

some corners line up perfectly...

others... not so much. Oh well.

Just checking in!

Whew! Last week was insane!

And I *thought* that meant that this week would be calm... I was wrong! Apparently, it really comes back to bite you in the butt when people ask you to do something and you say "Oh sure- just let me get through this weekend, then I'll be wide open next week!"...

'next week' quickly fills up!

Here's a few awesome things for you, though:

Jillian in her preshy dress (remember when I had just met her?)!

more polky-dots I ordered...

and an xbox controller because I'm obsessed with Netflix instant queue...

a dress that I made for a photographer is getting pimped out by this little angel:


my little brother went to prom- and I showed up during the "parents are allowed in for 30 mintues to take pictures but then have to leave" time because my mom doesn't know how to work her digital camera. *sigh*


my end of the year program went GREAT and the 5th graders loved their beach towels:


all 12 of them.


my 15 helpers liked their monogrammed v-neck shirts, too!

Also, I'm doing something kind of fun on Facebook-
when 50 people "like" wee little winslow on facebook, I'm going to give away this set of cloth napkins! (I personally believe that cloth napkins are the easiest, cutest, cheapest way to be a good steward of this earth!)


Also, my quilting class starts tomorrow night! Yay!
I promise to have more exciting things to post soon!