An Exciting Purchase, a Tragedy, and a Bit of Sewing

I cannot believe that it has been almost a month since my last post!  I have had every intention of posting before now, but a lot has gone on in the past few weeks to prevent me from having time to do so.  I must say that it is good to be posting again!

Before sharing my most recent project please allow me to share a few things with you that have happened recently.  Firstly, I decided that it was time to upgrade my vehicle to something newer.  About a month ago, April 29 to be exact, I bought a used 2011 Kia Soul Sport from Auction Direct in Raleigh.  Jeremy was helping me search for vehicles and found this one at one of the stores in New York.  It was a great deal and I just could not let this car slip away from me so I paid for the transfer to Raleigh and ended up with a car payment for a few years.  Take a look at it...

I love how sporty looking it is!  It is a fun car that my sales person said looked as if it is ready for a party.  Check out the interior, which is probably my favorite part.

It has leather heated seats, a sunroof, cargo net, cargo storage liner, sports pedals, and lights around the door speakers that change colors.  This car is meant to be driven at night in an urban environment.  I will enjoy it for a long time.  Just to fill you in on my pugly little friends, they have taken a few rides in it already and they seem to be much happier being able to see where we're going without any effort at all.

The night after I made this purchase I received an emergency call from my mother.  She informed me that my sister-in-law had passed away due to complications with her pregnancy.  Her name was Chante and she was approaching her 31st birthday on June 9.  She had difficulties due to fibroids on her uterus during the four months of her pregnancy.  Several weeks prior to her death she had to be given 3 units of blood due to a massive loss of blood caused by a tear in the fibroid.  She and my brother were on the couch in their home in Panama City, FL the night she passed away.  According to the autopsy report she died from a blood clot from all the bleeding out she had been enduring.

This trip wasn't the first trip I had in mind for my new car, but I ended up driving to Dublin, GA and staying with my family for about a week.  While there, I pretty much helped my mom maintain as much order as possible in her home.  It was very difficult seeing my brother, my mother, Chante's mother, and her sister so upset.  I cannot even imagine how it must feel for them.  Jeremy and I are also bothered by the loss of Chante.  She was our friend and we always enjoyed seeing her when home for the holidays.  I will miss her texting me just to say hi.  Here's the only photo I ever took of her.

Forgive me if the above news made you sad.  I simply wanted to let you all know what's been going on.  Not that we're all caught up, how about we get back to the fun stuff?!

Several weeks ago I came across a tutorial for a quilt block known as a Dresden Plate.  I thought that it looked pretty nifty and since it involved applique (the owl quilt from a while back was also appliqued) I thought it would be a fun little challenge.  I decided to make mine into a pillow and of course it had to have green in it!  Without further adieu, here's the finished product.  Let me know what you think! 

Well, I guess that's it for now.  Have a great weekend!!  And remember to wag more and bark less.

Colorful Cup of Joe

Although this posting has nothing to do with my sewing, all you coffee lovers out there should appreciate it.  So Jeremy heard about a business called Sociable Art through our buddy Lauren.  The owner, Arianne, is a painter, specifically a muralist.  Her business involves hosting a painting class, of sorts, at one of several local venues (local being within an hour or so driving distance from Raleigh).  Each class has a specific painting that will be the subject of that evening.  Last night Jeremy and I attended one of these classes at the Steele Street Coffee & Wine Bar in downtown Sanford, NC.  Our subject, a coffee cup with a beautifully colored background, was quite fitting of the awesome venue.  The photo shown here is Arianne's creation:

I love the perspective of the cup as well as the lighting and shading for the darker shadowy areas.  Now take a look at Jeremy's and then mine respectively.

As you can see, our paintings are not nearly as masterful as Arianne's.  Last night I was honestly quite disappointed to the point of being upset because I was expecting mine to come out looking similar to hers.  I don't know why I thought that mine would be the spitting image of hers.  I let myself get lost in emotion and ended up saying that I hated my painting.  I have decided after sleeping on it, however, that I should appreciate the many other talents that I do have and perhaps step back and focus on the good things about my painting instead of the bad.  For instance, I really like my background.  I feel that it turned out quite nice.  I love how Jeremy was able to master the shadow of the cup onto the saucer.  That turned out quite well in his painting!

Aside from my little tantrum we enjoyed the evening very much.  We are signed up to attend another session at a different locale in a week or so.  I'll have to check out the dates, but it will be in time for Mother's Day and the subject for that week will be the perfect gift for moms!

To Owl A Good Night

It has been almost a week since my last post.  The end of the semester has kept me busy with school work.  This past weekend's storm that blew threw Raleigh has also made things pretty interesting around here.  We have driven around town several times looking at some of the damage left behind.  I have had hardly any time to work on any sewing projects.  This, of course, means that I have not yet quilted the owl quilt, but I did decide to go ahead and post photos of it unquilted.

The piecing for the quilt top was quite easy.  It was learning how to do applique that was somewhat of a challenge.  I took a close up photo of the owl to give you guys an idea of how the applique turned out.  I don't think it turned out badly considering it was my first time.  I will say that I loved the process and am excited to work on many more appliqued projects in the future!

To give credit where credit is due, the inspiration from this quilt came from the cover of ths Spring 2011 Quilts & More cover.  My mother was in town the weekend I bought the magazine and asked me to make the quilt for my niece.  Here's a photo of the magazine cover:

My most recent project arose from a need for easy access to pins while sewing and needing a place within reach of my sewing machine to toss snipped threads quickly.  While browsing Sew, Mama, Sew! I found a tutorial for a solution to these needs that looked pretty cool.  Check out my version, which is mostly green (imagine that), then compare that to a photo from the tutorial.

I am quite pleased with the end result and can't wait to work on another project soon to break it in!

Until next time wag more, bark less, and get out and find some sticks for Igor.

Igor Says Hey!

OMG!  Hey!  My name is Bad Igor! What’s your name?! Whats your favorite treat?!  I like dust! I also like my mama-pug, he’s the one that doesn’t sew, he holds me at night when he gets home and while he is staring at the fake window with animals and people that aren’t really there.  My mama-pug & daddy think I have attention deficit disorder but I don’t…I have a bad eye so I can only pay attention to half of what a normal pug would.  What was your favorite treat again?  I’m learning tricks, I can sit and I can push Otis away from the food bowl.  OH!  I have two sisters too, they have something called ‘cats.’  I feel sorry for them because they can’t bark and they sleep way too much…they also have to poop in a box under the stairs filled with little rocks…very strange…I like pooping in grass.  One time a really long time ago I had to leave my mama-pug, daddy, sisters and stupid brother for a WHOLE DAY!   *snort & sigh* My mama-pug took me to get fixed, I’m not sure what I had broken, but he always knows where the food is, so I trust him.  Do you want to know my most favoritist thing in the world?!  STICKS!  OMG I love sticks!  They are great, you can pick them up and chew on them and they all taste different, I LOVE STICKS!  Okay, I need to find a stick now.  BYE!

Polka Dots & Stripes

Before sharing my most current projects, I just wanted you all to know that I still have not quilted the owl quilt. My goal is to have it finished this weekend. Please have patience as I get it finished and posted for you guys to see. Some of you already know this, but for those of you that don't, I work full time and go to school full time. It's really difficult to find time for sewing. I am very determined to sew for at least an hour or two a day as often as possible. It is my passion and can't get enough of it.

And now for what I've put together over the past two days....


In the photos above and below is a very cool zippy pouch that I found a pattern for on Sew, Mama, Sew!  I have a few ideas in mind to enhance the functionality of it, but I think it is very hip.  What do you guys think?

I also made an easy to sew tissue pouch out of the left over fabric.  As you see in the photo below, I added a decorative stitch to it, just to add a bit of pizazz to it.

Here's another little tissue pouch I made out of some left over fabric from another project:

A bit of the other project can be seen in the above photo.  The upper half is shown below.  I really don't know what to call this or use it for.  I was just playing around with the zipper and came up with this.  The closest use I can come up with is to hang it on a doorknob or hook on a shelf and store things in it.  *shrugs*

Okay, so this is all the time I have for now.  Until next time, enjoy the sunshine!

Shopping Extravaganza

So this past weekend I contacted my crafting buddy Jennifer and drove over to her house.  Her sewing studio is so incredibly awesome!  I am so envious of it.  Anyways, she has been cleaning the room up a bit and working on eliminating excess clutter by selling certain fabrics in her stash.  I went through some of these fabrics and want to show you guys what I ended up purchasing.  

So I apparently have a new found fascination with owls.  I am currently working on an owl quilt for one of my nieces.  Perhaps the cuteness of that project has inspired this current fad for me.

These are awesomely funky!  I love them and will hopefully draw motivation and inspiration from their awesomeness.

I really liked these as well and hope to find ways to incorporate them into future projects.

I practically begged Jennifer for these fabric squares for quite some time.  She had a hard time departing with them as they are no longer made and this was all she had left.  The pattern I have calls for this line of fabric.  I could certainly choose other fabrics on my own, but really wanted to try the pattern out as it was meant to be.  I am thrilled that she finally gave in to my inquiries!

Okay folks, it's late, I'm tired, and I'm wanting to sew a bit before bed.  Please stay tuned for upcoming photos of my finished owl quilt that I mentioned above.

Pugly Inspiration

Hello everyone!  We are Igor and Otis and we wanted to show ourselves off while our daddy wasn't looking.  He took these pictures of us the other day and told us that he wanted to show them off anyways, so he shouldn't be too mad that we have created this post.

These pictures are of my crazy, rambunctious little brother Igor:

And this handsome stud is me, Otis:

I'll give you all a moment to catch your breath after taking in all of the cuteness you just experienced.  Okay.....so now that you know how absolutely irresistable we are, you should understand when I tell you guys that our daddy lets us get away with a lot.  He does get kind of upset at us sometimes, but we give him "the look" and he forgives us pretty quickly.

We really like it when our daddy is in his sewing room because it stays closed and is a forbidden area unless he's in there.  We drag every toy we can find into the room in an effort to try and divert his attention from whatever project he's working on at that time to throwing our toys for us to fetch and fight over.  Oh, before I forget, he is working on a new quilt.  It looks like it will be really neat!  It's his first attempt at applique and it looks like it's going pretty well so far.  I will be sure to share some pictures of it when he finishes.

Igor is nipping at my paws, so it's getting kind of difficult to type.  I will be sure to follow up with you as soon as I get another opportunity.  Until then, bark less and wag more.  Woof!!