I've had this adorable "Cameras Multi" print on my fabric wishlist for a while, so last week when a client asked me to create a custom baby quilt for one of her photog friends, I knew just where to begin my fabric selection! All four prints are from Riley Blake's Snapshots, and I found them at The Quilted Castle. The shop I usually order from was out of stock, so this was a new store to me - very happy with their selection and fast shipping! 

Here's a little peek at the Sunbonnet Sue made with the print. Now I'm off for a good long session at the machine to finish the applique! But the kiddos are away for the day visiting grandparents, so I should be able to work without interruption : )

Have you had a project recently that screamed for a specific print?
What did you use?

~ Sarah

Linking up with Molli Sparkles' Sunday Stash.

My parents just returned from the trip of a lifetime to France and Germany. They toured Paris and Normandy with old Army friends of theirs, and then they went on just the two of them to various towns in the vicinity of Baumholder, Germany, where my dad was stationed when I was a baby. They chose beautiful Christmas ornaments for each of us at Käthe Wohlfahrt (that package has yet to arrive stateside though), but my mom also brought me this adorable little piece of blue shepherd fabric as a souvenir from Der Patchwork Engel - love the sheep!

And yet again, thrilled with my most recent arrivals from Pink Castle's Stash Stack Club! Pink is my second favorite color in my personal life, but in my quilting world, it's number one. You just can't go wrong with a little bit of pink in just about any quilt : )  

What the best quilty/sewing souvenir you've ever received? 

~ Sarah

Linking up with Molli's Sunday Stash.

Alisa of A Stitch In Between asked me to join in the Around the World Blog Hop, and I couldn't be happier for the invite from her. Alisa really embodies the theme of the hop, having lived in five countries, and currently hailing from Taiwan where she blogs about her sewing life. She makes all sorts of nifty things, but since I'm mom to two kids who just built a rocket ship out of our new vacuum cleaner box, this cool jetpack tshirt she made for her son is my most favorite recent finish of hers!

Without further ado, my hop interview:

What am I working on?
This is the part where I tell you I have the most amazing book deal up my sleeve, or that I've just created the next "it" quilt trend replete with pattern release and super popular QAL, right? If only that were the case.... 

At the moment I have three paused projects on my design wall (my full size Triangle QAL design, my halfway swapped Supernova Friendship Blocks, and the beginnings of my-month-as-queen Stash Bee quilt). And I say paused because just last week I decided to rededicate August to family and home instead of my originally planned sewathon. I'm enjoying every last minute of family time before my husband's and children's summer vacation ends while simultaneously purging every single room in the house of clutter and chaos. We spent the weekend rearranging three beds and a longarm, so the family camping trip we're leaving on this afternoon is happily subtitled "Escape from the Allen Wrench!"

How does my work differ from others?
If you'd asked me this a year ago, I'd have had no clue. Today, though, a year of projects under my belt has me seeing more clearly what my style and focuses are, and they're not all what I was planning when I set out: I enjoy making small quilted projects for kids, and I seem to have been bitten by the applique bug!

Why do I create what I do?
I have notebooks full of sketches for full size quilts and projects for myself, but usually my kids are my inspiration and they win top billing when it comes to prioritizing my sewing. Even when I work for clients, the finishes are often for kids, such as nap mats, baby and doll quilts. 

How does my blogging process work?
I try to post regularly, but I've stopped aiming to write on a set schedule because it made blogging and my quilting and sewing a lot less enjoyable. I enjoy posting what I'm working on, participating in hops and QALs, and writing when I have something to share in a voice I think is truly me. Beyond that, my process looks a lot like typing furiously late late at night because I was to busy quelling a mutiny between savage hungry children at 5 pm when the idea struck and simply must get it all down now that the little angels are sleeping ; )

First is Heidi from Fabric Mutt. Heidi hails from California where she creates all sorts of sewing projects, but I especially love her patchwork piecing, like this adorable pouch. 

Second is Mara from Secretly Stitching. Mara joined me for my 30/30 Sewing Challenge last winter, and I've been following her not-actually-so-secret stitching ever since! 

And third is Heather from QA Creations. Heather's blog originally caught my attention because she's a fellow milspouse and professional longarm quilter based out of North Carolina. I contacted her to ask a million and one questions about how she chose her longarm (that will inevitably have to be moved) so I'd have some ideas about how to choose my longarm (that will inevitably have be moved), and she sent me loads of very helpful information. (Thanks again, Heather!) 

Happy hopping!

~ Sarah

I feel like a double winner this week... first off, I won the Last Chance Link Up over at The Sassy Quilter for the Triangle QAL. If you're looking for inspiration or sewing tips to make your own triangle project, you should really go check out Paula's series - helpful tutorials and lots of gorgeous submissions! I think there were many more lovely finishes submitted than mine, but it was a random generator thingy, so that helped my odds ; ) I received a $25 gift certificate to Fat Quarter Shop, as well as the pattern and thread shown below. 

And as if that unexpected stash boost wasn't enough for the week, my first Stash Bee mail arrived, too! Daisy at Ants to Sugar sent me her contribution for my queen bee block, and she tucked in some extra charm squares she thought I'd love. Thanks, Daisy!

On a related note, I've asked for a block made entirely of HSTs and while looking for tutorials, came across a recommendation for the Quilt in a Day 6 1/2" Triangle Square Up Ruler. I hesitated a few weeks, but knowing how many I have ahead to flesh out my eventual quilt, decided to go ahead and get one as my pile of to-be-trimmed keeps growing.

I'm off to tidy... yesterday I talked my husband into helping me relocate my longarm up a flight of stairs, so now I have a lot of things to put away that were moved for the task. Hoping that after dedicating August to family time and home reorganization, back-to-school will bring a nice household flow and lots of time to finally dig in to quilting again.

What's new to you? Anything wonderful that you've added to your stash this week?

~ Sarah

Linking up with Sunday Stash.

Another week, another stash post with virtually no sewing completed in between. Enjoying summer is definitely getting in the way of enjoying my sewing machine! I've been feeling guilty about this since I had declared all seven weeks my husband is off of school to be full time work for me while he took charge of the kids, but this week I've had a change of heart. I know that next summer will be no fun at all with bar exam prep, packing and moving, and the following year could see him deployed, so I've decided to revamp my plan. We're going to enjoy the heck out of August and I'm not going to look back with regret. My poor unloved longarm can wait for my full attention until the mundane routine of the school year. We'll be busy making family memories in the meantime : )

That said, not sewing doesn't seem to have stopped my stash from accumulating, so without further ado, here's what's new...

I used to teach math, so when I saw this fabric, it had to be mine. And now it is.

Eep! And these double gauze sheep! Along with the math, they're from Miss Matatabi, a fabulous purveyor of Japanese fabrics with very reasonable international shipping prices who got my fabric to me in about a week. I think it takes longer to send mail to my old address on the same seaboard than it did to receive this from the other side of the Earth. Very pleased!

And finally.... I follow a fabulous Cape Cod small business, Drumming Beetle, which creates gorgeous custom children's tea sets and play food. When the owner, Rebecca, recently showed some of her new stash, including this, which she'd purchased at the LQS where I grew up, I phoned my mom and asked her to run over and grab a few yards. She did later that same day - moms are so handy! If you don't already know, I love AH, I love reading, my kids love reading, my littlest is obsessed with cats... in short, this is the perfect print for our house. Not sure what it will become, but it most definitely will find a home in our book nook!

What's new in your stash? 
Impulse buys like my reading felines or something you've been saving up for?

~ Sarah

Linking up with Sunday Stash.

August is my month to be queen of Hive 3 at Stash Bee. I've been gathering ideas for a long while, planning for something quick and scrappy in a rainbow palette, but my husband made an eleventh hour request (yesterday afternoon) to minimize the number of colors, and to include his favorites (red and blue). Considering we're a military family, and he and I both liked this block designed with white contrast stripes, I decided to go all out American.  

I've asked my hive mates to use a scrappy mix of bright, medium/cooler red and blue prints along with solid white or low volume white to create incomplete 12.5" blocks from HSTs. Below is a shot of the fabric pull I shared for inspiration, and I also whipped together a quick Pinterest board with more examples.

While looking for HST tutorials online to refer to, I found two excellent examples that show how to best square off your blocks as you go. The first HST tutorial from Karen at Sew Many Ways includes trimming with a square ruler, and the second HST tutorial from Amy Smart at Diary of a Quilter (who is vacationing in Germany at the moment - lucky her!) includes trimming with a right square triangle ruler made for that specific purpose. Both tutorials are for creating two-at-a-time HSTs, which is perfect for saving a little time while still allowing a lot of variety in fabrics so the blocks stay very scrappy.

If you'd like to create something similar, here's a quick how to for the blocks...

For each 12" finished block, you'll need:
          (8) 4" squares of saturated color fabrics   &   (8) 4" squares of white/low volume

Begin by pairing (8) sets of 4" squares together matching saturated with white/LV following the two-at-a-time HST method to create (16) 3.5" squares.

Are you in a bee? What block have you chosen or really loved creating for a bee mate?

~ Sarah

Linking up with Fabric Frenzy Friday