So a boy's quilt wasn't up someone's alley? How about a girl's? This is a fun colorful one that was surprisingly hard to photograph. Well, I guess I shouldn't have been THAT surprised since it was in the office on a cloudy day since the back deck was all rain-soaked. This and the Shades of Blue quilt were two experiments at making an affordable standard quilt for my Etsy shop. Still working on that. Turns out a boatload of scraps still takes a long time to sew together and then to quilt. Who knew? Quilting takes time! Huh.

This one is a little larger at 42" square. I think I'll be shooting for somewhere between that and the 33" square blue one for the "Etsy standard," but both are awesomely soft, squishy, and adorable. Can a fun, squishily soft baby quilt ever be the wrong size, really?

When I uploaded pictures to Flickr, I put "Pretty in Pink" as the quilt title, which led to a discussion over whether that phrase still conjures up memories of a movie not fit for a baby girl, or if it's back to simply being a phrase. So I went with "The Bee's Knees" instead because of the bees on the fabric. Not that I ever really got that phrase. Anybody know how it originated?

shades of blue01
Originally uploaded by binkwaffle - Holly

No, Mom, I'm not pregnant. Just getting that out of the way.

But if anyone knows someone who IS, wouldn't this make the perfect baby quilt? It's 33" square and has a double layer of 100% cotton batting for extra squishiness and warmth. It uses lots of popular modern fabrics and has a hand-finished binding. So fun to make and to watch it materialize!

It's at my Etsy shop, so come on over and take a gander at this or my other things!

BBW Deal!
Originally uploaded by binkwaffle

Why you should
a) use coupons
b) take advantage of killer sales
c) finally use those gift cards that just sit in your wallet for a year...

All told, I paid $5 and change out of pocket for this. I used a $5 BBW gift card, $40 left on a mall gift card, a $10/$40 BBW coupon, and bought it all at the semi-annual sale, and I paid 5 bucks!!!

Those candles were 75% off!! The regular price of everything was approx. $176!! Pre-giftcard and pre-cash price was only $50 and change. Granted, I used a gift card that I wouldn't usually have, but it was still an awesome deal either way!

I got:
2 Wallflower units w/ refills
2 Wallflower refill packs
1 Body Lotion
1 Shower Gel
4 4 oz. Candles
2 14.5 oz. Candles
2 Antibacterial Soaps
1 Shampoo
1 Conditioner

And yes, I know the photo stinks to high heaven. Sorry about that. Wanted to start using all right away and not stage a photo shoot. :-)

Bugs!!!!
Originally uploaded by binkwaffle

Apparently, these are squash bugs! Thanks, Andrea! We have the spray and will be dousing the vine, bushes, and part of the garden tonite. Seriously, the bug factor (are slugs officially bugs, too? If not, broaden it to a pest factor) is the biggest turnoff for me when it comes to gardening. They just flat out gross me out. They don't scare me, but they are just plain gross. And it feels like they're crawling all over me once I've seen a few. Ewww....

Bugs!!!!

What is this bug??? There are hundreds of them all over an aggressive vine coming from my neighbor's yard. The vine overtakes everything on my side of the fence every year, but this year it's worse because it has these black things all over it! Now, granted, it looks like they're killing the plant, but in the process, I don't want them to kill the plants underneath them, the ones that are mine!!! And they're VERY close to my garden, and I did not do all that work to have a bug colony eat the fruit of my labor. Literally! HELP!!

I probably did a very stupid thing (Did I mention my thumb is only very slightly a pale pale green and that this is the first year my garden is still alive at this point in the spring/summer?) and tried to hose them all off. I had two thoughts: (1) they might get mad and fly away, or (2) they might be so wussy that the force of the water kills them instantly. Apparently, I was wrong on both accounts, because they're all still there. So now what? Do I spray them with something? Of course we want to rip out as much of the vine as we can, too, but the roots are on the other side of the fence (and it's a rental so who knows who lives there right now?) and I really don't relish the idea of ripping out all those vines with the bugs still all over them. Ewww. And they're just barely hanging over one side of the garden (which is how I found them, when I was trimming back a few bush branches), so they'll all fall off into the garden as soon as we start ripping them out.

Help!

So, my boys to come into contact with a good half-dozen teachers every day. It's an AWESOME magnet school here in Tulsa that anyone living in the district has GOT to at least come tour and consider for their kids. It was originally a lab school and a "demonstration" school where all the teachers from the entire district came for a few days to learn alternative ways to teach kids based on kids' brain research and the like. Now it's just a "normal" walls-free multi-age hands-on school that still operates the same way but that doesn't have teachers coming to learn.

Anyhoo, all that's to say... The boys each have a "homebase" teacher and a "family" teacher. (Homebase is based on their grade or age group; family is a multi-age "class" that meets several afternoons a week, where they get to learn to interact with other ages, to learn from each other, to help the younger ones learn, etc.) So the "main" 2 teachers for each boy got a reusable shopping bag using this pattern.

(To be honest, I was underwhelmed with the pattern and project--sorry to the designer--but they're done and that's that. I wish I'd reinforced them with a little interfacing, but I guess they are shopping bags, after all. So, there they are. Ain't redoing them now! Overall, they're cute; just a pain in the you-know-what to make. Not overly quick to whip up.)


THEN, of course, the boys came home from school one afternoon; not to drool and gush over my long hard work, but to insist that Mrs. So and So, Mr. You Know Who, etc., all needed one, too. After all, they all teach the boys each day. Oy. So I set out to create a more time efficient project for the rest of them, and voila! After a zillion searches online and a hybrid of a billion tutorials, patterns, and photos, here's what I came up with:





A tutorial will follow this week, now that the teachers all have their gifts and the final rush of the school year's end is over. You know, while the boys are running through the house and I have all that, er, quiet time...

I FINALLY finished up my pattern for Sophie's Shrug! Shelley made it a Loops Original pattern today, blogged about it, and will start selling it online (should be on the Loops site in a day or two), in the store, and on Ravelry. How cool is that?

I've had quite a few subjects for guinea pigs, so the pattern should be spot on. I'll be knitting one out of a bulkier yarn this next week or two so that we have an example of how it knits up with larger yarns. I made a tiny one for a coworker's baby shower, so I need to get a photo of it from her (I know. Bad Holly. Take the pics BEFORE you gift the item!) to show how small the same pattern can go on smaller needles and yarns.

The "gonna run over and take a few pics of Sophie in the newest version" idea turned into "Aunt Holly, why don't we try all of them on?" and "Aunt Holly, look! We hung a sheet on the clothesline!" instead. It was fun, though. All the poses were the girls' ideas, too. No need for prompting. Girls seem to be naturals at the art of posing. :-)

Introducing binkwaffle button bands! Headbands, rubber bands, eventually barrettes.... Had to find a lucrative way to use up those scraps, right? Eh, who are we kidding? If I see a cool idea, I have to give it a try. Focused and single-minded I'm not. At all.

These are going up in my Etsy shop a few a day, so if you see something you like here but not there yet, let me know. And I'm more than happy to do custom ones, too, so please ask!

I have another quilting style under my belt now. The String Quilt takes a long time!!! It utilizes scraps and "strings" of fabric and so doesn't cost a lot to make, assuming you have scraps galore lying around. But wow! The time involved is long. But it's fun. That's what counts, right? And the fact that it looks cool? :-)



This baby has all sorts of fabrics in it, from solid cottons and linen to Amy Butler and Joel Dewberry out-of-print prints to a rescued skirt to munki munki PJs... Tres fun. I used the paper piecing method; not sure I'd use that method again, as I had a lot of stretching and had to trim the squares again and again. Might give the washable stabilizer a try next time.

I used a wonky unplanned crooked set of lines for the quilting. I really like it! It's SOOOO much easier and quicker than mapping out the quilt lines first, although I still had a couple of fixes that had to be made because they were SO random. But very fun, nonetheless.

I'm going to put it in my Etsy shop, so if you know anyone who would like it.... well... :-)



It's approx. 38"x50" and has a 100% cotton batting in the center. Almost all of the fabrics are either 100% linen or 100% cotton. A couple of blends might be thrown in there; not sure what the skirt had in it... One's even almost a flannel, it's so soft!

I got flowers from my boys for Valentine's Day and forgot to snap a picture of them at the beginning of their long lives. Pro Flowers is definitely worth the money! These little guys came on Friday, the 12th, and the picture of them in the larger vase was taken on the 21st, I think.
Then I cut them down and put the best ones in my new IKEA vases two days ago.
They're getting a little wilty at this point, but only if you touch them and see that they're a bit floppy-headed. If you just look at them w/o touching, they still look great! If I'd gotten more than two packets of flower food, I'm convinced they'd have lasted longer. Can you buy that stuff at the store in a larger quantity than the little packets?
Thanks, boys, for my pretty flowers! I love you!

I made this bag for a good friend who's pregnant with her second baby, a girl this time. She needed something decidedly feminine, I thought. I looked at some bag pictures, measured the ones I had and liked, made notes, saw how much yardage I had of which fabric.... and voila! I love it! I will do a couple of things differently the next time around, but all in all, I think it's perfect! NOT what I can usually say for my first attempts at creating something from scratch.

And of course, as is the story for most of us creatives, I sat in our employee meeting the morning before the baby shower, sewing the changing pad's binding instead of knitting. Yeah. Creating always takes longer than you plan for it to. When will I learn?

Congratulations, Dan and Anna! And Aaron! Can't wait to see her! Hope she (and you) likes the bag! :-)

*NO idea why the mosaic maker isn't sticking a photo in that blank spot. I told it to. Computers. Can't live with them...

I finished my first quilt today. (we won't mention the completely huge, time consuming, tedious, handsewn, and handquilted one I started in high school and finished after I got married, of which I then didn't take a single photo before I gave it away... Jamie, are you reading this? Can ya take a pic for me?).... This is my first "modern" quilt. Funky and bold fabrics, random sizes of fabric pieces, piecing on the BACK.... I discovered this blog a few months ago, and it's only pulled me deeper and deeper into the world of quilting and taking my sewing ideas to a new level. Thanks for the creativity and the inspiration, Ashley!

I donated the quilt to Craft Hope for their Etsy shop tonight. Craft Hope sends all the money (ALL of it; no administrative costs, no nuthin') from the shop to Doctors Without Borders for their work right now in Haiti. Craft Hope lists the items, buyers buy the items and pay Craft Hope, and we donors mail the buyers their items. It should be available in the next day or so, I think.

Well, they were overwhelmed with donations and with sales, and they decided to close their shop down before they got my quilt listed, so I'll donate another one when they reopen. It's on sale in my Etsy shop now. Oh, well. More time and more excused to keep sewing, right? Have to have something new for them when they reopen!
Now on to another one.... I have WAAYYY more ideas in my head than I have time in a day!! Sleep? I have to sleep?? And do the dishes? And....?

Spent most of the day today on two wholesale orders for two knitting shops .... Don't the parts look cool all lined up like that?

Okay, so I've finally mastered zippers. A couple of these are still the "old" style, but the rest are the new and improved method, all thanks to a wonderful pattern and tutorial from Elizabeth at Oh Fransson!. Thanks, Elizabeth! She had the best ways of finishing off my pouches that I'd have never thought up if I'd spent the rest of my life dedicated to the process. And no, I'd have given up long before that, leaving the world devoid of these cute little guys! :-)

They'll be going into my Etsy shop this weekend, with more like them in the near future. Now that I'm not throwing half-finished projects across the room in frustration with yet another screwed up zipper, I've become quite addicted obsessed eager to make more. Brad will be happy, I'm sure, as I've amassed quite the fabric collection these last few months. Sorry, honey! I'll sell it, I promise!

Once upon a time, I created my own pattern for a Louisa Harding contest. I made a little dress to go with it (for contest brownie points... they didn't work...), and my love for fabric and sewing was reborn. Because of this newly rediscovered love, my knitting took a backseat many days. So when a couple of friends asked me for the pattern to Sophie's Shrug, I cranked one out -- errors and all -- and never really got back to proofing it. Turns out it's not as easy to "whip up" a pattern as I thought. Eternal thanks goes to all those who've created well-written patterns!
Two tests and two more nicely outfitted nieces later, I still didn't have a clearly written pattern.


So when this yummy yarn from Blue Sky came in to the store, I just had to have it. It was my inspiration kick in the seat of the pants to revise the pattern. A springtime version, to boot. So begins my revision process. I'll keep ya posted on the progress...
Besides, with five nieces, each practice run should fit SOMEone!

What, you haven't spent $34 on one yard of fabric before?? Okay, neither have I... until now...
This is for a very special project which shall remain secret for now, but I just had to show off my new love: Heather Ross fabric. She has some designs available in quilting fabrics, others available only as Munki Munki pajamas. Because the artwork is so creative and adorable, the PJs are in high demand as well, selling on eBay and Etsy as "one XL sleeve" and "one left front pants panel" and so on... Very very cute. AND, for whatever strange reason, these pajamas -- which run close to $100 a pair -- have shown up in Marshall's and TJMaxx this past year for anywhere from $10 to $17!!! (Needless to say, I'd love you forever if you found some, especially the winter scenes, at your local Marshall's... just sayin'...) Used in small amounts to make it go farther, it can make a cute project elevate to a whole new level of cuteness. Or so I tell myself as I search the very same Marshall's yet again.

Does it help that I'm not keeping the whole yard, that I'm trading half of it for two more Heather Ross designs from another Heather Ross and Munki freak? Yeah, I didn't think so. Oh, well. It was worth a try.