I finished the quilt top yesterday and learned another lesson, sigh. I was sewing the rows together and the seams from the blocks didn’t match up and I just couldn’t figure out why. Well, now I know that when you make a pattern you should not only think about adding seam allowance but to also to take it away!

The design is made of squares and rectangles, so in my little brain it went like this: One square is 20×20 cm including seam allowance, so a rectangle is made out of two or three squares so it’s 20×40 or 20×60 cm. WRONG!!

I should have calculated the blocks how they should be and then add the seam allowance. Oh well, another lesson learned and hopefully I won’t make this mistake again. 

And of course I had some helping paws to make sure that pining the border to the quilt top isn’t such a boring task. The mischievous little creature was running over the quilt and dashing into it every 30 seconds! We filmed it and as soon as I’ll find out how to edit it, I’ll post the video for you amusement.

But to be fair, she even helped sewing the top together, well kind of, at least she was looking dumb cute while she was lying next to me.

Just a little post to keep you updated on the quilt: I cut all the blocks, the border and the binding and I can officially say: I hate cutting and measuring! My back hurts because I don’t have a table that’s big enough so I had to cut on the floor, I really have a hard time cutting straight even with this great rotary cutter tutorial and I’m in constant fear that I don’t have enough fabric or I do something wrong. I’m deeply impressed with all the people out there who make these amazing quilts out of 1000 different pieces, but at the same time I think they’re just plain crazy :)

But I’m pretty happy how the quilt looks so far. Now I’m off to my little sewing machine and after a good night of sleep sewing I can probably show you the finished quilt top. After that I have to figure out how to quilt this little beauty.

Like I promised Marie from Protect The Cookie last week, this time it’s all about organizers. Hope you’ll like the tutorials.

Wall Organizer- hang it over your desk

Corkboard Wall Pocket - bulletin board and mail storage in one

Door Organizer - enough pockets for everything

Post Office Bag - organize and carry your packages & mail in style

Car CD Visor - keep your CDs organized and easy to reach

Car Organizer  - toys, maps or books: keep your car clutter free

Car Organizer II - same purpose, other version

Is it already Sunday? After a week of vacation I can finally start to relax so it’s kind of hard to follow what day it is :) Here is the stash for this week, all Amy Butler Midwest Modern except for the Joel Dewberry Aviary in between. Have a great Sunday gals!

Want to show off your Stash? Join the Sunday Stash at 1/4 of an inch.

Wanna see more stash? Check out the Sunday Stash flickr group.

I hope you all had a great Christmas, I surely did even though probably not in the traditional sense. Tony was over at his mother’s house for two days, so I had time to finally make this little bag I was thinking about the last couple of days.

The pattern is the Taxi Tote from Anna Maria Horner’s “Seams to Me” and the instructions are really easy to follow. I would definitely say this would be a great bag for beginners. I really like the book and will probably make some more projects from it soon. It’s beautifully design, well written and covers projects from storage cubes, bags, quilts, aprons over to pillows and skirts. 

And now on to the Taxi Tote. I didn’t want to use only one fabric, so this was a good project to try out the foundation piecing technique. I used some heavy weight home decor fabric from Ikea and fused even heavier interfacing to the back of it. Then I used this as my foundation for the outer fabrics. The brown and green fabric are a wool/synthetic mix, the yellow is corduroy and the white/red one is a bedcover from Ikea. I added a contrasting straight stitch to the yellow and green stripe and now I just have to get another button because I don’t really like the one I used but couldn’t find a better one in my stash that was big enough. 

I kind of like how the tote turned out, the only thing I don’t like is the binding. First of all the bedcover is a really low quality fabric and was a pain in the ass to work with (I don’t know how someone can sleep in this) and second I messed up. If I ever do this bag again, I’ll definitely sew on the binding my hand.

Check out more projects from the book from other crafters: Seams to me flickr group.

Bonus shot: The dessert my mom made yesterday - Panna Cotta with fresh figs and a sauce made with cinnamon, orange juice, pin nuts and cranberries. It was delicious!

<rant> Yes, I said dash and not stash. I started cutting the fabric for the mermaid quilt a half hour ago, and while I was sitting on the floor lining up the fabric with the ruler, concentrating to get everything right, the friggin cat waited until everything was in position and ready to cut and dashed, DASHED into the fabric, every friggin single time!! So I’ll pour myself a glass of wine now and try it again tomorrow - with the cat locked in the bedroom. </rant>

 The root of all evil! Don’t be fooled by the cuteness.