The Wood Between the Worlds

 I love how pretty all the blues, greens and yellows look with brown

 all of my blankets pass the Ollie test of approval...he LOVES these blankets and will try to carry them around the house and snuggle them when I'm not looking.  

 here's Joshy holding up the entire blanket

Next I give you:

My crowning achievement in blanket making thus far:

My first scrappy quilt (with many more to come...it was so much fun to make!):

 This is a special quilt that I made for our new nephew Jackson who was born in December to Brent's younger sister and her husband.  When I heard that their baby was coming to them with spina bifida I  knew that I wanted to make them a special blanket.  I asked her what colors she wanted and she told me to make it colorful!  How fun!  I got some of the squares from my friend SewSara's etsy shop, and I cut the rest of them myself, added a border, backed it with some cuddly minky (which will probably be too hot for where they live right now :-o), and I used SewSara's tutorial (this is a great tutorial!) for appliqueing Jackson's name on the bottom.  I hope that he'll love this blanket his whole life!

here's a close up of some of the squares and the diagonal quilting I did with my machine

Here is a sample of fabrics that I've been collecting, which I think will be gorgeous together in a quilt for my living room...for those days where you want to cuddle by the fire (I had a lot of those days this winter because I was SO COLD in my first trimester!)...and I have been needing a cute blanket which matches my living room's colors.

 I'm excited about this project...

but first, I'm finishing a special quilt for Elsa...

it's been on my shelf for the past two and a half years and my heart needs me to finish it now.

(Pictures to come.)

Here's a little maternity t-shirt re-do/re-purpose whatever you want to call it:

 I wish I had a before picture, but basically the little square graphic came from an itty-bitty maternity t-shirt that I bought online, on sale toward the end of Oliver's pregnancy.  The website told me: one size fits most.  Ha!  Hahahahahahahahaha!!  When I got it, it was more like: one size fits a teeny, tiny x-small teen pregnant mama.  I'm telling you!  There was nothing about it that was one size fits most! It was smaller than my non maternity shirts and was not at all stretchy to accommodate a bigger size!  Seriously, I wear a medium or a large...so I consider myself to fit into the "one size fits most" category!  Anyway...I had this idea many moons ago to re-purpose my kids most beloved t-shirts that they outgrow by cutting out the graphic and simply sewing it on a bigger shirt.  Very easy!  I never actually got around to doing it for my kids, but I went and bought a big old white maternity shirt from a re-sale store and I appliqued the graphic from that tiny shirt onto this gap t-shirt.  Now it'll actually fit me at the END of my pregnancy, when I'm actually nesting.  :) 

 Before and after

I really wanted this dress to be a long, flowy summer dress...but alas, it is not quite long enough to be maxi-length.  I think I'm going to have to hem it to just below my knees, but I haven't decided yet.

 this gathering is really, super easy to do with that stretchy, elastic thread in your bobbin and regular thread on the top.

I wish I could say Happy Springtime, but where we are the weather has been so difficult lately!  We finally got our first snow last week and we got some more today.  Other than that it's been raining all the time.  I feel jipped because when we came up here 5 years ago (!) to search for a house in March, it was so warm we were wearing shorts!  That's the kind of spring weather I thought I was signing up for!  Hopefully the sun will come out next week for spring break!