no time to sew :(

I'm training for a new job, which leaves me little time to sew. Hopefully things will settle down soon so I can break out my machines again!

(Since my last post, we've made HUGE headway on organizing the house. Always more that can be done, but I'm pleased with the progress! This too, will be put on hold for awhile)

mini break

It looks like it's been a little while since I've posted... and it will likely be awhile longer.

I have still been making a few things (mostly embroidery right now) but my main focus for the time being is home organization. EEK. So far, so good, but wow is it exhausting.

Pillow for the couch

I saw an awesome tutorial for Herringbone tuck pillows at the blog Artfully @ Atelier Caroline and fell in love with them. I knew immediately I wanted to try making one.

I decided to make a pillow out of the same fabric I used to reupholster the chair for my living room, thinking it would help tie the furniture in with each other.

Meticulous measuring is not my thing, so I did the best I could in pleating and ironing the fabric with a few measurements. (I've been eyeing up pleating boards for awhile now) I believe I made my pleats every 1" and sewed them at 1/4".

I decided to change things up a bit (ultimately avoiding more measuring) and sewed a bunch of random straight lines at different angles, rather than parallel to each other.

Here's how it turned out:

And, here's the corner of my living room with the reupholstered chair and new pillow for the couch:

embroidered dishcloth

I've totally been in the dishcloth embroidery mode lately. This is largely because it's the only thing I have supplies for/that I can think of that is functional and I can randomly make. I'm open to ideas for other projects if anyone has any :)

Here's one for my Grandma, I haven't seen her yet since making it, so she doesn't know about it (I hope she doesn't see this post too soon!)

(The cat design was from a Brother embroidery machine)

Crocheted blanket...

... done, but not by choice. I had to finish off the crocheted blanket I've been working on the other day. I wanted to add one to two more skeins of yarn to it, but they no longer sell the yarn I'd been using (at least I haven't seen it for the last 2 months at several stores that previously carried it)

So, I used up the rest of the yarn I had, and that was that.

The final measurements of this blanket: 65" wide by 90" long, or about 5.5 feet by 7.5 feet, whew, that took quite awhile! (looks like it was 10 months or so, although I took loooooong breaks from crocheting it)

Here are some previous posts on this blanket:

first post about blanket & information on pattern (April 2010)
the blanket in May 2010
July 2010
July 2010 progress
yet another July 2010 post

My cute little orange cat ate my computer cord a few days ago (which is why I have not blogged lately) but luckily a replacement cord came in the mail quicker than expected. I'm now back up and running :) That cat sure is lucky he's cute... ugh.