Thanks for all your lovely comments on my new studio! I wish I could invite you all over for a little tea & sewing, wouldn’t that be fun :) Thank you though, it made my day to read all your lovely comments! :)

I was tagged me awhile back by Sew Spoiled, so I thought I would share my answers to that & a few photos at the same time today…

What was I doing ten years ago?
Let’s see, 10 years ago I was still in high school. (See 2 posts ago where I mentioned my birthday if you are ever so curious about my age ;) So trying my hardest to enjoy the summer most likely :)

What are five (non-work) things on my to-do list for today?
Catch up on some emails
Work on framing the photos I had printed to hang in our living room
Write a couple thank you notes
Cuddle the cats
Watch an episode of the old tv show “Bewitched” (I am addicted thanks to netflix…)

Five snacks I enjoy:
Mint Chocolate Pirouette’s, Norfolk Lemon or Ginger Biscuits, apple slices, and to be honest those are the only 3 snacks I can think of that I enjoy… I am not a big food person really.

Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
Since I can’t comprehend ever being a billionaire that is a tough one… I would buy a house in the country (but near enough to the city) and get a dog + 1 more cat (I am convinced right now that Pounce & Axel could use a kitty sister - which isn’t going to happen anytime soon since we are only allowed 2 pets where we are living) + 2 horses… I would also save a bunch & give some to our families. I would also give a bunch to my favorite charity’s (or is it charities?)…

Places I’ve lived
Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, and Washington (my favorite place by far! :)

I am not going to tag anyone, but feel free to consider yourself tagged if you want to play along.

All the photos are just some of my favorites from a walk I took a couple weeks ago… I was trying out one of the lenses I had rented & had fun just walking around taking photos.

I can hardly believe it has been over 3 ½ months since we picked up and moved from Illinois to Washington… I am so happy we made that move for so many different reasons, but one reason is definitely my new studio space. When we looked for places to live, we decided to find an apartment that had an extra room for my sewing. Ben is so nice to not mind that all he has is a little corner for his desk, when I have the whole rest of the room for all my stuff…

I love the windows in our apartment, we get a ton of natural light which is wonderful with the grey skies that this area seems to have quite frequently:) Actually I picked the blue paint for the walls because it reminds me a bit of the sky and I figured when the sky is grey I can just look at the lovely walls in my studio :)

The inspiration wire above my desk has some of my favorite postcards on it for right now. I think as the seasons change I might change out the items hanging from it. I love that it is a bit of art & color that I can switch out so easily.

Of course Pounce needed to be in at least one photo :) (Don’t mind the bikes, that is not actually where those belong…)

One of my favorite things about my new sewing studio is my cutting table. In our old house, I had to constantly set up a folding table whenever I needed more space for sewing… Now I just walk over to my cutting table :) (The best part is that it does come apart for easy storage for when we have guests over and need to use my studio as a guest room, but I can leave it up all the time now.)

I love the black + white print of the curtains… In fact I love it so much I bought a bit extra of it & in another color too! (Would it be too strange to make a shirt in the same fabric as my curtains? Maybe if I just don’t stand right next to them when I wear the top? :)

Have I mentioned that I love my new studio! It was so much fun to decorate, but even more fun to enjoy it now that it is finished. :)

2 posts in the same week… I know I was gone for awhile, so I hope it isn’t too much to post a bunch now that I am back :) I definitely missed blogging while I was gone & am happy to be back to writing in this space again!

That was a much unintended blogging break that I took! I think I am back though :) Summer has finally arrived and things are finally starting to settle into a bit of a routine or at least as routine as life is going to get anytime soon. My blogging break was quite a bit of fun though, packed with lots of stuff including in no particular order…

- Finishing decorating my studio, complete with curtains (I promise to post a bunch of photos of my finished studio soon - in fact I already have a post started already).

- Visiting with family

- Getting to be tourists in our own city

- Going whale watching (see above about being tourists :) and actually getting to see Orca whales…

- Taking a free motion quilting lesson & a quilt binding class. Both so much fun, although my free motion quilting could still use a bit more practice :)

- Renting 2 lenses from here to try both out for a week and taking a lot of photos.

- My 25th birthday last Friday!

I also worked on a bit of sewing during my blogging break, but other than the curtains I have only started projects and not finished anything. I have a lot of ideas right now though so I am hoping to finish some of those projects so I can start on new ones soon. (Now if only the linen I ordered over a month ago would actually arrive, that would help!)

I have so much to blog about, I hardly even know where to start! We have family coming to visit in a little less than a week, so lately we have been trying to get all the little finishing touches done in our new apartment. Instead of “one project a month” (which is a great idea) it has been something like one project a day around here. My project for today is to hopefully finish the curtains for my studio (which is also going to be doubling as a guest room in less than a week). After the curtains are hung, I promise to take photos & share my finished studio, which I am absolutely loving!

Of course, even with everything going on I still have time for mini photo shoots with one of the cats :)

Edited to say: I fixed the size finally :) Sorry these photos are a bit smaller than usual, but you can click on them to see them larger - which I really do suggest doing since Axel is so cute :) I had to install the new wordpress recently & I really dislike the changes they made… Seriously the old version made a lot more sense & worked a lot better in my opinion. Oh well!

I’m still here, this week has just been really busy :)

I have actually been doing a bit of sewing, but I have been so busy with other things that I haven’t had time to take photos or post about what I am working on. Soon though! I am pretty excited because after trying to figure out how to quilt on my own, I decided to take some quilting classes. I have already finished with the one class (which was 2 nights of learning how to put together quilt blocks) & have some lovely quilt blocks to show from it. So much fun & now I am looking forward to learning about machine quilting and how to attach bindings to quilts.

Also this past week… I spent the day yesterday at this lovely blogger’s home sewing & chatting. She also helped me figure out how in the world to make a 20 inch square log cabin block for the front of my living room pillows. :) Thanks Anina, I had so much fun! Then today I had coffee & good conversation with another lovely blogger. So all in all, a very fun if busy week. :)

In case you were wondering, these photos have nothing at all to do with my week… :)

:beautiful weather (love when that happens):

:painted my studio (photos soon):

:happy that it is a long weekend:

Something about the season’s changing always makes me wish for a new bag. For summer I decided I wanted to change out my pleated linen purse for a tote in colors that remind me of summer.

Do you ever go to the fabric store with a vague idea of what kind of fabric you want & then end up spending way too much time in the fabric shop because you just can’t decide? I actually sat down on the floor among the bolts of fabric so I could picture more clearly which fabrics would work together! I finally picked the 3 fabrics in the post below, because they remind me of the ocean & summer at the beach. (I think the two striped fabrics are Kaffe Fasset and the print is a Joel Dewberry.)

Aurora made sewing this tote so easy that I almost wish I had an excuse to make a few more! Actually I think figuring out how to photograph the tote took me more time than making it :) I still need to get my photography spots figured out in our new place…

Now if only summer would arrive! :)

Okay so it technically isn’t Friday anymore in this part of the world, but close enough. :)

A little work in progress that I started today…

These fabrics make me think of the beach & summertime and will hopefully be a tote bag soon :)

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Okay so I am still really behind on emails (and I discovered one in my inbox today that is from over a month ago!), but our living room is actually starting to look like a living room. Since the moving company came yesterday to pick up all the empty boxes we had stacked in our living room, I spent a lot of my day today cleaning & rearranging the living room. I think I will definitely share some photos of what it looks like when it is all done, but there is still a little ways to go. Since there is nothing else that exciting going on, I thought I would just share some recent photos that I took at the botanical gardens.

I experimented a little with that photo & added a texture to it… I think I like it, although it is a bit different.

(Click on any photo to see it slightly larger…)

And just because, a photo of Pounce…

And one of Axel (he loves this basket, although he is a bit big for it!)…

I finally finished a little something that has been sitting on my works in progress pile for oh about four months. My first quilt…

Even the cats are impressed that I actually got around to finishing it:)

I do have to admit that I sort of cheated on this, because it doesn’t have any binding around the edges. I really wanted to finish it though and I figured binding the quilt would probably take me another four months, so I just went ahead and top-stitched the edges. I am glad though that I waited those four months to finish it, since the quilting went so much smoother on my new machine than it would have on my old one! :)

The plan is to use this quilt in our living room and so I backed it in a nice soft flannel so it is extra nice for cuddling up on the couch to read a good book. Hopefully it won’t take me another four months to make some matching throw pillows & curtains for the living room ;) Although trying to figure out the math for making a log cabin pillow might take me that long! :) (Unless anyone knows of a really good tutorial for a 20×20 inch sized throw pillow in a log cabin pattern?)

Edited to include: I am really behind on emails right now, so if you have left a comment lately thank you! I am hoping to catch up soon :)