Island Mama

New duvet cover, made from three old sheets found at the thrift store.

Vintage yellow roses feel so happy and summery. Even if they’re covering up a feather duvet, still in use most nights in July.

Well, almost a quarter. This is 8 squares of 17 across. There’ll be one strip down and across the center that is almost black except for the center square, which may be the same purple as the outside corner, or may be something as yet undetermined.

The quilt is (almost) 1/8th done. At least (almost) 1/8th of the pattern part of the top. That’s not counting borders and quilting and binding.

The whole pieced part is 17 squares by 17 squares, and I’m doing them in batches of 4 x 4 squares. Then I’ll have to do one row for the center each direction to join it all together. Two 4×4 bits are done.

The first section took me three evenings, a couple hours each time. Last night I completed the second section. It’s looking good, I’m very happy with it so far.

On the last day of March, we had sun, then snow, then sun, then snow….. It was cold and wet and what was that about March going out like a lamb?

We got outside for a little while before dinner in one of the sunny spells, and there are definite signs of life in the garden, finally!

One of our new apple trees is showing green. (So are the plums and cherries!)

The raspberries are really getting leafy.

The salad greens are coming up already, despite the snow! You can just see the tiny green leaves there.

There are salmonberry flowers appearing all over the place! Thank goodness they have such bright flowers, because we’d never have known we have so many of them if they didn’t stand out so distinctly.

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Today, it was warm outside. Warm from the sun! No chill in the air, we spent the whole afternoon outside, playing, working, tidying up. It was delightful and I can’t wait for the weather to be more reliably like that.

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I’ve been working on the quilt, I will have photos to share soon. I’m sort of piecing blocks in chunks as I go to make sure it’s working before I have 289 blocks ready to put together all at once. The top is 1/16th done.

I finally started on the king-size quilt I’ve been planning since last August. After entering the quilt I made for my youngest son in the county fair, I decided my goal this year was to make a quilt that would deserve to be hung up and displayed in its entirety, instead of being folded up and hung over a railing in a nook, lost among the bulk of entries. So my husband came up with a design based on a mathematical curve, I started with one fabric I love that I’d picked up at the thrift store, and over the Christmas break I bought all the rest of the materials. (The quilt shop was having a pre-end-of-year-inventory sale, what could I do?) There was much discussion of colors and patterns while my in-laws were visiting for Christmas.

And finally, last night, I started cutting. I cut out 289 squares. (Rotary cutters rock!)

Now I have hundreds of little triangles to do. Pondering whether to cut them all at once or cut some and start sewing, cutting the rest as I go. Just to make sure the design is going to work, of course.

I came up with this little kids’ tote bag idea recently, because Ben asked me to make him one out of two fat quarters our local quilting store owner gave him one day.

It has dalmatians and fire hydrants all over it — what could be better for a three year old boy? He loves it, and so does one of our friends, so I made another one for her and documented the process in photos so I could write about it.

Materials needed:

• Two fat quarters of coordinating fabrics — a bold print for the outside and a plainer/smaller pattern for the inside works well. (Doesn’t work well on obvious one-way patterns — one half would end up upside-down.)
• Slightly less than a fat quarter of iron-on interfacing.
• An old belt — I find mine at the thrift store — or some other ribbon or webbing for straps.

1. Center the interfacing and iron onto the wrong side of the outer fabric.
   
2. With right sides together, sew around the edges of the fabric. Leave about the center third of one of the long sides unsewn to allow you to turn right side out. Trim the corners.
   
3. Turn right side out, pushing out corners. Iron seams flat. Topstitch at 1/8″ around the entire outside of the rectangle.
   
4. With right sides (outside fabric) together, fold in half widthwise. Sew the two ends together.
   
5. You now have basically a flat inside-out pouch. Fold in the outside edges that you just sewed, towards the center, so that the seam is laying along the center bottom of the pouch.
   
6. Sew across the corner of the bag, about 2″ in from the point, on both ends.
   
7. Turn the whole thing right side out. Lay one of the long sides flat against the bottom (like you would fold a paper grocery sack) and topstitch at 1/8″, from corner to corner, along the outside. Do the same thing on the other side, and, if you want, from each of the four bottom corners to the top edge, to give it more of a boxy shape.
   
8. Cut the old belt in half, and sew one half on each side as a handle. I do it just a couple of inches in from the ends and at a slight angle. I also leave the belt buckle on for decoration.
   

That’s it! Give it to your favorite kid and they can carry around their books or art supplies or cuddly toys or whatever they like.