And we're out.

So the time has finally come. The yeti is extinct. He will be remembered fondly by his hand-stitched toothy grin, his pointy claws, and his silky pelt.

Oh yeti, you will be missed.

Pictured above is the last of the yetis. Ever. He flew via First Class Mail/Parcel Post to his new home with Jess T's dad. Another traveled far away and will be a baby shower gift so that's a secret. If you find some of this fur, let me know and we'll attempt a reincarnation.

I have already begun working on designs for a new elusive species. Look for them in late Spring/early Summer.

R.I.P. mysterious beast.

Amy Butler's Patchwork Crib / Playtime Quilt

I bought Little Stitches for Little Ones from Barnes and Noble a few weeks ago using a hoarded birthday gift card (my birthday is in October). It's an absolutely gorgeous book with amazing photos and lots of images of Amy Butler's fabric. The format of the book is nice because it has a sturdy hardcover with a spiral binding to lay flat. All the patterns are in a cute little pocket. Overall it's great for inspiration because it's just so beautiful. Because of that, I bought a previous book of hers called In Stitches.

I decided to start with the quilt project because we really needed something for Zadie to play on in our living room. This is a perfect size. I nabbed this photo during naptime.

The book is really lacking in diagrams (and often photos of the completed pieces -- if you're a visual person and not good at following written directions then this probably isn't the book for you).

So, as you can see, I made my own quilt map using photocopies of the 4 diagrams that were in the book. I then color-coded the blocks so I would have a better visual. I also made a little key of the fabrics so that I wouldn't make any mistakes when cutting or piecing.

The fabric is the Funky Monkey line by Erin Michaels for Moda. I bought it a couple of years ago. The pattern calls for 4 fabrics but since I had so many I decided to add two more. I wanted to use the green number print and the crowd print to add some more color. If I hadn't, this would have been too baby-ish with all the pink and aqua. The green gives it a nice punch. Since the pattern of the blocks repeats, it was easy to make the switch.

The back of the quilt is the fabric that has the monkeys in a crowd. Half is cream and half is red. I put all of the cream pieces facing up and all the red pieces facing down so there wouldn't be an orientation to the quilt. I also used regular quilt binding that you can buy from the store. I just didn't have time to do any more ironing and cutting.

I absolutely love this. It turned out really well and I'm sure we'll have it forever. The hardest part was the cutting and a technique for quilting called stitch-in-the-ditch. I hadn't done that before and found it kinda challenging. But now that the quilt is finished, you can't tell how bad of a job I did. I also used really thin quilt batting. It's good for a play quilt but for my next quilt (see this post), I'm going to get something thicker.

ocd, just a little

After seeing Heather Ross' gorgeous Mendocino fabric collection, I decided to make Zadie a quilt for when she moves into the toddler bed version of her crib.

I bought the Mixtape pattern from OhFrannson (who also has an amazing blog -- if you're into quilting, you should take a look).

And now I'm trying to choose fabrics. I'm going to use the Favorite Songs pattern because it will give me the largest blocks. Since I'm new to this, I think that's the best way to go (larger = fewer). The fabrics have some pretty big prints so the bigger the block, the more space they'll have.

Anyway, on the Freespirit site, they have swatches of 36 prints. When I was searching Etsy, I found a few more. Now I'm getting all ocd and feel like I need to see them all in one space before I'm able to make my decision. I wonder if someone can help me with this...

I often wish I lived in a city with a huge fabric store that would have everything. It is hard to buy fabric online.

Stripey and stuff

Look at this cool collage by Rebecca Kate on flickr. It's all stripes and legwarmers. Up there in the left corner is me and Anda and Sido and Zadie. We're all very stripey in the photo.

I took a screenshot of this.

I love it. I need to learn how to use flickrtoys.

BOGO sale continues

Due to some success, I have decided to continue the BOGO sale in my Etsy shop until Feb. 14.

Here's the deal:

Buy any one item at regular cost and get ANY item of equal or lesser cost for FREE! Please shop as you normally would adding both items to your cart, but do NOT pay, wait for an updated invoice reflecting your sale prices. ALL items qualify for the sale, even bean dolls and yetis, panties and rompers.

Let me know if you have any questions.

BOGO

I'm having a huge sale in my shop for the next week. I'm in the middle of a huge life change (no, I'm way too young for menopause). I'm just rethinking a few things around here so I decided to have a sale. Plus one of my YetiLovesSeamonster peeps, Tiddlywinks, was having a sale and I had a lot of fun choosing a bunny for Zadie so I thought it would be a good idea.

So it's Buy any item in the shop and Get One free. That's right. As much as I hate that acronym, I'm using it now.

So just buy what you want but don't pay. Wait for me to send you a revised invoice and pay then.

And no, this is not in response to the CPSIA CPSC craziness (I'm sure that will all get worked out). It's just me.

And no, I'm not doing any custom orders right now. (Unless you are JessT or the other yeti lover who I will not name -- yours are both almost done, I swear).

Oh, and Anda is sending me some things from a consignment shop in Brooklyn that was only open for like a week so I might have a couple of sizes in a few items not listed so ask.

Look at this!

When Zadie started eating all this baby food, we began amassing millions of glass baby food jars. Even though we make our own baby food, after a few outings we just got fed up with bringing along several Pyrex containers of different vegetables and decided that sometimes, it's okay to go with what's already been prepared. It wasn't long before our kitchen was full of little jars and lids.

We recycle just about everything but it seems like a waste to recycle these when they could be reused so much better.

Along came this Junior Society blog post. Now I'm going to put all my little jars in a box somewhere in the basement and spend the next year collecting little bits to make some fabulous snowglobes. I even have the glass etching stuff hanging around from a previous project.

I'm so excited about this. I made these as a kid but had completely forgotten. It's so much fun to be a mom. I'm filled with excitement for all of these cool projects I'll get to make for my little one and even more for what we'll get to do together when she gets a little more coordinated.

Read the whole post here. And spend some time checking out the whole blog when you have the time. It's very well designed and is organized into easy categories. I have to add that I get this blog sent straight to my email so it doesn't get lost with all the rest of the blogs in my Google reader. It's one of my favorites.