I won! First project: baby pinwheels

I won a few things on the Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day!

The first prize to arrive was this:

a charm pack from from blank pages....

All lovely!  It doesn't quite match the baby's things, and I haven't been sewing for myself much with the option to sew for babies, and it's so fun I don't want to sit around waiting for something to strike me as the right project, so... I have a friend with a baby of as-yet-unknown gender on the way, and the parents aren't too worried about giving a boy things with pink... so I think I'll make this:

the Windy Days Quilt found over at Moda Bake Shop.  I love the scattered nature of the pinwheels and that they're different sizes - looks more random, while still being orderly enough to suit my engineer-brain, and not "wonky," which wouldn't suit my engineer-brain at all.

But with a dark background instead of the white - both makes it a little more modern, to suit the recipients, and much more stainy-baby-friendly!    

A bit of my own stash for one or two of the bigger pinwheels and I should be ready to go!

Baby quilts

I've never been good at coming up with colors and fabrics that go well together, and I've always been a sucker for kits of any kind (Himself knows the way to please me -- get me sets or kits or samplers!)  So, when I saw these baby quilt sets at Joann's, I had to get them.

2 friends, one pregnant, one I just found out adopted a newborn five months ago.

I do like the way these turned out.  The doggy quilt is backed with the faces from the center top and bottom panels; the duck quilt is backed with the blue dotted flannel.

I especially like that there's no binding involved, just like the self-binding baby blankets I like making.  No batting either, which I don't mind using, but batting is expensive.  Just turn and handstitch the opening closed.  I don't like handstitching either, and I think it looks better with topstitching anyhow, so I topstitch across the opening and all the way around.  A little stitch-in-the-ditch (nasty hard when one side of the ditch is yellow or brown plush!), and you're ready to go!

I'm thinking of making bibs or burp cloths with the extra fabric scraps.  We'll see.

Of course, what did I do but go out and buy a larger-sized actual (with-binding-and-batting) quilt kit for my grandmother for Christmas...

Bride

Going to a dear friend's wedding in New York. I don't think this'll be finished by the wedding on Sunday, but it's a ton of fun! She's done some massive cross-stitch pieces in the past, so I think she'll appreciate it.

Bless you both, Kate and Dave!

Girls' night out

I never go anywhere. I work full time, and Himself is a doctor, so, the few times he's home, I want to be with him ... and I'm usually tired when I get home and just want to sleep. Tonight I let a sweet girl I've known since we were six talk me into joining her for a girls' night out (well, actually, in, at her place).

With some excellent cheese, and some excellent wine, a bunch of girls -- most taking the night off from kids as well as husband -- talked about babies (did you know olive oil makes a baby's bottom easier to clean, just like greasing a pan before baking?), in-laws (from experiences of many: don't live with them! Especially without the husband!), and husbands (they just don't understand why girls who have a maid coming have to clean up before the maid gets there!). We don't have any babies yet, of course, but it was still a great evening. Last time I did anything of the sort was January, getting together with my college roommates / bridesmaids. I'm the only married one of the four of us, so it was different tonight. Fun both times. The time before that was last July, going out to Galveston with coworkers just a few weeks before the places we went got washed into the ocean. But once every six months isn't enough... I must remember how much fun I had tonight, get over my hermit/homebody tendencies, and get together with girls more often!