Flickr Favorites Friday 11.18.2011

1. Rainbow Reflections, 2. Rainbow Crystal ball cave (Marble, crystal, geode, Refracted Sunlight,prism, light, refraction, focus, RGB), 3. a fuzzy rainbow, 4. “The true harvest of my life is intangible - a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched”, 5. There once was an ugly duckling. With feathers all stubby and brown., 6. bright rainbow colours, 7. Rainbow Rose, 8. Sewing_Rainbow Wrap Skirt_DSC_5967, 9. Purple and Yellow Strip and Flower Pillows, 10. 'Rainbow Bokeh', 11. Straws 1, 12. A Flowing Spectrum, 13. finally..., 14. Bands of blue..., 15. Rainbow Chandelier Crystal Necklace, 16. Ring of stitches

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I haven't done one of these in awhile, and it's a crying shame. My thoughts:

1. This makes me want a nice macro lens for my camera something serious. Maybe someday.
3. I don't felt nor do I have the desire to, but these sure are pretty to look at.
5. Must learn to use the selective gradient tool in Photoshop....
8. I love love LOVE this skirt! I smell a possible Christmas present for the little girl.
9. Must learn to make pillows, stat. And to sew with felt :)
12. I really want to make one of these melted crayon canvases for my daughter's new room.
13. If I ever get the time, I WILL learn to paper piece hexagons.
14, 16. And if I can get the motivation, I WILL get back into some embroidery. It's so relaxing!
15. I have the itch to make jewelry. Now for the motivation...

Big Girl (rainbow) Bed Quilt

With Baby #2 on the way it is time to move Baby #1 into a bigger room so we can turn her room back into a nursery. To ease the transition this means my little girl will be getting a nice, newly decorated room complete with her own bed-sized quilt.

I struggled at first with the design. I have managed to pass down (force) my love of rainbows on to my daughter, so I decided I'd like to make some sort of rainbow quilt. I also wanted it to be a relatively quick one as my last two were quite time intensive and I have a lot of crafting for my daughter, the new baby, and holidays that I'd like to do. The solution came when I came upon the "Parisville" quilt over at Fresh Lemons Modern Quilts. It's design is based upon a string quilt, which I've made before, and it also involves large blocks of fabric. I like this idea for two reason: (1) less sewing :), and (2) it allows me to showcase the particular fabrics that I choose.


These are the fabrics that I chose for this quilt. There's a vast array of modern prints, and my (and my daughter's, I think) favorites are from Kaffe Fassett. I took these pictures right before I started cutting and sewing, and since then I've finished the red, orange, yellow, and lime green rows (pictures to come). After seeing the fabrics in the quilt I have since gone back and ordered some additional ones to swap in place of some of the above because some of them just don't look how I'd like. It's just one of those things that happens once you actually start sewing. Also, as much as possible I've tried to give my daughter the reigns in fabric selection. She's certainly old enough to have opinions on what she does and doesn't like, and I wanted to make sure she was entirely pleased with her quilt.

Since this is, in a sense, a simplified string quilt, I needed to decide on fabric color for the "strings" in the middle of the blocks and also how wide to make them. I chose white Kona cotton for the strings, because I wanted the color to go with all of the fabrics, and as I tell my daughter, "white goes with everything." I cut them to 1" by 18" (approximately), because the individual quilt blocks are 12" square before being sewn together (11.5" square after sewing).

The entire quilt will measure 103.5" x 92" when complete. I wanted it to be large enough to allow for plenty of drape over the sides of the bed and over the foot of the bed. I have yet to decide on a quilting pattern and will post my ideas later when they come to me.

There will be plenty of leftover scrap fabric and I hope to use it to make a mini quilt for my office as decoration. The Rainbow Room can never have enough rainbows. :)

For the Love of Mochi

Oh, how I do love this yarn: Mochi Plus in Intense Rainbow.


I've been working on a scarf with it the past few weeks. It's going slow, because I didn't realize just how much yarn comes per (very small) skein, so I keep having to reorder. I also forgot to compensate for differences in dye lots, which means lots of matching yarns and, unfortunately, wasted yarn.




An odd thing about this yarn is that its thickness varies in the skein, which means that certain parts of the scarf have ended up crocheted a bit more tightly than I would like. I think it will look great, imperfections and all, once finished.