A snuggle, for beer

I promise there are two containers full of beer on my sewing table in the middle of a weekday for a good reason.



Measuring. Not drinking.



Growler coozy!

Here it is all finished





The specs are as follows:
The football-related material is from an old jersey.
The outer coozy body is from Tim's old pants.
The lining is Kona in white.
It's padded with wool batting. During its first run to the brewery, Tim filled up a growler before we had dinner, and the beer was still cold when we got home an hour later. Score 10 points for wool. The puffiness also buffers the bottle a bit, so you can set down a gallon of booze without anyone hearing it. That can come in handy.

So I guess there was no good reason the second beer bottle was there. I was just trying to consolidate, I guess.

On other fronts, the little quilt is done!



I think it will end up on one of the very blank walls in the sewing room.

As for other projects, I grabbed some stuff at JoAnn today to make pillows for our couch. Specifically, I grabbed pillows. And yellow, blue and white linen. Also, a nice little package of Christmas fabric came in the mail two days ago.



That one's for Chowder's Christmas stocking.



The green is for Tom's.



And here they both are, securing a place on the naughty list. What charmers.

Been busy

We've been jamming as much summer as possible into August. So far it's been swell. Fairs, fishing, blues fests, etc.

Same on the sewing front.

We swung by Lowe's on Friday and for $21 ($15 if all of our hammers weren't in the basement of our Butte house for some reason) got the supplies I needed to build something I've been daydreaming about since seeing them all over when my mom and I had our Montana road trip in June.


It's a loom to weave fabric scraps into rugs! And Chowder isn't nearly as excited as I am.

It's 2 by 4 feet and has a bazillion nails. I hammered them all.

Here's a basic diagram of how it went together.



I bought two 8-foot long boards (I think they were 2 by 2 inches) and had a guy cut them into 2- and 4-foot segments. I used 1.5-inch roofing nails, but if I did it again I'd use smaller once because my boards started to split ever so slightly when I drove in the nails. Maybe it's just because I'm so strong. I placed a nail every inch and did that before screwing the board ends together.



I also raided the Goodwill pile and came up with lots of shirts and pants.


Formerly known as a pair of trousers. I cut off a leg, hemmed the top and added elastic at the bottom.



Last night I was restless with my baby quilt blocks. I'll explain why in a few paragraphs.

So I took a break, wandered back to the Goodwill stack and made my first quartered log cabin blocks based on this quilt from, again, the Block Party book.


Three sleeves from mens dress shirts.

I also got a laundry quarter pouch from the cuff.


Just zig-zag up each side.

Wheh.

So, back to that baby quilt. I showed someone the block photos last night and they loved them, but said the colors leaned toward the boy end of the spectrum. Urgh. I hate when that happens. I hadn't been second-guessing myself on the gender-neutrality thing up until that point. I love these blocks and I think it'd be good for a baby girl to have a little blue in her life.

I mean, I'm a girl, and today I'm wearing a blue shirt.

But more green and yellow couldn't hurt. So I picked up some greens and yellows from MoMo's It's a Hoot line. Just a quarter yard of four prints, so only $9.50.

I had a big realization on Monday after seeing my three blocks on the design wall all weekend. That's one advantage to having it right in the middle of our living space.

One of these things is not like the other. Can you which?


I'm not sure if I'm getting the terms right here, because I've seen them used different ways, but the blocks on the sides are courthouse steps blocks (if you ignore the color rules) and the center one is a traditional log cabin block.



With all the different colors and prints, the traditional block seems too busy. So for this quilt, I'll stick with all courthouse steps.

Some of those steps will be modified a bit to keep it wonky. Like that one on the right has two sides added on before the top and bottom.

So I'll be back at it tonight, with lots more greens and yellows.