Anyway, I had a great excuse to get a couple of yards of minky: K & N were having a baby!

In  a previous Joann’s trip I had found a cute Winnie the Pooh fat quarter bundle in various colors. As they decided to not find out the gender of the baby until it was born, this would be perfect for my fabric addiction and schemes…er I mean blanket!

Compared to the smaller knit blanket I made for Jess’ baby, I made this quilt top 35″x45″.

I lined the inside with the stripped minky fabric I had purchased and added a bias edge instead of the fancier quilt ribbon I had bought. It just didn’t feel right to use the ribbon.

While the knit blanket had me continuously asking Thad “Honey, does this look too small?” this blanket meant that he was instead bombarded with “I think this will be too big”.

Ok, so it might be too large for a newborn, but then, they’ll grow into it right?

Call me crazy, but since I had a couple of squares left for each color I went wild and made a little bag to go with the gifts. I’ve been going a little nuts making drawstring bags with French seams lately…

So this is Sophie’s quilt…She’s now a smiley almost-4 month old and growing fast. I hope she enjoys it!

That I was tempted to make another one in the same table runner?

Well, I liked it so much I had to make yet another one…this time the butterfly is going to be in a napkin that will be wrapping bread/tortillas in my table! Aren’t butterflies pretty?

Here is the finished Butterfly bread napkin…

I’ve been working on a few projects that I couldn’t upload right away; also known as baby shower gifts. There were also projects that I completely forgot to take pictures of…oh well!

Besides the crafts I’ve also been getting organized. While Ravelry helped me get my yarns organized this past winter, in the form of pictures and amounts of yarn, I still needed to do something desperately about my needles. They were just… everywhere!

I had seen pencil cases being used for paint brush and knitting needle storage; and I had already made some over a year ago; gifts for the cute flower girl and ring bearer in our wedding. So, why not make one for my needles?

Armed with a cute green cotton fabric found at Joann’s, some linen in my fabric stash and some adorable leftovers, a Japanese fabric purchased last year from Purl Soho, I went ahead and made one…

While I knew which size needles I had (once again, thanks to Ravelry), I couldn’t find them easily. Some were in half started projects I was going to unravel, the remainder in their original packaging somewhere in my “crafts box” in the living room.

I needed them to be more accessible,  ready in case I needed them at a moment’s notice. Why at a moment’s notice? Because of the Stitch & Bitch* (we meet weekly, see details below)!

I was working on baby projects which are tiny and often I finished them as soon as I got there. Since I needed to start new projects away from home, I really  needed to make sure I had my needles with me.

Here is the finished product! Since then, the collection has grown a little bit. I might have to make another one!

*Stitch & Bitch at St. Stephen’s Green*

Tuesdays, 7pm — 1701 Green Street (in the Art Museum/Spring Garden area), Philadelphia PA

Not much progress has been made on the runner as I keep on finding things I’d like to add to it so it never seems to want to be done!

Last time I blogged, we left off with the dahlias; both were done in satin stitch, one with the two colors separate and the second one with the colors blending with short and long stitch…well, let’s move onto bouillons and dessert, shall we? But before, some biology:

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If you are lucky to live in southern climates, you might have noticed that bougainvilleas are a lot like Poinsettias; the red/colorful “petals” are actually leaves, the flowers are the tiny yellow/white centers!

So how would you portray that in embroidery? Well i chose to use bouillons in a light yellow color…what do you think?

And after adding the yellow bouillons, AKA the flowers, the flower ovaries were done. These were done with double thread, in brown, because that is what I have noticed in these flowers.

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And now we have this:

I still needed to add some stuff to the blank space, so I decided to add another Mexican native: Vainilla! I knew this one was going to be hard, I personally didn’t grow up seeing these orchids…but I love vanilla, so I had to try.

And….this is when, while browsing pictures by my Flickr contacts, I saw this pretty monarch butterfly. Forget about the “flower only” theme…it had to be added!

Let’s focus on the vanilla blossom for now: Sadly the color of the flower is close to the fabric so, in order for the flower to be noticed, I had to add some foliage.

So far I’ve only done one leaf but i intend to add some more at the end, when I will probably fix the first leaf anyway. I’m afraid that instead of appearing like an elongated leaf, it looks more like a blade of grass.

For the center of the flower I went with a hint of darker yellow to show some “shading”. I am afraid the orchid did not come out as well as I wanted, but hey, maybe in the future I’ll try and do another project and do a better drawing of one…didn’t I mention this was going to be hard?

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And this is what we have so far:

Next up: the butterfly! (that will be in a couple of days!)

*No, I did not misspell vanilla. I just chose to spell it in Spanish!

First Dahlia finished

So the first bunch of bougainvilleas was finished…i moved onto the dahlias. First Dahlia was done with satin stitch only.

As you can see, the edges were done in a darker pink than the middle…at some point i tried blending it in, but voted against it…I can’t remember why.

For the second Dahlia I wanted to try something different: I wanted hints of color rather than a bold edge. It had to be one of those cream/white ones, with a hint of pink (you can tell that pink is one of my favorite colors in flowers can’t you?)

This was done by using button hole stitch on the already satin-stitch filled second dahlia.

perhaps bouillons might have also worked here.

I could not decide on what to do for the middle in the second dahlia. Should I do bouillons? Should I just fill in with satin stitch? Should I use button hole? I felt like the Wordpress spell check, which right know must be in Spanish mode, as it is highlighting basic words in the English language.

After realizing that perhaps buttonhole might get lost if placed in the middle (as it did on the first bougainvillea bunch, which was re-done) so i went for satin, just made sure they were not on top of each other as that might make them look quite messy….

And here is the second update!

so this is what it looks like after the dahlias!