A Little of This, A Little of That

What have I been up to?  Well, quite a bit actually, leaving little time to blog.  Here are some samples of what I've been doing.

I sewed several dog beds to take to the local animal shelter.  People give me their fabric scraps and I sew them into "pillows" for dogs and/or cats.  Sometimes I'm able to find some good scrap fabric to use for the casing.  Here you can see that I used some Giants "rally towels" (actually four of them) to make one of the beds.  The blue bed is a sweatshirt turned inside out, the bottom band and arms/neck cut off, then sewn into a rectangle and stuffed.

I took three beds a couple weeks ago, and I have three more to take now.

Something that is taking a lot of my time, but I don't have a picture to show you, is rehearsals for a mystery dinner theater in which I'm playing a part.  This is the third year in a row that MisterStitches has written a play, drawing on our local area for ideas.  This one is called Diving For Abalone.  Rehearsals and learning/practicing lines takes a lot of time.  It will be performed the first weekend in February.  

And the day after the play closes, I will head to Healdsburg for my guild's annual quilt retreat.  This is a lot of fun to plan and think about, and of course, a lot of fun to implement!  I made up this easy, quilt-as-you-go table runner as a sample, in case anyone wants to make this at retreat.  Even the binding was sewn entirely by machine to make it super quick!

I found instructions (thank you, Pinterest!) on how to make an apron from a man's shirt, so I made one for a sample.  I like how it turned out.  This one was made from a dress shirt, but I also made one from a nice knit shirt with a collar.

And then I leave some things to be a surprise at the retreat, for which the following picture is a clue!

Coming up in March will be a class I'm going to teach about English Paper Piecing.  I'm very fond of EPP, and love the designs made with it.  As I had these other things to keep me busy, I thought, "Well, I can leave planning the class till after the retreat, because it's not until March."  I thought wrong!  I received an email from the programs chairman with a request for pictures, my bio, what the class will cover, class fee (if any), supply list, etc.  Oh, and it needs to be done right NOW!  They can't sign people up for the class until this is done.  So I basically had to plan the class so I'd be able to tell people what to bring for it.  I worked on that for a day or two and have it pretty much under control.  Obviously, I'll have a lot of work yet to do, preparing handouts, planning what I'll teach and in what order, etc, but that stuff really can wait till after retreat!