Recent craft roundup

[Update: I had forgotten to link to the Japanese craft book I used for the fabric crane at the bottom of this post.]

I have been doing a lot of crafting lately, but am having trouble getting good pictures. I need to try pictures during the day so I can use actual sunlight. Anyway, here's what I've been up to.

Quilt class. I'm taking a beginning quilt class. In retrospect this was the worst time to take it, since our daycare person is on maternity leave, and we're already running around like crazy trying to get done all we'll supposed to. So of course I'm going to choose now to add something else to do. I was up until 3am Thursday night finishing my quilt homework and some other stuff, so I wasn't exactly chipper at class on Friday morning, after only 4 hours of sleep. One day I will learn (1) how to schedule my time and (2) not to procrastinate.

Oh, did I mention that I'm really liking my quilt class? I may have left out that little detail. Here's my nine-patch top, sans borders yet. This picture suffers from my color problem: the darker fabric is actually a dark green, not blue-gray like it looks here.

The next quilt we started in class is a rail quilt. Is that the right name? I'm having SUCH a hard time with colors. I spent about an hour with someone at the fabric store picking out these:

I love the bear fabric on the right, but apparently it's too subtle. These really don't work together. (Found out after making the squares and placing them together.) I went back yesterday afternoon and spent an hour with the teacher picking out two lighter replacement fabrics. I'm replacing the yellowy one in the middle, and the greeny-purple one to its right. We'll see if those work. I'm horrible with color. How do people pick colors that work well together?

A little carry bag for Max's friend Alexandra (a great train enthusiast), recycled from an old pair of jeans.

And finally, a panel for a friend's wedding wishes banner. Their wedding is today, we finally finished this Thursday night and gave it to them yesterday. They gave out squares of fabric (the red in the background) and asked for wedding wishes. They'll string them together and hand them at the wedding. The crane is from the "Chirimen" Japanese craft book here, and was done entirely by hand. It was a little time consuming to make. It has a pouch in its tummy, we put in a strip of fabric with good wishes written on it. The other is one of those toys (whose name I can't recall) that's kind of like a magic-8 ball. You put your fingers in the four corners and someone can pick which corner to pick up. We wrote more good wishes inside.

Comments

[myra]

Wow! You have been very busy. I always have trouble picking out fabric colors too. I almost always feel overwhelmed in the fabric store.

The quilt looks like its coming along fabulous and the crane chirimen is awesome!

[Bettsi]

We called them "cootie catchers"! Love all the new stuff.