A Few Things I've Been Working On

It's dangerous to go alone! Take this.

My brother FLIPPED his car a few days ago! Thankfully, he is all right. He just has a few cuts and a Honda logo emblazoned on his arm.  Seat belts rock! I wanted to make him a brother appreciation gift and I knew pretty quickly that I had to make a weird stuffed animal for him (for protection, of course). He is 24, but he appreciates the cutesy and unusual! Mister Bunny from Sewing in a Straight Line by Brett Bara wasn't the weirdest stuffed animal pattern I found, but he was definitely the most dapper.

Mister Bunny has a flannel body and a felt face and ears. I would have totally used one of my husband's flannel shirts, but I already cut up a perfectly good piece of clothing for Handstitched Class and I didn't want to raise his blood pressure even more!  Mister Bunny and his partner Miss Kitty are great quick sewing projects if you need a gift for a child or a weirdo, like my brother ;D. I made a tag for Mister Bunny using printable fabric. I sewed it on with the blanket stitch on my machine. It took me a few tries to get it looking remotely normal, but it was fun trying a new stitch since I mostly stick with the straight stitch or the zig-zag stitch, if I am feeling wild!

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I decided I was going to be good and wash all my fabric for Rachel at Stitched in Color's Handstitched Class. As my luck would have it, my front load washing machine managed to dump all the water that was supposed to wash the fabric onto the floor.

LESSON LEARNED: Make sure no Shout Color Catchers (or anything else) find there way into the soap dispenser drawer! My husband took the machine apart and there was a Color Catcher blocking the pipe between the soap dispenser and the drum. I told y'all I was accident prone!

After everything got washed for real, I was able to begin The Flocked Tank ( the first project for Handstitched Class). I love this tank top and I am wearing it right now as I am typing this post! It is made from an Old Navy jersey stretch tank in Heather Charcoal & Clothworks Floral Folio Dark Orange Wavy Stripe.

I had the worst time getting my transfer marks to stick so I free-handed a few of the shapes. It was so much fun cutting up the tank to reveal the fabric! I have trouble keeping my stitches even, but I really enjoy the process of hand-stitching.

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This is Block One for the Fat Quarter Shop Designer Mystery Block of the Month. The block is named Laundry Days and it was designed by Anne Sutton of Bunny Hill Designs. I was so excited when this came in the mail last Tuesday, can't wait to see the next one! Vintage Modern makes me smile. 

I always hate it when the camera reveals some horrible mistake I did not see with my own eyes. When I looked at the picture I uploaded to the Fat Quarter Shop's Flickr Group, I noticed that the block didn't look square on the lower left side, and I was really irritated with myself because I had spent so much time on this block! Luckily it turned out to be a case of bad ironing instead of bad cutting!

Besides that, I have been working on WIPs, but none of them have changed substantially since the last time I photographed them!

The latest news on the Let's Get Acquainted blog hop is over at Plum and June. Be sure to stop by there and enter the giveaway! AND don't forget to check out the following blogs on the hop!

June 14  Debbie from A Quilter's Table  Sarah from Silly Banana Sewing

June 19 Jennifer from Sewlandia  Nicole from Mama Love Quilts

June 21 Suzanne from SuzClaas Mina from Kindaquilty

I am now going to hop off the computer to go trim some HSTs! Woo!