WiP Wednesday: Getting Involved!

Oh my goodness I've had such a great week!  I've worked on and finished a lot.  Also, as you may guess from the title, I've been getting more involved in the blogger world and having a blast doing it!  I've made new friends (Hi Cynthia!), joined my first ever fabric swap (so excited!), joined two quilt-a-longs (Mario and Tetris).  That's all added to my regular to do list, keeping up with the Let's Get Acquainted Blog Hop, and the Skill Builder Sampler. I also added a bunch more blogs to my blog additions side panel.  Finally, I spent WAY too much money on fabric recently and it's beginning to arrive in the mail, hurray!

Today I'm linking up with Freshly Pieced where Sukie is stepping in for Lee this week.  As always it's the best place to be on Wednesday to find inspiration for future projects which I love even if I am a tad overbooked.

 I'll start with the Crochet projects.  I mentioned at the end of my last WiP Wednesday post that I was loving Rosie's Cozies and wanted to make some hats for my local NICU.  Well, I've made a bunch of progress with that!

Right after last weeks' post I decided to get going on the crocheted preemie hats.  I bought eight new skeins of I Love This Yarn! from Hobby Lobby and added that to a white one I already had at home and I was ready to go.  I went with pretty basic baby colors and think I may branch out in the future.

The lady at the Hobby Lobby gave me this GIGANTIC bag.  Seriously?  I only bought eight skeins!  they could have easily fit into two small bags without even trying.  This bag is so big my 5.5 year-old can fit inside!

We were having some more fun with the big bag and discovered my two smallest ones could fit at the same time.  You know that whole this bag is not a toy thing?  Yeah, we totally ignored that!  Don't worry though, I didn't let them play with it alone and sadly through all the fun it got a big hole in it so it can't even hold my stuff anymore.

Here's my first preemie hat finish.  Isn't it adorable?!  I used the pattern from The Dainty Daisy but I modified the ears a little bit.  She glued hers on but I worked them in with the backing color and they are double thick with the back used to create an edge.  Don't you love you tiny it is?  Yes, people can actually have heads this small.

Here are the nine hats I've finished so far, I finished the last two today.  I made one in each color with three bears, three with ear flaps, and three bunnies (although my kids think they are Kangaroo ears, odd).  I can't wait to make a bunch more!  I'll be making newborn size next because I know from personal experience preemies aren't the only babies in the NICU.

Here's a close up of the bunny using my little girl's favorite doll.  I created the ear pattern myself and in spite of my kids insisting they are Kangaroo ears I like the way they turned out.

Here's the bear variation.  I love the fat edge on those cute ears!  I took the ear pattern from the link above and modified it.  I may post my patterns later if there is interest, so let me know if you want them.

Here's the ear flap version.  LOVE!  Again I modified the pattern, I guess I just can't help myself.  I just took the last row of the ear flaps off so they were less pointy.

Now onto the Quilt projects...

I finished my Walk in the Woods Disappearing 9-Patch quilt on Friday.  See the full post here.  I just adore this quilt and so does my little Miya.  It went together so quickly!  All told I only sewed on it four different days!

I got a bunch of new fabric in the mail.  Here's my littlest man carrying my box that weighed eight pounds.  That's about 1/3 his total weight.  I certainly can't carry 1/3 my totally weight and smile at the same time!

Here it is!  YUMMY!  I got four jelly rolls of Sentiments by 3 Sisters for Moda for my SIL Suzi's quilt.  I got one jelly roll of Meadow by Blackbird Designs for Moda which will be for my MIL.  I got myself two rolls of Serenade by Kate Spain (LOVE HER!) and one of Leaf Bella solids which will turn into a bed quilt for me.  These rolls will need to be supplemented with yardage but I figured I'd get the rolls while they were on sale.   Judi The Green Fairy filled that order for me during her massive Jelly roll sale and threw in a pen.  Need I mention the fabulousness of the Green Fairy?  She's pretty awesome!  Also here is a bunch of yardage I got from Erica's (another store I love) from the Papillon line also by 3 Sisters for Moda.  They will become a quilt for my mother if I can uncover my cutting table this week.

As I mentioned above I also joined my first ever fabric swap this week.  It's the Tetris Color Charm Swap.  I don't think I could geek out any more about this!  We each buy two yards of fabric in two colors and cut them into 112 charms each for a total of 224 charms.  Then Melissa from Happy Quilting swaps them all around and we have all the fabric we need in all the colors for the Tetris quilt-a-long! The colors are assigned.  I received my color assignment this morning (red and orange) and jumped on it.  I picked out and purchased my colors with lightning speed and I just received an email from Intrepid Thread that they have been shipped.  I can't wait to see what other people picked and what I'll be getting!  Here's what I picked...

Fruit Slice - Digi in Tomato

Fruit Slice - Seeds in Tangerine

 As always thanks for stopping by and here's to another productive week!