Blogger's Quilt Festival . . .

This is the quilt I'm submitting for the annual Blogger's Quilt Festival (some of you may have seen this one before). It's Alyssa's toddler bed quilt. I made it because she was outgrowing her baby quilt and I seem to take a loooong time to finish twin-sized quilts, so this seemed doable.

This quilt is full of firsts for me:

My first time doing an online quilt-along.

My first time using my scallop ruler for the border.

My first time cutting bias binding.

My first time labeling a quilt.

My first time quilting with minky for a backing.

and My first time getting complimented on a quilt by the fabric designer herself. (okay, so it's the only time - but I just had to throw that in there :)

This is probably my favorite quilt that I've completed; it was a great learning process. And this is one of my favorite fabric lines ever (Sandi Hendersen's ginger blossom). I'm hoping that my daughter will love it one day too - she still prefers her baby quilt with her feet sticking out.

publishing my blog . . .

So I've been blogging since 2006 and besides this blog, I don't have any photo albums or much scrapbooking to show for these past years. So I decided to print my blog posts so I could have a hard copy to look back on. There's different ways of doing this and depending on the program you have, your computer skills, and of course your time, you can make it yourself. However, I don't possess any of the above, so I went to a website called sharedbook.com and used their blog2print program. What can I say - but EASY! It took me all of 10 minutes to produce a book over 200 pages long complete with index and page numbers. I chose to buy the pdf file for a whopping $7.95 and emailed it to a local printer who printed it off for me. Less than a day later, I had this wonderful book in my hands. I encourage every blogger to print their blog as a keepsake (and it makes me feel better about being a scrapbooking slacker).

Winners!

There were so many great suggestions - thanks everyone! Some of them that I really liked were already taken, but I really like the one that I settled on - Our Busy Little Bunch. I wasn't sure at first if I wanted to stay similar to my old title, but well, it just works! So I'll be switching everything in the next little while and my new blog header is in the works!


The winners are . . .
Misty Creek (for being the first to suggest the new name) and
Mary Janes and Galoshes (by random number)


Thanks to everyone for participating! If you'd like one of these bags for yourself, check out the tutorial - it's a quick and rewarding project!

May Giveaway Day - Rename My Blog!

It's the "Sew Mama, Sew! Giveaway Day!" My giveaway is for a reuseable shopping bag that nicely folds and snaps up into a little pouch that can be thrown in your bag or purse (tutorial found here). What I'm asking for in return is a new name for my blog!

Here's some facts to help you out:

- this started as a family blog

- it's evolved a bit to include my sewing and quilting projects

- and since we now have a son, the pink has got to go!

I'll be drawing two names on May 20. One bag will go to the first person that suggests the name I choose and the second will be a random number winner. So you get two chances to win one!

Thanks for helping me out! Will ship to US or Canada.