Our Little Free Library

Happy Friday! Today I wanted to share a project that I've become passionate about this past year, our Little Free Library!


After baby girl was born last year, we started walking way more in our neighborhood. Lucky for us, there are a bunch of little free libraries that we can walk to, and stopping at them became something to do on those walks. I usually had a small stash of books in the bottom of the stroller, ready to swap out for something! The libraries brought me so much joy, I realized how much I'd like to have one of our own!


We have a lot of walking traffic in front of our house, so I knew it would be a good spot for one! Unfortunately I was very short on time with a new baby and wasn't sure how I was going to manage to make one. I'm grateful that my Dad stepped in and took this project on for me! We worked together to come up with a design and he built it over the winter.


This Spring I put the finishing touches on it and we installed it. I also took it as an opportunity to expand my garden in this area, which is now the "Library Garden". It's growing in nicely, although there are a few things I need to swap out that aren't super happy.


I love being a little library steward. It's so fun to see people in our neighborhood interact with it. I try to keep the bottom shelf stocked with kids books and activity/coloring books, while the top shelf is for adult books. It's added to by passersby regularly, and I thrift a lot of books for it. The Goodwill Outlet here sells kids books for $.38 and adult books for $.68, so it's inexpensive to keep a stash of books on hand to keep the library full. I love the excuse to save books from the landfill!


Have a Great Weekend!

A Quilty Coloring Book Volume 2

Happy Friday! I made another coloring book!! Say Hello to In Color Order: A Quilty Coloring Book Volume 2. Making the first volume brought me so much joy, I decided to make another. Let me show it to you.


For Volume 2, I dug into my fabric design library. I pulled some of my favorite prints from the five fabric collections I designed from 2012-2015 and turned them into coloring pages! There are also a few pages with designs that never made it into a collection, but I thought would be fun to color.


The covers are a bit different this time, they're printed on plain white cardstock and also feature a design you could color!


There are 16 different designs to color. The books are 5.5”x8.5”, printed on regular copy paper, nothing fancy! I’d recommend using colored pencils or crayons with these, markers may bleed through.


I print and assemble these little books here at a home. I treated myself to a booklet stapler recently, so each book has two staples holding it all together!

Find the coloring book in my shop here: In Color Order Vol 2 - A Quilty Coloring Book

Have a Great Weekend!

Vintage Sheet Side Braid Quilt

Happy Wednesday! I am so excited to share this finished quilt with you today! This is one of my favorites that I've finished in a while!! Say hello to my vintage sheet side braid quilt!


To be honest, I don't actually remember how this quilt idea came about. I knew I wanted to make another quilt with my vintage sheet stash, so I believe I just went through my patterns and picked one that I hadn't made in a while. I still love my Side Braid Quilt Pattern, and I have only made one other full size mini braid quilt! See that version here: Mini Braid Quilt.


I decided to try to cut as much of this quilt from my scrap bin as I could. Super scrappy was the goal, even for the background. I filled in the rainbow of colors with my stash where I needed to.


The layout definitely took some playing with to get right. I swapped out a really bright orange that was sticking out, and a background piece or two that had too much going on. There is minimal contrast in this quilt, so it has a really soft pattern compared to the original mini braid quilt I made.


Here it is in all its glory!! It finished at 60"x78". It's super soft and is like a scrapbook of my sheet stash!


The quilting for this quilt is SO special. This is my first vintage sheet quilt that I've had long arm quilted. I sent it to Katie at Autumn Moon Quilting and she knocked it out of the park. It looks incredible!! I'm so grateful that she was willing to quilt it for me. And I love this fun retro floral quilting design, it goes so well with the vintage sheet prints. It's called Posy Patch.


For the backing I used a sheet (of course!), this one is a fun warm floral. I originally cut and made a striped binding for this quilt, but when it came back I realized it really didn't match the backing at all. So I sent it aside for another quilt and made some with this fun orange geometric. I think it works really well with the front and the back, win-win! I thrifted it in 2011, so it's been waiting for its moment to shine!!


This was a fun quilt to make. It was nice to revisit this pattern, how did it come out 12 years ago!? I think this version is one of my favorite quilts I've made with it. It's great for stash busting fat quarters or scraps!


Pattern: Side Braid Quilt Pattern
Fabric: Reclaimed vintage bed sheets
Quilting: Autumn Moon Quilting

Happy Quilting!

Big Sewing Room Changes

My sewing room has gone through a lot of evolutions in the past year plus. When baby girl was first born, it became feeding central on the second floor with a glider, extra armchair and lots of baby supplies. At one point Michael's spin bike found a home in here, and as baby got older I made room for a pack and play. Eventually all those things were moved out and for a number of months things in here were "back to normal".

Fast forward to this summer when we made the biggest change yet. We moved our extra queen bed out of baby girl's room and into the sewing room. We really needed a dedicated place for visitors to stay, and it was the only option. It was my idea, but I'll be the first to admit it's been bittersweet. I'm getting more and more used to it, and I think it actually looks pretty good! Let me take you along for the messy journey.

The most time consuming task was moving my shelf unit (an Expedit from Ikea). This thing is heavy, even with nothing in it! I hoped I could just partially unload it and still move it, but no luck. Everything had to come out!

There was only one other wall where this unit could fit, so that's where it went! From a sun-damage perspective this is actually a much better spot. It wasn't getting direct sun before, but either way this wall offers more protection which is a bright side! There is a vent on this wall, but luckily it lined up perfectly with one of the shelves!

These units hold A LOT of stuff. Exhibit A, the floor of the sewing room mid-move. Yikes!! It has to get worse before it gets better!

That's better. Filled back up and looking nice! I took the move as an opportunity to change up my display shelves along the top row. For now I like it!

So much empty space while we waited to move the bed! Couldn't manage all of this in one weekend. I basted one more quilt on the floor during this in between time.

Bed and nightstands were moved in and fit great. They're also from Ikea. We built/stained them when we first moved to Connecticut.

Another bright side, under bed storage! I fit a bunch of these short storage boxes under the bed to hold various supplies. This bin has part of my vintage pillowcase collection.

Here is what things look like now! I didn't even realize this vintage comforter I thrifted recently was a queen size until I threw it on the bed. It looks great, and I won't need to worry about any fading or sun damage, as it's already got a bit of both! And it's still really cute. I'd like to work on the nightstand set up, but for now they're fine!

I've set up my ironing board in front of the shelving unit, which has been working well. I can easily take it down and store it when we have guests staying.


I installed an inexpensive curtain rod behind the bed so that I can hanging quilts, quilt tops, or fabric there. I like that I can change it out whenever I want, and it adds some coziness to the room. I went with white so that it would mostly just blend into the wall. I still need to figure out what art I want to put back up, we'll see.

Dusty has given her stamp of approval and had her first nap on the bed. Baby girl also thinks its one of the best places in the house to run around and explore.

I'm happy with where the sewing room is at right now. Loosing some space to the bed is worth it to have a place for people to stay. Now I need to do a fully updated sewing room tour. My last one was from 2019! It's changed so much in five years!!

Happy Sewing!

What I'm Working on Right Now

Happy Friday! I had a big backlog of finished projects, but today I thought it would be nice to share some things I'm working on right now.


I have two (very different) sets of 12 quilt blocks that have been sitting around for a while, and I've decided to get them both finished up into quilts. The first set is a bunch of warm colored blocks from the first virtual quilt bee I participated in (3x6 bee!), back in 2010. These are long overdue to become a quilt! I've decided to make a smaller version of my Interlaced Quilt. Right now I'm working on the in between blocks, but it shouldn't take long to get this one sewn into a finished quilt top!


This quilt top came together in July! I have a bunch of 2" strips leftover from when I used to make Wrapped Wreath kits, and I wanted to use some of them up. Originally I was going to make a pillow and I made two smaller blocks but wasn't happy with how either turned out. So I made those two blocks larger and then made two more to make this quilt top! I don't always mix stripes in with the florals, so it's a bit different from my typical mix!


I'm currently working on quilting this quilt. The plan is to do some wavy lines in both directions to create a wavy checkerboard quilting pattern!


I've been working on a new pattern! This one has been kicking around my brain for more than 10 years, and it's finally time to get it out!


I started another soft and subtle quilt. This time using my Candyweb block pattern.


I'm really loving how it's coming along. I wasn't sure what it would look like with such low contrast, but I think it's still really cool! I was planning to stop at four blocks, but now I think I've talked myself into nine, so I have five more to make! Taking a little break from this to work on other things at the moment, but I'll come back to it soon!


I've been on a bit of a pillow making spree! I've made three covers in the last few weeks. I've thrifted a bunch of nice pillow forms and I'm slowly covering them all!! I love making pillow covers, they're so satisfying.

Hopefully I can share some of these projects in full soon! I'm struggling to make time to take good photos (baby's nap does not line up with the good light in the sewing room) and do all the computer work behind publishing a blog post at the moment. I would love to show up here more regularly! For now, I'm doing the best I can. Hope you're all well!

Happy Sewing!