make your own grocery totes...

I have decided to start posting links to blogs, etc. that I am enjoying every now and then to my page. I rarely actually get to do projects, or even update my blog, and it seems to me that one of the greatest things about blogging is sharing the wealth of amazingly creative ideas that are out there. So here is a link to a tutorial from this blog for these sweet recycled grocery totes. I would just love to make these...sometime...

quilt

Finally finished this blanket for one of my dearest friends who had her third child about a month ago. The sex of her baby was a surprise, so I waited till she delivered to start (that's how I justify it taking so long...) Technically it's not really a quilt, because there's no batting in between the layers...it's more like a glorified receiving blanket. But it's patchwork and it looks like a quilt so that's what I've been calling it...

I thought it turned out well, for a first attempt. The squares of the various fabrics were already cut and came pre-packaged, for which I was grateful. It's not always easy for me to pick out complementary fabrics for this sort of thing, although I think I'm getting better at it.

I didn't have the time or dedication to hand quilt it, so I machine- sewed down the the middle section of squares in one direction to keep the layers together. The backing is just a chocolate colored twin sized sheet I found on clearance, cut to size and used to bind the edges.

One final note: I finally bought a rotary cutter and mat for this project, and can now say, with conviction, that they are most definitely necessary tools for any sort of quilting.