another sewing / creative post

May brought about not only Mother's Day, but also a birthday, and so I made items to celebrate both occasions. First up is a bag that I made for my mother, using the same pattern I've been using since last summer (this is the fifth bag I've made with it, I rather like it!). I picked out handpainted fabrics at the Sewing Expo in March, selecting a light purple with a silver sheen and swirly pattern as well as a shades of gray with silver and a raindrops pattern. Rather than just doing one side of each color, I used a strip of each one to slash the opposite fabric, and cut my pieces from those. There wasn't enough fabric left to make the outside handles, so I used a dark purple dupioni silk that I had on hand from a project a while back and that turned out really nicely. I was a bit nervous using the silk, but I didn't have any issues with fraying on the parts I was working on and it turned out really lovely, I think. The lining is a royal purple ballistic nylon, and inside (not shown) are two pockets made from a quilting cotton in a green/cream/gold butterfly print. I'm pretty happy with how this one turned out. Of course, I forgot to take pictures before shipping it, but my mom sent me these pictures she took, including this last one that shows the bag next to the quilt I made her two years ago (the first one I ever made!).

Next up was my best friend's birthday, and I decided to make her an iPad cover similar to the one I made myself a few months ago. I originally picked out the blue flowered fabric seen in the lining on the left, and then changed my plans based on a mutual purchase of the geometric/metallic fabric that makes up the center stripe. Shortly after we bought yardage of that fabric to split, I came across the green flowered fabric that fit with it perfectly, and so the design was set. I made the dimensions a half-inch smaller in width than mine, and it is a little snug on the iPad but seems to be breaking in well. Mine is really just a bit too big, so maybe the happy medium is a quarter inch in difference. The binding is a sage green leaf fabric that I used to bind the baby quilt I made for Finley last year - little projects like this are great to use some leftover binding for, saving me a lot of effort in cutting and ironing! I'm really happy with how this one came out, and even more pleased that I finished it with several days to go instead of finishing it just minutes before leaving for the celebration! Yay for me!

I've completed one other project which is enroute to its recipient, who reads this blog so I will wait to talk about it until she has received it. I am currently quilting a small baby quilt (meant to cover the baby-pod carrier thing) for a brand new baby another friend had, and again will wait to post more about that until it has gone to its recipient.

I read an awful lot of quilting blogs, and have been awaiting the release of the 1001 Peeps fabric by Lizzy House, which is an Arabian-themed followup to the Castle Peeps fabric she designed last year. The end of last summer is when I really began reading a lot of blogs, and at first I was irritated with how much of the fabric was showing up everywhere, but some of the design did grow on me - of course, too late to buy it in most retail locations! I did find some of the green castle print at the Sewing Expo, which I used to make my iPad case, and I bought some half-yard cuts of the blue colorway from a seller on Etsy earlier this spring. When the new 1001 Peeps fabric came out, including a gorgeous purple colorway, I bought quite a lot of it...mostly half-yard cuts, but some full and multiple yard cuts as well! I was super thrilled when it arrived, and I've just about settled on my first project with it - a sleeve case for my Nintendo DS, rather than the large snap-on case that I currently use. I'll post about that when I work on it next month, never fear - I want to have it in time for PAX!

Speaking of PAX, both Chris and I are planning to take part in the Buttoneer exchange this year, which is where all participants make up their own buttons and bring them to trade. I took part in it last year and had a great time, so it was a no-brainer for me to do it again this year and Chris doesn't want to be left out. I can come up with great designs in my head, but I'm not so good at the art of drawing them up myself, so instead I chose two photos of Curzon and Ezri from our photoshoot last fall and with the permission of Artis Photography I made PAX buttons from them. I can't wait to trade them in August!

We're about to head out on vacation, as our friends are coming from NJ with their two kids and we're taking the RV out to the Olympic Peninsula for a week and a half. It's going to be a lot of fun, even if the weather is not being so cooperative, and we're really looking forward to it.

Memorial Day ride

On Monday, for the first time in about two years, I went on a motorcycle ride for fun. This time around was much better than the first time, mainly because of the bar risers that make it so much easier to ride my bike for long periods of time. It was also more fun since there were friends of my own on the ride, rather than just my husbands' coworkers, as two people I've known for a long time via an online message board came along for the trip.


We took the ferry from Edmonds to Kingston, then met up with the last person in Poulsbo before heading out 104 to 101 towards Port Angeles. This was the first time I've gone out that way, including going over the Hood Canal Bridge, and that is very impressive - and I'm very glad there was almost no wind that day! We rode up to the top of Hurricane Ridge, which surprised us with temperatures of 34F and more than five feet of snow still on the ground, as shown in the above photo. The road was a LOT of fun to ride, despite the cold, wet, and fog, and I'd like to give it another shot some time when I'm not holding back due to weather conditions. I was definitely the most comfortable of our group in my electric heated gear, however!


On our way back, we stopped on 101 in Port Townsend to visit Fat Smitty's, a burger joint recommended to us by another friend on the forum who wasn't able to join us. We parked our fleet of bikes - my BMW F800ST, my husband's Honda ST1300, a KLR, a V-Strom 1000, and two others I don't recall - outside of the joint and went inside. It's definitely a dive diner, with hundreds of dollar bills with sharpied drawings/comments thumbtacked all over the place, but it was a great stop after a lot of riding.


And that is their signature dish - the Fat Smitty burger, with three buns, two patties, cheese, bacon, and veggies. The advice the server gave was "to squish it as flat as you can, pick it up, and DO NOT LET GO" which was ignored with entertaining consequences by at least two people in the group. I did not get one of these, as I know better, and my regular sized burger and chocolate shake were perfectly tasty on their own.

Taking a motorcycle on the ferry is awesome, as you can skip the 1-2 hour wait that the cars are suffering through and go straight to the head of the line. There were about fifteen bikes waiting for this ferry, including our group pictured above (with another big BMW from another passenger) and a group of Harleys that was on the other side. The ferry was pretty crowded so we just stayed down below with our bikes for the ride over, especially since it's only about a half-hour once the ferry is loaded and moving.

We did a total of about 200 miles or so, and I really enjoyed the trip. I'm thinking another trip should be in the cards for this summer, maybe a visit to Mt. St. Helens, especially since we can't take the dogs there. We'll see!

the trouble with terriers...

...is that they don't know when to quit. We've had issues with Phoebe picking fights with the female border collies in the past, as already chronicled, but there's never been a serious injury. Neither Ezri nor Jadzia have ever been hurt by Phoebe (I'm not sure she CAN hurt anyone, with her ground-down teeth...), and when Jadzia has corrected Phoebe it's ended with a small puncture wound or two. It has been quiet in our house since early November, with very few snarls and no actual fighting. What a pleasant change.

Too bad it didn't last.

On May 9th, Phoebe got herself into a big bowl of trouble yet again, this time requiring an emergency vet visit. Chris had come home early before I did, and put the dogs (plus Jitter, our friends' BC puppy we were watching) loose into the house so he could clean out the kennel. When I came home and went upstairs, I found Phoebe with this wound in her side. As near as I can figure, Jadzia or Ezri got excited and bouncy when I came home (they can hear the bike a block away), Phoebe tried to fun police them, and Jadzia nailed her in the side. However, this time it wasn't a simple puncture wound - instead it looked like her tooth caught in the skin and ripped it for a good couple of inches. Yay. So it was off to the emergency vet for me and Phoebe to get that taken care of, since that's a little too severe to pack with neosporin and hope for the best.

Unfortunately the e-vet was pretty busy that evening, so while they were able to give Phoebe some pain meds right away they weren't able to get to treating her injury until well into the night, so she had to stay the night. She got several stitches along with a drain, with the drain staying in place for five days while we used hot compresses on it twice a day to help promote healing. Additionally she got a course of antibiotics, as well as pain meds, topped off with a cone to keep her from chewing the wound, all to the tune of "too much money" for such an idiotic move. So she's been crated during the day for over two weeks now, obviously with no flyball or other heavy exercise allowed. To add insult to injury, it's been raining a lot and so when we took her out for the first week or so we had to put a coat on her to keep the incision dry. Phoebe was totally thrilled about THAT, believe me.

Happily all seems to be healing up as needed now, which is good since she's a height dog for the tournament next weekend (June 4-5). The drain came out on May 13, and one of my vet tech teammates took her stitches out on May 22. Of course, silly me thought that once the stitches were out she didn't need her cone and put her in the crate without it, so she chewed it up a bit that day. It healed up quickly, and we are now allowing her supervised no-cone time and for the past three days she's shown no inclination to go after the spot. I hope that keeps up, I don't want to deal with a cone at the tournament! It's going to be bad enough explaining what happened to her all weekend long - she's already running in the yard full-bore to play fetch, so I'm not concerned about her ability to run flyball next weekend at all. Phoebe continues to live up to her nickname as "the little tank," although I wish the continuing proofs were a little less expensive!

In positive Phoebe news, she is now ranked 38th of a total of 1460 Jack/Parson Russell Terriers on the NAFA point-scoring list. She's also currently at 118 on the top 250 point-scoring dogs for the 2011 racing year. Not bad for such a little brat.

urban homesteading and you

This is my first attempt at a quiche/frittata type of dish, and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. I got the recipe from an awesome book I picked up a few weeks ago, The Urban Homestead, which is full of fascinating information about skills that are largely unknown in American city society. The book covers topics from cleaning (vinegar and baking soda) to growing food (from microgreens in the window to full-on food gardens) to keeping worms and chickens. It also covers various food preservation methods, including canning, making butter, drying, and so on. While I'm passingly familiar with many of the concepts, I'm not at all familiar with how they are executed and it is really neat to have a book that explains all of this sort of thing to my citified self. And possibly even more importantly, the book is written with enthusiasm but not with disdain, as so many "eco-friendly" books often are, so I came away from reading it excited and inspired to try new things and not dejected and morose that I'll never be cool enough or eco-friendly enough to be acceptable. The recipe for this "crustless quiche" came from the book, and I modified it slightly to make it gluten-free so that Chris could enjoy it as well.

Recipe: Crustless Quiche (from The Urban Homestead, modified to be Gluten-Free by me)
Ingredients:
4 eggs
~1 cup of soft cheese
1 cup of milk
3/4 cup of gluten-free flour
1 tsp of salt (or more to taste)
ground pepper (to taste)
additives (bacon, ham, onions, garlic, spinach, etc.)

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a 9" pie pan, and put the pie pan on top of another pan or cookie sheet in case of spills.
2. Prepare any additives that need it, such as sauteeing garlic/onions/spinach in olive oil, cooking bacon and crumbling it, chopping up ham, etc. All mix-in items should be diced, chopped, or crumbled to be small, like 1/4" - 1/2" with smaller pieces better. Also cut up the cheese at this point and set it aside - again, 1/2" cubes is a good plan.
3. Mix flour, salt, and pepper together. If you want to add any additional seasonings, this is the time to do it.
3. Beat the eggs together in a largeish bowl. Add in the milk and mix thoroughly.
4. Add the flour a bit at a time, mixing well with each addition, until all of it is incorporated and you have something that looks kinda like pancake batter. Gluten-free flour is particularly picky about being mixed in, so just do your best - mine still has some small blobs of unmixed flour even after several minutes of beating.
5. Add in the cheese cubes and stir, then add in the rest of your additives.
6. Mix everything well and pour into your pie pan, possibly giving it a bit of a stir to redistribute the additives after pouring. Top with extra grated cheese if you like.
7. Pop into the oven for 45 minutes. The quiche is done when a knife stuck in the middle comes out clean.

The flour in the mixture, at least with my gluten-free version, will settle a little bit during baking and make its own sort of psuedo-crust in the pan. You can kind of see this in the photo to the right. I've made this recipe twice so far, and the important attributes seem to be the size and amount of additives, and the type of cheese used. My first one was made with queso fresco from the farmers' market, which is a slightly squishy and low density cheese, and it came out much better than the second one which I made with fresh mozzarella which I think was both too dense and too damp for the dish. The original recipe suggested feta, and I'm thinking of trying cheese curds as well. Shredded cheese would probably be great as well, but I did really like the taste and texture I got when using the queso fresco. The second version I made I used sliced ham that I cut into about 3/4" squares, and they were too big and didn't stay well distributed in the pan, though that might be because I also used a lot of ham. The second one was still edible and pretty good, even with the damp cheese and too much ham, so this is a pretty forgiving recipe over all. And it's pretty quick to put together, especially if you pre-chop everything in advance. The one recipe gave enough for two meals for the two of us, and it reheats nicely - I just foil-wrapped the pan, and then popped it into the oven at 250F for about twenty minutes the next evening.

I also have a funny Jadzia story to share today. I've realized this week that she has figured out how to tell me the water dish is empty - she waits until I'm filling my own water bottle at the fridge, and pats my leg. Every time she's done this in the past two weeks, her water dish has been empty. That's pretty good problem-solving, even for a border collie - she connected the water from the sink, the water from the fridge, her bowl, and my bottle together. I'm very entertained and kind of proud of her for that.

sewing room remodel, finished!

Posting more often doesn't seem to be working out the way I intended. Oh well. At least I finally found the charging cables for my cameras, so I was able to get the pictures off of them from finishing up my sewing room remodel. I've been happily working in it for about two months now, so this post is well overdue.

First a single photo of what the room looked like before we began. Plain white walls and blue carpet, same as the living room and hallway in our house. The room is rather small, only 8' x 7.5', and I originally just had a single 8' conference table for both my sewing machine and cutting area. This meant that it wasn't really comfortable to do either, and was really my biggest driver for doing the remodel.


The first thing we did was rip out all of the old carpet, as shown in a post in February. Once that was done we painted the walls - two in a tan and two in a light sage, with the half-wall molding done in a dark green - and installed laminate flooring from IKEA in "dark brown" with floor molding to go along with it.


Once that was done, we started moving the furniture back in. Here's the back corner of the room, to the left as you look in the door, showing the cabinet I refinished last year that contains my Pfaff 130 machine.


Next up is my barrister's cabinet, which was given to me by my Nana many years ago when I was still living in Pittsburgh, which holds my fabric stash and some of my other sewing machines. I used fabric and foam board to make panel covers to fill in the glass, which eliminates the visual clutter of the cabinet when the doors are closed. I still need to make a panel for the lower door, unfortunately!


The newest feature of the room was a design wall, where I can put up pieces I'm working on in order to set their design before I sew them together. I made three panels using styrofoam insulation panels from Home Depot, each 2' x 4', covered in batting which was then stapled to the back of the panel. I added picture frame hangers to the back of each panel using superglue to hold them in the styrofoam, then hung them up. They're light and easy to maneuver, and I'm really quite pleased with the result. The picture shows blocks from the Halloween table runner and the baby quilt I made for my friend Kathy, both projects which I'm glad to say I've finished since then!


The replacement for the conference table was two adjustable tables from IKEA, one of which was set up high to use as a cutting table and the other was set down low for my sewing machine. There are plenty of tutorials online and in books about ergonomics of both, but generally you cut material at standing height and want your sewing machine at seated height, so using one table for both really makes it hard for either one to work out. This photo also shows the awesome replacement for nails in the wall - a pegboard, painted dark green to match the half-wall molding trim, which holds my rulers, cutters, scissors, and other tools.


And now, for the photos of my sewing room as it is now with just about everything moved back in (as opposed to the minimalist, neat, and tidy photos above). Here is my sewing table, with the attached ironing board (which Chris cut down for me so it could be used on the low-height table), my bookshelf of sewing books, speakers for use with my iPad (TV or Pandora radio), thread rack, and bulletin board which has a crocheted Star Trek insignia potholder my mother made me, photos of my mom & me, Ezri, and Curzon, a color wheel, and Superior Threads sample cards.


Here's the cutting table photo, where you can see I've added more rulers and tools to the pegboard, and you can see my kaleidoscope quilt blocks on the design wall and my current project on the table. I've also picked up some cheap green and purple small vinyl bins at Target that I'm using for scrap and trash collection on the table - much easier than stepping around the ironing board to the trash can every cut! Beneath the cutting table are my two storage units, mostly for precut scraps and specialty fabrics, which will be joined by a third next time I have a coupon for JoAnn's. Behind the storage units are my wrapping paper supplies, as I figured that was a great place to put them since they're not needed often and my cutting table will be a great place to wrap gifts in the future.


This is another view of the Pfaff cabinet side of the room, also showing my beautiful Brian Froud print and another project that's on the design wall. The cabinet has the awesome Halloween table runner on top of it, but you can't see it right now because it's covered in other fabric acquisitions as well as the working fabric pile for the project on the design wall. To the right is the incredibly cool pirate chest that I got off Craigslist for $30, which is holding my project collections, precut jelly rolls, and unfinished quilt tops. Just ignore the pile of bags under the cabinet...


Above the Pfaff cabinet is the same shelf that was there before, which holds my childhood teddy bear, a unicorn beanie baby my husband gave me, and the beautiful pillow my mother cross-stitched for me for my thirteenth birthday. I'm so lucky to have inspiration from my family and friends in this room when I work.


Finally a view of the barrister's cabinet again, with the doors down to hide the clutter inside them. The clutter isn't actually that bad, since I got some great bins at the Container Store to hold everything (so far), but it's more calming visually to have the doors down. The decorative (but largely useless until I turn it into a hand crank) Singer NL-15 is on top of the cabinet, and my Featherweights, older Janome L-108, and my Rocketeer are inside the cabinet. Just to the left of the cabinet and behind me when I sew is a shower corner shelf kit in the right shade of green that I got for $7 on clearance at Target, which holds my smaller notions that I use often but didn't want right next to my machine. There's also a small whiteboard just to the left of my chair where I note what I'm working on and what's on the list for next.


So there it is - my finished sewing room! I love how it turned out and it makes me happy every time I go in there. There are some features not pictured, like a remote-control power strip for my sewing machine and iron, that I added along the way that are really awesome. I also have a few other things I'd like to hang up in there, like my bridesmaids bouquet from a few years ago that's framed in brown and would look great, and some embroidery hoops that I got to display favorite fabric swatches. Those will get put up eventually...unless we move first!

springtime achievements

It's been nearly a month since I updated, mainly because I keep wanting to put pictures in my posts and then not taking them or uploading them from the camera. Part of this problem is due to the fact that the charger cables for BOTH of my cameras have gone missing despite my searches. Our month has been pretty busy, and I'll start off with perhaps the least "real" but still important achievements of the last few weeks.


Our World of Warcraft guild put forth a monumental team effort on April 4th-5th, and we were successful in becoming our realm's first maximum level guild. Chris and I played for about 5-6 hours both days after work, doing our part with our friends to earn the guild experience points needed to level. We handily beat the other guilds on the server, even the larger ones, and made level 25 about two days before another group managed it. It was a lot of fun to have such a big project to work on with everyone!

We've also had our first two tournaments of the year, both held up at the Cloverdale fairgrounds in British Columbia. The first tournament was very special to me, as not only did it mark Jadzia's seventh anniversary of racing (and mine as well!), but all three of my girls earned titles that weekend. Phoebe was the first dog in the club to earn the Flyball Grand Champion 50,000 point title on Saturday, with Jadzia earning her own FGDCh50k title early Sunday morning. Ezri picked up her Flyball Master Champion (15,000 points) title on Sunday as well, and is well on her way to earn her ONYX (20,000 points) by her second racing anniversary in July. It was pretty special to have all three titles line up to be earned on the same weekend together, and I am so proud of all of my girls and what we've accomplished together with our flyball club. Ezri ran all her start races under 4.00 seconds at the first tournament, and Jadzia managed to pull out not one but two 5.01 second runs at the second tournament. I'm quite entertained by this picture taken by a friend from another club showing Ezri after she missed her tug as she's trying to turn around quickly to go and grab it again.

Unfortunately not everything was roses, as when I was coming home from the first tournament (alone, as Chris had already left in order to travel for work), I had trouble taking the trailer through the border back into the USA and hit the back of it against a pole, damaging the back cap. The border officials have chosen to make a maze of barriers after the gates for clearing Customs, and unfortunately they seem to ignore the existence of such large truck/trailer rigs as many of us in the flyball world are driving. If I hadn't turned when I did (thus hitting the trailer), I would have hit the truck on the barrier in front of me. I think in the future I'm going to ask them to move all barriers that they possibly can, or see if we can take the rig through the semi-truck commercial lanes instead. Amazingly, the wonderful service team at Camping World in Burlington have already repaired it (just two weeks after getting the estimate approved!) and we will be picking it up to bring it home again tomorrow. It was really hard to not have my trailer at the tournament last weekend, so I'm thrilled that I won't have to "hotel it" for the tournament at the end of this month in Abbotsford.

On the sewing/quilting front, I have finished the top for a quilt for a Christmas present, completed and gifted a baby quilt to my friend Kathy for her son due in May, taken half of a kaleidoscope quilting class, and started work on a mini baby quilt (for an infant carrier) for another friend. The last item I am making freehand using a log cabin pattern that will eventually be a 30" or larger square, using a matched set of eight fat quarters from the Lollipop fabric line that I bought at the sewing expo in March. I fussy-cut the center square to show the three monkeys in the print, and I've been adding additional logs to a 2" finished width as strikes my fancy. The current size is a 16" finished block, and I've set up the next two fabrics that will be in the pattern in the photo to the right. I've already ordered an adorable brown flannel printed with yellow bananas for the backing, and a plain teal solid for the binding, and these should be here next week.

Finally, here are the pictures of the baby quilt that I made for Kathy's new baby due next month. The finished size is intended to be 40" x 60" (but wound up juuuuust a bit wonky with one end about 3/8" wider than the other!) which has worked out really nicely for another friend. I used two jelly rolls of fabrics from the Love U line, with additional bits from Beetle Boy and other fabrics that I liked. The backing is an awesome mini mushroom print flannel, and the binding is made of blue/orange strips from the jelly rolls. I originally didn't make the binding quite long enough, as I was making it to use the two colors equally, and adding an extra 10" to the circumference of the quilt was apparently not quite enough, so I had to add a few extra inches on when I got to the end. I'm really pleased with how the whole thing came out!

View of the entire quilt after completion and washing.

Back corner of the quilt folded over the front to show the label, backing, and binding.

Close-up of the pattern with some of the quilting visible (diagonal lines on the strips, outlines on the square blocks and inset blocks).

Folded quilt showing the different binding colors (I like this picture a lot!)

That's all for now! This weekend we will be retrieving our trailer, playing some more Warcraft with friends, and having a long mixed flyball practice/scrimmage event on Sunday with Unorthodogs. Hopefully the dogs will pretend to be tired by Sunday evening so we can watch the premiere of A Game of Thrones without interruption!

what I'm working on recently

I've got several projects in progress right now, and two smaller ones that I finished recently, so it's time for a bit of an update. I still can't find the charger cables for EITHER of my cameras, so I don't have all the photos I need to make a post about my awesome new sewing room. We'll be going through the guest room this week to fish out the rest of the RV stuff for the spring flyball season, so hopefully they will turn up when we clean out some of the stuff.

Yesterday I finished the quilt top for my friends' baby, and got it all put together and pinned into a quilt sandwich. The quilt went from a collection of nine sub-units on my design board to the first portion of quilting being complete, which is a whole lot of work to do in one day! I was starting to worry that the design would be a bit busy with all the different prints, but I think that it's come out really nicely and I'm pleased with it. The border fabric (monkeys!) really helps to frame it and make it look a bit more polished, I think. The quilt ended up juuuust a bit out of square, with the finished top dimensions working out to being about 36.75" by 55.5" and 56", so I wound up trimming just a bit off the edges to square it up a bit. Instead of 3" borders at the top and bottom, I used 2.5" finished borders, which looks really nice and not as out of balance as the 3" might have. I fussy-cut just a bit on the monkey border for the sides, to ensure I'd have full monkey chains and not bits of the pattern. The top wound up slightly bowed when I was putting on the border, so I wound up snipping a bit more off - maybe I should've left well enough alone in the first place! The quilt still fit just fine on my backing fabric, so even if it's not perfectly 40" x 60" it's very close. I'm doing diagonal quilting on the rows and outline quilting on the squares, and if I have time and feel confident enough I plan to do little loops inside the squares as well.

Last Friday was the first of two classes that my friend and I are taking at Pacific Fabrics in Bellevue, with the topic being Kaleidoscope Quilts. The trick to doing these is to carefully match your pattern by using lots of pins as you make a stack of 8 pattern repeats, then cutting wedges down your strip of fabric. The pinning is really a giant pain in the butt, and you should use way more pins than I did the first time, but the results are pretty cool. I am having some trouble with the pieces not being *exactly* the same size from the top to the bottom, but I bet a little more experience will fix that. The resulting eight-piece kaleidoscope blocks are just gorgeous and they're a lot of fun to put together. The fabric that both of us are using (mine is a purple colorway, hers is a green colorway) has a lot of action and is turning out some really great blocks so far. Our next class is April 1 and that's when we will learn how to finish off the blocks for quilt assembly. Hopefully I will have time to finish making my kaleidoscope parts before then!

The week before the iPad 2 release, I decided to make a sleeve for my new toy out of some awesome fabric I got at the sewing expo. I paired a bit of the green castles from the Lizzy House line of "Castle Peeps" that I was so happy to find along with some gray fabric with black dragons printed on it. I lined it with a purple and gold floral print that I picked up at QuiltWorks Northwest a few weeks ago, and used some royal purple binding that I already had made up from making the butterfly quilts two years ago. I'm really pleased with how it came out, although the photo doesn't quite do the colors justice, and it's happily protecting my iPad as I carry it with me everywhere.

I used the iPad sleeve tutorial on the Moda Bakeshop site in order to get the dimensions for the sleeve, but I modified it from what was there to use two pieces of batting instead of one. If I make another I'll probably make it a little shorter and maybe a little skinnier to fit slightly more snugly. The sleeve as completed can fit two iPad 2 units, each with a SmartCover, comfortably but isn't too baggy with just one.

Completed sleeve, the back is identical to the front. All that remains to do is to hand-stitch the binding down to the inside of the sleeve. The castles really are bright green...not sickly mustard yellow!

Interior of sleeve after binding was sewn, showing the floral lining and one of my awesome new quilt labels that I ordered from Sweetwater a few weeks ago. I completed all of the hand sewing during one session of D&D the day before the iPad 2 release.

And of course, what would a post that mentions the iPad 2 be without a story of how I got mine? I took off early from work on the release day, a Friday with the release time set to be 5pm, and met with my friends' husband to sit in line. We got to Alderwood at around noon, which made us about 70th in line or so. After taking turns to get a hot lunch from Panera, we settled down for our five-hour wait - I brought chairs, a blanket, and wore extra layers since it was about 45F outside. As in the past, the Apple store employees were awesome and brought around hot coffee, water, and granola bars to those waiting in line. They started handing out tickets for iPads to those in line around 4:30, after the line had "squished up" as those camped out put away their chairs. I think they should've handed out tickets much earlier, as there were a lot more people in front of us at that point than there were when we arrived, but it was a good idea all the same. I wound up with almost what I wanted, by the time they got to me they'd already sold out of 32GB 3G units for AT&T so I upgraded to the 64GB version.

The actual purchase process for the iPad 2 was a lot smoother than that for the iPhone 4 last June, but that's probably to be expected since there are no required data plans or contracts for the iPad. We were in the store by 5:20pm and on our way with our shiny new toys by 5:30pm, much better than last time when the store opened at 7am and we weren't on our way until 11:30am! I got home just after Chris got home from work, and we quickly opened up our new toys and started syncing them to our computers before spending the evening with our friends eating pizza and playing with the iPads. Over the week that we've had them, they've quickly become almost indispensable with both of us using them as around-the-house laptops as well as at work. I've even hooked mine up to our cable TV service to watch HBO when I'm at the gym! Sadly I've already dropped mine once (and onto gravel to boot) so it has a few minor scratches on it, but the durability is pretty good and the smart covers are just awesome. Yay for new technology!