My first Spoonflower order has arrived!

I've been really curious about Spoonflower for a long, long time and now I had a project I really couldn't do any other way then designing the fabric myself so it was time to take the step and finally make an order. After a weeks of fiddling with Adobe Illustrator in my spare moments I finally had vector graphics of what I wanted and could make my first order. It arrived today and way, way above all my expectations! The quality of the print is just amazing, the colors very close to what they appeared on screen in nearly all cases and gradients looked great! I'm super happy!

Here's a part of what I ordered, since you can only order full yards when you order more then 1 yard I had some space left over and added some of this and some of that to the edges. I'm making an OviPets Pillow from this I think ^^ The main design is a secret still and not ready to be revealed.

I also got an adorable little fabric swatch booklet:

I also have to show you my beautiful Grape Hyacinths that's been flowering so prettily!

Well, now I have to unpack my sewing room! =)

Joining the Pinterest Craze

I admit it, my name is Maria and I've gone Pinterest crazy.
When you can't create yourself, you can always collect inspiration from others. One of my most recent pins is this awesome makeup pouch which I just have to make my own version of when I get the chance =)

I'm pinning like crazy from all over the net (all the stuff that used to clog up my bookmarks and get lost in every reformatting, now on Pinterest, neatly sorted and easily over-viewed) and this site is just the best!

 

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Now I want you all to help me by wishing really hard that I'm able to unpack my sewing room in time for this months February FMQ Challenge

It looks like so much fun as I've always wanted to learn how to quilt feathers so I really hope I'll have some time to spend on learning how to do this:

Picture borrowed from SewCalGal's blog

Move complete!

We've moved into our new apartment which we just love, it's just the perfect little size for us and Diana loves it just as much as we do, the windows go to the floor in the living room so she can watch people and cars below. Her old climbing tree was very used up after 5 years and either way much to big for this apartment so we got her a new little one that we could place in front of the window next to our  "desk" (kitchen table with computers) so she could lie next to us and still enjoy the view. However, our Norwegian Forest Cat is not much of a climber so we had to add a little stepping stool for her so she could get up ^^
I also just love the bowls I found for her when I bought the tree, they look like hollowed out rocks but are very durable plastic and can be seen at the bottom right of the pic, below the refrigerator and freezer.

She's also very much enjoying the armrest on the couch and went monorail cat on us =D

I have however not had time for anything craftier then wrapping this Christening gift, however, I did enjoy that, I got to play with some buttons and ribbon for a while, yep that's how bad my crafting withdrawals are.

Other then that the craftiest thing I've done is trying to unpack our place from the bags and boxes. Not much fun to see there... Work is still just killing us so not much hope for the near future either. :(

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Luckily there are other people out there being crafty and I get to live through them a little right now, I have received an email from Mary Deckert who made her own, gorgeous version of Summer Squares, she made hers Twin size too by adding more squares, isn't it just lovely?

She added two rows to the bottom and to the side to get it this size. Thank you so very much Mary for sharing your beautiful creation with me! <3

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 I also noticed that in my absence, I've gotten over 100 followers! That's just amazing and will be celebrated with a giveaway as soon as I have unpacked my sewing room! =D

Most welcome all new followers! You have no idea how happy I am to have you <3
I hope you will enjoy my rambling and crafting. I'm really longing to be able to get back in the saddle and sew soon, my creative side threatens to claw it's way out if kept boxed up for much longer. ^^

Panic does not make for productive

I realize some of you will think me totally insane after reading the below but I'm trying to share all my quilting/crafting stuff combined with some personal tidbits here on the blog and right now, it's a major lack of spare time and stress over an unfinished project.

So, I hit what I felt as something of a low water mark the other day as a quilter. I had to let the lovely people at Moda know that my life right now doesn't permit as much quilting time as I would want (basically I would be happy for any, as I have none) and that I wouldn't be able to finish my latest project - which is a massive one - in any sort of reasonable time frame. I've been feeling so bad about this project and being unable to finish it in a timely manner that I've been unable to go to sleep from time to time lately. I hate letting people down more then anything else (apart from maybe flying). As I'd sent off the email I felt a giant weight off my shoulders and for the first time in quite some time I was able to go to sleep without panicking over a quilt. Which I realize sounds ridiculous as I technically have much bigger things to occupy my mind constantly that are work related - but this is my hobby and it means so much to me and I've felt so bad about committing to do something and then not being able to do it as I've said. I've been trying to slowly nibble away at it while waiting for stuff to upload and things like that but the stress I've been feeling has had me so on edge that every other block ended up all wonky and had to be re-sewn. And let's face it, a 10 minutes of sewing here and there won't get you very far when working on an advanced king size quilt pattern! Not enjoyable sewing in other words...

My life right now is upside down. We're in the middle of a move ourselves while we at the same time are moving both of our web games, PonyIsland and OviPets onto brand new servers and server setups (read work around the clock to get everything to run smoothly and make the transitions as seamless as possible). Which is such exciting work but there's so much stress involved. Our own move is also a happy one - we've found an absolutely adorable  little apartment that we just LOVE! It's perfect for us, it has a lovely view over a park and it has a high glass railing for the balcony so Diana will be able to join us for a glass of wine out there in the summer. =)

Our new apartment has a small room apart from our bedroom which will be used for storage and as a sewing room! I will get to have an actual room for sewing which will be great! While I loved having a sewing area in the living room for social reasons, you can't exactly leave the mess you want to be able to leave mid project when you can't close a door around it =)
Can't wait to have time to start setting it up! And I really can't wait for some spare time to actually start using it!

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I also got an email today which made me really happy, it was from Jan who had made her granddaughter a beautiful Sunkissed Summer Squares quilt:

The label was just to lovely to leave out (last names I however blurred out for privacy), I got all teary eyed when I read it, so much love in this quilt!

Thank you for sharing your quilt with me Jan! <3