Vol. 3: Looking Forward

Between the Olympics, the Super Bowl, and Valentines Day, I feel like the winter mood is lifting a little bit. Sometimes having some fun things to look forward to can help so much. Our weather is also improving this week, so that’s a huge relief too!

Knowing how much having things to look forward to helps me get past a slump, I’ve learned to build those things in when they don’t happen naturally. Planning a thrifting day, digging into a new project, seeing what books and movies are coming out soon, planning to try a fancy new recipe for dinner one night — those things can all help!

The other thing that helps is cleaning. I know it’s not the most exciting, but when I really can’t get myself motivated, I decidedly clean my house and it’s astounding how it turns my day around. Even if it’s not that cluttered to begin with, putting away the extra visual stimuli and having a place for my eyes to rest without tasks staring back at me somehow helps a ton.

And now, I have a fun little list of things to share with you this week, so let’s hop in.

The Olympics

I absolutely love watching the Olympics and it’s super fun to be able to catch up with the events through the replays on Peacock, although I wish I didn’t always see spoilers for the finished events on social media. Maybe they could wait 24 hours so the time zones could catch up, but that’s life in the age of the Internet, I guess!

We especially love to watch the figure skating and curling, and I always love seeing the opening ceremony fashions. Mongolia wins again, in my opinion.

Valentines Day

In case you missed my email yesterday, I made some funny sewing Valentines on a whim while watching the Olympics over the weekend, and put them in my shop! You can print them out and give them to all your sewing buddies!

I also remember that I have some Valentines themed sewing patterns in my shop and have done a terrible job of promoting them this season, whoops. I have a great pattern for ruffled hearts in two sizes. So they can be pillows, placements, coasters, or door hangers! I also have a video tutorial to go with it.

And I have a pattern for a scrappy heart quilt block, which people have used to make such creative things! Some have made pillows using the block and others have made table runners and quilts. So fun, and I love being tagged on Instagram when people use my tutorials as a starting off point. There’s a video for this one also.

I’m going to try to watercolor paint a Star Wars landscape for my husband for Valentines Day. If it turns out, I’ll show you next week.

What I’ve been sewing

If you follow me on Instagram, you might have seen a sneak peak of my newest quilt project. I started this one on a whim (how unlike me, right!?) I made a couple of improv butterflies to see how they would look, and Layla absolutely loved them and asked for a twin size quilt. This is the video I filmed this week, so you’ll see more of this idea and where I’m going with it when I post it next Monday.

Today, I posted a very fun no-sew video tutorial for the origami stars I showed you a few weeks ago after making one as a bag charm for the new purse I just made. It’s fun and easy and not just for Christmas, though they would make great gifty ornaments also.

Projects in the Queue

The coming week’s sewing involves some curtains for my kitchen and February’s blocks for the Block of the Month quilt club I joined.

I also placed a couple fabric orders over the weekend, so I’m excited to get my hands on those. One is this striped knit from Style Maker Fabrics. I want to make a long Blackwood Cardigan with it because I had one that I loved that just got worn out, so I’ve been wanting to make a replacement. The other order was from Moonlight Quilters, which is a first for me, but they had just the selection of low volume prints and solids that I need for my two current quilt projects.

What’s inspiring me

I love coming across examples of “wonky” quilting from history. I think we forget that Improv quilting is actually not a new concept. Far from it, in fact. This morning I saw this Log Cabin Variation quilt from circa 1900 and just had to share it with you.

Amazing!! Do you see those subtle curves mixed in there?? I feel like its creator was a fun lady ;)

That’s all for now!

Happy Sewing

Love, Nikki