New veggie bed in the works

This weekend we double-dug our new veggie bed and started marking off where our path will be. Next we're going to surround it with a chicken wire fence to help ward off the varmints. As you can see, we're going for a somewhat keyhole style plan, except not round. Well, whatever the shape, before you know it, I'll be planting peas!

Please disregard the chaotic nature of my yard at the moment... stacked up yard furniture, misc canoe, cold frame placed randomly on the grass, and raised beds perched precariously above ground. What can I say, the snow just melted and all I have time for is getting ready for planting ASAP!

The heralds of spring

Spring is right around the corner, which means I'll probably be posting a lot more gardening related stuff. For example, I've already got some seedlings going for spring planting!

So far I have onions, celery, a few annual flowers (sweet pea, pansy and impatiens), bell peppers, hot peppers, broccoli, brussels sprouts, and eggplant underway. This will be the first year I've tried celery or eggplant, and the first in a while that I've bothered trying broccoli and brussels sprouts, but I'm hopeful.

Here are a couple pics of the happy wee plants:

And in other springtime-is-near news, bulbs are pushing up their noses around my yard! I think only a gardener could understand just how THRILLING that is to see after a looong and snowy winter. :)

Megumi Sakakibara Free-Motion Quilt - Done!

Okay, this has actually been done for a while but I'm a slacker about posting. I decided to vary the binding just for fun, and to add a little extra excitement since I made the back so boring (all white).

The light makes the colors kind of hard to see, but I'm guessing you get the drift.

Free-Motion Quilting!

I swallowed my fear and dove in for some free-motion quilting on my latest baby quilt... and I think it came out pretty damn well. Hopefully the squiggly lines make up for the fact that I got lazy and just backed it with a solid kona snow.

Next up, binding!

Megumi Sakakibara Baby Quilt

While pulling out fabric for yet another baby quilt, I found a stash of awesome Megumi Sakakibara prints, perfect for a baby girl's blanket. I was thinking that I'd do something simple just to bang this quilt out in a relatively quick time, so I cut out a bunch of 5" squares and sashed them with some Heather Bailey Nicey Jane "Hop Dot" in cream.

Now I'm starting to think it's a little too.. something. Busy, maybe? I dunno that I'm crazy about the sashing choice, but I don't hate it, so this is how it's gonna be.

The colors aren't showing up great on these pics, but I think you get the drift. And yeah, my squares aren't lining up great, but whatever. I doubt baby girl will care. :P

Now, should I back it in something cuddly and minky? Or just regular quilting cotton, so it's better for throwing on the floor and letting a wee one roll around on it?

For the record, you can find a lot of this fabric at superbuzzy or fabricworm.

Simple Echino pillows

I took my first shot at making a couple of pillows this weekend, and made what amounts to about the simplest covers for a throw pillow that I could conjure. They ended up being slightly too big, but if they ever end up getting washed, that might be taken care of a little bit.

This was also my first excuse to use some Etsuko Furuya by Echino fabric, which I am always admiring from afar. My soon-to-be-a-teen niece is redoing her room and hopefully these will be an accent, or at least an inspiration. They are backed with Echino solids in purple and blue, respectively, as you can kind of see in the second picture here.

For the record, the prints I used here are the Wild Forest (or Woodland Friends, depending on which of these quilting shops has the "official" name -- who knows?) in Natural & Pink from Fall 2010, and what I think is called Quiet Ground from the Fall 2009 line. My local fabric store, Fabric Corner in Arlington, MA, had a TON of Etsuko Furuya fabric in stock so I just bought what I liked, and am not positive of the actual names.

Owl Quilt: DONE!

Duh-du-du-dun! It's finished!

I'm not actually planning on it staying on the bed like this, but it was the best way to see the whole thing: