You'll Shoot Your Eye Out.

Yesterday, I thought that I broke my new space sewing machine. It's computerized and makes bee-boo-bee-boo R2D2 noises.

I totally didn't. I just got overzealous in my stitching and failed to read a certain portion of the manual. I'm not a product salesman for Brother, but I have to say that I really really like this machine. It has 60 built-in stitches (that panel on the right side shows them all), does buttonholes and buttons, and you can even sew without using a foot pedal, although it does come with one. It makes projects scary easy. As in, oh man, I should just buy shares for JoAnn Fabric stores, I'm gonna spend so much money there anyway easy.

Here are two quick projects that I did this week!

Beanbags for Emmy's little friend Ransom. He turned 1 yesterday and we went to his super-cool birthday party to watch him smash cake. I used a different stitch for each letter, purposefully trying to give it a kindergarten-handwriting look. Next time, I would have finished the bottom differently, perhaps with a contrasting thread color, but I wanted to make sure that they wouldn't open and create a choking hazard. If I had planned ahead more, I would've made a quilted, soft cornhole board to go with it!

Boo on the camera flash washing out the richness of this cotton print! These are a gift for my sweet sister-in-law, whose birthday is today. I've still got to get them shipped out to her... darn you long post office lines! Anyway, I digress... they are a stack of 4 reversible placemats, washer/dryer friendly and not crazy large so they take up the whole table (personal pet peeve!). I used a light blue thread in a leaf-pattern embroidered stitch so that the brown side has an eye-catching detail. Hopefully she'll enjoy them in her new house with the pretty blue kitchen.

I'll keep adding in projects as I complete them. Stay tuned for... new, colorful couch pillows, baby tshirts, and apparel experiments for my still-on-standby Etsy shop. Oh yeah, and I'm going to try my hand at quirky, modern quilts, if there's such a thing. Vive la brother! And pray that I don't neglect my child or my nagging need to get back into grad classes :)