Just a few things

Made beach boxes for my girls and niece today. I thought they'd like to have a place to store the treasures they find on the beach. Pretty sure my youngest will fill hers with rocks. My oldest will find the tiniest things possible to collect. Everything small and tiny, that's what she's into these days. And ponies. This box is a spin off of the Nature Boxes seen here.

My sister commissioned a sock monkey shirt for her friend's daughter. She is turning one and Emily is attending her birthday luau. I added eye lashes to this one. Think she's pretty cute.


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Lisa is hosting the next MTM. She'll also be announcing the next theme. oooo, better check her blog on Monday. Theme suggestions are welcome. Seriously. I'd love to hear from you. You're so close to the comment button. Might as well.
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Promise Kept

Check me out! There is nothing like a finished quilt fresh from the dryer. I love how it puckers around the hand quilting. I love how it suddenly becomes new and fresh again after being repeatedly mauled during the quilting. Now it just needs a final folding and a thick satin ribbon tied around it.

Back
Hand quilting detail

Fresh and folded

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Don't forget to join the new flickr group devoted to our Muffin Tin Meals. Come on . . . I know you want to. Click on over ~

www.flickr.com/groups/muffintinmeals

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The Crafty Crow Funny Food Contest

Here are my entries to this super fun contest. Read all the contest details here. It took me a while to figure out what kind of funny food to make. One of the contest rules requires that the entries be kid made. Since my kids are 4 and 23 months I had to do some thinking about how we could do this together and end up with something other than food stew. I decided to make each entry and then give them the supplies to make their own. We had a great time. My oldest really got into it.

Here is our Fruity Kitty. She is made out of yogurt, kiwi, strawberries, raisins, apple, cherries and fruit leather (for the whiskers).
Made by me.

Made by my 4 year old.

Made by my 23 month old.

The Peanut Butter Monkey is our second entry. He is made out of bread, peanut butter, bananas, and chocolate chips. I used a bowl as a template for the head and kitchen shears to cut out his ears and muzzle. The mouth is made out of crust. I had intended to cut some red fruit leather into a traditional sock monkey mouth, but decided it was more resourceful to use the crust. Think the fruit leather would have been darling, though.

Made by me.

Made by my 4 year old.

Check out the contest's flickr group. There are loads of great entires. So far my favs are the salmon patty Pac Man and the Stromboli snail.

Don't know why the monkey picture is small . . .probably just to make me crazy.

7 Dogs & a Sycamore Baby

I've been featured on the blog Seven Dogs & A Baby! In between taking care of the afore mentioned 7 dogs (!) and baby, Angela writes product reviews. In addition to her review of my shirts, she is also offering a give away. Yes, you lucky reader could win a free sock monkey onesie. Check out the review and enter to win!

Enter to Win

This is your last day to enter at Crazy Crafty Mama to win a *free* onesie. Leave a comment to enter. Winner will receive a Sock Monkey Onesie. Hurry!

Monkey Swap

Love how this one turned out! It is headed to Lisa's youngest daughter as part of our monkey shirts for Big Sister Busy Box swap. I'll be offering similar shirts in my shop soon.

Sashing Selected

After a rushed trip to the Quilting Loft I found the sashing to go in between my Chinese Coins. I thought I'd end up with some sort of creamy white, possibly with a faint, small pattern. However, as I laid my coins next to these types of fabrics it became clear that this wasn't right. Look what I chose instead:The yellow warmed the quilt right up unlike the creams. The yellow also made the bananas pop and brought out the yellow numbers on red fabric. I haven't pieced it all together yet. Look for a post on Sunday as Quilt Club meets on Saturday and you know what I'll be working on.

As for the recipient of this quilt . . . She was born on Monday. Her name is Renee and she is absolutely the sweetest thing you've ever seen.

Grape Ape

Trina from Woven Chains was absolutely so supportive and sweet when I posted about my Monkey Love shirts and ended by saying her daughter would love one. So I offered to make one for her. They supplied the shirt and I supplied my monkey magic. I was contemplating the design when I remembered Trina's affection toward purple AND that our monthly Etsyrain creative challenge (thanks KC) was Purple Rain. So behold GRAPE APE:
Finding purple fabric proved to be a bit of a challenge as it is not a color I naturally gravitate toward. However, I ended up having a lot of fun going through all my scrap bags to find the perfect purples for this primate. Humor me a minute while I walk down memory lane and tell you where all these pieces came from. The solid lavender is from the VERY FIRST QUILT I made (see pic). The stripes are from a baby quilt I finished a year ago. The stars and dots are from a yearly strip exchange that we do in my Quilt Club.

Hope it's a hit with Trina's daughter!

Chinese Coins

Thanks to Trina from Woven Chains I found a pattern for the baby quilt. She loaned me a stack of baby quilt books filled with patterns. I decided to go with the Chinese Coins pattern. One that I've wanted to make for some time. The pattern would showcase the sock monkey fabric but also allowed for a random, scrappy look. I bought some additional sock monkey fabric from ebay and also picked up some coordinating reds, browns and creams at The Quilting Loft in Ballard.

Today my quilt club met, so I had 5 glorious hours to work on this project - in between eating, talking, showing, telling and then more eating. Always more eating. Food highlights included Thai coconut soup, Valentine sugar cookies, and candied nuts. Surprisingly I did get a lot done on the quilt. I finished the 4 columns and now need to decide on some fabric to go between the columns. Some suggestions have been to use solid chocolate brown with a thin red outer border or to do just the reverse. Take a look at the columns or "coins" and help me out. What do you think?