Rambling Roses Design

When the festive season surrounding the holidays is done and it’s not quite spring yet, there is this period of Bleh.

It doesn’t help that Vancouver has been enveloped in a dense fog for days.

The eerie scene pierced by fog horns is actually pretty cool and keeps all sorts of nautical disasters from happening. I’ve heard that it’s bright and sunny on our local mountains, thanks to temperature inversion.

Spring will be here before we know it. In the meantime, I’m going to introduce some color and cheeriness around here.

What better way to do it than cut up a whole bunch of happy fabric and sew it back together again!

Tiny half-square triangles pieced together into nine patches.

The fabric is “Happy Go Lucky“ by Bonnie & Camille for Moda. Such a perfect name for this fabric line.

It’s coming together and I’ve got just enough of the nine patches to make a mini.

Time to brighten this drab with some fab 😀

PS: On a whole other note, I think it’s totally wrong that Cadbury Creme eggs are already out on store shelves tempting us!

**Linking up: WIP Wednesday on Freshly Pieced and Let’s Bee Social on Sew Fresh Quilts**

Posted by Preeti & filed under Mini Quilts, Quilting, WIP Wednesday. This post has 8 comments.

There is something so sweet about little baby things. I’ve got a keepsake box for each of my children filled with stuff from when they were little. A lock of hair, a tiny onesie, a baby blanket, a favorite outfit, a squeaky toy… As a mother, these are treasured possessions that I will always hold close to my heart.

My friend recently became a mom for the first time. The arrival of her wee baby boy was celebrated with much anticipation and excitement. There were celebrations even before his arrival :: at the baby shower!

I sewed a set of matching bibs and burp cloths to take to the shower for the little man.

These are all backed with chenille :: super absorbent and gentle for delicate baby skin.

Isn’t that elephant print the cutest!

I forgot to make a note of the dimensions I cut the burpies to. I used a fat quarter for each set and only had a bit of fabric left over.

And the bibs… I loved making these!!

Fabrics are “Safari“ from Northcott and “Savanna Bop” from Andover Fabrics.

Some Dr. Seuss fun went into the basket too 🙂

The new parents are coping rather well (much better than I did!!) with midnight feedings and upside down schedules. Babies are so precious!

Posted by Preeti & filed under Gifts, Sewing, Sewn Finishes. This post has 4 comments.

Remember this quilt top I showed you a while ago?

The massive thing is now quilted. Actually, I finished the quilting soon after I wrote that post and then I folded it up and put it away in the linen closet.

Well, the little girl who has laid claim to this quilt said to me on New Year’s Day complete with hand on hip, “Mama, do you think you can finish my quilt in 2015?”. Miss Sass, I tell ya!!

I’ve had the binding prepped since November so I’d better get going with finishing this thing.

I pulled the quilt out, trimmed it and attached the binding. Man, I’d forgotten how huge it is!

Now, I’ll settle in for some hand stitching. A couple evenings spent sewing on the couch with Netflix should do the trick.

This quilt is going to be finished in 2015… most definitely!!

**Linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday**

Posted by Preeti & filed under Quilting, WIP Wednesday. This post has 5 comments.

Happy New Year!! May 2015 be your best year yet!

It’s been a long while since I made resolutions with the onset of a new calendar year. I think it’s because I follow through for maybe a month, two tops and then kaboom, I fall off the resolution wagon! This year however, I posted this picture on my IG feed on New Years Day…

Focussed. Intentional. Organized. #chroniclistmaker #erincondrenlifeplanner #ECLP #2015

A photo posted by Preeti Verghese (@preetiverghese) on Jan 1, 2015 at 11:22am PST

Focussed. Intentional. Organized.

It’s a sort of resolution I guess. These words are like a personal mission statement and speak so much into my state of mind and purpose right now. Putting it out there makes me accountable. Oh yes, I’ve got the other standard resolutions all lined up too… lose weight, get healthy, read more, blog more often (Lol!) etc, etc! But that up there was a good place to start.

Umm speaking of blogging… I’ve been away from this space for far too long because I was hanging over on Instagram all last month. It seems like when things get even slightly busy, the blog is always the first one to fall by the wayside. That being said, I love the instant aspect of IG so definitely come find me, I’m preetiverghese over there and I’d love to follow you back 🙂

Next time, I’ll share some crafty stuff I’ve been doing. Have a fabulous day all ♥

Posted by Preeti & filed under Rambling. This post has 5 comments.

This is “Take 2” because I accidentally published this post with no pictures! Boo!!

While I was looking at the directions to make my mason jar pin cushion, I found another adorable tutorial. This one is for tiny felt mittens.

Really, these things are so much fun to put together and there are so many ways each little mitt can be decorated.

I want to make a few of these to gift and a few for our tree, they are pretty quick to make. I bet if I used a hot glue gun, I could churn these out even faster. I prefer needle and thread though, so slow and steady does it.

If you enlarged the template, you could easily make these large enough for a gift card to fit inside.

I want to make a few red ones, just to indulge my love for all-the-red-things-at-Christmas!

Kiki saw this one and said, “It’s an Elsa mitten!”

There are a few more cut out and ready to go. Let the Christmas crafting begin!

I want to wish all my family and friends south of the border a wonderful, happy Thanksgiving

❤

**Linking up with Lee for WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced**

Posted by Preeti & filed under Crafty, WIP Wednesday. This post has 8 comments.

Ever since I began sewing, I realized that pins are my best friends. They are so important if you want accuracy while you are piecing something. Eyeballing things just won’t cut it. As a result, my pin collection has grown exponentially.

The pincushion that I made last year is full, no… overflowing and I’ve got another makeshift “pin cushion” :: a piece of batting rolled up into a wad held together with a strip of selvedge, sheesh!

Last week when I was sewing a project that has been commissioned, I was stabbed by an errant pin and my project was ruined with the bloodshed that ensued. I decided enough was enough. These sharp, pointy objects need to be contained in an enclosed space! I looked through the interwebs for a solution and the most common tutorial that kept popping up was

Everyone knows and loves Amy’s tutorials. This is the one I used. I had all the ingredients to get’er done and I did.

This project was so easy and quick and not to forget, adorable. I want to make more. Button jar? Spool jar??

Like I said, I’m a big pinner while piecing. This Mini Swoon block had me furiously pinning all the tiny pieces together.

There are a few points that don’t quite match, but practice makes perfect right? This is good because I’ve got three more blocks to go.

Fellow pinners, how do you control your pin problem?

Posted by Preeti & filed under Crafty, Quilting, Rambling. This post has 5 comments.

There have been many goings on in our little corner and this blog has become so very neglected. Today is Monday :: the perfect day to get back on track!

Picture of our resident hummingbird pinched from the mister’s facebook page 🙂

Earlier this month, Kirtana turned 7 and her birthday sort of morphed into a birthday week and beyond! I think she’s partied out for the time being which is a good thing for this tired mama.

Right after those extended celebrations, both kids were involved with this year’s Remembrance Day activities. They were part of the parade honoring our fallen troops. Kiki is part of Brownies with the Girl Guides of Canada and Prithvi is now a Flight Corporal with Air Cadets Canada.

The Air Cadets program is such a tremendous opportunity for young people to challenge themselves and acquire skills even if they don’t intend to pursue a military career in the future. We are so proud of him and his achievements over the years. In fact, he just got back from a two day camp yesterday. Not the cozy roast marshmallows and sing around the campfire sort of camp. This was a mandatory Field Training Exercise a.k.a survival camp! We had a couple nights of below freezing temps in Vancouver where we are at sea level. The cadets were up in the mountains and Prithvi said it got down to -6 Celcius one night, so, so brrrr! No snow though and all of them survived! Great job cadets!!

Speaking of this arctic chill, I’ve been in full on Christmas mode ever since the calendar said November, not to early right? Right! In fact, at Kiki’s birthday party, one of the activities we had for the kids was to decorate their own Christmas ornaments. You spray liquid adhesive into a plain glass ornament, Mod Podge would work too I guess. Then go to town with glitter! Using a small funnel, pour in as many colors of glitter as you’d like, swirl it around making sure to cover the whole inside of the ornament. Shake out the excess, pop the lid back on, tie a ribbon on top. Done!

It turned out to be a huge hit. Now I want to experiment with some for our tree.

Happy Monday everyone 🙂

Posted by Preeti & filed under Canada, Family, Rambling. This post has 5 comments.

Fall has been different this year with the leaves taking their sweet time to show us their autumnal gloriousness.

We haven’t had to do any raking in the backyard yet and it’s the end of October! Being able to slowly savor the changing colors has been wonderful.

I have a finished fall project too! I saw these Modern Maples popping up all over on Instagram and Flickr. Not wanting to tackle yet another huge project at this time, I settled for a scaled-down version.

The mini Modern Maples.

I dug out some autumn-esque fabric, got this pieced together and quilted in one afternoon. Talk about instant gratification!

It was the picture taking of the finished project that had me dragging my feet!

I quilted this mini using straight lines spaced 1/2 an inch apart and I’m quite pleased with the result.

It’s now up on the wall in our office next to my only other mini that I made last year. As you can see, there is a lot more wall space to fill up with other mini quilts.

I’ve got the pieces cut for a Mini Swoon, so that’s what is on the agenda next!

** Linking up with Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish It Up Friday **

Posted by Preeti & filed under Quilting, Sewn Finishes. This post has 8 comments.

I began this project totally clueless about the size of the end result. I’m attributing that to my quilting newbie-ish-ness. I had a couple (3 maybe?) charm packs of Scrumptious by Bonnie and Camille for Moda.

I decided that these would be great to make the perfect snuggle quilt, you know the kind you want to snuggle with while reading a book or watching TV.

I began slicing and sewing them to make blocks and had a nice stack going.

I sashed each block using Kona cotton in white and then I had rows! It was my first time doing something this big and I was super excited!

When I laid the rows out together on the floor, they looked colorful and bright, but oh so busy. I knew that I needed to add sashing between each row to break things up. I was beginning to sense that this project was going in a different direction than what I envisioned in the first place. I had a sinking feeling that size was going to be a problem.

Yup! It’s massive!!!

While it’s no king size quilt, this thing is huge! My son, Prithvi is almost 6 feet tall and he held it up high for me to take pictures.

I pin basted it on the floor last night and I’ve begun quilting it on my sewing machine. Hah, my tiny machine has got to quilt this BEAST!! I’ve chosen to quilt it using wavy lines and I know it can be done coz I’ve seen Kim do it on her sewing machine countless times and she made many large quilts, larger than this one even. Then again, she’d been quilting for 15 years!

My sewing table can’t handle the beast, so I’m quilting it at our dining table. My family won’t mind that this thing is going to sit there for however long it takes me to geterdone coz we eat dinner at our kitchen table anyways. Kiki’s called dibs on this one already so there’s no turning back, gulp!

The blissful ignorance of a newbie 😀

**Linking up to WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced**

Posted by Preeti & filed under Fabric, Quilting, WIP Wednesday. This post has 9 comments.

Impulse yarn purchases – knitters always make them! I’m not much of a sock knitter, but I can’t help resisting a skein of sock yarn every now and then. Especially when it is jewel-toned and gorgeous like this one.

I felt like it would be perfect for a scarf and thought I’d do a quick pattern rummage into the treasure trove that is Ravelry! Hitchhiker was the pattern that showed up number 1 on my list. But I wanted to keep looking for “that perfect pattern”. Yup, my search ended up in a two-day vortex of indecision. I finally gave up in frustration and cast on for none other than the original contender, Hitchhiker. Funny how that happens every time!

The Hitchhiker Scarf pattern is based on the hilarious and enjoyable book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. If you’ve read the book, you will remember that the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is 42!

Likewise, the Hitchhiker scarf has 42 “teeth” for the patterned edging.

I knew that I would have to either shorten the scarf or do some sort of modification to the pattern to make it work because my skein of Tosh Sock didn’t have the yardage required. I decided to add stripes halfway through my knitting. Some leftover Dream in Color Smooshy from this project looked like it would work for the stripes.

When I was about three-quarters of the way through, I had serious doubts about having enough yarn to make it to the magic number of 42 teeth. I got to the 40th tooth and realized my sci-fi scarf race had to end. I’d run out of both colors of yarn and had just a tiny bit of blue to finish the cast off edge.

42, 41, 40… the galaxy is still doing its thing brilliantly and I haven’t been zapped for not having the perfect number on my Hitchhiker!

Hitchhiker (Ravelry notes)
Pattern: Hitchhiker by Martina Behm
Yarn: Madelinetosh Sock in “Forestry”
Needles: Size US 7 / 4.5 mm

Posted by Preeti & filed under Accessories, Finished Knits, Scarves, Shawl, Stashbusting. This post has 7 comments.

Fab During Drab

Bibs And Burpies

Finish Line… Almost!

Looking Ahead

Mini Mittens… Take 2!

(P)In Control

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