Yay for old cameras!

So okay, I know we live in the age of camera snobbery, where people's blogs are judged by their photos, and people's photos are picked to death by people with photography fetishes. But sometimes it's nice to have pictures of your stuff or your family even if the camera is not awesome and your skillz are not awesome either. 

That being said, I found a way to start using the 8 year old digital camera we gave our oldest son last year (since our two year old camera decided to stop working) which means I can get some pics up here finally. 

First of all, another journal. This one is for...somebody. I don't think that somebody reads my blog, but you can't be too careful, right?

My niece's quilt in progress. Forgive the awful picture, the lighting has been wretched lately so I just did my best with icky indoor lighting. At least I didn't use a flash!! Anyway, this brings me to a little poll question for you: are you the type of quilter who likes to use a designer's whole collection for your quilt, or are you a mix and match quilter?

Personally I find myself to be the latter. Even though I know things will be more perfectly coordinated if I use fabrics from one designer, that takes some of the fun away for me. I love the process of picking out colors and patterns and putting them together, and using one line is (for me anyway) the quilting equivalent of paint by numbers. 

So anyway, this quilt started off with FFA2 as the color inspiration, and grew from there. There's Michael Miller, Denyse Schmidt, Amy Butler, Kaffe Fasset, Heather Ross' Mendocino, Riley Blake...the list goes on. I pretty much just saved any scrap of gray or orange and then threw them all together. I knew I wanted to fussy cut the Sleeping Beauty and Owl and Pussycat prints to be the focal points for each block, which meant doing a square/log cabin-esque layout. I'm a little tired of log cabins personally, so I tried to liven things up a bit by throwing the tiny patchwork squares in the mix. I really liked the effect.

Also, I loved the texture and color of the "Roses" fabric in natural, and thought this might just be the perfect opportunity to try quilting with linen, something I've been wanting to try for a year now but haven't had a project I felt would go well with it. I absolutely LOVE the result. I think linen is my new favorite fabric. Anyway, I like how this is coming together. Sorry for all the chatter. I know I don't usually go on and on about my process but I'm feeling wordy today.

Here are the snowmen I'm embroidering for our family's stockings. I was never really happy with last year's stockings, so this year I decided to take a little more time and make something I really liked, something that reflected our family's personality. And nothing reflects our family personality like the slightly twisted and ironic humor of Calvin and Hobbes. These are so much fun to sew, mostly because I'm laughing while I'm doing it. These are for our boys, I haven't started mine and Art's yet. 

And now for some random Christmas decor:

Can you tell I like garlands? This year I made one out of old Christmas cards, one out of felt a la Betz White's Felt Ogee Ornament post (though I have to admit I did it way easier: I just folded and cut the lines in a very non-precise way, then hot glued instead of stitched. It took me like an hour to make forty of these things), a colorful dot garland out of dot stickers I painted, and my requisite paper chain garlands. Ha ha.

Happy Sunday!