The handmade goods of my friends and family are a great source of inspiration for me. This fall, I've been keeping cozy with two gifts given to me by other talented people.

My sweet sister Carmen knitted these fingerless mitts for me last winter and when the weather started to turn, they were the perfect thing to keep me cozy.

They also paired perfectly with a beautiful loop scarf crocheted by my dear friend Sheelagh.


Sheelagh was very modest about her work, but I was amazed to learn that this was the very first thing she has ever crocheted!

Multi-talented Sheels.

Unfortunately, fall is officially over in Saskatchewan with the arrival of snow and cold this week, so I've had to graduate to full mittens, earmuffs (I love my 'muffs) and a scarf wrapped tightly around my neck. But this look was nice while it lasted.

Put 'em both together and you've got some fall coziness!

I'm home after a three-week holiday in France and Italy and so happy that it's still summery weather in Saskatchewan! Which is great, because I have a few summertime projects to post about.

Two VIB's (Very Important Babies) were born over this past summer: our beautiful niece Lilah Caroline (aka Rosie or Blu-ey*) came onto the scene in July and the charming Sina Rose-Ann came to the party in early August.

Your niece and your best friend's first baby call for some serious gifting.

Luckily, my Mom and I had been "oohing" and "ahhing" at the recipes coming out from the Moda Bake Shop for some time, including this one for a Cathedral Window Baby Playmat. I gather that people don't like to hold their children constantly, so rather than placing them on a pile of broken glass, they can rest them on this delightful mat!

This project looked like so much fun, I just had to make one for each of the new babes. I wasn't disappointed - I had a blast piecing these together and was very happy with how they turned out.

Sina's is on the left, Lilah's the right

Even the backside is pretty!

I had the opportunity to spend a weekend working on one of them at the lake with my product tester, the lovely Everleigh:

This playmat is baby approved!

Cozy for adults, too!

Some tips if you decide to take this on yourself (noting the step in the Moda pattern, if applicable):

I love you, rotary cutter. No, I'm not exaggerating!

• Buy an Olfa Rotary Circle Cutter. I think it only ended up being about $15 (with a coupon from Michael's, of course), so it is well worth the investment. I have no idea how you would get perfect circles with just a regular cutter and it saves you a tonne of time. Bonus: it's fun to use!
• Steps no. 1 and 2: Once you get a sense of where to place your cutter on each piece of fabric, you won't need to fold, press and mark each square before you cut a circle out of it (also a time saver!)
• Steps no. 6 and 7: Once you've placed them in a configuration you like, take a photo of it. It gets hard to remember what goes next to what once you start sewing them into rows. Picking a nice configuration (front and back) was a real challenge for me, being design challenged!

Take a picture of your layout

• Step no. 9: Your sewing machine may already have a walking or quilting foot (and like me, you don't know it). The great gals at the Pfaff store told me that it's the black foot behind the regular sewing foot that you can lower and raise as needed. By golly, they were right!

• Step no. 13: Make sure your square template is perfect, perfect, perfect! It really throws your alignment off if it's not a perfect square, so be careful with this step.
• Step no. 20: I didn't have an iron handy when I was finishing one of the mats, so I had to pin down the flaps before top stitching them. This actually turned out way better than ironing them down, so if you have the extra time (I had rainy day lake time), I would suggest this.

Hard at work

*In utero, Lilah was called "Rosie" or "Blu-ey" by her elder sister Claire (my brother- and sister-in-law thought they might pay homage to Beyonce and Jay-Z's baby, as they are such huge fans). Rosie hasn't stuck, but much to the chagrin in my in-laws, Blu-ey has.

Lilah - one day old

Sina - a week old

Summer in Saskatchewan is about 45 seconds long. At least it feels that way to most of us.

Realistically, we get about 10 weeks of excellent weather for enjoying the outdoors, so it would be shameful for me to waste them behind my sewing machine*.

So rather than thread from a sewing machine, this post pays tribute to the kind of threads that you wear. I purchased a fantastic pair of sewing-inspired sandals by Camper to satisfy my crafting urges this summer. They never fail to make me smile (and get a few compliments, I might add!)

Yes, those are measuring tapes!

After all, isn't this what summer is really all about?





*With a few exceptions, as there have been two very special babes born this summer which will be the feature of an upcoming post!