busy, busy, busy

So, the last couple of days I've been working on some stuff. Yesterday I made a "Posy Wristlet" from Kokoro No Te. I think it's really cool, but Del doesn't understand it. I had the girls pick out some simple candies to put in it and I'm going to give it to my grandma. The green stem part is like a little pocket and then you use the drawstring to keep the trinkets in there. They picked some little jellybeans. It took me all day long for being such a little thing and there were some instructions I just didn't understand but I faked it and it turned out pretty good. I remembered that I have some Japanese print cotton fabric so I'll use that instead next time. The author of the book, Kumiko Sudo, really stresses using Japanese silks from kimono. Good grief, I don't even know where to find that stuff. She famous enough that people send her scraps from kimono that they have in their house or they've found or bought and the like. Why is it that rich people get so much free stuff and us poor people have to pay lots of money for cool things like kimono silk? Anyway, I used the best cotton fabric in my stash; I actually bought this stuff from a real quilting store instead of from Joann's, which has...fabric, not fabulous fabric.
Today I worked on Ella's quilt. We made her give up her blankies when she turned 5 and I cut up two of them to make into a big quilt to put on her bed. It's been sitting around because of the Christmas rush and then because I've been so sick with this baby. But, now it's time to work on it. I found a pattern in a quilting magazine that I really liked and the premise is: make a four-patch, draw a circle on it. Make a quilt sandwich, which in this case goes batting, four-patch, white backing. Sew around the circle. Cut a slit in the backing and then trim and turn it right side out. When you get enough of these circles sew them together in squares and then on the back you'll have these flaps of rounded quilt which you quilt down, thus covering up the slit you made to turn the circle. On the back you'll have this scrappy, patch quilt and on the front you'll have white stars with four points.

Here's a picture from the magazine I got the pattern from. You can see the front stars and then the back is all patches.

OK, last thing. Our little caterpillar cocooned himself. He spent a couple of days trying to find a comfy place to rest and spinning all this web-like stuff and the he finally settled on under a leaf and one minute he was just resting in his web-like stuff and the next he shed all his hair and he crunchy head and he was an orange and black cocoon. It happened so fast! Anyway, here he is.