Stitching in the Barn

I started sewing about 11 years ago before the birth of my son in 2000. I don't remember why except that I wanted to make him clothes. One of the first things I made was this mouse for my then 7 year old daughter. I don't even know where I got the pattern from. Very likely, it was from a book in the library. It's so funny now looking back at it. She still had it in her closet among all her other stuffed animals that I suggested we finally clear out. It looks more like a rat than a mouse and it always gives us a chuckle to see it. It's amazing to consider a few years later I made this dog for my son when he was in his "Clifford the Big Red Dog" phase. He took me like 21 total hours to make. I was curious so I kept track of the time. After that one, I never made another and I've rarely made a stuffed animal since then. I reorganized my sewing space last weekend. I didn't really clean it, there was nothing to throw out. I tried to ma...

I made this quilt for my MIL. She loves decorating for Halloween, she's sews also and I knew she would love and appreciate this wall quilt. She showed it to everyone:

that took a long time to complete. These two quilts had been languishing in my UFO (Un-Finished Objects) pile for quite a long time. The reason was because I had the intention of working on them by hand. I really don't have much patience recently to finish them so when my husband bought and fixed my Necchi last year I used it to finish these by machine and get them out of the pile. The first is a labyrinth quilt:

This is the first baby quilt I ever made and it never got delivered:

I don't remember when I made this quilt and I haven't hung it up in a very long while but it was one of my very firsts.  It's a very small purple and red-violet Irish chain quilt. The reason it's a Harry Potter quilt is because I embroidered some symbols familiar in the early Harry Potter books into the open spaces:

This is my first finished quilt. It's buried today in a plastic storage bin somewhere but I do bring it out and hang it on the wall when I feel like it fits the season, though it's not for any specific one. It's my 9/11 quilt but it doesn't have a name. It isn't because I made it in remembrance of the event but it's because I finished sewing on the binding by hand while I was riveted to the horrific scenes in NYC that day. Looking back, maybe I'll call it "Grounded By Quilting" because it helped me stay grounded while watching those news reports.