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When I was a kid, I made simple friendship bracelets by braiding three strands of floss. I always envied the girls with thicker, more colorful bracelets and I remember trying to learn how to make them, but never meeting anyone with the patience to really teach me. I forgot about them until I saw this post about friendship bracelets on the Purl Bee. The link contains great photos and step-by-step instructions. Man, I wish I had the internet when I was coming up!

As usual, I think I messed up every single step possible.

Mistake 1.

I went to City Quilter to buy a few colors of embroidery floss and only saw these beautiful hand-dyed colors.

They are beautiful, made in America, and use environmentally friendly dyes, but they are also double the price of regular floss.

I am all about paying more for better quality and supporting smaller businesses, but not the first time I’m making a new project. If I looked six inches to the left, I would’ve seen drawers and drawers of cheaper floss which would’ve made much more sense to practice on. I wish I saved these fancy flosses for an actual friend.

Indy, as always, was helpful.

Mistake 2.

I have no idea how to tie a slip knot. I watched many a youtube video on it, but still had to do it four or five times until it was centered and small enough.

Mistake 3.

For some reason, I imagined it would take me 15 minutes to tie these knots and finish this bracelet. It took more than three hours mostly because of Mistake #4.

Mistake 4.

I tried to keep all the colors laid out flat and pulled tight as I made the knots, but somewhere along the line, I realized the entire right side of the bracelet was messed up and getting worse and worse with each row.

I had to pull out most of the bracelet and start again. This brings me back to Mistake 1. If I wasn’t using the designer label floss, I would’ve just started fresh. I literally cried.

Although the process was a rough first try, I am really happy with the final result.

I ended it with two braids that slip through the slipknot and tie in a bow.

The hand-dyed fabrics gave the final product a pretty interesting look. The green, for example became paler or deeper in different sections.

Although the inconsistent colors made the bracelet more interesting, the inconsistent knots are more YIKES than interesting.

At long last, the Bounce top is finished!

I decided to take some pictures with some New York City architecture that echos the circle motif.

St. Vincent’s Hospital.

The Maritime Hotel.

The Cabana bar outside of the hotel.

Hotel’s porthole windows.

In early December, Nova posted her pattern for Pillow Pockets.

The pattern was so incredibly cute, I just knew I wanted to make one for my niece, but I wasn’t sure I could pull it together in time for her birthday. I kept seeing the pattern pop up all over the internet and read about how fun and simple this pattern is to complete, so I thought I would give it a try.

After an evening pulling out all of my fabrics and choosing colors for the Dresden Plate, I spent some time trying out different backgrounds for the pillow. I really like the high contrast between the background fabric and the Dresden Plate in Nova’s samples.

I also liked the idea of something more harmonious.

In the end, I decided on the strawberries because pink is the girl’s favorite color and I’m not sure what other project lends itself so well to hot pink strawberries.

The Dresden plate was straightforward to piece together, but I had never made a pillowcase before, so I anticipated pulling out a lot of stitches stitches and trying to figure it all out. Indy settled in for a long evening, but the pattern was actually a snap.

I found every step of the way so rewarding. Each night I worked on this, I went to sleep pretty pleased. I have had a couple dud patterns recently, so I am grateful for the clear instructions I know I saved myself a lot of headache.

Finished with hours to spare before her party!

I kept the quilting super simple.

I used a complimentary stripe for the fabric in the back. I just added this to my stash after visiting (read: paying extremely high prices for little bits of gorgeous fabrics) Britex in San Francisco.

Okay, EXTREMELY simple quilting. Don’t mind the cat hair.

I received a stack of Robert Kaufman Poseidon solids for Christmas and the one I tried out as a background fabric ended up making a perfect for the binding.

I repeated the stripe inside the pocket.

I am really happy with the final product.

The birthday girl was pretty happy too!

I made a few mug rugs for my coworkers this year. I lost my camera for a couple days, so here are some blurry shots from my cell phone.

I bought the red mugs from Bed Bath & Beyond and found some glittery ribbon at a card store. I rolled up the “rug” and put it inside and wrote a card.

The dots were leftover from Bounce, and the smaller prints were from my Trip Around the World quilt. I bought the square floral piece from a quilt show in Somers. I’m really pleased how smaller print fabrics compliment it!

I didn’t use a pattern, but it is similar to my last mug rug. This one came out a little smaller, which I think is how they are “supposed to be.” (Unlike the corners of this project, which are not at all how they are “supposed to be.”)

I quilted it with my walking foot on my machine. This seems like the kind of project that should zip up in no time, but I made six of them and ran into a bunch of small issues so the project took a couple weeks of evenings. In the end, I’m happy with how they came out and I think my coworkers will really enjoy them!