Lemony Fresh Victory!

A new paper-pieced pattern is complete!  ...and it wants to TAKE OVER THE WORLD!

Invader Zim is here!

Invader Zim was a short-lived Nickelodeon cartoon from the early 2000s about Zim, a short alien with an ego the size of a galaxy who was banished to the planet Earth.  He is a bit delusional and makes it his mission to take over the planet with the help of his happy-go-lucky robot GIR.  The show could be described as a cupcake made from equal parts insanity and creepiness.  With a piggie on top.

Anyways, it's a show that my brother-in-law very much enjoyed, and therefore this became his birthday present.

Invader Zim is a pretty complicated pattern... there are 25 pieces that need to be sewn together.  Because of the complexity, I had to make him quite large... a full 18 inches square.  Here is a view of the back with most of the paper taken off:

For fun I decided to make him into a giant hexagon as opposed to the traditional square.  He is, after all, an Irken alien!

After I had him all pieced together I decided to accentuate the edges and add some details by embroidering around his head and arms.  Then I sewed him into a pillow!

You too can sew up your own Ivader Zim with my FREE pattern, available here!

Check out all of my paper-pieced patterns on the patterns page!

Roly-Poly Fish Heads!

It's summertime, and that means vacation time... which in our family means fishing time!

This picture is from a couple of years ago... Guess who caught the big fish?

Our family's annual vacation tradition inspired this super-cute pencil case:

I was also inspired by the shark pencil cases in minnebites Etsy shop.  I made up my own pattern with shorter fins and I appliqued the eyes (mostly because I didn't have any googly eyes in my stash...)

This fish sure is hungry!

Fish heads, fish heads...

...eat them up, YUM!

Pinterest Project: Modular Coasters

This week's project was from the blog "How About Orange."  We made modular felt coasters and they were super simple and fun!  To start out, we cut out 4 felt rectangles based on the templates that you can download here.  The pieces are woven together (as explained here) and voila!

A coaster is born!

Once the modular shapes are cut out, they can be arranged in different color combinations for different looks.

...and they give my morning cup of tea a pretty place to sit.