New Year's Pen-Eve?

Got a bit more sewing done today, and I've been poking at transferring the sewing blogs I follow from my browser bookmarks to the sidebar here.  There are a lot of them!

Let's see.  I finished the drawstring playmat for Squiddle's Duplo blocks.  The one I made a touch larger than the one in the tutorial; it has a 40" diameter when flat, and thus far contains both his train set and construction vehicles set when it's pulled into a bag.  More than I'd thought it would!  And a couple more yards of fabric used up.  I need to make him another for my parents' house.  Theoretically this will make for easier cleanup; you just toss the blocks onto the mat and pull the drawstring when you're done playing.  I did have to switch back from the Babylock machine to my Singer 15 to finish the mat.  No matter how I fiddled with the tension on the Denim Pro II, it just wasn't working to topstitch around the edge through four layers of quilting cotton.  Ah well.  I just needed it for the buttonholes, really.

I also sewed my nine blocks for this month's Block Lotto.  That was actually kind of fun, and used up most of the 1.5" strips I had lying around and not yet put into the box of 1.5" strips.

And, not something I sewed today, but something I'm just getting around to pictures of, one of my more recent quilts:

I titled this one "You Are My Sunshine" since I made it for my older son, Squiddle, while I was expecting my younger son, Jazzy.  I gave it to Squiddle as a gift when Jazzy was born in September.  The blocks I won in May from the Orange County Quilters Guild block of the month drawing.  Two of the blocks are mine - top left and bottom center.  The brown sashing was a remnant, and I used almost every last scrap.  One of the sashes is pieced, I had so little left!  The blue border I picked up at the Bargain Bazaar at Costume College this year - at a certain point they switch over from "make us an offer" mode to "fill a trashbag for $5" mode, and I walked out with two trashbags full this year.  The backing, which I don't have a picture of, was a couple pieces one of my quilt guild friends gave me, that coordinated perfectly with the front.  And the sunflower fabric in the cornerstones is actually part of what I love most about this quilt.  It's from the fabric stash I inherited from my maternal grandmother, the one who first taught me to quilt.  I think she would approve, having her fabric used in a quilt for her great-grandson.