finally sewing again

Brandon may not be able to use his hand - but mine work just fine

and I'd been itching to use them.

With a needle and thread, that is.

I mean, it certainly isn't like I haven't been using my hands at all...

But there were several times during the past few weeks of wedding reception preparations

that I really (really!) wished I had something to hand sew,

but I didn't have time to cut anything out.

I still have the quilting to do on Lily's quilt - but I'm not entirely sure if I want to do any hand-quilting on it or not.

(and I have a sneaking suspicion that when they fixed the timing on my machine, 

the tension got a bit messed up : / I need to call and ask about that.)

A few times when I got the itch, I was tempted to just grab some scraps to stitch on, just to sew something.

Even if it was nothing....

But that just seemed wasteful.

In the future - maybe I'll have the foresight to have a hand sewing project ready to go

when I'm going to be in the midst of big projects that require lots of thinking.

Tuesday, I finally had time to cut into some fabric.

I decided on a shrug, 

but instead of using the pattern in one of Natalie's books (I forget which one it's in)

which I'd need to make a muslin of,

I opted to go with something I knew would fit,

my own t-shirt pattern - cut in the shape of a shrug with 3/4 sleeves.

So far, I've got the shrug constructed, and the sleeve bindings done, complete with random amethyst beads.

The entire garment is hand-sewn, Alabama Chanin style.

Which, you know, makes me all kinds of happy.

Even if it does take forever to finish....

Seeing that every spare moment, and those I can manage to multi-task, is spent sewing,

 I haven't gotten to my library books yet.

But, just in case I have a moment and I'd rather read than sew, well - I'm all set.