After years of execution and planning, our back family room is finally a pleasant place to be. It's not 100% done, but we're getting there. Elie did almost all the work himself—he is no joke. He figures out the things I don't. And vice versa. Which brings me to the fluffy pile of muslin.

Every so often, my sewing is a contribution and not a distraction. I made simple muslin curtains for all the back room windows, and now it's not a fishbowl. I have made these for every window in this house. We used to wonder and argue and have grand ideas about curtains, but now we know what works. This time there wasn't even a discussion.

I'll show you the back room once it gets a little more, hmmm...furnished. We need some shelves. I love this number.

PS This weekend we made awesome grilled stuff-from-the-garden pizza. Thanks Melissa.

Hello there. Have your days been as full as mine? I love getting home from work in the summer and feel like I still have day left, like there's part of the actual day that my family and I own. We enjoy the sinking sun, and pick things from the garden, and take too long making dinner. Why the heck not?

I've been sewing too, but really not finishing much. I suppose I might take process pics, but I've been doing that a bunch in the garden instead. One finishing exception—I did manage to sew the buttons on to this top I sewed a couple of weeks ago. I like it. It has a peplum (aka it flounces out under the waist), which is about my favorite thing ever in a button-down blouse. I made it as a muslin, but I like it as a shirt. After completing it, I almost cut into my "good" fabric right away, but then I decided that I should probably take it for a test drive. How many times have you noticed how much less comfortable a shirt is at 3:30 at your desk than it was at 7:00 in front of your bedroom mirror? A million. The shirt held up well. I had been thinking about taking it in a little at the waist, but now I don't think I will. I will make the shoulders more narrow though. I'll pinch a straight line down from the shoulders right through the bust. That will shape it up just fine.

I'm so glad I joined the scrappy pincushion swap. There is just something so succinct about a pincushion—it's small, it's stickable, and that's about all the requirements there are. Pincushions were some of the first things I made and fell in love with when I started blogging. I loved (and still love) how diverse and how special they are. Highly detailed or not, I can't help admiring their utilitarian loveliness.

My pincushion went out to my partner today. I am at the tail end of the swap, but not late. I hope she loves it—it was hard to put in the box! The felt bunny pattern is from Japanese craft book ISBN 9784529047869, which is chock full of adorable animals you can stitch up in felt. The rest of the pincushion came from my scrap basket—it was a scrappy swap, after all. I kind of want to make an entire army of these now. Pincushion group shots really get me.