Year End Post--And An Apology

year-end post


way back in april i set a goal/challenge for myself.  i wanted to make a new blog post every monday.   and i was able to keep up pretty well.  sometimes the post didn't go up till wednesday, but i managed one every week.

then autumn came.  two things happened.  i started taking a course to become an emergency medical responder.  its a pretty intensive course and demanding.  lots to read and retain.  for example, after i started the course i did not read a single page of recreational reading. that is a rarity for me!  it also left a lot less time for sewing and craft projects. i just finished the class this week.

the second thing is that last week i broke my arm, my foot, and bruised my hip and knee.  if you're thinking, hey wait a minute. didn't you tell us this before?  the answer is that yes, i told you this before.  back in may of 2017 i broke my arm.  and now I've done it again.  its getting boring!!  that is why there are no capital letters/punctuation in this blog post.  covering the whole keyboard with one hand is hard enough without adding extra work to it!  this time i broke my right arm instead of my left, and im working at using my non-dominant hand.  things are much harder than with the previous break!  so, between the classes and broken arm, i haven't been able to keep up with my blogging.

but this will eventually heal, and i have a good physical therapist who will help me afterwards.  its boring though, not being able to sew or craft.

i hope you all had a blessed and merry christmas.
happy new year!!

The Final Journey--A Quilt

The theme for our guild's challenge this year was "Journey."  My immediate thought was "the final journey," or death.  (I'm not always so macabre, I promise!!)  And what better way to show that, I thought, than "the light at the end of the tunnel."  So I googled that phrase and found these two representations, which I thought were perfect.

And I knew just what method I wanted to use to show my idea.  I learned this method back in 2015 in an Empty Spools class at Asilomar.  And I blogged about the quilt I made back then here.

 So I started cutting fabric confetti.  This is a very simple process.  Simply lay a piece of fabric down on the cutting mat, then cut random up and down strokes with the rotary cutter.  After that, cut random horizontal strokes.  You end up with confetti!

Maybe it wasn't a wise choice to cut the black fabric on a white cutting mat.  Uh-oh!

The plastic bags are kind of shiny and distorting, 

 but this shows some of the different colors of fabric that I cut into confetti.  I must add that with a lot of these, I had to get out more fabric and cut more confetti, as I ran out when I was building the design.

Finally I'm starting on the design!  Using the photo as a suggestion, I started laying down different colors of confetti fabric.  I started with the lightest colors and worked my way out to the edge.  (I have my backing fabric taped to the table, wrong side up, and then that is just batting laid over it.)  The confetti pieces stick pretty well to the batting.  Although I would not do this in front of an open window on a windy day!

You can see that m&ms are sometimes required when doing this!

Here is a close-up of some of the lighter pieces.

And this is what your floor looks like--even on a good day!!

Here I've made quite a bit of progress.  I just kept adding more fabric bits in a circular design.

You can see how the color gradation is changing as I get to the darker colors.  I wanted the light center to be off-centered on my quilt.

I pretty much have the whole piece filled with fabric bits in this photo.  Now comes the fun part!

A piece of black tulle gets laid--Very Carefully--on top of the whole thing.  Pretty sure MisterStitches helped me with this part.  Because once you lay the tulle down, you really don't want to re-position it.

And then came the fun part of safety pinning the living daylights out of it!  The pins have to be placed very close together so that the fabric pieces don't shift.  And yet, you can see that the fabric has shifted some; the white batting is showing through.  That will get taken care of with the quilting.

I know I used every safety pin in my house, and then borrowed some from a friend for this!

This photo shows the quilting.  While I'm quilting, I need to stop every so often and use a long pin to reposition some of the fabric pieces that have migrated.  This is the part where it gets quilted oh-so-heavily, to hold down all the little pieces.

When the quilting was all done, I hung it back up on the wall.  Wow, it really looks different from this angle!  Instead of laying on a table top!  

But now you can see a problem I had.  That white batting really looks awful.  At this point, I thought that maybe I should have used black batting, but that would have shown through the lighter fabrics, probably.  Not sure.  Maybe I should have used white batting for the inside circle and then black batting to fill in the outside edges.  That might have worked.  

What I did here was to take a sharpie and color in all the side parts of the batting.  

This. Was. Not. A. Fun. Job.

Another part of this challenge was that we had to use at least a five-inch square of a particular blue fabric.  I pondered how I was going to achieve this!  But then I simply cut the five-inch square into confetti.  I spread the little pieces around in the outer black part of the quilt.  And it worked!  In fact, I really like the effect. 

Here is a close-up of the little blue specks.

The final product.  About 36" by about 36".

I should maybe add a p.s. here at the end.  In May of 2017 I fell and broke my left arm.  That really hampers sewing and quilting!  I already knew this because I had broken my left arm in 2007 also!  But this type of "quilting" was very easy to do with just one (dominant) hand.  All the cutting of the confetti used just my right hand.  I started placing the confetti on the batting with just one hand.  Then I needed two hands for basting and quilting, and my arm had healed by then!

More Aprons

Busy sewing some more aprons for TwoFish Baking Company.  It seems they always need aprons there, though I can't understand why!!

On this apron I made the pockets of the same fabric as the front, so you can't see them.  You'll just have to take my word for it.

And on this apron, I reverted to my method of using the opposite side's fabric for the pockets.  I like it when that makes the pockets stand out, but the two fabrics don't fight or clash.  Sometimes, I admit, the pocket fabric and the apron fabric simply do not play well together.  

I think I need to be a little more strict about which fabrics I use for the pockets, just so everyone is happy!

A Cute Little Necklace

SisterStitches gave me a little kit some time ago.  (Can't remember how long ago, but long enough that it's slightly embarrassing!)  A tiny, little box, and it contained, literally, everything I needed, including a needle and three choices of thread color!  SisterStitches finds the greatest gifts!

And this is the final result.  I actually came across this recently in a "project bag" with another project, and it was almost finished.  It only needed like three more stitches!

Small little cross stitches, very simple.

So I finished it up, and doesn't it look nice!  I'm so pleased to wear it. 

Thanks again, Sis! 

Green Bag Lady Bag

One of the blogs I follow (see right-hand column of my blog) is the Green Bag Lady.  This remarkable woman has given away over 53,000 fabric shopping bags.  Isn't that incredible!!  She's also a nice person, as I've come to know her a little bit through her visits to my part of the country.  And I have helped to give out quite a few of her bags, which is always fun!

Each bag has its own number.  Here's my number!

I have several of GBL's bags, and I've also used her super-simple pattern (located on her blog) to make some bags of my own.  Some I've given away and some have been for myself.  But when I saw recently that GBL was having a give-away on her blog of bags made from Harmony Art fabric, I just had to put in my name in the hopes of receiving one of the bags.  I also count Harmony as one of my friends, and the fabrics she designs are incredibly beautiful.  Both in look and in feel!

And guess what!  My wish came true!!  I received an email from Bagette Dad, asking for my mailing address.  And this beautiful bag is what came in the mail to me!  Isn't that fabric beautiful!  

The design is called Animal Farm.  I just love the little animals pictured.  Love, love.

So check out The Green Bag Lady's blog and website.  She's doing some great work, besides making pretty things!!

A Little Dress for BabyStitches

I saw this dress sewn up in my local quilt shop, The Loft.  It was so cute that I just had to buy the pattern and make it for BabyStitches.  I chose two different fabrics.  The pretty multi-colored fabric came from that same store, The Loft, and I had the pink print in my stash.

Just so we are all clear on it, the pattern is Kwik Sew #K3775.

It was not the easiest thing I've ever sewn!  In fact, I'll admit that I had to go in to The Loft and ask Marva for some help, as I knew she had already made two of them.  Together, she and I figured out how to put the pieces together.  The unusual thing about this pattern is that there's a front piece, and a back piece, and a side piece.  And it was a little weird how the facings fit with the three different pieces.  But I'm very happy with the result.

Doesn't BabyStitches look lovely, especially wearing Mom's shoes!!??

I put these three pretty yellow sunshine buttons on the front placket.  Yes, I know it is fall, and I have just sewn a sleeveless dress.  But this is California, where the days stay warm longer.  And BabyStitches can always put a little t-shirt on under the dress if it's cool outside.

I found some unusual buttons for the back of the dress.  I was a little nervous about sewing buttonholes, because it's been a long time since I've done any.  And I've never made buttonholes with my newest machine, the Bernina 750.  So I looked in the book, followed the directions, and it was simple!  I held one of the buttons up to the touchscreen of my machine, in the particular corner they told me, and adjusted the corner square (with my stitch length button) so it was the same size as my button.  Then the machine just automatically sewed the buttonhole and it was just the right size!

Some of you may know (remember) that I am a long-time member of the Bear Patch Bits Club.  This club is part of Bear Patch Quilt Company, located near Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota.  SisterStitches is the manager there.  I've made several visits to the store, when I've visited family and friends in the midwest, and it is a really, really nice store.  Lots of wonderful fabric, classes enough to choke a, well, a bear, coffee and cookies, nice quilt samples all around.

Now to the Bear Patch Bits Club.  For a mere $40.00 for a whole year (I think that's what it was), I receive a package in the mail every month.  Containing twenty (yes, 20!) 5-inch squares of new fabric that the store has  recently gotten into stock.  Accompanied by a nice letter (written by SisterStitches!), usually containing a quilt pattern using 5" squares, and also a yummy recipe.  

I have to tell you that these packages have become like Christmas every month for me!!!  I see that oversize white envelope in my mailbox, and I know that there are 20 pieces of joy inside!  Really, each one makes me very, very happy.  This happy relationship has been going on for many years.

Bear Patch Quilt Company is going to close within a few months from now.  I know.  It's very sad.  And I certainly don't begrudge the owner and employees a nice retirement.  But that also means that my little white envelopes will no longer be coming in the mail.

Well, MisterStitches has often been the spectator to my opening said envelopes, and he knows how happy they make me.  So, he really stepped up.   He asked me if he could provide a similar thing for me.   After I picked myself up off the floor, I said, yes I think you can!!  So I pointed him to Missouri Star Quilt Company, and told him that getting a charm pack in the mail would definitely mean the world to me.  

So last week he presented me with the first box.  I opened it and this was inside.  A beautiful, beautiful charm pack of "island print" batiks.  Oh so beautiful!

Just look at them all!

Such luscious colors!!

Aren't these blues gorgeous!!

And the reds/purples!

See what I mean!!??!!

As you can see, MisterStitches really hit it out of the ball park with this idea!  

I think I'll keep him around.

A friend witnessed me opening the box and going through all the colors.  Oh my, it was so much fun!

Alphabet Embroidery

My friend,Jenny, over at Jenny of Elefantz, has designed some beautiful embroidery designs for the whole alphabet.  And she is sharing them by email from her blog one or two at a time.  I thought that maybe this was a "make-along" that I might be able to keep up with, as they are small, so I'm working at turning out lots of pretty little letters.

So far I've done a through f, and am currently working on g.  Once I get the fabric ready and the threads collected, these only take about an hour each to make.

I'm pinning them up on my design wall to keep track of the finished ones.

And now for a few close-ups.  I have to admit that I am more eager to show close-ups of some of them, and a little reluctant to show others, the ones which aren't as nicely done.  But, as DaughterStitches is fond of saying, "It is what it is."  Or "C'est la vie!"

Jenny's idea and instructions call for making 26 little pin cushions with our embroideries.  (Each letter is around 2-3" tall.)  So I added some pretty lavender print to the sides of the "b" for that reason.  But I'm not sure that I want to make pincushions, so now I'm leaving them as just little squares.  Maybe I'll put them into a sampler wall hanging.  Or maybe they will be Christmas ornaments.  Who knows?!?  And some of them might even turn into pin cushions!

Aren't they such cute little designs?!?

I decided to streamline things a little bit, and prepared several squares ahead of time.  I found pieces of appropriate fabric, cut them to size, and ironed a stabilizer onto the back.  I even went through my Bear Patch Bits and found some little squares in there to use.

I have to admit that I have changed the colors a few times from what Jenny has called out.  Sometimes I can't find the right color, and sometimes I just feel like doing it a little differently.  Or, I've chosen a blue background, and she calls for light blue thread.  It's fun because they are such cute little things when they're done.  Go on over to her blog and check them out!