Back from vacation in TX..... Pincushion swap received!

 I received my pincushion package the other day, it was chock full of goodies from my partner Carol,aka mamacjt at Flickr!  Look at all this loot!  2 fabulous pincushions- a big prince of a frog named Frank and a beautiful wristlet flower pincushion along with some decorative pins that look like cakes and desserts. Also, a box of Jelly Bellies that are drink flavored, and a bunch of prom queen stuff, since Carol was worried that I felt left out because I never went to an actual prom.  Aw, isn't she sweet?  She even wrote a fairy tale about it.  She sent me a Prom Queen sash and a tiara, cool! And of course, the Prom King, Frank.  LOL  The Fairy Tale is a hoot to read and it's very clever.  It incorporates the names of so many Flickr friends, it's just wonderful.

Frank is a chunky fellow, he has a wonderful feel to him and he's gigantic!

Thanks so much for being a fun swap partner, Carol!

Now on to vacation stuff-

(to see this better, click on the link below)

While in TX, my friends took me to a fun quilt shop called The Nimble Thimble, in Tyler.  As I was waiting to have some fabric cut, a lady came in with a really pretty quilt top that she had made for her granddaughter.  This is the pattern she started with, above.   It's called the  "You Are Everything" quilt and it's from Lizzie B Cre8tive.  We all just loved it- my friends came over to see what was going on- one was reading a book on her iPad and the other had her Kindle Fire, they don't sew or quilt, but they enable me to buy more fabric and patterns by cheerfully driving me there, coming inside, carrying bolts, offering suggestions, etc.  I just love those 2 ladies!  Lisa and Jennifer, you rock!

Anyway, the lady needed a backing and binding and I'm happy to say that we all got to be involved in that process and I think we guided her nicely.  :)  She really appreciated the help.  And when we saw her block in the bottom corner that had a red pig and said "the sooey to my Razorback", that struck up a whole new conversation because her granddaughter and I both live in Arkansas.  So this quilt can be personalized!  I want to make a sarcastic one, with things like "you are the thorn in my side" or "the pain in my ass", "the shark in my ocean", "the salt in my wound", "the knife in my back", etc.  LOL  Hey, I could make it for my Flickr buddy Kimmie! 

I had a wonderful time in TX at my friends Jennifer and Charles' house.  Our friend Lisa came up, too, from southern Louisiana with her little puppy, Charlie and he was just a delight.  He really entertained us and made us laugh even more than we already would.  He was so full of beans and he was FAST, running in circles, digging in some freshly turned dirt, getting filthy in the process.  Turned out, some fish carcasses had been buried in that garden and he was on the hunt for fish bones.  When told, my husband said he had a future as a cadaver dog!  lol  That was so funny.  Charlie is a terrier of some sort and weighs about 10 pounds.  I can just picture him working next to the big dogs!

Now I'm home and on a crusade to clean our house, it really needs a thorough deep-cleaning as we have company coming soon and we also need it just because I'm tired of looking anywhere in the house and seeing a mess.  So I'll be busy doing that, until I can't stand it anymore.  This is what I get for going and staying in immaculate houses!  

We went to our friends Blakeley and Sylvia's Open House at their shop, Wilson & Wilson Folk Art Co. in Eureka Springs a couple of weeks ago, and we got these 2 wonderful blackbirds!  They look great on our mantle along with all their other animals.  I just love their work!  These are an early birthday present from my sweet husband.  We got a cardinal last year that is to die for.

 And these are the pincushions I made for our swap- a trash can with a removable lid and storage inside, and a "cardboard" box for pins.  Inside the lid is a removable tape measure.  The trash can is my own pattern, I made it up as I went along.  It's made from felted wool and Timtex.  The box is cotton fabric, stuffed with ground walnut shells.

 I also made the snail from a Vanilla House pattern and shrunk it way down to be pincushion size.  Partner liked the trash can more, though, so I get to keep the snail! 

Our clematis (2 plants) is blooming wonderfully this year!

Have a great weekend everybody!  Thanks for plowing thru all the photos, I should blog more often and make these posts shorter, sorry about that.  I just never feel like I have much to say so I put it off until I suddenly have too much!

Mug Rug Received, bitties made and how to track an errant cat...

 This is the cute Halloween mug rug I received from Jeanette/scrapnchick, I just love it and I'm still using it even though it's almost the middle of November.  I do love bats!

And one of November's Bitty Block Swap themes was science/biology.  I decided on dissected frogs.  

 Close-up-

 And we're doing a side swap of calendar blocks- I was assigned April, so I went with Easter bunnies. I found an image by Googling and thought this was adorable.  I had some perfect fabric for the background and so I made these.  I added blush to the ears and noses for some color.  This is not my artwork, but can't find it again to give the proper credit. 

 And one of our cats, Beeswax, has been scaring us to death, going off for 2.5 days at a time, worrying us sick.  He finally showed up one morning and then disappeared again that night for another 2.5 days.  This time, I was ready for him!  I got some surveyor tape and wrote our phone number on it in case he's going to someone's house or barn.  I don't think he'd let anyone touch him, so I wrote it big so maybe they'll call us if he is going to their place.  Our nearest neighbors are a long walk from here, though, so there's no real telling where he's going or what he's doing.  Beez is 8.5 years old and has been neutered since he was very young, so it's not girl-trouble.  Anyway, he stayed home for a solid week, so we thought he was over this meandering thing, but then last night, I guess he took off again, he didn't come home for breakfast.  It's a very full moon, I guess the lure was too much, whatever it is.  I just hope he's careful and comes home soon.  We love our Beeswax so much, he's the coolest cat and LOVES to sit on Jim for hours.  The other 4 cats are being very good and hanging around in the house, because it's chilly outside and quite wet, we got almost 5" of rain last week. (Updated to add- he's home again, he was gone 3.5 days that time and then again for just 2, now it's cold and wet and he's staying in, yay!)

That's all that's happening here, except for a new Christmas mug rug swap that I'm trying to decide on what to make.  I can't tell you any of my ideas because it's not a secret swap this time, my partner is Ruthiequilts and I don't know if she ever looks at my little blog.  She's an amazing quilter/crafter though so I am feeling some pressure!

Finished the latest scrappy mug rug...

I had shown you a sketch, earlier, and I was actually able to make it work in fabric, surprisingly enough.  Yes, I always doubt my own abilities to translate an idea into an actual object.  

 I tried a new-to-me technique- weaving strips of fabric together that have fusible webbing on the back, to make the tablecloth.  That was fun and very easy to do.

Here's a close up of raw-edge appliqueing.

The finished mug rug- the binding is a red with pale gray dots.

The label is the tea bag paper thing.  I added the napkin to help make the cup and saucer stand out from the tablecloth more, it adds a nice 3D touch, too.

 The back is called "Round Robin" by Michael Miller. 

I still have to decide on the Haiku poem to go with this.  I'll write it on a card and include it.  I hope my partner likes this.  It's not very practical, really, but I think it came out pretty well.  Now I just to make her a little something extra and it'll be ready to mail when the time comes.  :)

Thanks for looking at it!  

Progress on the Doll Quilt and a Mug Rug Sketch...

 I made some progress on the doll quilt, I'm doing a "Wheel of Fortune" mini quilt for my partner.  Hopefully she'll like it, it was a challenge to do with 96 little triangles, each triangle has 4 pieces of fabric in it, that's a lot of seams and this little puppy weighs a lot!  Here you can see the size difference between unsewn triangles at the bottom and 4 sewn ones at the top.  All the seam allowances shrink it by about 25%.

 All sewn together- it measures 10.5" x 13.75".  I'll add a white border and then bind it with a pink, maybe a scrappy binding.

A close of one of the stars.  Getting these little strips to line up correctly was a pain in my butt, some of them I unpicked and resewed 3 times.  Grrr!

It's still not perfect, but it's acceptable, I think.

Gravey seems to approve of it!  :)

And here is my sketch for the Haiku mug rug swap.  It's a bird, bathing in a cup of tea.  Pretty whimsical, but I think it's funny and the poetry possibilities are good.  :)

 

Family is in town this week!  Too bad it's about 100º here and dry.  Lots of stay-inside time, I predict.

Happy Fourth of July to the USA!

Happy Fourth of July!

I finished up my set of red birds- spring, summer, autumn and winter... Autumn looks very patriotic, doesn't he?

I had made 2 of these little birds a while back when the bitty theme was birds- I offered a choice of the spring or winter birds.  Then I decided a set of 4 was in order so I made a couple more, summer and autumn.  I had some time to work on them on Friday and so I pulled some fabrics and got them done.  Each little mini measures 7" square. I think I need to add a falling leaf on the autumn one as his leafy bits aren't really showing up too well, it's overpowered by the red and the dark blue.  Other than that, though, I'm pretty pleased with these.  :)

It's nice to actually be getting things done for a change, I need to do this more often.  Seems like I start a lot of things, but don't finish them in a timely fashion.  

None of you guys would ever do that, right?  lol  Yeah, that's what I thought!  I'm in good company!

Doll Quilt Beginnings.... Mug Rug Ending ............. and something to keep!

 Murphy helped me pick out fabrics!  He voted against both of those blues, in the end.  I think he didn't like them being brighter than his blue eyes.  :)

 I'm going to make a village with a snow-capped purple mountain backdrop.  It's going to be a rainbow village, with the blue sky on top, going down to purples, then red, orange and yellow houses on a green grass yard with a small pond with a fountain.  There will be some things in the sky, probably a sun and a cloud or two and maybe a curving line of flying geese, in a rainbow of colors, that will get smaller as it gets farther away.  (For those of you who don't quilt, flying geese are triangles of fabric.)  I'm making the houses right now, that's my today project, getting them done. 

 It feels good to have gotten started on this and I hope my partner will like it.

 This is what I'm sending to my mug rug partner- 2 mug rugs, a scrap of hedgehog fabric, a chocolate bar, 2 cocoa mixes and 2 postcards of our area.  I think she'll be pleased. 

And here is something I made to keep.  3 birds on a wire, with butterflies.  I hung it on the wall in my craft room, inside the ironing board cabinet.  I'll see it a lot there.  :) I found the bird image on clipart so I don't have a pattern to sell or provide.

Bitty Block Busyness! And a quilt swap completed....

The theme for February in the Bitty Block Committee was text/word or trees on a white background.  I had this cute cat/dog background fabric so I made cat and dog blocks.  

 The fabric was too perfect to not use!

 I tried two on this fabric but it was too finicky to make a dozen of- I was covering up the best parts of the kitties!  So I kept the one for me and I only had one to swap.  :)

 I knew I wanted to do spring trees and when they were done, they were too plain.  So I cleverly (I thought at the time) added a swing to each one.  Little did I know, so did a couple of the other swappers!  I'm not nearly as clever as I think.  My husband told me to add a tire swing, but I thought that was too boyish.  lol  I should have listened to him!  DON'T tell him I said that! 

 They came out pretty cute, though, I think.

 We're doing a side-swap too, of the "Out of Our Gourds" fruit and veggies- spoofing on famous people who have names similar to fruits and veggies!  Ones like "Ludwig von Beet-hoven"  and "Beety Boop", not to mention "The Grapeful Dead", "Lima Minelli", Pablo Pea-casso, etc.  :) 

I made Alexander the Grape. 

 We all had to make 14 of our guys/girls. 

I've got 2 more sets to finish- another set of trees and one of words.  They'll be done soon, just a little handwork left.   That'll make 62+ bitty blocks I've made this month.  Phew!  (I usually make a few extras for side-swaps or to keep for projects like you're about to see below.)

 I used one of my left over red bird bitty blocks and made this mug rug, but I suspect it'll end up on a wall instead of under a cuppa.  I love how it turned out.  I'm doing another one right now with one of my little kite-flying hedgies.  If this one is winter, the hedgie is spring.

 And I was in another swap, the theme was "Take Flight" and my 8 year old partner, Max, made me this wonderful "The Flight of the Rainbow Balloons" mini quilt.  I absolutely love it and I hung it up on the wall just the left of where I sew upstairs.  Every time I turn my head, I am delighted by it!  8 years old, can you believe it?  He's going places, that Max!  Such talent.  His mom is amazing, so I am sure he gets it from her.  You might know her- she goes by lolablueocean at Flickr.

 The back is wonderful, too, look at that great label!

I sent him a quilt of a dragon carrying a little boy over a castle town, in the night.  I think we were both pleased with our swap!  He's a great kid and I hope to swap with him again, but I know he's going to be in high demand!

So that's what I've been doing, along with making things for my shop.  I need to get those listed!  Off to the salt-mine!

More bitty blocks made...

Oh, the Scrappy Mug Rug Swap is up and running again.  This is round 3. 

More of the little blocks for swapping/making mini quilts-

Little red birds- some in the winter, some in the summer, just for fun.  The swappers got to pick which season they would get.  These go along with the other birds I made, for the bird theme for December's blocks.  The other ones were roundish/oval birds sitting on a wire, if you recall.  Rainbow colored. 

I'm really pleased with how both of the birds turned out.

January's blocks are for Whimsical/Woodland.  I made some flying squirrels.  I used a q-tip dipped in a weak water/bleach solution to fade out the tummies. 

The first photo is the most accurate, color-wise. 

We have flying squirrels here and see them occasionally, usually when some cheesy cat catches one under the bird feeder and drags it into the house.  My gosh, are they ever cute and soft and because of their excess "wing" skin, sort of sloppy/droopy/adorable!  I just want to keep them and hug on them and put one in my pocket, but the little buggers have been known to bite!  I wish they'd bite the cats so the cats would leave them alone.  They are so precious!

And the little hedgehog - he was so popular in the castle quilt that I thought a dozen people would like to have one of their own.  I know I wanted one!  I hated sending that mini quilt away!  He is also for the woodland/whimsical theme for January, 2011.  The swappers in the group got to pick which one they'd like, as the kites are all different.

So that's what I've been making- I'm also working on a swap mini for my young partner, Max.  I'm almost done with it, I'll post some sneak peeks next time!