A Little Gift From SisterStitches

For one of my "special days," SisterStitches gave me a cute little necklace embroidery kit.  I finished it, and put it on the chain that was included with the kit.  (I really like it when they include everything you need in the kit, don't you?!?)

With the needle provided, I was easily able to make the cross stitches through the holes in the wooden circle.

This is how the kit arrived.  They gave me quite a bit of thread, and even two colors so I could choose which one to use!  Thank you, SisterStitches!

Retreat 2019

We had a wonderful time at retreat this year.  There were twenty-four of us there, which made a very nice group.  A friend of mine, Lori, had given me a printed fabric panel which says, "What happens at  quilt retreat stays at retreat."  I added some borders to it, and it stood on a little easel on our welcome table.  It helped (as if we needed any help!) to remind us that retreat is all about having fun.

This year's Quilt of Valor block was a simple foundation pieced scrappy block sewn on a sheet of phone book paper!  They will go together to make a very nice quilt.  Eight inches was the biggest square that I could get out of the phone book, so that's our size.  I'll need to add a border or two.  Here are some of them sewn together.  The little blue dots are actually tape telling me the row and column number so I could keep them all straight.

And I made progress on the 2018 Quilt of Valor that we made at last year's retreat.  I got a backing pieced for it, and with the help of a couple friends, it is now sandwiched and all I have to do is quilt it.

Retreat is always a very cozy time for me.  The weather outside may be challenging, and this year it was colder than usual.  I don't think any of us used the hot tubs this year, as it was just too cold to think about getting out of the hot tub!  But inside it was warm and cozy, as usual.  The hum of machines and the smell of hot fabric being ironed really appeals to me!

In light of my recent broken bones (last December), Kalynn encouraged everyone to wrap me up in pieces of batting to protect me from further mishap.  I looked like a mummy!

Baby Afghans

Lots of afghans being stitched up here!  Sometimes it seems like they just fly off my fingers!

In December I took ten of them to Project Santa here in my town.

Two different shades of pink look nice together.  Simple double crochet stitch throughout.

You can just ignore that shadow in the lower left corner!

This one  used all the same color, but I mixed up things a little bit by adding some random skipped stitches.

Number 2 Shirts (and a Christmas shirt) for BabyStitches

back before i broke my arm i was able to sew some "number 2" t-shirts for babystitches.  her birthday is in early december.  and i also sewed a christmas tree shirt, like i made for granddaughterstitches quite a few years ago.  i found the idea on pinterest.  i just cut a tree-shaped triangle out of green lace, with the curly edge as the bottom of the tree.  fused it in place.

then i used some beading thread to sew on some sequins, topped by little seed beads.  i think buttons could be used, too, for the "ornaments."

i really love this little pink piece of fabric (moleskin?) that is specifically for holding beads.  it does a great job of holding them in place where i want them until im ready to use them.

and here is the finished christmas shirt!

i have never before bought t-shirts from amazon to make these.  I've always been able to find a t-shirt in a store.  this time, however, i hadn't been near a store for quite a while, so i ordered them from amazon.  and you know what happens when you buy a kids t-shirt from amazon, right?  you can't order just one! so i had six shirts and decided to decorate them all.

i made this cute salmon-colored t-shirt.

and a green number on this gray shirt.

the same green number as i put on this green shirt.  i used all batik fabrics this time, to hopefully help with fraying.  and after fusing each number,  i went around each one in machine blanket stitch.  

then i decided to put a letter "e" on one shirt, as her name starts with "e" and she's learning her letters.  i used a cute red print, and there wasn't very much left.  barely enough to save.  but it was a long strip, so i added a ruffle to the bottom of the shirt.  

real simple--gathered the strip by pulling a thread, then sewed it to the bottom hem of the t-shirt.

here is babystitches, modeling one of her t-shirts,

and another one.

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!