Things to be Thankful for:

After a rotten weekend of being sick (congestion, allergies, cold, etc, whatever), I thought it important to regroup and remember what I was thankful for on Thanksgiving.  It already seems like sooooo long ago, but laying around in bed for two days will do that to a person.  I didn't spend time doing anything creative!  Not even planning something in my head.  What a sad waste of quiet time.

I am thankful for my children, who are finally old enough to realize that leaving me alone when I'm sick is in everyone's best interest. 
I am thankful for my husband.  No, really!
I am thankful for the roof over my head and the fact that we both have a job.
I am thankful for my family and friends, both in person and cyber!
I am mostly thankful for God, who has blessed me with a creative mind and full heart. 

I am also thankful that the ribbon I ordered to tie my quilt came in today!!  It is 2mm silk ribbon in "petunia" from silkribbon.com.  I notice that now, after I've ordered, of course, you can get 15% off until December 2nd.  I have enjoyed using their Cam Creations silk ribbon in both the colors and the white that I have dyed. 

I hope the colors come out right on your screen.  This is the backing fabric, a golden green, with the rich, bright pink silk ribbon.  I have decided to tie off and try to hid the knots.  I am also going to try to just go through the foundation fabric instead of all the way through the front of the quilt.  Cross your fingers for that!  And thanks to everyone who had a suggestion or comment, either on the blog or my facebook page. 

Dia de los Muertos...in my style

Dia de los Muertos is literally "the Day of the Dead."  It is a Mexican holiday that ties into the Catholic All Saints Day and All Souls Day.  People celebrate their dearly departed loved ones by having parties, cleaning graves, and making altars for the deceased.  It is also a big business for those selling sugar skulls and dressed skeletons. 


Lisa's Bride:  A new addition to this year's Halloween yard display

While I do not celebrate this day, three of my bests (two friends, one cousin) collect and display all sorts of paraphernalia dedicated to the phenomenon.  So, in honor of my buds, I dusted off the embroidery machine and made lace skulls (the lace is where the 'my style' comes to play).  The design I used is from Embroidery Library. 

I was having the worst time with snarls and machine repairs and wasting thread, time, energy, and water soluble stabilizer until I finally tried changing the needle for a smaller one.  Problem solved.  I feel like an idiot because I wasted a lot of stabilizer and thread, and that stuff is not cheap.  Lesson learned, though. 

So, in honor of the special strange people in my life, I added the olive and pink skull to the crazy quilt.  I also finished the last of the corner blocks this weekend, but that is for a different post.  Last night I tried adding borders but realized that this thing is way too skewed and had to remove them.  I will need to do more squaring before I get to that point. 

Nearing the Finish Line!!!

Finally, number 20 is complete!  I think it still needs something, but I'm not sure what yet.  It will come to me eventually.
The Tiffany blue brocade and lace are from my aunt's wedding suit back in the 60s.  The dark blue (it looks black in the picture) is from my uncle's dress blues that he wore for the wedding.  He was in the Navy and is a Vietnam Veteran.  I feel very, very blessed to have these fabrics but I'm not sure if it's because Aunt Tricia cut up their wedding outfits for me or because I have his uniform, a true piece of our history.  It's very humbling.  My aunt inspired me to start quilting.  She is very, very creative with a needle and thread and has unwittingly challenged me to change, adapt, and improve in my own little fabric world.  This is not to say that we are the same at all, but we do appreciate each other's work.  Aunt Tricia's quilts, and decorative clothing, is generally super bright and very modern, except for her work with buttons, neckties, and yo-yos.  (She is being featured in an upcoming issue of Belle Armoire.)  I tend to be much more traditional and while I enjoy pops of brights, I lean toward spring and fall colors. 
The brown floral, black cat, and turquoise paisley are from my cousin Tommie Sue, whose favorite colors are orange and turquoise.  Can you tell?  One of TS' jackets was in the Valentines issue of the same magazine this year.  I'm thrilled for them both to have been published, as well as extremely jealous!

 

I have never worked with wool before.  It sews nicely, but does it ever attract every snippet of thread and anything else!  How in the world do soldiers keep themselves looking as handsome and neat as they do?  It boggles the mind.  Anyway, the eagle pattern is from the Q is for Quilter blog that I found a few days ago.  I just had to play around with the size and transfer it to my water soluble stabilizer.  The USA is free hand.



My strawberries are satin stitched.  Didn't I say a long time ago that I was NOT going to satin stitch again?  Ah, well.  They turned out nicely.  The pink flowers to the left are silk ribbon and done in a lazy daisy stitch, as are the leaves.

 

Tommie Sue's Halloween cat was cute but needed something.  I picked out his whiskers, eyebrows, mouth, and ear hair with a single strand of gray.  There is satin stitching on the solid orange of the striped fabric he is wrapped in and black backstitching.







My lucky horseshoe full of flowers is tatted.  Some of the flowers I had laying around and can't remember where the patterns came from (sorry to anyone I have offended).  The horseshoe came from Be-stitched.  This is a very cool site with lots of different motifs well beyond the general doilies and edgings.  This arrangement didn't come out the way I envisioned, but I'm not sure what to do with it so it's staying as-is.

 

I finished the block last night and stitched it to some of the surrounding blocks early this morning.  Hopefully next week I will be able to share pictures of all the blocks sewn together, before the border is added.  I found the perfect fabric for that last weekend while shopping for school clothes.  I know, the fabric store is not the first place most people think of these days for school clothes.  But after spending that much time shopping with my little teen angels, I deserved a mommy break.

 

Comments?  Suggestions?

Little Bits of Randomness

Last week I had fun making lace with the embroidery machine.  All of my lace patterns are from Embroidery Library or Secrets of Embroidery.  Just search for "freestanding lace." 

These are some of my results:

green owl



brown rooster with lime bobbin-should be an "oops," but turned out very pretty

green frog with white bobbin

My favorite is the peacock (of course).  Like the others, it was designed to be sewn out in one color.  By watching very carefully I was able to switch out threads and come up with my masterpiece.  The dark color that may look brown is actually a deep plum.  The whole thing needs to have some more of the bobbin clipped, but that isn't nearly as much fun as the sewing.

I also assembled 3 sets of four crazy quilt blocks and have done the embroidery on the seams of two of the sets.  I've been worrying that they wouldn't fit together well and decided that the only way to stop worrying was to try it.  They work!  I haven't taken pictures of that yet.  Don't want to spoil the surprise.

This is what block 19 looks like without the embroidery.  I was going to take before pictures of all the blocks, but I was too anxious to get started that I only have pictures of one or two. 

Of course, crazy quilting is what I do in my free time.  I am currently working on a quilt using a young lady's baby and little girl clothes and dresses.  Hopefully I will have that top finished by next week and I will post a picture.  It's really cute so far.  The biggest challenge is the fabric availability.  I'm not sure if there will be enough for the twenty blocks I'm trying to squeeze out of it.  Otherwise I will have to add a border.  Not a problem, but not what I envisioned. 



The Next Chapter

I believe we are at number 18.  This one features my mother-in-law in her wedding portrait.  I tried to make a veil for her, but I just couldn't get it right so I picked out her pearls with french knots and her bouquet with satin roses. 

The paisleys are free hand with variegated thread and a silk ribbon rose.  I love paisleys.  A lot.  More than I probably should.  But they're just so cool and free while still being contained.

This is Noel.  She is my favorite dog (which is saying a lot because I love dogs and have had many, many favorites).  My husband rescued her from the local shelter at Christmas several years ago because I adore bassets.  She never completely fattened up, but she always made me laugh.  Have you ever watched a basset run?  It's more of a rocking motion and is adorable.  Noel died last July and I still miss her.  Anyway, I sort of copied a drawing from the internet and used the water soluble stabilizer trick to embroider her.

I went to an estate sale last week and found a pile of nice fabrics for crazy quilting.  The light blue, purple, and burgundy were all from that sale.  At fifty cents for a couple of yards, I felt that I could finally experiment with burn-out velvet on the burgundy.  It turned out pretty well, until I cut it off when sewing it on the block.  Oh, well.  Only God is perfect. 

I collect hats. I have downsized quite a bit in the last 10 years, but I still have quite an affinity for them. Nano bought my first one, a black velvet that molds to the back of my head and reigns from the late 1800s, at a festival (Tuleta Days) in a neighboring community. I think I was about 12. The embroidered one doesn't look like anything I own, but I thought it looked Victorian. The fuzzy brown stuff is supposed to look like ostrich feathers or some such. Not sure if it does, but it works for me.

My aunt visited this week and brought a large bag full of lace bits and yards.  First I found the little off white loop thing that was the perfect length for the area above the blue butterfly.  I had left the embroidery off that area with the intention of putting in a piece of lace or trim and shazam!  There was the perfect piece.  After I embroidered the hat, I decided a lace parasol would be cute.  Back to the bag where I found this soft polyester that wasn't what I had in mind, but was too pretty to pass up.  It wasn't stiff enough to applique an open parasol, but I think it turned out very nicely.

I am planning to stop at 20 blocks, but I'm still not sure.  I had originally wanted the last two to really be one.  I have an awesome piece of organza with a large peacock machine embroidered onto it that I wanted to mount to the block, but the way it was cut when I bought it is awkward and I don't think it will work just right.  Still thinking about it, though.

Little Bits of Everything

Block #17 showcases Grandma.  Actually my husband's grandmother, but she feels like mine.  She was always interested in my latest project and was also very religious.  When we were finally forced to put her in a nursing home for her last few months, she would bunch up her sheet and use it to pray the rosary.  No, we were not so mean as to not give her a rosary.  We just couldn't find one that she didn't break before she was forced into bedrest, and afterwards she kept losing them in the bed and resorting to the blanket or sheet.  When she passed, it was about 2:30 in the afternoon on Good Friday.  Still gives me goose bumps. 

This is the oldest picture we had of Grandma, in keeping with the other old photographs I've been using.  It had some issues and I had to cut someone else out, but I finally got it just the way I wanted it.  This is what the first try looked like, but it was awful and I ripped up the block: 

I finally printed her picture again in an oval with a printed background around it and I think it looks much better.  The flowers are mostly hand dyed silk ribbon, with a few simple flowers I tatted to give some more dimension. 

The fan next to Grandma's picture is my adaptation of one that appears on many of the older crazy quilts. 

The little black doo-dad is an engraved design I copied from my son's shotgun.  I think on the block it looks kind of like a bat off of a Scooby Doo cartoon or something.  The lace applique was also hand dyed. 
Check out the detail of the large piece of lace. It broke my heart to cut into that piece, so I just cut off one end and kept the width. I try not to use patches that big, but I love, love, love that lace!

This odd looking thing is a mockingbird nest.  There was no way I could embroider a mockingbird (the state bird of Texas, for those of you not from the Great State).  But a few years ago I took a picture of a nest and eggs in a tree in our yard and decided that was the perfect compromise.  The eggs are satin stitched in a light blue.  I then tried dropping brown dye on them, but it turned into lines instead of speckles.  I will probably try to fix that later on.  The nest is made of couched yarns from Roxann and leftover bits of brown velvet and silk ribbons.  The whole thing is super soft.

Church Window

Here I go again, not posting in a while.  Honestly, the thingie to download pictures from the camera was lost and I was too cheap to buy another.  I finally broke down and bought one.  It was the principle of the thing.  It's been in my camera case for years, but the husband and kids played with the camera when we went to the beach on Memorial Day weekend and it suddenly disappeared.  Of course, no one saw it or knows where it is. 

This block is supposed to look like a stained glass window.  I tatted the cross a few years ago with no real plan.  It was originally going to be a bookmark, but it ended up way bigger than I had envisioned.  The main window at our church has a Jesus on the cross statue with a purple cross behind him in stained glass, so I dyed some purple lace to go along with the black ribbon (leading) around the window.  The red background came with gold sequins sewn on, which seemed appropriate. 

The "L" is my initial, and the lilies of the valley my birth month flower.  They are made with the wider white silk ribbon.  Each is 3 petals with a bit of yellow hanging down.  I drew the little Victorian boot when I was bored one day and added it as an after thought because I couldn't come up with anything else to put in that spot. 

I am very, very proud of the Mexican dahlia.  I dyed the ribbon and just kept adding petals that naturally curled.  It's very thick and looks just like I imagined it.  That almost never happens. 

The whole thing is finished with hand dyed fans and velvet ribbons, and some vintage lace at the bottom.
I promise that the next post won't take so long, since I almost have that block finished and I can download the pictures now.

Floating Along

This block came along quite easily compared to some.  It took a while to finish simply because I didn't have a lot of time to devote. 

This is my aunt (okay, technically my husband's aunt).  I was the domestic daughter she never had.  She taught me to make a lot of the traditional Tex-Mex foods that my husband and kids love that her daughters weren't interested in.  We would also sit at her dining table hemming pants by hand (that part of the family is vertically challenged) and talking about sewing projects, kids, church, and whatever came up.  Those times reminded me of going with my mom as a small child to the neighbor's house where they would sit over a cup of coffee every morning.  Back when children were to be seen and not heard.  Ms. Ruby could crochet like you wouldn't believe and had many dolls that she had dressed.  I would sit and admire them after I finished my juice and the adults were still talking.  Anyway, the ribbon around the picture is a luxurious dark blue velvet that you would have to see in person and touch to appreciate.  I love the floral spray of lace at the bottom.  That piece has been auditioned on every block, but just now found the perfect home.  Ms. Ruby did not make the crocheted lace to the right, but as it is a gorgeous piece of workmanship, I can imagine it being hers.

This is another piece of a kimono grab bag that I got in the San Antonio show in September of last year.  It's a lot bigger than the pieces I usually put in the quilt, but I hated to cut it up.  It's hard to tell, but I outlined the top wings, antennae, and body in matching threads for some dimension. 

These are some little medallions I tatted forever ago when I was bored.  They make a great little take-along project for the doctor's office, waiting for the kids during practice, or when your husband is driving.  If you have never tried needle tatting, you should really try it.  At the Houston Quilt Festival several years ago, the gentleman from Handy Hands Needle Tatting showed me how in about 5 minutes.  No kidding, I had to make the bus so he had to hurry.  Barbara (the owner) is the nicest lady and helped me over the phone once when I had gotten myself confused.  Hobby Lobby also has some of her line and books, but I prefer to buy direct.  Got to support the small businesses when you can!

This is the prettiest green velvet.  I hate to cover it, but the swan scene was perfect.  A swan was the first thing I remember my mother teaching me to draw.  When my friend Laura sent me a copy of the Sublime Stitching book and I saw her swan, it inspired me to make my own. 
Note:  Never, ever, ever take cattails home to arrange in your studio.  They dry and explode tiny white dandelion-ish seeds.  You will never get them all out and will think a rat has nested in your batting.  Dad harvested some for me, thinking they would be really cool since we don't have such things where we live.  It's a sight I will never forget and will always make me laugh.

Bohemian Tile Runner

Brilliant!  My blog is new and I'm already behind!  It's been two weeks since I posted last, but a lot has happened in those two weeks, so I'm not going to beat myself up. 

I finished the Bohemian Tile runner.  I absolutely love the colors and fabrics!  I will be teaching a class on this design on Thursday of this week.  My patterns are also for sale, so if you see something you like on the blog, just drop me a line.  I hope my designs inspire you, but please remember to not plagiarize because that's just not nice.

The pieces are appliqued using fusible web and a straight stitch.  I've never used a straight stitch for applique, but I saw it in a book and thought it was pretty cool, since the fusible web will be holding the pieces down, too.  I don't recommend that stitch for anything that will be washed often.