I Haven't Forgotten About Great Granny!

Great Granny has not been hung out to dry! 

I've been participating in a "Great Granny Sew Along"  but it's sort of difficult to get too much completed when sewing time is short due to long hours on the job - (12 to 13 hr days until Sep.) 

So w/o further ado...here's what's on my design line blowing in the wind. 

My Youngest Brother Loves Bacon...

...and I love my youngest brother so I made him some bacon pillowcases for Christmas. 

Our sense of humor has gotten us through some tough times as children and as old fogies we still make each other laugh. 

Working on It

Handquilted in variegated brown perle #8. This is my first time hand quilting and I rather enjoy the process even tho' this old farmhouse has no a/c and it's been over 100 degrees on some of the days I've worked on this. (Call me driven? Call me crazy?) I love this embroidery frame (or whatever it's called). On the other hand, I've tried to use several different types of thimbles and liked none of them. The callous on the end of my finger will have to do.  I may add binding tomorrow and be finished with it. Then I'll wash it and hope none of my thread knots come loose since this is the first time I've done the hidden knots and I've done a lot of them.

I love chocolate! 

Tips from an Old Bag and Gerry K

As of a few weeks ago this was my purse (aka old bag). I've used it for years and love it.  

But it was starting to wear out. 

Boho bags were all the rage and a dear lady named Gerry K posted a tutorial on how she made hers and also sold some kits with fabric in her etsy store. 

So, I made a pattern of my old bag, bought some fabrics from Gerry and used some tips from her tutorial, added some of my own fabrics and some stitching and some thrift store finds and made myself a new purse. 

 The background of the flap was a doily from a thrift store, the fringe and beads I had in my stash, I had just learned how to make wide ribbon roses, and crocheted up a butterfly for the rose garden.

I had embroidered a rose on some taffeta thinking I would use it for a long purse strap but later decided it wouldn't work as a strap so turned it into a purse side. 

 This is part of the back of the purse. Fabrics are bonded together on interfacing ala Gerry's tutorial but I wanted to have some stitching on the purse too so I stitched.  The lace was in my stash so I painted it with alcohol ink. That was a first for me and quite possible a last.

This is the other side of the purse - again, I painted some lace and crocheted up a wild Irish rose.

 I added a piece of trim with whatever these little swivel thingys are called on the end to attach key rings and keys which seem to be absent. And, no, I really don't love NY - someone went there and brought it back to me thinking I would love a key ring with my name on it.

Since I am not good at pattern making I made the bag a little too loose on the inside so had to add some drawstrings in casing to keep all my stuff from falling out. But I kind of like what I did with my mistakes. It sat for months waiting for me to figure out what to do with a purse whose contents would spill out after all the work I had put into it.

I used up a lot of trims I had in my stash from thrift stores. 

 And I even made a coin purse with roses on it to go inside my new bag.

 When I was finished I took a couple of photos to try to showcase my work.

And I won second prize in a purse contest held on the CQI (Crazy Quilting International) Yahoo Group. Not sure what I won yet, but I do feel honored and I have a new purse besides. All the ladies at work love it and much to my surprise I've been offered some large (to me) sums of money for it. But, it's all mine!

I'm going over to the usual Tuesday linky party at Quilting by the River to show off.

Snakes and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails

This is a quilt for my 3 yo grandson - Snakes and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails. 

Someone posted a link to a video for a 10 minute quilt block  that I thought I would try with some 6.5 charms  I've swapped with members of various groups. 

I used some of the smaller prints for the centers. 

The blocks actually took me a little longer than 10 min. only because I sewed down the "cathedral windows" by hand since my eyes don't see well enough to do by machine and sometimes my hands don't guide the machine too well either. (Numb, stiff hands this a.m. are also why pics are a bit blurry looking- or maybe they are fine and my eyes aren't working right. Ah, old age!)

We've got some snakes...

...and some snails and some puppy dog tails. 

I'll probably use some black Kona for the borders and who knows what for the back.

Linking up to Patchwork Times Design Wall Monday. 

Cobwebs in the Sewing Room

I've added six more blocks to my cobweb quilt and hopefully one of these days I'll have my small bright scraps used up. The larger scraps all went to several colorful Heartstrings Quilts. My 3yo grandson loves to look at all the different fabrics in quilts so maybe I'll get some Spiderman fabric for the back and this will be his. Or not...

I'm linking up with a Linky Party at Quilting By the River.  Come party!

I'm Not a Great Granny but...

...I think I'll participate in the Great Granny Sewalong. Anything that reminds me of Granny (who taught me to sew) has got to be good. And any quilt  made from my 30s reproductions will probably be queen-sized and end up on my bed.

Linking up at Design Wall Monday. 

Midnight Fantasy Garden (A WIP)

This is block 5 of my midnight fantasy Garden. There's not much completed on it yet except Mr. Gnome and a butterfly. I'm going to add a lot of bugs to this block. At top is a beetle and the dragonfly is made of glow in the dark thread.  You can see a little bit of a glow in the dark praying mantis down in the right hand corner. I want to do some stumpwork mushrooms and butterflies to add to this block as well as some more glow in the dark things.

This is block 4 of Midnight Fantasy Garden. I previously posted a little bit about this block but have added some items since - mostly a lot of pansies and a little mouse.

I blogged about block 1 which is complete and blocks 2 and 3 are out in RRs. Not sure how many blocks I'm going to have all together but this is going to be a glow in the dark midnight fantasy garden  large wallhanging to hang in the spare bedroom where the 7 yo granddaughters sleep when they visit every other weekend.

I'm linking up at Sharon Boggon's Pintangle WIP Wednesday.  (That reminds me...I really, really need to catch up on my TAST).

Hourglass Figures

I've finished more blocks for my Roses are Red, etc, Skies are Gray hourglass quilt. 

According to my figures I now have 361 out of the 500 necessary if I make the quilt 20x25 blocks. 

I don't have Fifty Shades of Gray or I'd call it my "Fifty Shades of Gray" quilt! 

This is actually not on my design wall but my design desk top but I'm linking up to Patchwork Times Design Wall Monday (for the first time) and also to Quilting by the River Linky Tuesday. 

Crazy Basket Case - July CQJP 2012

This is my July block for the Crazy Quilt Journal Project 2012. This is block 7 out of 30 necessary for my lap quilt entitled Crazy Basket Case.   Each block contains a basket, embellishments and fabrics are mostly red and white and must be washable (no beads). I have also tried not to repeat any seam treatments.

I Sure Don't Make 'Em Like I Used To

I used to make most of the family's clothes back in the olden days (70s) - husband's shirts, son's shirts and shorts, daughter's everything. I decided to make a few things for the granddaughters since I'm a little rusty in the sewing clothing department and they are always in need of clothes. Well, first of all I suffered from sticker shock...patterns are now 13.95. Tissue paper has sure gotten expensive. I waited until the patterns were 99 cents before I picked one up. I should have looked in the attic where I stored all the old patterns but I'm sure a mouse has used them for a nest or something and besides...it's too hot to go up in the attic. There are so many retro 70s fabrics now - I'm sure I have several little girls' patterns from that era I used for my daughter.

Anyway...I took the DGD's measurements mostly for the shorts to be sure they fit properly in the waist and crotch but I figured a loose fitting shirt made no difference so I made them each a shirt in the size they wear in Walmart clothes. Now it looks like they will have a couple of shirts for next summer. They are a little on the large side I think.

Tale of Two RRs

This is the final block I need to work on for the Fool's Goldwork RR hosted at CQI Yahoo Group. Wendy requested a peacock theme and so here's my peacock. I cut the peacock from gold ribbon, and padded it with felt. I then trimmed the body/feather with gold trim. Rest of body was stitched with 3 different gold threads.

Before I added the peacock I had embellished all the seams with treatments of white (or was it ecru?) perle #8. It would have bothered me if those seams were bare but I also didn't want them to detract from the peacock.  The bottom of the block has some other chicken peacock scratch stitched with various gold threads and beads. I added a butterfly also cut from gold colored organza ribbon and trimmed in gold threads to break up the white space but it occurred to me after I was finished that the butterfly is as big as the peacock and it reminded me of those old Japanese movies where two giant creatures fight each other. Who would win? Butterfly or peacock. Ah, my mind wanders...Anyway...when I thought I was finished I thought that dark brown triangle looked like a tumor protruding from Mr. Peacock so I think I toned it down with a trail of bullion roses made of 2 strands DMC and 1 strand gold DMC antique effects. Some of the leaves are stitched with DMC pearlescent and sparkle more than shown here.

I wasn't sure I would like the fool's goldwork because I'm not a gold/sparkly person; however, I have really enjoyed this, have a book on real goldwork to use for further ideas and have an entire tub of gold stuff I need to use up. So...maybe something will be in the works soon (or not).

Hosted on the CQ4Newbies Yahoo Group is a "Brown Color Study" RR. The block and all embellishments are supposed to be done in brown. Each lady sends her block around to others in their group to embellish and then eventually each block makes it's way back to each owner.

This is Toni's block and it had a lot of rectangular spaces. I find it difficult to stitch seams on blocks made in this style but look at each block as a challenge so..

Since it is hot here and I'm without A/C (I did go to work and experience some today, though) my thoughts of course led to fans. I embellished a long seam with my rendition of chain stitch/buttonhole fans with lazy daisy handles of variegated perle. Below that I added a variegated silk ribbon fan since I needed something to stand out on that striped brown.

Continuing on with fans...Toni's block had an Asian looking dragon in the fabric she used in the middle of the block So, I stitched an Asian lady with fan next to it. (Yes, that's supposed to be an Asian lady with fan and some bonsai in the background.) That's a stray thread near the bottom of the lady's kimono on the right. I think each of my pics has a stray thread somewhere. I also added a feather stitch/bullion seam between dragon and dragon  Asian lady.  Like the peacock block I used two strands of DMC plus one strand of antique effects brown metallic thread on the bullions. That's why they look kind of stripey. 

 And finally...I crocheted a little brown basket and added cast-on flowers/beads to it. And the seam above is satin ribbon, french knots and kiko flower stitches.

And here's what it looks like before it passes on to the next lady to stitch on (except I somehow managed to chop off some of the top half of the block in the photo.

Oh, one last thing...I'm not sure I showed MY brown color study block that is going around for the other ladies to embellish. I wonder what everyone will choose to do.

Twenty-eight Years Ago Today...

Worked on patriotic themed happy blocks today.  I don't have air conditioning (I live in an old farm house in the country) and the heat index is over 100 so no one wanted to come out to our house to celebrate anything. 

Twenty-eight years ago today (July 4, 1984) my youngest son was born at around 2 o'clock in the afternoon. (8 lbs. 4 oz. 20 inches long). John Henry III was named after his father and grandfather. (Don't know why father, John Jr., wasn't in the pic. But take a good look at me since I normally don't put pics of me out there on the internet since I haven't seen a photo of me I ever liked including this sad one ). 

And, the rest of the story...as I've written on his card every year since he was old enough..."xx years ago today you popped right out of my crotch". ('Tis true. I got to the hospital at around 1:45, didn't wait for DH to bring wheelchair so walked right in and about 15 min. later DH was cutting the umbilical cord and we had a new baby 10 years younger than our oldest.)

Happy Birthday to my Yankee Doodle Dandy, my little firecracker, my youngest. I LOVE you.!