Tickled pink...

THIS is what I love about making/giving gifts. Is she just not the most precious little lady? I also imagine the day when she's a toddler or pre-schooler dragging her blankie around. Wow!

A dozen roses...

Several months ago, my friend Denise, shared a photo of a some bedding she wanted to buy, along with a pretty decorative pillow that completed the ensemble. It's a very pretty grouping from Target.
At the time, I believe they'd just upsized to king-size which presented a perfect shopportunity! Good girl! About one month ago, she approached me about making some fabric roses that would match to go around two bedside table lamps. We visited, I took photos, and I got a better idea of what she wanted. I even got to take the pillow with me!

Shopping for matching color for roses and perhaps, for curtains

Right after that, I went to the Hancock Fabrics down the street to get some ideas. Apparently I was so entranced, that I did not realize they were closing soon (half the lights going out didn't nudge my awareness meter a bit) until I saw them locking the door after another group of shoppers left. I was thinking it was getting kinda hard to see the color matches with the dimmed lighting—did they not pay their light bill? Apparently those were not the only dim bulbs in the store. Duh on me—they close at 6 p.m. on Saturday! I took pictures of matching and complementing fabric and apologetically left the store. They were very kind and said they wouldn't have kicked me out until they'd finished vacuuming. By the way, it's difficult getting this color to photograph consistently, but trust me, they really were close matches!

The option that excited me most was one that resembled mattress/pillow ticking fabric. Even though Denise also liked the ticking, she still opted for the matching solid option. I used 3.5" x selvage-to-selvage width strips; sewed them into tubes with long basting stitches; turned them inside out; pressed crisply along seam and opposite edge; folded each; stuffed the 'stem' in an upside-down drink carrier until I was ready to hand-stitch through each to hold together; and then ironed on a interfacing circle on the back to cover the stitching.

As I was about half finished, I had the feeling I wanted to store/give them in an interesting container. My brain, working like the conveyor contraption at the dry cleaners, creaked, clicked and clacked until it came up with 'hey, there's that Braum's cookie package that's almost empty!' Ah, ha, I have to get rid of that last peanut butter cookie—big sacrifice for a friend and all. So, just a little while ago, I dropped off to Denise her dozen roses—actually a baker's dozen! She loved them, but maybe was a little disappointed there was no cookie hiding at the bottom.

This past Tuesday, I attended my first class at Oklahoma Quiltworks. I learned how to do paper piecing. It's a piecing technique that is incredibly precise in creating/aligning points, but required my brain to limber up far earlier in the day than I'd normally try. I liked the process. I loved the results. Shifting my paradigm of approach will take some time. I can see it being very practical in some applications but not necessary or desirable for all. Debbie Aldridge taught a fun and informative class! And get this, we were so spellbound by the instruction, none of us pounced on the snacks (a three-flavor danish ring from Panera and some mini-muffins) until after the class was over!

My other in-progress piece is a baby quilt for a lovely little lady who joined the world on the 17th of this month. These are some of the pieces. (More details in posting to come.) After a little hit-and-miss, I am to the point of pinning together the quilt sandwich. I hope to have it ready to deliver next week. Can't wait to see that precious little girl, Cairo!

A Big Quilt for a Little Lady...

It started with a need for a gift and an idea. I was browsing my favorite quilt fabric shop and got all the way to the wall of books and magazines this time. Up until now, the fabric entranced me so, I don't know if I noticed there were books and magazines along the back wall. Tunnel vision, no doubt. After several minutes of leafing through a dozen publications, I came across Quilts Made Modern. There were several of the 10 designs I liked, but the one that really got my attention was this one called Loft. I don't know if it was its graphical pattern, the colors they used, or the waves of stitching. Let's say it was all three.

Could this be the one I make for my special gift? Sure—why not!? So I bought the book—did I really spend THAT much for ONE instruction book? Oh. well, got it closer to filling in my frequent customer card.

After spending quite some time not finding just the fabric I wanted, I decided to check at Hobby Lobby for fabric. This was a mixed blessing. Yes, I finally found some fabrics that worked together just as I wished, and they cost a bit less, but I was soon to discover a bit of the disappointment in using less than high-end fabric. Live and learn!  Although pink and brown are the planned nursery colors, I decided to look a little farther down the road. What if I made a quilt that will last a little longer than infancy—something she can use after the crib.

I choose contemporary bright pinks and greens for the top and binding. For the backing, I found a darling pink and white toile of vintage Mother Goose rhyme characters. As before, I scanned some of the fabric and roughed out the design in Photoshop to use as guide. After some calculations and instruction edits and print outs, I started cutting the pieces. The process involved stitching together long strips in to blocks and then cross cutting the assembled pieces into blocks.

It went together pretty quickly, but needed a little custom touch. I used my Cricut/Gypsy to cut out fabric fused to Wonder Under to spell out her name; fused the letters to the bottom right corner's block; and satin stitched the raw edges. I also dotted the 'i' with a heart. How cutesie! Instead of using straight pins (albeit ones with flat heads), I tried safety-pinning together the top, batting, and backing this time. They worked great and kept the 'quilt sandwich' very stable through the contortions of my version of machine quilting. I also used an all-cotton batting. I was (just barely) able to stitch everything together on my ever-faithful Lady Kenmore. Instead of a fancy overall stitching pattern, I opted for stitching the ditch and it's all held together beautifully.

I am making more home-mades and I want to 'sign' my work. Hey, they may become someone's heirlooms some day! I came up with the idea (am certain many have done this before me) to use iron-on transfer paper printed off my inkjet printer. This is how I signed off Miss Cali's quilt.

All that's left is to give it to her momma. I can hardly wait! I'm pulling together this post beforehand and will publish after she has it in hand. Cali, you've got a great family waiting for you! Jamie, Jace, and Chris—we love you guys!

Quilt One (2010–2011)...

The rest of the story...

At the end of 2010, I decided 2011 would be the year I'd make a quilt. 2010 became a year of considerable fabric acquisition. I got hooked on fat quarters and quilt fabric shops. I mean, really, how much trouble can I get into only one little rectangle of fabric at a time? Fat quarters made excellent little purchase to supply my Christmas gift sewing, so I was especially happy to discover them. Organizing them becomes a whole hobby in itself.

As it turned out, waiting until 2011 to start the quilt was not happening. A couple of days after Christmas, I started scanning some fabric and 'building' my quilt in Photoshop. I chose these three fabrics—one yard each of the stripes and two yards of the plaid. Over five years ago I bought them from Hancock Fabrics as part of their then-sponsored St. Jude Quilt of Dreams partnership. This fabric sat around as a good intention all these years. One of the reasons I probably never did anything with it before now was that the color palette was not my favorite—perfect for practicing.

I arranged the scanned layers of cloth into a simple blue stripe and green stripe checkerboard in Photoshop—three-inch squares. I then added the plaid panels in different sizes over the field of striped blocks. Everything moved around and I settled on my design. I then divided up the design into nine-unit blocks—five across by seven down.

Once I had the layout, I created a spreadsheet in Excel to determine if I had enough fabric to complete the design. I numbered each 3x3 block; counted how many of each size block I'd need, and so forth. This is probably not the normal procedure, but my left brain jumped in and insisted she'd be in charge. I humor her as much as possible.

I started cutting and sewing and pressing and was well on my way to finishing the top in just a couple of days. One thing I discovered along the way was I had not taken uneven stripes and pattern orientation into consideration. There were definite east/wests in the green stripe and north/souths in the blue stripe. I had a stack of blocks 'done' and had to rip and resew almost half of them. But I'm glad I did.

I stumbled through choosing batting and finding nice, wide backing fabric. I opted to hand-tie the layers together. Thank goodness for the hot tub cover. It's an expanse almost 8x8 feet and at a good height. Down the road, I'll send one out to be stitched down. No plans to buy any quilting machines. For now, me and my 1975 Lady Kenmore machine have done fine.

Insert the 2010 Oklahoma City Quilt Show. I figure I was risky—about to finish my first quilt and think I was invincible! I attended last Friday and came away with a clue or two how to do the binding. Turns out I had just enough information to be dangerous and wound up adding a detail I hadn't planned. Ah, my best friend, serendipity. I finished by hand-stitching the binding over a couple of days and finally finished it two days ago. And at the end of the day, it feels so good curling up with, yet, another finished project!

Hmm...what's next? Maybe some time for drawing some Zentangles; organizing my fabric for real and on my iPad (my newest tool toy); sewing up a tote bag or two; deciding on something to make for upcoming newborns coming into the the world; planning that next great quilt; or maybe, even, dismantling my office and repacking it with a bit less clutter. We'll see!

Electrifying...

Zentangle motifs in fabric

Due to a bit of inconvenience (electrician rewiring areas of our house), I was freed up to make a pilgrimage to Prairie Quilt in Hennessey a week ago. I went solo this time and kept myself entertained with singing along (loudly) with my favorite CD of praise music. To compound the crime, I recorded myself via my new Android app—AndRecorder. (I haven't listened to the audio files yet and hope I can be charitable.) That said, I'm betting GweNaomi was happy to miss this trip.

I think I officially looked at ALL the fabric this time. In addition to a handful of fat quarters, I found four little quilt square kits and fabric with Zentangle Patterns! Does that make the whole trip worthwhile or WHAT!? Although the first one I found was in browns, I later found these blues in another area and they photographed better. Before checking out, I edited down my pile of fat quarters from fifteen down to ten (plus three pieces of cut goods). Oddly enough, the ones I put back were mostly ones I saw when I first came in the door. When I come away with an assortment like this, I always wonder if there is a repeating theme/pattern to my choices. What do you think?

The day's bounty included half-yard cuts of my already made purse fabric.

It felt like I was doing a little 50's-60's time traveling with Sputnik. Then I moved into this dark, bold-n-gold space. Interesting. I even contemplated if the ladies working at this store could tell lots about the personalities of the quilters who come through there, based on their fabric selections. I suspect my selections most say I am not working on a quilt at all, which is true. For now.

Baby J was born on Sunday, January 21. She's a beautiful young lady and her parents are beaming! Next up, our church family awaits the births of Lady Smith and Baby P next spring!

New life for old...
Another project I've had in mind was what to do with my old journals. I started keeping one back in 1977 and stayed with it inconsistently for more than 20 years. There comes a point where they've done what they needed to do and can be released—but how? Hmm. Hmm? Hmm! Paper-making! Several months ago I ran many pages of journals through my cross-cut paper shredder and saved the shreds in two BIG Hobby Lobby bags.

Next in the process is to use a blender to pulverize the shreds, mixed with water, into a pulp slurry. Surprisingly it wasn't gray or white, but a very neutral green which reminded me of that 'eye-ease' paper from steno book, columnar pad, and lab/engineering grid paper days.

BIG NOTE TO SELF: Hold down the lid on the blender very securely because when an unchewed wad finally hits the blade, the mass will erupt everywhere.
 

Did Maytag his THIS in mind?

After the pulp contains no remnants of the paper, I poured it into a plastic dishpan. In 'normal' paper-making, this is where one would stir the pulp to align the fibers and then dip their framed screen into the mixture. I didn't make any of these screens but got the bright idea to pour the pulp through one of my clothes dryer's flat drying racks. Okay, I used two of them. I let them drip dry over the sink for awhile, so the drips from the uppermost rack would not drip 'holes' into the still wet pulp below, then slid them into the dryer closet for at least 24 hours. I ran the heated cycle a couple of times then just let them air dry.

Note the screen texture on the edge.

And voilà! The finished sheets are very bumpy and have very low tear resistance. But they're writable-uponable (my made up word). Without all that water, the paper dried to be mostly white. More than paper, it reminds me of the fiberboard molded drink carriers you get at drive-throughs to carry up to four drinks. I'm going to investigate some more techniques, find out how to strengthen the paper, build a couple of small frames, and try adding color, leaves, petals, etc. Hey, I might even wind up making something with the paper—how about the cover of a gratitude journal?

More than anything, this process mirrors my own redeemed life—shredded, crushed, mixed, poured out and made anew—ready for my new story to be written. Thank you, Jesus.

Working Backwards...

"What I did on summer/fall vacation…"

Knitted with Red Heart "Heart & Sole" Green Envy

Sock knitting:
Yesterday, after two weeks' work, I finished my first ever knitted sock. Have started its mate and anticipate an easier time of it—not so many unravels/reknits.

Zentangle drawing:
On Saturday, 30 October I took a class in the drawing technique called Zentangle. Along with a baker's dozen's worth of other girls, we learned about the process and how to draw some patterns. Here's a couple of photos from Gwen's blog. Barbara LaGree was a wonderful instructor. I enjoyed how we each came up with something unique from the same instruction. My friend Toni (now too far away in Colorado) does some fantastic doodles and might really enjoy the technique.

All's quiet as we concentrate and focus

My busy hands

Some really good news about Zentangling is that the materials used can be quite basic—a Micron 01 pen and a tile. Official tiles are 3.5" square pieces of high quality watercolor paper die-cut to imitate a deckle edge. The process is really quite simple yet can be truly glorious and grandiose in scale, if you wish. Replicate established patterns or design your own—newly created patterns, reflective of your world and unique to you. I can't wait to immerse myself in some pattern discovery and Zentangle drawing.

Anything is possible…

one stroke at a time.

From Trend Lab Versailles Black & White pattern

Gift for Baby J:
Using a valance of my friend's nursery pattern, I created a throw pillow, using the main fabric, complementing one, and some black satin ribbon trim. I particularly enjoyed transforming one item into an altogether different item. I guess today it's call 'repurposing.' The goal, to give her something completely unique that will completely match the other nursery items. There are fewer than three weeks until Miss Baby J makes her debut! Way to go Jessica and Jimmy!

Original baby-size

Crocheted Pumpkin Hats:
Miss Peacock started a craze! She saw a cute little pumpkin hat for a baby and knew she wanted one for her upcoming grand-daughter. Several of us got the pattern and started making ones for our own circumstances. My first (test/trial) was for one of my stuffed animals. (Yes, really.) The second was a larger version for myself. I had a girls' group tea party to attend in October and the only requirement was to wear a hat. And finally, I made one for a real, live baby! My former editor has a new grand-niece and now has a new grand-niece with a punkin' hat! 

More Sewing: 

In addition to resurrecting (and wanting to reproportion) an old coin purse pattern, I've been drawn back into the world of fabric/sewing. After many years' absence, I've begun browsing and shopping at Oklahoma Quiltworks again. Upon my return I discovered two fantastic poppy-theme quilts and fabrics. I've been going a little fat quarter and linear quarter-yard crazy lately. (But they are arranged so beautifully!) One Thursday afternoon, Gwen and I went to Prairie Quilt in Hennessey (via Okarche and Eischen's!). I was practically dumbstruck by all the fabric! I came away with a pattern and a project—a roomy handbag/tote. It was finished in a couple of days and I've enjoyed carrying it. 

And then there was the pincushion I just HAD to make for Gwen—a chicken like her beloved Ambrose and Alistair.

A home for a trio of typewriters

Beth Moore Esther Study:

Back together again, most of the original Over 40s Women's Bible Study group. From mid-September up and over in two more weeks, we've been having a great time of friendship, fellowship, and learning. Missing Linda, Pat, and Phyllis! And, yeah, sometimes It's Tough Being a Woman!

And from August… 

All of my typewriters found a home together on this nifty end table I picked up at a yard sale. In addition to what looks like a metal inlay, this tiered table has a very nice style. Back when I was a teen, I remember asking someone what the term 'conversation piece' meant. Oh. Well, I think it's safe to say my house is all a-chatter considering its contents.

Before I got over-involved with all this handwork, I managed to read six books in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series. I'm sure there's much I've forgotten, but I am so pleased to have FINISHED so many projects! I've already got ideas/fabrics for this year's Christmas sewing. Stay tuned for more!

Baby Cozies™...

I came across Baby Cozies™ yesterday and realized pictures would be more descriptive than words. In addition to these critters, they also come in flamingo, monkey, hippo, parrot, bears, lion, and more! And they are so soft and cuddly.

Bet you're already making your list of newborns and newborns-to-be. I can hardly wait to find an excuse to bring one/some home.