Second post this week!

I actually got time to sew yesterday too! Woo hoo! I am on a roll . It seems there is a plethora of babies being born among my local circle of friends and family and I am in need of baby quilts. This top is likely the most simple baby quilt top I have ever put together. Six inch squares. That’s it. It took about an hour to put this together once I decided what to do. This is for a friend that is decorating her nursery with …..gulp….frogs. I can’t stand frogs. I could not bear to make a froggy quilt of any sort. So I decided to go with froggy colors.

These are fabrics I dyed last summer. I presoaked my fabric in the soda ash solution then stuffed it in a plastic shoebox. I poured lemon yellow dye at one end and turquoise at the other end and let them run together. So in actuality, I only used two fabrics to make this top. Couldn’t get any simpler than that! This mom-to-be is not an old fashioned girl so the typical 30s repro fabrics that I often use for baby quilts just wouldn’t cut it.

I am struggling with the fact that this was TOO easy. I never make gifts that are this easy. It feels like cheating. But then again, I only have a week and a half until the shower. Not sure how I will quilt it yet. I am thinking random wavy lines from top to bottom, maybe with a varigated thread or perhaps using a number of different colors pulled from the dyed fabric. I keep thinking it needs something that looks like sea weed.

Tomorrow I hope to find a backing fabric and get it basted. Until next time.

Finally!

For the first time on months, I am finally getting back to sewing…..at least a little bit! It is vacation time around here and after a long weekend of camping, I stole away to the sewing room for a bit and started to play with some strips of hand dyed fabric I had laying around. I think these pieces could be considered my very first landscapes. Here is the first one:

This one actually measures about 5″ x 7″. The color here is not exactly right, something I need to work on. Here is the second:

This one is a litle bigger, probably 8″ x 12″ or so. Too lazy to get a ruler . I foundation pieced both onto a piece of Warm and Natural batting. Now I need to decide how to finish them. I am thinking about mounting them to canvas and adding a frame. Any ideas? Not sure I will add any more quilting but I reserve the right to change my mind!

So this is a start. I hope to steal a fe more minutes today to do something. I need to get past the idea that everything has to be a masterpiece and just play again. It has been too long.

If it ever warms up in Michigan, I want to dye some fabric again. Yesterday, on July 1st, 2009, I wore sweats and wrapped up in an afghan to stay warm while reading a book IN MY HOUSE! This is ridiculous! Where is that global warming anyway?

Until next time…..

Hello World!

I am still alive! I have been substitute teaching quite a lot though and haven’t done much of any sewing. Here are a few pics of my daughter’s new room that we redecorated for her after her brother left home:

The fabrics are from IKEA as well as most of the furniture. We bought the bulletin board at a garage sale and recovered it. She also has a book shelf for her books and we are thinking of decoupaging old maps all over it.

I have done some knitting, a few pair of mittens and several sets of baby booties and a pair of socks for myself. I forgot to take picutes of the knitting bags I made for my nieces before I sent them off!

I am back to cleaning out the sewing room in between working and preparing for daughter #2’s graduation in a little over a week. 

If you need any vintage Singer Sewing Machine manuals, check out my for sale page. If you don’t see what you need, ask. I have a lot more manuals than I have listed right now. I would love to find good homes for all of them!

Finally back to the blog!

My son has left the nest! It was a lot of work getting him ready to go. As soon as he drove away, my youngest daughter was ready to redecorate and take over his room! So the week my DH was gone driving out to AZ and getting our son settled into his first apartment, I was playing interior decorator. Who knew that tan walls would take FIVE coats of paint to cover???? What is up with that??? Craziness. Plain and simple. Needless to say, the project took far longer than I planned and I never did get any art done that week. The room looks great and there is greater peace in the house now that all three girls have their own rooms .

Time to sew, right? Not quite. My sub teaching papers finally went through and it is time to go back to work. At least part time. My first day back in the classroom was last Friday. It went pretty well. I have my sketchbook packed in case I get time to doodle next time I get called.

I did get a little knitting in. My first baby sweater:

All I need to do is add some tiny buttons. I am wondering if I have enough pink yarn left to make a matching bonnet or booties. I have a couple friends who are expecting so hopefully someone will have a girl!  I also made a couple kniting bags for my nieces that have learned to knit. I will post pics tomorrow of those. I think they turned out well.

I also managed to enter thre pieces in our local State of the Arts Show in my town. It is juried. The last two times I entered, two of my three pieces were accepted and each time I took home an award. Here’s hoping I can make it three in a row! I will find out next week.

Until next time …. which will be sooner rather than later!

Where have I been?

My poor blog has been so neglected! I have been busy getting my oldest ready to move out of the nest. He leaves for Arizona in two weeks to start school at UTI in Avondale. He will be gone for at least a year and it is highly likely that he won’t move back home when he is done with school.  He had been working full time until the end of Feburary and since then we have been getting everything in order for him to go. His youngest sister is already redecorating his room….at least in her mind!  He has most of his stuff packed away and no doubt little sister will have a paintbrush in her hand before he reaches the end of the driveway!

The only thing fiber related thing I have  accomplished lately is the pair of socks I finished knitting:

See that little ball of yarn in the picture? That is all I had left when I finished the second sock. Whew! That was close! If it appears that one sock is bigger than the other, you are very observant…..grrrr. This hasn’t happened since the first few pair I made. I don’t know where I miscounted but I must have gone to many rounds on the foot of the second one. They also look a bit out of proportion. That is because I make short cuffs on my socks. For some reason, I don’t like knitting the cuff so I tend to make them short. I also tend to make my socks too big no matter how hard I try to get it right.

I have decided I need to learn “toe up” sock knitting. I have been watching some youtube videos to see how this is done. I made a practice toe tonight. Not bad.  The best part seems to be that I don’t have to do that pesky Kitchener thing. I will have to work more on this.

I can’t handle wool next to my skin so I always make cotton socks. Anyone know of any great cotton sock yarns?

Until next time.

What’s on Your Design Wall?

This is the question I intend to pose to the Quilt Art List! And I will go first. This is what is up right now:

And this:

And just for fun, this is what is on my main work table:

And this is my latest knitting project, another pair of socks:

These are size 4 needles. The pink is much brighter than this picture shows. I just love varigated yarn! This is Sinfonia, a 100% cotton yarn that I bought at Hobby Lobby. I have never worked with this before but so far so good. I am not  the greatest knitter in the world but I love making socks. The only thing I DON’T like is not really knowing if they  will fit until I have put  a bazillion hours into them. Hopefully I will have the first one of the pair done this weekend.

Until later….what are you working on?

New Work in Progress

Thanks for all the congrats on getting in to Sacred Threads! I am amazed even yet.

I did get back into the studio today but I am letting the painted quilt sit for a while. I moved back into more comfortable area and started working on another ladder quilt. Here is where I am so far:

This measures about 16″ x 20″ at this point and it is tentatively called “Corporate Ladder”. The greens are a bit more intense than this picture shows.

The other day I started this one:

Not sure at all where this is going. I got stuck and that is why I started the one above. Obviously, it is much farther along. Both of these started with strips leftover from other things. I may work on them more later today and maybe not. I am feeling very antsy for some reason and can’t seem to stay focused for very long on anything!

Have a wonderful weekend!

SACRED THREADS!!!!

I am so excited I can hardly breathe! My first entrance and first acceptance into a real, important, juried quilt show! I got a big envelope from the Sacred Threads show to be held in June in Reynoldsburg, Ohio in June.  My quilt Long Dark Night of the Soul was accepted and my Justice quilt was denied.

I am not sure when my feet will finally touch the floor and my kids say I have perma-grin .  They are right!

Painted Quilt Part 2

I am so thankful to everyone who took the time to look at this and leave such helpful suggestions and comments! I am clearly out of my realm here and I am painfully aware that it shows. But what the heck, I might as well make my learning experience public .  I added more paint last night and this is what it looked like:

I still hated it so this morning I decided to wash it in the washer. I hadn’t heat set anything yet. This is how it came out:

My “moon” is woefully offcenter, if only my horizon line were! Time for more paint. This time I added some Jacquard gold watered down and applied with a foam brush to the center area. I also used more shiva to give it more wave:

I think I might call the the ugly quilt. Wonder if Ami Simms is still doing her contest….. Actually, close up, I like the lok of the gold on top.

I haven’t solved my horizon line issue.  Maybe I will wash over the whole thing with the gold….I am about to conclude that painting is not my thing. I suupose I could use this as a smalll rug. I have this thing about everything having to turn out and be used for something.

Again, feel free to add your 2 cents worth here. Pondering the next step…..and the big question, is it possible to make this worse?

Not sure about this one…..

Okay I am finally back to work….at least a little. I pulled a piece back out that I worked on in January but wasn’t happy with.  Remember this?

Someone suggested that I add a sheer fabric over the top. That got me thinking. If I only did the bottom half, it would look like buildings reflected in water. Cool. Today I fould the only piece of sheer fabric I have and tried it out:

Nope. Too shiny, not me. So I decided to add more quilting but use only dark thread on the bottom half and light on the top. Here are the results:

 

Not enough contrast. Now what? I remembered the Shiva paint sticks I got a while back and tried a few out on a practice quilting scrap. Not bad. Decided I am not liking this piece anyway so I might as well go for it.

 

Okay, definitely more contrast here. But does it look like I ran over it with my car? This is mostly black so I decided to add some dark blue. I want it to look intentional, not just dirty!

 

Here is a close up:

I like the way the quilting lines show up like waves. Still not sold on this though, not even close. Not sure what to do next.  I think it looks more unfinished than ever. Thinking I should have left it alone entirely. I will leave it pinned up and think about it a while. This is the first time I have ever tried paint on a quilt and obviously have a lot to learn. Maybe this is just not my thing.

The horizon line bothers me and I don’t know how to fix it.  I welcome any comments, you won’t offend me even if you tell me it is part of the crap quota! Any ideas would be most welcome as well. Please fire away!