What A Week

This was spring break week for the school kids. Hubby took off the whole week, but I only took the last three days. Have been so far behind at work due to various changes that I just couldn't take off more time. Besides, that was all the paid time off I had.

Thursday we went to the beach. I took my crocheting along, but it was so cold and windy that I ended up putting it away. It was actually quite miserable due to the wind. But, it was fun to get out of town for the day. We went on home a little early and got things ready for the camping trip.

Friday, we loaded up and headed up the canyon to a place called Keyesville. Primitive camping, as in no hook ups, but how I love those mountains. Friday was actually a bit miserable due to high winds, but at least I was in the motorhome and was able to finish up one block for the green color study.

I feel it turned out well. It was pretty time consuming with all the little beads, but hopefully she will be able to see it is a potted plant.

Now to finish up the next purple block, the spring block, and I think I will be back on track with the crazy quilt embroidery projects.

Of course I still have my crochet exchanges to catch up though, really must get my hands moving on those.

Thrift Store Buys - Recycled For Projects

I have to admit here first of all that I have never been a fan of hitting the thrift stores and garage sales for clothing items and jewelry to use in craft projects. I know it is a personal kind of hang up of mine, but it just seems so very wrong to buy a pair of trashed up jeans to cut up and make potholders. Don't start in on me, I am also one of those people that thinks there is something very wrong with finding joy in jumping out of a perfectly good airplane and calling it skydiving. Back to the recycled clothing angle.

On one of my crazy quilt groups there as been some lively discussion about the thrift store finds of some wedding dresses and cutting them up to use for crazy quilt blocks. This is not a new concept, that is however how many quilts were made in pioneer days. It was essential to keep the family warm, the only available fabric was from worn out or out grown clothing or flour and feed sacks. My own mom tells me of her father letting her pick out the chicken feed sacks so she could have the bags. I didn't really believe this until Mom gave me some old dresden plate blocks that my aunt had made, all original 30's fabric along with scraps of grampa's shirts, they are pieced on old Pillsbury Flour sacks.

Once again I drift. After reading some of the postings, and remembering how I once bought some old prom dresses for my oldest daughter (now 25) to play dress up in for a very small amount of money (we had nothing to spare back then) I decided to hit the local Goodwill and Salvation Army thrift stores. I was all excited at the prospect of finding a cheap old worn out wedding dress to harvest the lace and beading off of for my "Crazy Quilt" replica that I am planning, even though I have been planning it for...oh my...twenty years or so. GOOD GRIEF! I found only one dress between the two stores, not much embellishment on it either, and they wanted $65.00 for it. I was in shock to say the least. So, my plans ended quickly. I just refuse to pay that much money for something I am going to tear up. YES, I KNOW, I am in reality just down right cheap. My purse chirps when I open it...unless I am buying chocolate and soda that is. At any rate, I did discover some rather interesting jewelry, which DD 11, promptly lost out of the bag somewhere. My trip was not in vain though, I found a very interesting item to feed my "join in the with the crowd" project.

This is a peasant style blouse. The picture is obviously not the best of quality, but the shirt is brown guaze type fabric with aqua blue and orange beading in the motifs. The heart shapes have turqouise stones in the center. This is a closer look at the beaded areas. The photo really doesn't do it justice. Only wish I had found this shirt in Gigantic Size to fit me. Already have a few ideas of what I am going to do with this, just kind of holding off doing anything until I know exactly what I am going to do so I don't waste any of it. This shirt was only $3.50 and there is more than that in the turqouise alone.

I borrowed hubby's camera to try and get a shot of the double image of the moon as it went through the lunar eclipse, am going to see if I can get a little better shot of this top in the morning before he figures out I have it.

I did come across some pretty good bargains though. Some great blouses for myself, a couple of pairs of dress slacks (one still had the tags on it) and the absolutely cutest Calvin Klein brand denim jacket for DD 11 for less than $10 and with this new winter storm that hit overnight (well storm for central California) it is very needed. I have not given up on the idea of finding some beaded and lace items to turn in to CQ blocks. Plan on going downtown to some off beat little thrift shops that are known for being less pricey. I had no idea that the Salvation Army Store would be so proud of their donated items.

Now, hubby cleaned out the hot tub and it is warming up, there are cold Amber Bock's in the fridge, it is about mid 40's outside and clouds roaming about with buckets of rain in them, so I am going to get a bottle, get my hubby, and enjoy some warm soothing water and what ever else may come up while I am in there.

Green Garden Round Robin

Well here it is the middle of February and I have not done much of anything lately. I am not as sick as I was, but still seem to have a nagging cough and tire out so easy.

At any rate, just wanted to post a quick note about the green garden round robin I am in through my Yahoo group. I am getting Karen's block ready to mail off so snapped a photo of my part of the wardrobe, so to speak, for her nakid block. I do hope she likes what I did. This round robin is called a color study. It is both challenging and frustrating. Challenging because it has to all be done in green, trying new stitches and techniques as well. Frustrating because it has to all be done in green, trying new stitches and techniques. It is so hard to find the supplies I want, when I want them. I have been to several craft shops in town and have finally gathered together a bit of a working stash. Not the most ideal, but an acceptable one. Especially after being very disappointed to find that the rather large collection of what I thought was silk ribbon is actually organza ribbon. I worked with some of it anyway however to make a rose out of, believe you would call it a spider web rose. I wasn't thrown in to orbit by the results, but am mildly pleased.

The patch or motif that I stitched is supposed to look like an archway in a garden. Beads were used to make the arch. It seems that at least locally, only two shades of green are used to make beads. Christmas green, and a bit darker green. The leaves on the arch are made of silk ribbon and done using a ribbon stitch. My first use of this (besides the practice piece) and I probably should have added a few more. One set of flowers was done using a looped straight stitch, another first for me, and french knots done in floss worked in the middles. I really liked the way these turned out, but they were very time extensive. Here is closer look, although for some reason the camera lost some green along the way.

One thing that I really do like is the little flying critter. Supposed to be a butterfly, not really quite there. Is definately not a bird, but I really do like it and will make this more. The wings are just a large chain stitch with a smaller one inside, straight stitched body, legs and antanea, french knot head. In person he is what you would call a kelly green. If I ever get this camera situation worked out, there will be better photos in time.

First, my new little camera takes great over all shots, very good color. Just don't even think about a close up. I just can't figure out how to focus the thing. Hubby's camera takes good close up shots, but lousy color, and now the batteries have died. I even thought about scanning the block, but of course for some reason I cannot make my new printer scan anything. Pretty much the story of my life actually. If I could get a better close up, the wider seam treatment turned out just awesome. It is a series of straight stitches and stem stitches along with chain stitched flowers. The last seam treatment is a butterfly done with chain stitches on either end of a line of angels.

The next color in the study is purple. I am all stoked up for that one, as I have learned alot from the green. Purple is my second favorite color, right next to blue. Like the green however, I can already forsee a problem with supplies, but have actually figured a way to work around that. Like I said, I learned a lot from the green study already. Lots of ideas would come to mind for seam treatments, motifs, and such but unless you can use different colors to off set them they just don't work. Oh how I struggled with my huge craving to insert some yellow and red centers in to those flowers and seams. I did however emerge triumphant and stayed all green. Have also discovered a few online sources that I will be ordering from this weekend as well. I may grumble a bit about the challenge of only working in one color, but I am getting a lot out of it. I love to do one color embroidery, also known as redwork, and am thinking of doing more of that for these color study groups. Redwork has a fascinating history by the way, which will not be explored in this post, but highly recommend you doing your own research in to that subject.

The group is also doing a swap called Food Fight and I am going to work on that one this weekend. This will be a bit different as it is a centralized swap and I complete the block, so get to do all the dressing up for it. The block is to reflect a food and we include the recipe as well. Think I mentioned it in an earlier post. At least with it I can feed my need for color, all colors. Okay, I know I was headed somewhere with all this, just totally lost where, so know it is time to call it a night.

Moday

It is Monday morning, while I am feeling a shade better, I am home with two sick children. Well, one isn't missing school, his school has a day off for teacher's work day, but they are both sick, so am missing work...again. Was getting some nice sleep time until the neighbor's son, kindergarten age, decided to have his own concert. I had a few words with him at the door, at least the kids are getting some sleep.

Anyway, the weather here is just plain nasty. So windy, and this part of the country does not handle wind well, so I just stayed in as much as possible. Hubby, who is feeling better now (since he is the one that started all this crud) did the cooking yesterday and was sweet enough to leave me to my own devices so to speak. I thought I would post my Crazy quilt block progress.

I think this is about all I am going to do to it. This block is for the STS (season to season) Spring swap. It is a combination swap round robin actually. I am so looking forward to this. I make a block, reflective of what spring is to me. Then I embellish approximately half of it, send it to the hostess, she sends our blocks to our partners, we then finish the other half of the block we receive, then send it back. I know I have posted about this before, just doing a recap in case some one is seeing this for the first time. At any rate, this is what I did to mine.
This is a bit closer view. My camera seems to blur on things when I try to get a close up. The top set of flowers is a purchased applique that I just fell in love with when I saw it, had no idea what I would do with it, but now I do. Then, I did a feather stitch as a vine, then added two shades of purple SRE flowers along it. The dragon fly was another one of those appliques I fell in love with, several came in the package. The three is free form embroidery. I stitched the trunk and branches in using a brown with a red tone. Supposed to be a redwood. Okay, give me a break, I am new at this. The needles are made by using fun fur which I crocheted a length of chain stitch and then cut it and couched it in place. It looks much cooler in person. It probably isn't really half of the block, but I will send a little note with it explaining that I can do more when I get it back. I just wanted to be sure and leave a decent amount of seams and patches to work on.

Today, I am going to do a little work on Karen's Green block. Everything in green. I had a couple of things in mind, eyelash yarn would have been great, can't find any in just green. So, having to improvise on things a bit. I am going to head out to JoAnn's today to see if I can find some green beads. Not sure if they even make what I am looking for, but will give it my best shot. At any rate, had to boast about my creative impulse here.

I know that most of you have probably already thought of this, so is nothing new, but I am pretty proud of myself for thinking of it on my own. This is a crocheted butterfly, actually the top part of a bookmark (that story is on my other blog) but it happens to work great. I was looking at the green crochet thread I had, a sick kind of pea green, and after making the bookmarks knew I would not get the results I was looking for. While looking through my absurd number of plastic boxes full of this and that for what I may need to make for the next 50 years (have had the boxes going for 20 already) a spool of silk ribbon fell out, bright green. It hit me, wondered if I could crochet with it. Well, there you go. Here it is. It is so cute and comes really close to just what I had in mind.

Home Sick Again - More Sewing

I hate being sick for several reasons, but two really major ones. One, I hate feeling bad. So bad that I just can't do much of anything. The second reason is that being home and doing some crafting makes me really not want to be working. But, on payday, that is really nice to have my own check coming in.

So, with that being said, I got some more basic sewing done. These are hearts that I plan to embellish for trades.

I belong to a couple of different groups that trade these hearts, so am hoping to get back in to that. It is a lot of fun and you just trade one on one when ever you have some made up. Great thing about that is that you don't have to worry about time deadlines. Make them up as you have time, then post them as available. They have been great for me to learn new stitches or techniques on. There is an online magazine for crazy quilting, I can't find the link just now, but was looking at it this morning and it has the most awesome pineapple motif in it.

I have also finished a couple of more ATC projects. Will be working on embellishing them as well so can start trading them.

These are also the perfect size for practicing on. I am still very new at all of this, especially with the ATC projects, so will have to do a little more looking around to get more ideas on them, but it is a start.

Been Sewing

I was home sick today spending most of it in bed. Had to get up and do some thing, so I gathered the essentials and did a little sewing. I have my mug of cola, skittles, and my mountain trail mix. Along with the remote control for the TV and the cordless phone of course. Which was handy as I had a really nice conversation with Gerry (Sewing South Paw) about the block. I tried to put a link to her blog where her name is, but for some reason it just isn't working tonight. My computer is doing some really weird things though, no telling what is going to happen next with it.

So, with my essentials in place I set about making some "nakkid" blocks. The first is for a "Spring Season to Season" swap with Gerry on CQ For Newbies group. I will embellish the block, approximately half of it, and send it to our sweet hostess Gerry. She will then partner us up, send us the partner's block for us to finish embellishments on, then it will be sent back home. Our block represents spring to us. Since leaving the wind and dirt storms of spring in West Texas I have developed a true fondness for spring when all the flowers come out in bloom through the hills and mountains near by. We will drive through them often to take day trips either to the beach or up to the mountains. I found a left over embroidered car block, used it for my focus. I will be adding all kinds of flowers an such. Of course, the saying April showers bring May flowers stuck with me so in the top corner I have a rainbow with rain. Corny I know. May end up regretting that as the "rain drops" keep falling off everywhere. Seems the fabric tends to shed a bit. Oh well, live and learn I say. I like the beginning look and it is my block.

I also found some western fabric of cowboys, which I have a thing for, so made a couple of blocks up to keep for myself with that. Like I said, there is just something about a true cowboy. Don't they look tempting? Yes, it has been an almost life long infatuation. I come from a long line of ranchers, my dad and uncle were horsemen, I grew up with horses. I didn't miss a single episode of "Big Valley" even watched "F Troop" and my favorite movies are westerns. Dances With Wolves, Lonesome Dove, Open Range, The Searchers, and so many more. Too many to sit here and name. Guess that is why the romance novels I write mainly take place in the olden days of cowboys, ranches, mountain men, you get the idea. Back to the point, these blocks will be for me and I look forward to learning new techniques on them. I also have enough of the fabrics to make several more, so will probably have a throw by the time it is finished.

Man, it really bites to be sick. Very hard to type accurately when you keep coughing your lung up. I am off to a warm bath and then bed. Just wanted to post about my little bit of sewing.

Green Garden Round Robin

My first block in the Green Garden Round Robin arrived today. I am in the avocado group. If nothing else I will have learned to spell avocado correctly with out the use of spell check. As I said, Karen's beautiful block arrived today and tempting me to start adding all kinds of dressing to her. OH HOW I WANT TO START ALREADY. But, I am taking a few days to really think this out, before just jumping in there. We have a month to add our touches and send it to the next person, so have time to plan. I have an idea of what I want to do, but want to practice it on a bit on something to see how it will actually look. I will post before and after photos of course of each block I work on.

I am new to crazy quilting, having barely started my interest in it before starting a new job. I am going to use these swaps (especially the ATC and post cards) as a way of learning new techniques and stitches. I am so thrilled to be a member of group that is for newbies and with members that understand that some of us are just learning this beautiful craft. I have always been intrigued with the Victorian and pioneer eras in history. I am especially held captive by anything to do with the old west, pioneers that lived in a time where everything you had was produced at home, families lived close together, and God and family were first. I realize I have a romantic view of the past, in reality it was dirty, hungry, hard physical labor, type of life. But, I really think I should have lived back then. I would have made a great soiled dove.

I know, I am wondering off in a strange direction. I am tired and still sick, need to finish reading my emails, and then find something to get my mind off of what I want to work on. Just wanted to check in with a quick posting.

ATC - New For Me

Last night I was a little bored, so I pulled out some scraps and played around a bit. I felt like I hadn't sewn in years and some things were a bit rusty it seems. I have gotten the bug to make some ATC's for trading. If you are new like me, this stands for Artistic Trading Cards. I did a search on the internet, found millions of sites that were for rubber stamps or hand drawn art work. Not a lot working in fabric. These little cards are the same size as a business card. I did find some interesting sites for fabric post cards, which may be the next project, but will see how these go first. I want to do some crazy quilt ATC swaps, have already signed up for one group.

Okay, I know I will never be able to even come close to the beauties I found photos of, but I really had a lot of fun with what I started.
These are the very first attempts at making some ATC crazy quilt style cards. Just four of them for now, and just the basic card. I am thinking over what I am going to embroidery on them to embellish them. Not the greatest photos I know, but here are a couple of closer views.

Am anxious to dress them up, see what develops out of my strange little mind on to the fabric. And it can at times be a little, shall we say over the edge?

At any rate, the only down side to these little cards is the size. Makes it a challenge just sew up the base block. Prints that are not so large as to dwarf the entire block, small enough pieces that will actually show enough color to notice but not not take away from any focus fabric. I can see the same challenge with the embellishing. The balance and proportion will be key, don't want a chain stitch that takes up half the card, but want the stitch large enough to show up.

The positive sides is the size. Small enough to feel like you can scrap what doesn't work with out thoughts of wasting materials. Small enough to try out new techniques or stitches and still get the full effect as a result. Definitely a way to use up those scraps of fabric that are really too small to do anything with and my tightwad nature won't let me toss them. Yes, I predict there is going to be a pile of these babies knee deep before I am through. Well okay, ankle deep at any rate. I have to be careful, don't want to get so obsessed over them that I leave some on going projects unfinished.

Yes, I know, I hear it calling to me, but the baby blanket is yelling a little louder "please finish me up already" and I have a dress whose voice is even louder "IT'S BEEN ALMOST A YEAR, MAKE THE DARN BUTTONHOLES ALREADY SO YOU CAN WEAR US" right along with the shirt that is cut out "THESE PINS ARE GOING TO RUST INTO ME" and of course there are the combined voices of my blocks from various swaps that are constantly forming a choir to sing the songs of "Finish us too, we have waited so long".

No wonder I am going insane with all those voices constantly in my head.

That is all for now. The bath and bed are the voices being heard the clearest at the moment. Seems to be that a bath is the only way I can get warm since this blasted fog hit. I normally enjoy the fog, like I am being hidden away from the world. But that was when I didn't have to drive in it every morning to get to work. Now, it is cold, damp, and makes my bones weary and depressed. SO...off to warm in the bath tub, then to sleep, then to brighten my day with bright colors of everything I find made in to ATC and hearts for trading. Hope some one will want to trade when they are completed. Maybe even some post cards as well. Of course that will be after I finish the quilt, the dress, well that is the plan anyway.