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.

Finished My First ATC

Yesterday I worked all evening and only got two little Crazy Quilt ATC cards finished for trade. I hope that they will be acceptable.

This is my first efforts at this type of project. I think they turned out okay for a beginner. My little camera for some reason will not take good close up shots. Am pretty sure there is some setting I might could change, but have no clue what it would be. Now that the other computer is set up with a printer/scanner, I may try to scan them and see if I can get the little stitch detailing to show up any better.

Now, I guess I can see if anyone wants to trade with me. May need to work on my embroidery stitching a little more. I know I tried the bullion stitch on the bottom one. Do not like that stitch at all. But, there are a ton of them I can try on future projects. Speaking of which, learning stitches that is, ordered some new books and am looking forward to their arrival.

On another thread of thought, so to speak, one of my crazy quilt groups had a fairy tale round robin exchange. I had initially signed up for the swap, made my beginning blocks, created my story to pass around with it and all. Remember, I said that when I dive in, I really dive in. At any rate, had planned on being in 4 groups. Had it all planned how the four blocks would go together to make one wall hanging. Wrote up a story that the blocks represented and then divided that story so that only the part of the story that involved that block would be sent with it. Alas, that was the same time I was hired and started back to school so I ended up seeing really quick there would be no time for such things so asked to be dropped from the round robins. I was going through my box of projects and found two of my beginning blocks.


I see where I started to do a little embellishment on one of the blocks, even more impressive is that I actually remember what I was planning for those parts of it.
I was using a book for inspiration and stitch directions for the embellishment treatments, the book has disappeared, wrote more about that on my other blog, have ordered a replacement for it, will be able to go back to work on this project when the book arrives. These "sea" blocks will be in the UFO box for a while any way, have plenty of other things to work on until then that take priority. Who knows, maybe some type of ocean or sea theme round robin will be started. I will be ready.

One of the groups is holding a "Food Fight" where we make a completed block representing our favorite dish, include the recipe and send it to the host who will then swap them out. This sounds like so much fun. Now to decide on a favorite dish. I have all these scraps of fabric with chili peppers and my mouth is watering at some of my favorite Tex Mex recipes. Must be the Texan in me. It really bites though that due to being sick nothing, I mean nothing, has any taste to it. Except that god awful cough medicine. Oh well, will be sure and post photos as that project develops.

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.