The mailman has been here

I'm so blessed!  Saturday or was it Friday.......in any event...... I got some great mail!  First I received this awesome stuff that my friend Annie made herself with her computer and printer!  It will have to be something really special for me to cut into this stuff.  I LOVE it!



Thank you so much, my friend!  If you have nothing to do, you can print me off some more with that gorgeous penmanship,  lol  I have a Birthday coming up in case you didn't remember!  lol

Then, I got my quilt from the Little Quilt - Sew, Vote, Swap group.  I got the one that Cindy Sharp made and it is so gorgeous......although bigger than I expected at 24 x28 inches.



I also received a package in error that should have been sent somewhere else, but that's another story in itself and I won't go there!  It was funny though and really threw me for a loop for awhile.  Good thing I had the senders e-mail address from a different situation.  Crazy!  I will say that the package is off now on it's way to the proper owner and hopefully things will turn out okay!

Then, I again joined the Scrappy Mug Rug swap (my 2nd favorite swap).  I have a partner who has very specialized tastes so this might be a challenge.  The theme is spring and while I would normally make something with white (my signature, or so I've been told), I thought I'd make something for her/his tastes for the first one:



If you want to read about the challenge I had with this one, click on the picture and go to the Flickr site and read what I wrote under the photo.  I will make more mug rugs for this swap.  I rarely make one of anything for swaps, (as you all know by now.  lol) I love making little stuff!!

So, other than my clean, very short cut Toby, I have nothing else to show you today.  Toby is blowing his puppy coat which results in matting something terrible so I thought a shorter coat might be wise for awhile.  Actually, he is looking more and more like a Bichon instead of the Havanese he really is.  Think that's because I was "in" Bichon Frises for 30 years and only know how to groom that breed??  Duh?



Have a good week, my friends!  Until later.................

Thank heavens!

Earlier today I tried posting, but Flickr was broke!  I was perplexed to be sure!  How could that happen? What would I do without Flickr?  It's kind of like not having your phone.....(although I must admit that I am not one of the many who always has a phone at my side and that VERY often it's plugged in the wall getting charged when I go out), I do see my hubby though.  He wouldn't be caught dead without his iphone!  (Bugs me to death, too!!!  Always checking this and that!  Eeekkkkks!!)  I am getting away from myself though.  I just want to show you something.......

I finally finished the quilt for my swap partner for the Fab Little Quilt Swap.  Remember when I started with these:

Well, I sewed them together and got this:

Then I sandwiched it to quilt it and this is what the back looked like before I embellished it:

I had plans and certain criteria that I knew I would take to make it all it could be and I'm really happy with the way it turned out.  Here's the inside part after I finished it:



And a close-up to see the stitching.  Can you see where I embroidered FLIQS 2012 on the tree trunk?



And the whole thing:



Now I need to get to work.  I haven't sewn a thing in 3 days and I feel like a real slacker!  What oh what will I show you next time?????

E-gads!!

Flickr's broke!  At least it's broke to me.  I just tried to get into it to transfer some pictures so that you could see some stuff and NADA!  Nothing!  Connection is broke......or so it says!  Now what?  Heavenly days, what am I going to do without Flickr?  You too?  Maybe later!  Keep your fingers crossed!

Just a few things......

Since I haven't finished the quilt for my partner yet for the Fab Little Quilt Swap, I thought I'd show you something else.  (Actually a few "something elses"  lol)  Remember when I was in the Potholder Pass and made these:

Well, look at at the cool ones I got in return:

They kinda look like I could have made them for myself, huh?  They are SOOOO my taste?  Well, Sue (beachgirlsews) had me for a partner and we've been paired up before, so she is pretty used to what I like and she nailed it on the head with those beauties.  Think they will ever touch a hot pot?  NOT!!  Waaaay too pretty!

Then, we finally voted in the Little Quilt - Sew, Vote, Swap group (I always have to double check the name of that one, I get so confused with all these groups.  Duh!!) so I'm able to show you what I made.  I got the idea from someone's pinterest board.......(e-gads those boards come in handy sometimes).......they were paintings (and I looked them up to give proper credit by Lisa DeJohn,) that I thought would look perfect in fabric.  Here is one of the drawings and the beginning:

And here they are, ready for shipping to a partner yet to be revealed.  (That's the swap where we vote and what you get is a surprise depending on how your quilt fares in the voting....long process and I really can't explain the whole thing now.....)  Anyway, I made a pair of quilts and called them, "Flowers - a pair".  (Another one of my clever names, dontcha know???)



Each was 8 inches by 13 inches on a background of a very dark blue....."midnight" I think in the Kona line.

Then, I have something else in mind I want to try soon, so I searched the web and finally found what I needed and they are sooooo yummy:

Do you know what they are?  18 Hand Dyed fat quarters!!  Beautiful hand dyed fabrics that are sooo gorgeous, you wouldn't believe it!  I want to play and I hope things turn out like I have in my head.  BUT,  before I can do that, I have to finish the swap quilt for my partner and I'm telling you, this one is taking an age.  I sure hope she likes it when it's done.  You'll see soon..........probably next time!!  Until then, have a great week!!!  Spring is on it's way!!

Time to get serious.....

While I have been having a ball doing all sorts of things that I've had in my brain for weeks now, I'm thinkin' it's about time to get serious and start my partner's doll quilt for the Fab Little Quilt Swap.  So many ideas have been swirling about her wants and desires so I need to start before I forget some of them.  My hope is to make it whimsical and fun but still funky and wild.  (Actually all those are all just about the same anyway, huh?)  Duh!  I have this vision in my head and I'm hoping it works!  Lots of detail so your eye doesn't know where to look first.  First though, I had to get out all the patterned fabric again............much to Toby's delight, I might add:



That little guy (8 lbs at most) jumps on and off the bed like a gazelle so as soon as I brought out the bins and plopped them on the bed, he was right there to help.  Red seems to be his favorite color!  Can you tell?  You'd be surprised at how he loves to dig through those fabrics......I'd have a real mess if I wasn't right there to supervise!  I'm sure he'd take off with a hunk for sure.

So after I picked a bunch of various colors, and sewed them together in mindless sewing (because I still have my cold), this is what I ended up with:



They'll eventually get cut down to about 2 inches square and hopefully be used as a border (at least that's the plan right now.)  Of course though, I needed a middle piece so yesterday, I worked on that.  I wanted to piece the whole thing (remember me talking about that??)  Problem is that I'm not patient enough, so did it 50/50.  Piecing and fusing:



I KNOW it doesn't look like much right now.........but I did that on purpose!  I have plans.......so just wait!  I'm so hoping that it will look amazing when it's finished.   It's all in the details, dontcha know???   SO......you know what I'll be doing for the next few days..........stay tuned.........!!!

"Flowers in the Forest"

Earlier this year, when I discovered that my LQS was going to have a Kona club (at my suggestion) I figured that I should get my body moving and make something to be used as an inspiration piece and (and I must say AND......that hopefully I might be able to use for some swap too.)  During the Christmas break when I was just playing in Flickr and pinterest, ('cause my machine was packed away) I discovered a black and white drawing of a rug hooking pattern by the famous, Karla Gerard that I KNEW I'd have to do in fabric.   So.... as soon as my tree was down and I was back in business, I got to work.  First I fused some white fabric and cut out my trees.  I thought a blue background might be fun for a change:

I sewed the trees down right away because I wasn't sure how I'd be able to get to all the spaces after all my "flowers" were fused down.  Note the circle flowers starting to bloom.........(I cut three different sizes of circles and a bunch of different colored leaves.)

At this point all my circles were fused down and it was a matter of making my quilt sandwich and getting going.  I loved the clean look of the circles, but thought a different approach might be fun too:

Can you see how I thread painted all the circles to make them look fuzzy?  I thought it gave it sort of an ethereal affect.  Sort of mystical, if you will.......!!  Note that I also quilted the spaces in the blue spaces between the trees in order not to have it gap or wrinkle.  When things are so tightly quilted in one place, anything left unquilted has the possibility to wrinkle so I wanted to squash that in the beginning.  Next was the buttons and french knots:



And a close up:



I added some hand stitching too just to make it look more colorful!  Don't look at the back though.....not a pretty sight:

That was over 100 buttons, my friends!  I thought I'd never get done!  Good thing this ugly side will be against the wall, huh?  E-gads!!!  It ended up at 14 by about 22 inches.  Now, onto the next!  (Once I get rid of this lousy cold.  Now I'm coughing to beat the band and my nose is running all over the place!  Ugh!!!)

"Downtown"

Whew.......I finally finished "Downtown"!  Now I don't dare move it because it's so fragile with just my hand stitched-down windows holding those 165 fused window pieces in place.  I really should hang it, I suppose, but my ambition has flown out the window today.  My hubby brought home a cold last week and although I stayed away from him as much as I could, I'm feeling a dilly of a scratchy throat this morning!  UGH!  I hope this isn't the beginning of something!  The past two days I've also taken a nap, which isn't like me at all (unless I'm bored out of my mind....like during Christmas when my sewing machine is packed away for a couple of weeks.)  I still haven't made my partner's quilt for the Fab Little Quilt swap either....(the whimsey one that you all are waiting for, I'm thinking????)  I'm actually trying to decide if I should attempt free piecing, OR go to my fusing standby process.  (I probably could whip it up that way in no time........but free piecing might be a real challenge.  OH what to do??)  While I'm sitting here deciding, there's no reason I can't show you "Downtown" all finished, I suppose:



And here is a close up of the gazillion windows:



I think that quilt would be really cool above the desk of a city planner, don't you?  Too bad I don't know any city planners!!  Oh well............I think I'll go take a couple of Tylenol's now.  Even my Diet Pepsi isn't helping me this morning........ugh!!

Not quite a "Stitch in Dye" copy

Do you remember last time when I showed you the gorgeous fabrics that I drooled over for so long, the ones I finally got my hands on from my LQS?  The beauties created by one of my very favorite fabric artists, Malka Dubrawsky?  And.....do you remember the cool blocks and warm blocks that I made to mimic her stuff?  Well, I finished the quilt.  It's not very big at about 25 inches square, but you be the judge:



I thought I did a pretty good job, right?  After all, I followed all the rules in her book about being sort of wonky and I used a scissors to cut all my fabrics and not a rotary cutter as I went along...........BUT.........apparently, a bit of ME snuck in there without me even realizing it.  Do you see the white?  Hello!!  It seems to be my signature because I was informed that rarely does Malka use pure white in her quilts.  Especially that style of quilt.  SO...............I goofed!  And, do you know what I say? Too bad!  I like it!  AND, so does my quilt shop because at this very moment, it is hanging in there to help sell the "stitch in color" line.  (Not that it really needs any help, but my LQS has tons of fabrics and any little visual thing helps!  I'm sure you get it.)  So, I guess I'll have to make another one, only bigger next time!  And do you know what?  I'm thinking that the next one will have white in it too!  So there!!  I like white!  And, apparently it's getting to be my signature......e-gads!!

On another note, I've still been having fun creating all the goofy stuff in my head and since I'm involved in another doll sized quilt swap, I can make them to my hearts content until I have to get serious and really create what my partner would (hopefully) cherish.  I will tell you that she wants whimsey.........(don't you all jump up and down at once now, okay??)  I have taken a different direction lately, I know, but who wants to do the same stuff all the time???????  I will get back there soon!!  Promise!  This time though, I might try to piece most of the stuff instead of fusing it.  (A small challenge is good!  I keep telling myself!)  For now though, this is my latest project.  I wanted to create an industrial setting.  A downtown, if you will.  First I drew it:



Then I got to work:



And I continued:



(You can click on the pictures to go to my Flickr and read the explanations on the bottom of the photos.)

As of this writing, I am still plugging away hand stitching all the windows down.  What a thankless job! This wasn't my plan in the beginning, but once I started, I realized how much better it would look with all of them somewhat identical.  I'm hoping I can finish them today.  (Lord give me strength!!  It's sooo boring!!!!)  Right now,  I'm thinking of a border in white (duh...hello???)  I think it will make the white in the buildings pop!  We'll see!  Wish me luck!  Until next time..............

A bunch of stuff.....

Remember this:



Well, here it is all finished:



Kinda cool, huh?  It finished at 21 x 19 inches and is all ready to hang with sleeve, etc.  I just had to add the buttons, you know?  After all, it's sorta getting to be a signature!  I'm thinking this might be for sale.  If you're interested, throw a figure at me.  I'm really open for suggestions!  After all, I have only so much wall space!

On another note, I received a marvelous log cabin quilt from my partner, CASharp for the STUD swap.   Cindy is a very talented quilter and loves color just about as much as I do.  I can't imagine doing such teeny tiny piecing for so many cute little blocks:



If you look on her Flickr stream, she laid out those blocks all sorts of ways before she decided how to sew them together.  How fun!  Love it, Cindy!  Thank you!

THEN.......do you remember when I was salivating over the new Malka Dubrawsky fabrics?  And, how I finally went to my LQS and bought these:



I finally started using them......naturally with some Kona solids.  So far I have the warm blocks and the cool blocks.  See:





So guess what I'm going to be doing today?  I can hardly wait!  Stay tuned next time for the big reveal!