My Newest Project

I had to put my sewing projects to the side for now while I helped my husband build a set of stairs.  This is the bottom half of them.  When you get to the top of these, you will turn and then head up another small set to reach our soon to be new attic room.  We have been working on these for a few weeks to get them done in time for Thanksgiving.  All my relatives will be here for the Holiday's so we had to have it safe for all of them while they are here.  All I have left to do is finish mudding the drywall and then paint.  I want a color other than white, but I am undecided as to which one.  I was leaning towards burgundy, probably because it is in the family of my favorite color, but I don't want to make the stairway too dark.  Maybe I will start with one wall and see how it looks.

I've Zigged, now I need to Zag

I spent the evening last night sewing my Zigs together and now I have 16 diagonal strips hanging on my makeshift design wall.  Now all I have left to do for this top is sew these diagonal strips together and then trim the edges.  This is going to be bigger than I thought so it won't do for a cute baby blanket.  I will have to save it for something else.  I am liking the way it is coming out, but my husband always bunches up his forehead when he walks into the room.  He says it looks like a pink Charlie Brown shirt.....

Zig Zag Progress

Instead of using the yellow fabric I posted earlier for this new zig zag quilt, I decided to use a white tone on tone fabric.  Mainly because I didn't have enough of the yellow.  I was a couple inches too short in yardage to get all the strips I needed.

This evening I cut out all the strips and sewed them together.  Then I pressed them all and cut them all into 5.5 inch squares.  Each stack has 14 squares.  In the next couple of days I will lay them out and and see which order I like the pink colors for my zig zags. Hopefully I can do it sooner than later, but I am helping my husband build new stairs to our attic this week, so it may end up being later.

Starting a new quilt.

I have been itching to try out this Zig Zag quilt ever since I saw it on Crazy Mom Quilts' Blog.   So I picked out the fabrics today and put them on the cutting mat where they are ready to be cut into 3 inch strips.  I want to make this quilt for a little girl, so I decided to make it with various pinks and a yellow fabric as my base.  When looking through my stash, I realized I didn't have as many pink fabrics as I thought.  I barely had enough to pick out the nine I needed for this quilt.  I am a little wary about the pink and silver stars.  Hopefully when its all cut out and separated by the yellow, all the fabrics will play well together.  I haven't added any fabric to my stash for a couple years it has been slowly dwindling.  That is a good thing right??

Rag quilt for a boy this time.

Lately I have  been making pretty pink rag quilts.  So it was a nice switch to make one in blues and yellows for a little boy.  For this rag quilt I put the 4 patch blocks on the back.  So it is almost like a fancy double sided quilt.

I do believe the front of this one is my favorite so far, but then again I am partial to the blue and yellow color combination.  :)

Matching Burp Cloths

I finished up these two burp cloths over the weekend.  They were made to match the rag quilt I made in September.  These beauties are fun to make using cloth diapers and my embroidery machine.  They are one of my favorite items to make for new babies.

Simple Halloween Postcards

I made a few Halloween postcards the other day.  I always did like blue and yellow together, and since the fabric I fussy cut these images from was blue and yellow, I decided to keep those colors for the background of the Halloween cards.  Not your traditional holiday colors but they look good to me and I really like how the the yellow blanket stitch pops against the blue fabric.

Practicing My Needle work.

Fabric postcards are a wonderful size on which to practice my needle work.  You can really practice any technique you want on these little beauties.  And I can't think of anyone who doesn't like receiving them in the mail.  :)

The Castle

I finally finished this cross stitch project last night.  It felt so good to have it finished.  I still like it just as much as when I bought the leaflet 16 or so years ago.   At first I thought it had only been 15 years, but I know I started this when I was in high school and graduation day for me was 16 years ago. Over the past 16 years I have started and completed many other cross stitch projects, as well as many afghans, quilts, and clothing projects, but they have mostly been for other people.  The projects I make just for me, like this dragon, usually get put aside or stored away.  I know I hadn't worked on this particular project in over 6 years, because I don't remember working on it in the house we live in now and we have lived here for 6 years.  But now this one is finnally finished.  YAHOO!!!

      What made me get it back out again was my daughter.  We were walking around the Hobby Hobby, and she wanted to buy some DMC floss to make a friendship bracelet.  Above the floss were little kits for begginner cross stitchers.  She asked me if I would buy her one because she wanted to learn how to do it.  I told her no, because I didn't think she would finish it, but she begged and pleaded and promised that she would.  So I decided to go ahead and get it, after all it was only $2.00, and who was I to critizise her about not finishing it when I myself had three at home not finished. 

    When we got home, she said I should get out something to cross stitch while I helped her, so we went looking through my nightstand where I keep my projects and saw The Castle.  I noticed it was almost finished. All it needed was outlining on the dragon's wings and lower body.  So I decided I would work on it till it was done.  It only took me a couple hours.  I don't know why I didn't finish it early.  But it is finished now and I am so thrilled.  I just need to get it framed so I can put it on display and enjoy it.  :)

Scarecrow Postcard

I love this postcard!  First of all I just love this scarecrow design.  he is on my Halloween hat as well as some other projects I have done. His hands, hair, and feet are all fringed.  The design comes from Embroidery Library.  I really enjoy their designs.

I didn't want this cutie of a scarecrow standing all alone on brown fabric, so I fussy cut some pumpkins to go underneath him.  But then the top looked too plain, so I added some wavy hand stitching to the top to represent the sky.  I love how it turned out.  Hopefully Lori will too.  She was my partner for this swap.

Mosaic Color Play

I have signed up for a fun swap at IFQ called Mosaic Color Play. For this swap, my Partner sends me a 4 1/2 inch square piece of fabric that I have to use as the center of the Mosaic block. I add my fabrics to her square and mail back the completed block. At the same time, my partner is adding her fabrics to the fabric square I sent her. It is a lot of fun waiting for the fabric square to arrive in the mail and then trying to find fabrics in my stash that compliment the square my partner has sent. So far I have made and mailed three blocks. I have received two and am waiting for the third to come in the mail. As soon as my partner receives her block I will be able to sign up again.

Autumn Postcards

I have been busy the past couple days working on some fall themed postcards for my swap groups. The two similar ones are for ladies in Stashbusters, and the Pumpkin Embroidered one flies out my partner in Fabricards.

Embroidered Daisies Postcard

I spent the afternoon working on this postcard.  At first I was in the process of cutting out purple fabric for a quilt I'm working on. But as I was cutting, out of the blue, I thought that four of these purple triangles would look great on a postcard.  So I fiddled with them on a blank 4x6 piece of peltex and started adding more fabrics.  Then I thought to myself, it would look great with some hand embroidery on it.  So I got out my DMC floss and fiddled around.  I am still a beginner hand embroiderer and this is the first time I have done straight stitching to make a design, but I think it turned out lovely.  Now I just need to decide who should receive this in the mail.  :)

Quilting Feathers.... Sort of

I have read online that one way to get better at doing freehand machine quilted feathers is to practice drawing them on paper. Well, I did just that, but I think I got a little carried away.  Can you still see the feathers I started out with in this doodle?

It started out as an all black and white image, but my son told me to add some red to it, so I did.  I don't usually doodle in color, but here is the results.

A place for my knitting needles

I spent most of this week working on a new knitting needle case. I have lots of needles but I don't really use them all.  I got a good deal on eBay a few years ago for a whole pile of knitting needles. For a couple of dollars I got the few sizes I wanted and a lot of sizes that I didn't need. But being the pack rat that I am, I decided to keep the ones I didn't need with the thought that I may need them for some future project.

As I was cleaning out my room the other day I decided it was time for them to have a good home.  For years they all have been sitting jumbled together in a drawer in my night stand, and I always end up looking through the whole pile just to find the size I need. So that very day, I went to the internet looking for a good pattern. I came across quite a few, but this one from Alexandra's blog was my favorite so I printed out her tutorial and got to work.  I could have made this case from a pile of fat quarters, but since I didn't have a pile of fat quarters, I had to cut the pieces from my yardage.  While I was cutting my large strips, I realized I only needed half the strip I cut, so instead of having lots of leftover strip peices in various sizes, I decided to make two cases at one time. 

I did alter that pattern a bit by sewing more lines on the first pocket row.  I did this so I could add my crochet hooks to the roll.  The pattern said these wider pockets were good for holding circular needles, but I don't have any of those and didn't want to make another smaller roll just for my crochet hooks.  So for the one I am going to keep, I have one inch pockets on the bottom right instead of two four inch pickets.  I also altered the pattern by adding some decor bond behind each of the pockets and a layer of fusible fleece to the outside fabric.  The main reason I did this was because I didn't want the case to be flimsy and feel individual needles while I carried the roll around in my hands.  I was worried at first that all that extra layers might make it too stiff to roll, but it turned out great.  I love it!!