Stitching Report

And now for those less interested in our wintery weather, here's the Stitching Report. ;- )

I'd had an idea early in the month to make my bead journal piece for February with a red foundation and maybe try to incorporate June's Creativity Challenge theme of "Love" by working on the theme of Puppy Love. I have some dog buttons and charms and since I don't seem to be able to live without a dog in the family it seemed appropriate. I got out my doggy themed embellishments and went through my stack of red cottons... but nothing seemed to click. I put it all away again and tried not to stress over the fact that I wasn't sewing anything.

What I tend to do when I'm not sewing is to read or write, as in writing about why I'm not sewing. Sometimes I do jigsaw puzzles but right now there isn't a good place to leave one out. Parts of this little house are in a state of transition and my husband is working long hours so things are not progressing as quickly as I might like. Anyway...

On a whim I got out a piece of fabric printed with text. Then I looked to see what embellishments I might have that would carry out the theme of reading or writing. I have words on charms, and letter beads with which I could make words, but I didn't want a specific word or thought to prevail. I did find a pencil button (a couple of them actually). Well, what else could I use? Maybe a hand to hold the pencil?

I have a small collection of hand charms. Some of them are whole arms, for making small dolls. I had one arm milagro in the bunch too.

Then I thought of my head and face charms. I didn't have great expectations but one did seem to stand out as a possibility.

I placed the pencil, the arm, and the face on my foundation. Even though it felt like it needed something more I stitched them in place. Yesterday I looked deeper in my stash and came up with a book charm. That seemed to fill out the composition nicely.


I'm thinking the only real beadwork I do for this BJP is going to be confined to a technique that will create hair for the head. Any more than that and I will lose the effect of the background print.

I just have to figure out what technique and what color(s) to use...

Weather Report

I think I'm beginning to recover from my most recent bout of toxic attacks. (Keep your fingers crossed!)

We have had a significant weather event this week. This won't be a big deal to anyone east of the Cascade Mountain Range but around here it is. This is what it looked like Wednesday morning:

When I looked out the window everything was virtually the same color. It was snowing when I took the picture but the flakes were so tiny and so fine they don't show up. It snowed all day, sometimes heavier and faster, sometimes just a few flakes. This is another shot from early in the day, just for persepctive:

We may have had a total of six inches. Half of it melted away when the temperatures warmed up in the afternoon. Then another storm front came through. I believe it must have snowed during the night and then it just kept on snowing all day yesterday. This is what we have now:

We may have 12 inches. Other areas around us have up to 20 inches! At least the sky has gone from gray to blue again.

And I don't have to go anywhere. :- )

Time Out

It's been another of those rough weeks. As a result I've done no sewing at all in recent days. Last week I was playing around with stick blocks.


Then I read about Victoria's challenge over on the 15 Minutes of Play blog to make two blocks using only dots, stripes, and plaids. I found an old bit of strata that happened to be mostly dots and stripes and a big ole plaid. So I played around with that a bit until I had these two blocks:


Sent those off to V~ and haven't sewn since. I haven't even been back to see what V~ is doing with the blocks. But I did get some grandbaby time over the weekend. :- )

Unfortunately I still don't feel well enough to get back to sewing. On the other hand, I only have a few more days if I want to complete any February challenges by the end of the month!

And the Winner Is...

I hope my readers had as happy a Valentine's Day as I did. I got to sew all day! And then my DH made dinner for us. He treats me so well. :- )

I've added a little bit to Janet's Intuition block. The sawtooth strip down the right side, some horizontal flying geese units across the bottom, and a strip of pieced greens across the top.

Not much, but it's a start. I made quite a few blocks yesterday; I'll show them in another post. It remains to be seen whether any of them end up in Janet's quilt.

And now, for the news about two dozen of you have been waiting for, the winner of my white Love Token...

Everyone's name went onto a ticket for each comment you'd left.

And the lucky winner is Joyce!

It will be a while before Joyce actually sees her prize in person since she's about to fly over to Australia but the beauty of fiber art is that it doesn't spoil or go rotten!

Done!

Constructing this quilt top in three sections posed some pressing problems. It wasn't as bad as it may sound though. I merely had to decide which way to press the seam allowances to get the best results.

At this stage I had flat-pressed all the seam allowances but had not opened them up or pressed them in one direction or the other. In the end I decided to press the seam allowances of the center section upward and the two sides down. That allowed me to nestle the seam allowances up against each other to get clean joins on the front. The long vertical seams were then pressed open to help the quilt top lay flatter. Taa daa!

I had originally planned to do the quilting on this myself. The bigger it got the less I felt like wrestling with it. I called my favorite long-arm quilter and, lo and behold, she was able to find a hole in her schedule just the right size for this simple job. Woohoo!

I had several of the 6" half square triangle blocks left over, and enough of the focal fabrics to make up a few more. That allowed me to create a back out of just 4 yards of clearance fabric:

This won't be in his hands for SIL's birthday but it could easily be a completed quilt by then. Now it's time to put Janet's block back on the wall and see what happens.

In other news, my friend C~ dropped by for a quick visit. We hadn't seen each other in a while. I was able to finally give her a copy of Tonya's Word Play as a belated birthday gift, and look what she picked up for me on a recent trip:

A cute little bluebird clip and...

maybe the most fun skull print I've ever seen! This is from STUDIOe fabrics (studioefabrics.com). She found it in a shop in Oregon. I absolutely LOVE it! I haven't made a cover for my Nook yet; this may be what I end up using. :-D