Monday wrap-up

Posted on April 30, 2007 by Suzanne

So here it is the last day of April, and I’m still behind on the Quilt Studio 12x12x12 challenge.

But now, I’m only 1 month behind, instead of 2. Click to view this larger:

I was so tickled with my rainbow idea for the ABC Round Robin book (see yesterday’s post), that I did it again as a 12×12 quilt for myself.

It’s the same but different. It’s a 6 by 6 square of inchies, rather than the 6 by 7 rectangle for the book. You’ll also notice the addition of some buttons. And beads — the buttons on the inchies each have a black bead on top of them, in addition to the beads in the fringe. I love beaded fringe. I think I need to do more things with beads and buttons and fringe.

The funny thing is that my theme is supposed to be the Alphabet, with the idea that I will incorporate text on my quilts. Um yeah. Well, I forgot today. I had an idea that I was going to try, but I didn’t remember that I was going to try this idea until….the quilt was completely done. Oops. I still have a few ideas that I may play with, but for now, this is good enough. *I* know it is supposed to be a representation of “R is for Rainbow.”

Learned a few things from it. Still need to work on my satin stitch technique. I was brainstorming about why it is so messy, and it occurred to me that changing my needle might have helped. Any tips on how to do a clean satin stitch around the outside edge of a piece? The inchies are made of fabric fused to Timtex.

My next 12x12x12 is in progress. It’s covered with beads and buttons too. It’s taking me some time to do, but I hope to be done in a few days. And then I need to get going on something for May!

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On a completely unrelated note, as I was looking through pictures, I realized that I never showed a picture of this little book I made. I saw these on Lisa‘s blog last week. She also provided a link to the tutorial where she learned how to make them, which is here.

I learned from this project that I am a very messy gluer. Actually, I knew that already, it was just driven home to me with this project. No matter how hard, I try I get glue allover the place. I’m not sure what my problem is. Maybe I need to go back to Kindergarten for some gluing lessons.

Last, but not least, I thought I’d show off a picture of my athletes. I didn’t get very many decent pictures at the soccer game on Saturday, but was glad that at least one of them had both boys in the same shot.

I think that’s all from me for today. I need to go sew on some more buttons and then go to bed.

TTFN!

Suzanne

Under the Weather

Posted on April 29, 2007 by Suzanne

I’ve been a little under the weather this week, which is why some of my posts this week were a little crabby, and why I just didn’t even bother posting the last 2 days. Instead, I’ve been sewing. I showed off my page spread for my ABC RR in my previous post, but I thought I’d also show off the quilt top I finished yesterday.

It’s based on the pattern StarStruck found at Bonnie Hunter’s website.

You can click on the photo to view it larger. This is my 2nd StarStruck. It’s a fun pattern to put together — a good stashbuster. I do like how this turned out, but I think I like the green with red accents version that I did previously. I think there might be *too* much red in this one.

It looks pretty wonky, but it’s just hanging on my design wall, it is actually straight….

Thanks to some antibiotics, I’m feeling much better, so hopefully I’ll be more productive and less crabby this week.

TTFN-

Suzanne

R is for Rainbow

Posted on April 29, 2007 by Suzanne

I’m coming up against the due date for mailing on the ABC RR book that is currently in my possession. I did Tiptoe through the Tulips a few days ago, but just haven’t found the right inspiration for my second spread in the current book.

Until this morning!

I started with a rectangle of Sulky Totally Stable. I started cutting squares of fabric and laying them down in columns. One side of the stabilizer is iron-on, so as I added a column of color, I would lightly press it to get it to stick.

After I got all of the columns laid out, I got out some thread.

I did a little free-motion squiggle on each column in a matching color. After I was done stitching, I cut the rectangle up into 1-inch wide sections. I thought I was going to be able to get away with just the Totally Stable, but when I tried to Zig-Zag the edges, it proved to be too fragile. So, I fused on some fusible Timtex.

Here’s what it looked like after I had cut the columns apart, fused it to the Timtex, and zig-zagged down both sides of the columns.

The next step was to cut each column in to a 1-inch square, and then zig-zag the other 2 edges.

Here’s all 42 of my inchies:

I have admired the inchies I’ve seen on various people’s websites. The thing is that the pictures on websites are very deceiving as to the actual size of these puppies. Inchies are extremely small.

All of this work of sewing things together and then cuttnig them back apart was so that I could end up with the following page spread for the ABC RR book:

The edges are curled a little, the glue is still wet. After it finishes drying, I’ll be mailing this book on, and hopefully seeing another one showing up soon!

After I fused the inchies on to the blue sky background, I stitched across with matching thread, just to catch them. I had to add the black edging because I had managed to cut the blue sky backgrounds too short. Duh. There is also a ribbon dangling down the center with letter charms on it that spell out “RAINBOW.”

I’m very pleased with how this turned out, and I’m actually contemplating how I can use some of the ideas I had for this page spread for a different project for myself. For now, though, I’d better go clean up my mess and find something else to do.

TTFN-

Suzanne

Vying for Wife of the Year Award

Posted on April 26, 2007 by Suzanne

I’m pretty sure I’m not going to make Mother of the Year, so I thought I’d try for Wife of the Year.

Several months ago, my DH came home wearing a shirt that had a hole in the sleeve. I’m pretty sure that he had probably GONE to work with the hole, but I don’t want to think about that.

He spends a lot of his day with his left elbow on his desk, his left hand on his chin, keeping his head up while he endlessly clicks things on his computer with his right hand on the mouse.

He handed me the shirt and asked if I could cut off the sleeves and turn it into a short sleeve shirt. Other than the rather noticeable hole in the elbow, the shirt was still in pretty decent shape. He dug into his closet and handed me another short sleeve shirt that had a sleeve length he particularly liked so I had an example to work from.

This was winter time, so I wasn’t in any hurry to do the job. I hung the shirts in my closet thinking I’d get to them some day before he needed them. Over the course of several days he began to hand me other shirts with similar elbow holes — a total of 4 of these, in fact.

On the hanger they went, as I tried to ignore the fact that he had probably worn all of these to work several times with the holes already hole-y.

It’s nearly time for him to wear them, so I finally decided that today was the day. I’m not really sure why I avoided doing it — I guess I thought it was going to take me forever to do it. Yeah right. Maybe an hour total and he has 4 new short sleeve shirts to wear to work:

Unfortunately, because of the position of the holes, I had to cut the sleeves slightly shorter than the sample shirt, but they aren’t too far off.

I think I mostly avoided this project because despite the fact that I’m a quilter, I don’t really “sew.” My garment techniques are woefully inadequate. You’ll notice that I am not showing you a close-up of the hems, as the stitched lines are little bit wobbly. They do the job, though, which is all that really matters.

In case you are wondering, the reason why I am not a candidate for Mother of the Year is because I have forced the boys to eat school lunches TWICE this week. If looks could kill, Joe would have had me dead about a million times over this morning.

After school, I asked him how lunch was today.

“Kind of Good.”

Uh-huh. That’s what I thought. Twerp.

I’m going to try to angle for Mother of the Year with supper tonight, though, pancakes and scrambled eggs…better get cooking!

TTFN -

Suzanne

I heart beads

Posted on April 26, 2007 by Suzanne

So after I got through whining about my fusible web tracing issues from yesterday, I went back to the studio to try again. THis time I managed to get it right. I’m making this piece up as I go along, so once the letters were fused, and I did a quick zig-zag in matching thread, I had to decide what was next.

Beads.

Figured it couldn’t hurt to try.

I had this red bead mix that is packed with various shades of red (true red, pinky-red, purpley-red, goldish red, matte, shiny, silver-lined, clear). So, I started picking up groups of 2 or 3 beads (stab the needle in, whatever comes out on the needle is what gets sewn on), and began outlining the Q. Between last night and this afternoon, I’ve got the “C” and the “Q” outlined.

Yum.

I adore beads.

Don’t know what exactly I’m going to do with the all of the plain white fabric in the rest of the block, but I’m sure I’ll come up with something. Maybe more beads.

In case you are wondering, Salt Creek Quilt Company is the name of my business, thus the reason for the letters.

(Don’t forget to click to view them full size. These tiny thumbnails do not do the beads justice.)

I think I need more beads. Anybody want to share their favorite bead source(s)?

Thanks,

Suzanne