Can You See Me Now?

Posted on July 11, 2007 by Suzanne

This one made me laugh.

I think it’s going to be the inspiration for a page in the next altered book round robin I’m supposed to be working on. I’m thinking about using quotes or phrases with the word “SEE” in them. No idea how to lay it out or anything, but that’s the general idea. Hopefully I’ll have some inspiration during the night, since I really need to get this done…oh…about 2 weeks ago….

My car needs an oil change, which is sort of funny since it’s been just barely a month since I got the previous oil change. Unless you know that the poor car has been to:

Kansas City, St. Paul, Wisconsin, St. Louis, and various other small trips here and there….

All in the last 5 weeks.

No wonder I’m tired, my house is a disaster, and I feel like I’m getting nothing done….

Maybe something will get done tomorrow.

(I was telling a friend that I was sounding an awful lot like Scarlett lately…there’s always tomorrow….)

Til tomorrow then:

~~Scarlett~~

Suzanne

Catching up on old topics

Posted on June 18, 2007 by Suzanne

These pictures were taken long, long ago, but I still wanted to post them:

QOVs

First up are several QOVs that have gotten worked on recently. The first is one that I pieced awhile back, with grand intentions for applique and really fancy quilting. I lost interest, and when I ran out of time to piece something new in order to fulfill my obligation to the quarterly Quilt Studio challenge, I decided that this would be perfect. It’s red, white and blue, without being overtly patriotic, and it’s nice and girly, which fits the fact that this quarters challenge was to make QOVs suitable for Female soldiers.

It is quilted and bound, and just needs a label and a wash. I don’t know if the quilting shows up that well, it’s a design from my first book:

Next up is a QOV that was pieced by Marty. If you visit Marty’s blog you’ll see other pictures, she has it back and is working on binding it:

I used a gold Arc poly thread — it reads as almost metallic, which I thought matched the metallic accents in the Laurel Burch fabric.

I’ve quilted 2 other QOVs recently, but don’t have pictures of either of them. It felt good to load these up and get them done — the quilting went really fast on all 4. I think that the week I worked on these, I managed to actually get the 4 QOVs done, plus a customer quilt, plus 2 other small quilts that just needed fast quilting.

ABC Round Robin

I fell behind on the altered book round robin project that I’m a member of. For one thing, I got carried away with quilting (see above), and then when I started to work on a page for the book, I discovered that I had picked a letter that was already taken and I had to start from scratch. And this occurred the day that we lost Toby, which was 2 days before I was to leave for my 2 weeks of quilt show fun.

So. Last week, when I was home for 2 days, I was able to get this page spread done:

The daisy was done using a piece of interfacing, a layer of background fabric and then the petals and center. I turned the edges of the background fabric to the back to get a nice neat edge. The fiber piece was stitched to the background paper before the whole thing was glued into the book. The quotation was printed on vellum which I inserted by folding over about a half an inch flap, which got anchored in behind the scrapbook paper that I glued into the book.

Here’s a close-up of the daisy and the stitching/beading that I did to embellish it:

Well, I think that catches up the quilt and/or art related items of interest. I’m still behind on my 12x12x12 journal pieces (what happened to May? And where has June gone?). I did get my Longarm Round Robin quilt back, but it still needs to have the outer border quilted and I’m not sure when I’ll get to that….

I took a 2 hour nap today — I hit a wall and could go no further. Three hours later, I’m still feeling awfully groggy. I may have to go to bed early tonight…

I did not take my camera to either of the quilt shows I was at, but tomorrow I will try to post a few thoughts on everything I did and saw over the last 2 weeks.

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

Another page done

Posted on March 18, 2007 by Suzanne

Turquoise "T" on Two-color fabric with Twin circles

I Trapped Tangled Threads with Tulle and did some Threadplay on Top. (Actually I did bobbin work, as the Thread I wanted to use is Turquoise Kreinik metallic blending filament, which I didn’t think would work coming through the needle).

The fabric was layered with Two layers of Totally Stable stabilizer (a Sulky product).

Some of the "T"s were on purpose, some I only realized after I got going like the Twin circles or the fact that the name of the stabilizer started with a "T"…)

The color is much prettier in person. I still need to attach these to the appropriate places in Marilyn’s book, and will get it in the mail next week.

ABC RR Pages for Marilyn

Posted on March 17, 2007 by Suzanne

This post is a copy of what I posted on the ABC Round Robin blog that we are using to keep track of what our group is doing. (Which can be found here if you are interested. I should put a link in my list of links, I guess.)

*****************
I’m still contemplating what I’m doing for my second letter in
Marilyn’s book, but I wanted to show off the front and back of what I
did for the letter "P" for her book. In all honesty, I’m not sure yet
which is the front and which is the back….

I’m particularly fond of wordplay and being clever, although I hope it isn’t too silly.

Make note of plaid, pink, poetry, polka-dots, pocket….the pink background is painted paper…

There
are 3 printed poems in the pocket (which is made of two layers of polka-dot
fabric and a layer of Peltex interfacing). I might add more poems, just
haven’t picked any others yet. I was trying to see if there is a shade
of green that has a "P" name, haven’t found one yet…LOL.

Are the blue letters and brads Powder blue? I don’t think they are Periwinkle, but they might be Persian blue.

Oh wait — what about Persian Green or Pine Green?

I told you I was silly…..VBG