Busy, busy, busy….

Posted on August 2, 2007 by Suzanne

I’ve been absent from blogging this week due to a number of things:

1. Several trips to the pool (my tan is the darkest it’s been since I was little…of course it is only my arms, neck, and some of my legs, so the rest of me is still quite….blindingly white….LOL!). The funniest part is my flip-flop tan. Sorry, no pictures of any of that.

2. Trying to get caught up on my Altered book round robin project:

(1 book down, 1 to go, make note of the Four frocks, the Four Flowered paisleys — those are all rub-ons… The dress has some tulle underneath, the “top” is made of wool felt. The spread has since been glued into its book and I’ll mail it tomorrow.)

3. Being threatened by boys with nerf guns:

4. And hanging out at the new website/forum for Machine Quilters that I’ve created.

MQResource

If you are a machine quilter (longarm, midarm, shortarm, DSM) or a want-to-be, or just interested in learning about machine quilting, you are welcome to join us. Even thought our common link is machine quilting, we talk about a lot of other stuff, too. You do have to register and login in order to view the forums: and right now the forums are really active with introductions and people trying to figure out how to use the new forum software (just a warning…) The site is also still under construction, as I’m still figuring out the software and figuring out how best to organize things.

Oh and one more, playing with creating a signature at a website that Gina sent a bunch of us to. MyLiveSignature

TTFN-

8ccc9b5847b0fef3d5082675d752a541 Busy, busy, busy....

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

Of piano recitals, tulips and birds

Posted on April 23, 2007 by Suzanne

Yesterday was our piano recital. I teach 3 kids, and my boys take lessons (from someone else…). The other teachers and I decided to do a group recital day. There were 3 sessions — my students and my boys were at the 3 PM session. I think there were 13 kids playing at that session — a nice number. Not too long….

I had been worried about the performances of my boys simply because they’ve been really silly at practice time lately. Racing through their songs….goofing off….not listening to anything Mom has to say.

Thankfully, all of the children managed to do a wonderful job at the recital. No major flubs, nobody being silly. In fact, my boys, and my 3 students pretty much played their best at the recital, so I was proud and relieved.

Of the 13 kids at the 3PM recital, 8 were boys. Eight! All of the boys seem to be drawn to the bouncy, jazzy type songs. They were all very cute. The 13 kids ranged in age from 7 to about 10 or 11. The teachers announced the name of the next performer, and then when they got up on stage, each kid announced the names of their songs. After they played, they all gave a bow of some sort (head bob, slight bend at the waist…one of the girls even give a tiny curtsy).

Of course, I think the kids all thought the refreshments afterwards were the best part. One of my boys said to me later "It was really annoying when people kept coming up to the table of performers and telling us what a good job we did."

At least no one was trying to pinch his cheeks or give him a sloppy kiss!

I’ve had trouble getting going this week. The weekend was a little bit foggy: Benadryl doesn’t normally make me drowsy, but this weekend, boy….I had several Benadryl induced naps. It’s such a trade-off: sneezing and watery eyes, or drowsy foggy brain?

I have been trying to get back into crafty/arty projects. Today I worked on the "T" spread for the next Altered Book round robin book. I’m not sure I’m completely done with it, but here’s where I’m at for now:

If you can’t read it, the text is from the song "Tiptoe through the Tulips"

I also made a bird:

CarlaB has instructions on her blog (Feathered Fibers) for making this bird: she uses fabric, mine is out of paper. I’m contemplating using it for a page in one of my upcoming altered books. I discovered after the glue was dry that one of the leg is longer than the other. It’s actually one long braid, and I thought I’d stuck it in with the two ends hangingout fairly evenly. Oops.

I can’t remember the last time I actually cooked a meal, so I thought I’d surprise my family and actually cook something tonight. I’d better get going on that……..

TTFN-
Suzanne

Alphabet Round Robin Ship Day

Posted on February 22, 2007 by Suzanne

Today is the deadline. My Alphabet round robin book has to be in the mail today. I have really struggled to make up my mind about what to do to get it started. It’s now in the box and there is no turning back!

Here’s the book closed:

As I said in a previous post, the cover (front and back…) are a work in progress. Right now it is just painted with black gesso, which is very flat. I also managed to get some glue on the front cover. The hardest part of this project (for me, so far…) is dealing with the paint and glue and not making a mess!

Here’s my sign in page:

Does that pinky-purple fabric look familiar?

The pink sheets that I want the artists to sign are also from yesterday’s sunpainting experiment. I experimented with a sheet of Tyvek. It had pennies and some salt on it. The Tyvek doesn’t absorb the paint the way fabric does, so it didn’t sunpaint the same way, but it still had some interesting effects:

(The blue paper was colored with Tsukineko ink — I dipped a cosmetic sponge wedge in the ink and then splotched the ink on the paper)

I was going to send it out with just the above done. but then I had an idea. And I put this page together:

The black and white polka dot fabric is fused to some Fast-2-fuse interfacing, which is fairly thick. I was inspired to do the beading by Laura and her February 12×12 journal quilt.

The black scribbles on the paper around the little quiltlet are the names of objects that are red.

All of the pictures are clickable, so you can view them slightly larger if you so desire.

I was hoping to do some more sunpainting today, but the wind kicked up, so that’s not going to happen.

Better get to the post office!