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

Blue jeans and hydrangeas

Posted on May 4, 2007 by Suzanne

Several months ago, I opened up the seams on a pair of jeans that had developed a hole in the knee. The idea being that I would embellish the jeans in some way, and then sew them back up. Opening the seams is as far as I got at the time….

Next weekend, my mom and I will be going to a wedding in Texas. We were talking about what we are planning to wear — there is a party Friday night, the Blessing of the Wedding on Saturday, and a brunch on Sunday. OK. I’d better stop and explain first: the wedding itself is actually tomorrow. In Sweden. (The groom is Swedish and the happy couple lives in Sweden). The bride’s parents live in Texas, and *next* weekend is a great big party for the American friends that couldn’t make it to Sweden. But it’s easier to say that we are going to a wedding, than it is to say that we are going to a Blessing of a Wedding — obviously it took me a long time to explain just what the heck I meant.

So, back to the story, and why this has anything to do with my jeans. The Friday night event is Western themed party, and we decided that blue jeans were probably acceptable. But I started thinking….wouldn’t it be cool to wear something I had made….and wouldn’t it be fun to actually finish embellishing the jeans I had torn apart? The problem has always been that I simply didn’t know what to do with them. So, I started brainstorming today. Yes, the event is next Friday. At least I’m starting today, and not next Thursday….

No matter what I do, the ultimate goal is to cover the rather large rip in the left knee. This requires a fairly large patch of something, and I just haven’t been able to figure out what. I don’t want it too look dorky….

For some reason I picked up a piece of Michael Miller fabric with big hydrangeas on it — which reminded me that I have a jacket made out of the hydrangea fabric. OK, the reason I picked it up was because it was sitting on top of one of the gazillions of piles strewn around my studio at the moment. But, it must have been sitting there for just this purpose.

Here’s the jacket: (You can click the picture to view it larger)

It’s longer in back than in front and is kind of swingy. It’s an Indygo Junction pattern, and is actually reversible. And *I* made it! Amazing! And oh, I guess it needs to be ironed….

After contemplating the fabric and the jacket, I thought about turning the jeans into a companion for the jacket.

I decided to cut out some of the hydrangea bunches, and am planning to fuse them on. The sleeves of the jackets get folded up to show the red lining fabric as a cuff, so I’m also thinking about adding cuffs to the bottom of the jeans:

Once the flowers are fused on, I’ll use monofilament thread to stitch around the edges. I’m also thinking about adding some beading as an accent to the flowers, both on the jeans and on the jacket.

Any opinions on beads on the jeans? Obviously I don’t want beads on the backside, because I don’t want to sit on them…..but if I use Nymo thread to apply them, they ought to be OK, don’t you think? I’ll probably even try to remember to make a knot before and after each bead for extra security, maybe fuse something over the stitching on the inside once it is all done, just to help secure it. Plus, these will be special occasion jeans, not meant to be worn every day.

Are the cuffs going to look OK? Part of why I’m adding them is that the bottoms of the jeans are fraying slightly, so I thought it would be nice to help neaten those up a little bit.

That’s what I’ve been up to this afternoon.

I bent the truth a little yesterday — the day wasn’t completely wasted, as I did do some beading on my May 12x12x12 quilt. I’m couching the beads on, and I need more practice apparently. Additionally, it points out to me that the beads I was using were not as uniform as I thought.

We are headed to a movie tonight (Meet the Robinsons),

I hope you have a fun Friday night!

TTFN-

Suzanne

April’s Journal Quilt

Posted on May 2, 2007 by Suzanne

Hey! I’m caught up now!

Of course, I can’t stop, as it is time to do May’s 12x12x12 quilt, but I have hopes of getting it done on time this month.

I showed pictures of this earlier, when I was just starting to bead. I mentioned at the time that I adore beads. I just should also add that I adore buttons. I’m actually pretty proud of myself for sticking with this one. As you will see, there are a lot of buttons. Maybe I’ll con the boys into counting just how many buttons are actually on it.

I really struggled with myself about even using the buttons or the beads. The design is nothing spectacular, just the initials of my business name. It doesn’t seem like it’s a “real” quilt. Even though I professed several months ago that I was going to use my stuff, I still struggle a bit — I feel like I should be saving things for “good” — for use on a really “serious” project.

Seriously. Isn’t that silly?

I talked myself into continuing and last night I sewed on the final button. I think one of the things I like best about this is the sheer weight of it. It feels really cool. Shall I show you the picture instead of continuing to ramble?

OK, here it is. I pinned some black fabric to my design wall to put behind it for contrast. Click on it to view it full size. It looks stupid with the right edge of the picture cut off.

After I finished the buttons last night, I actually found myself thinking “Hmmm. Maybe the letters ought to be entirely filled in with beads.”

In between sewing on gazillions of buttons, I have been spending time sorting out my disaster of a studio. 15 minutes of cleaning, 15 minutes of sewing. I’m finding some interesting treasures. I’ll probably share some of these later. One thing I did was cull out some quilting books I’d like to try to get rid of. I’ll be posting a list later. Right now, though, I have to get some More Meandering Magic books ready to mail, head to the Post Office, and then I’m off to get groceries.

TTFN!

Suzanne

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!

**************

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

Beads and buttons

Posted on April 20, 2007 by Suzanne

I really didn’t spend very much money at MQX last week, but what I did do was to splurge on some jewelry:

As with a lot of things, this is so much prettier in real life. I wonder if taking a picture of it on a dark background would be better? Or maybe seeing what it looks like on me would be better?

And this one (which has matching earrings):

And some buttons:

There are actually 8 of those gorgeous handmade glass button. Haven’t got the slightest clue as to what I’m going to do with them, but I’ll have to find something now, won’t I?

I got all of this pretty stuff from a place called We Got the Buttons

You should go visit her website — she has some interesting information about how she actually makes the buttons.

There aren’t actually any buttons for sale on her website — the best way to use her gorgeous buttons is to ask her to make CUSTOM buttons. Send her a swatch of your fabric, tell her what size, shape and color, and she’ll make buttons to match!

I have some work to do today, but I’m also bound and determined to finish the pebbling on the red wholecloth.

First stop, though, is a trip the cough syrup bottle. I’m feeling better, but I’m hearing horror stories from people that this crud lasts weeks. Ugh.

More later!

Suzanne