While Re-Organizing....

I came across this moon I had made a few years ago.  I think it's done in a crazy way to either make it more interesting or to use small pieces of lame.  Not because I like to do crazy quilt blocks. I don't.

 A peek of the cutting mat behind to show you how I just cut into the blue fabric.

 This awesome little boat was in with the moon. Perfect. Made by Dorothy during a block swap long ago.....thank you D.!

 I tore trimmed the fabric around the boat to mix the fabrics together.

 The back side of the moon....

 and the boat weave...

 And for the holidays....LED lights behind batt makes a starry night....

 2 of 4 granddaughters

 my youngest...College Girl....

 An experiment...softened in water package things, glue added and shaped like a tree.

Still wet after 3 days.  Trashed.

Revisiting my Crow Piece

Story of the Crows

{originally done in early 2010}

This quilt came about recently when I read of a contest on/at Lark Books.They wanted at least 3 of 5 things on the quilt.

1-birds

2-mountains

3-silver things

4-re-purposed things

5-beads

this brought on an ah-ha moment for me.

With the recent interest in this piece, I sat looking at it this morning.

[ok, so it's on the bathroom wall...]

I learned a lot doing this.

The hand stitching.  The effects of them show up really well in this shot, ripples in the fabric.  I stitched the mountains north/south. If I had stitched them east/west, the ripples would go north/south 

and look more mountain-y.

The yarn birds.  I really like how they turned out, done with the wool yarn.

The larger birds.  I had stitched through paper for the original outlines because I didn't have another way to transfer them, the lines, to the black fabric.  Now I can see that adding more stitching would enhance them, whether by hand or machine.

The moon side of the mountains.  Really should have used a darker fabric to represent twilight.

Hopefully I will remember all this when I get back to one of the projects I have started, waiting patiently in my footstool.  Maybe the tropical one.

T-Day

The turkey is cooked, but forgot about the parade.  

The ham is in the oven, but we aren't watching football. 

The fresh cranberries have popped.

The potatoes are being pulverized.

The yams are in the oven, fresh whole buggers.

All 3 of our children are here at the moment. 

2 of 4 granddaughters are here now, the other 2 come later.

Ben, son, has to work, but then he plans to go shopping at midnight.

Son in law worked last night, so he sleeps for now.

We are thankful for every damn thing!

For Mo

Mo asked to see close ups of the crows...so here they are.  I used copyright-free pictures from a coloring page site, put the fabric right side up with the printed paper on top, then machine stitched through the paper on the lines.  I used yellow or white thread so it would show and then left it on there, so you could see the lines of the feathers, legs, etc.

 I did hand applique them on the background.  The one above is Dad, this guy below is  the middle fella, the young one, and he is supposed to have something fiber-shiny related in his beak....

 This is the female....

I added some stitches of white thread between her beak...lips???...and her legs to make them show up better.

Hopefully you can click, enlarge and enlarge again...

For Arlee

arlee wanted to see the crows close up, so here they are.  they were super easy to stitch, even though they are made with yarn.  they are only done on the top fabric, before the batt and backing where added.  i used a felt piece as a 'pattern', that i stitched over and pulled out towards the end and reused for the next bird.

Bits Of Bits

 I got the T-squares put up in the bathroom, they are great for magnets!  I need some heavy duty mags, though, for the wallies. Right now this one is clothes pinned, as are the curtains on the window.  I am hoping that stick you see in the corner will become a curtain rod.

 That is the crow quilt, with the 'murder' of crows in the tree, 

that I made with yarn, arlee.

 Steph gave me this itty bitty kitty mags last year...

 my blurry bits can hang here too. {very small rotary cutting ruler on a key fob.}

 Back when I showed you the dyed linen tablecloth, I meant to point out this...area....

tuning fork?  dowsing rod?

Are You a Flixer?

I am. My granddaughters are flixies.

We watch a lot of Netflix offerings.

I love watching tv shows this way....a whole season at a time!!!!

Rescue Me, Saving Grace, and others. 

Now Vampire Diaries, because Steph is hooked too.

I also like everything AMC is coming out with....Breaking Bad, Hell On Wheels, The Walking Dead....

I am the same way with books...gotta find authors with many titles so I can keep the series going!!  Game of Thrones, not the tv version yet, just the books.  S.M. Stirling books.  All of Neil Gaiman's even though he doesn't write in series'.  I love reading a book I don't have to rewrite in my head as I go.

Just so you know I do have other interests in my life.  Hah.

squirrel antics

 the felt tree is stitched down.  not sure what else i want to do with this, 

so i will leave it for a while.

back of the felt tree

 My Magic Diary cloth is finally seeing my hands again.  Water for butterflies.

added the thread and it's label in case you want something original too.

 these pixs are kinda on the dull side, no sun for days here....

steph was home so we threw some fabrics into a dye pot. the above piece goes perfectly with magic...

this is a linen tablecloth...looks a little better than this in person.

Change of Mood and Direction

But first for your funny bone...this box was very popular with the girls last weekend...and it held up with all that play.  I happened to notice this on the side....I love this! art by Megan.

 For the second bit of random...newly dyed towels.  They were green and yellow, to 'go' with the old bath colors.  So into the washer they went with 1 package of Firey Red, 1 Goldfish Orange, and 1 [other name] Orange, all Dylon dyes.  The yellow towels, bottom of pile, could use a little more....well something to darken them a bit. But the green ones....I got rust/paprika/dark terracotta....just what I wanted!!!  

And from the green base color too.

 Ok, this is where the mood and direction change comes in.  I was sitting here yesterday mulling over the FrankenStitch pieces...and decided I didn't really like them. I enjoyed doing the stitching, I just think they look like samplers. Not into samplers.

In came Ben. "You need a new project, Mom."  

So this piece came to mind....

The one I tried to do a tree on and didn't like. 

The one I was gifted 2 beautiful pieces of silk chiffon for....But while trying to find it in my footstool storage, this piece of brown [wool?] felt looked up at me...and the rest fell into place far faster than words can say....

The bits of extra tree are stitched onto the trunk, but not the background, the yellow/green silk is stitched down, as you can see, and the blue is partly pinned. Not sure yet where this will go after attaching the tree...

I am happy again!

Stitchy Things

 Recently arlee showed us how to square up our cloths in the FrankenStitch class.

 I ended up with a few ridges....this one, above, should be interesting to work on the lacy area.

 I finished the bridge over this area, but I think it looks more like a ladder.

 come on over!

 The whole thing so far....

...I twisted the snaky tie thing, tucked it under the tie-dye silk, and created a mole eye under it.  The pins kinda show where it's hiding under there.  This may not be done, but that snaky tie thing is finally tamed!!  It kept getting caught on anything it could...I even ended up stitching it to the back and had to rescue it.

Costumes, Toilets, and Frankenstitch

 My what big teeth you have Lily!

Don't let your babies grow up to be cowgirls...

 So, where did you say milk comes from Gup?

 See mom, her hair is getting longer...{which got a snort from me/mom/gup}

 Where's the cropped version of this? At least the tv had something suitable on it.

Oh...that's Megan with the big teeth this time. 

The only pic we have of the girls before trick and treating.  Lily was going to be a ghost, changed her mind, wore the giraffe costume again this year, but added some white makeup...she was the neighborhood hit.

Dan spent all day yesterday getting the flooring in...well half of that time was spent going up and down the stairs to the shop where the table saw is.

 Then he put in the toilet....which I love!!!!!

 So why is there a heater and fans going in the room???  See that little plastic pipe trying to hide behind the toilet??  Dan accidentally bumped it, so of course it shattered because it's plastic!! I am sure we had similar facial expressions as we passed each other,[OH SHIT] him to go turn off the water, me to go try to stem the flow.

 The flooring is laminate, and so far I lovvvvvve it.

I did a little Frankenstitching this last weekend.

 and did I show you the torn bit?  where I tore the fabric to fit the snaky silk thing in, and because it was an area of big blahness.

I came up with the idea to bridge it.  This is a 'so far' pic.

I had a day of half full fuckus interruptis. 

Had to wash the clean sheets and towels I had used to contain the flood. 

Ran the DW half full because plasticware stained with tomato sauce, don't fit nicely together.  

Moved the fans and heater around many many times.