Kibbles and Moondance

My baby-day bag.  Packed and ready to go...hopefully the camera will get put back into the bag....

bag'o'tricks

 The hand work in the bag is this piece I started a couple of years ago...just random bits and bits.  It was once larger, until scissors made it smaller.

kibbles 'n' bits

 Christine gave me a piece of fish print for the Pine Lake Quilt and these were left over parts, so I used them here...the head, the body and tail, and the ruff.

here fishy fishy

 I guess I shouldn't take pix in the sun...will I ever learn?  Nope.  Anyway, this is moondance, or so I seem to be calling it.  This is the 9-patch I started in answer to my inner self.

moondance

 I basted the star shapes down then decided they needed more umph....so I stitched yarn all around and am couching it down...the middle right side is done.

couching yarn around the stars

 I found it easier to stitch the yarn onto the piece, vs. just laying it down and couching as I go. Kinda like the invisible baste vs pins everywhere, easy to handle.

behind moondance
This is the back, the silk scrap I am stitching it to.

What a cool idea!

What am I talking about? Painting leaves....not painting leaves on something, I mean painting the actual leaf! Geninne has done just this! I have a leaf I could do this to too....

I have kept it for it's leathery look...on the fridge.
Onto other things....like chipmunks....
and deer on the Pine Lake quilt. I am so glad to have it back on the wall. I liked the rocks quilts, but I really like this one better. You will notice I have turned the pine cone right side up also....on older pix you will see that I have it pointy side up, like having a horseshoe wrong on the wall, ya know?!

To answer a question....

"Where are you going with all of these great pieces?" asked Mendofleur.

Haven't got a clue.  No seriously, I am not sure what I will be doing with the buffalo, log cabin and butterfly. I have gone back and forth with the keep together/ separate them . Stay tuned on that one. 

The Deer....well....I will probably let him stay on the design wall for a while

though I have considered adding him to Pine Lake. I am also going to turn that pine cone around!!!!! I didn't realize until long after the quilt was on the wall, that I had the cone upside down. Sheesh...good thing it's only safety pinned on there.

Offical Showing Of March "Quilt Every Day" Challenge

Nutcracker wallie for my MIL. Blurry, but great shot of machine quilting. Had the blocks, just needed to assemble and quilt. Not finished yet.
Pine Lake finished and on the wall!
The stringer of fish to go with Pine Lake.
A WIP wallie, started in March. More later ....like after I give it away....Oh look...a fish. Another WIP started in March. [my drawing skills, no less]
Threads to go with the fish.

Story book wallie, one of them. The train, tracks and mt.s for Polar Express. This is still a WIP, and a fun one at that! I am making a second one for my brothers grandson, but decided to go with books they would read to him. [but unchosen as of this minute] This one is from 5 books chosen by Dorothy for a Nesting Robin, online at delphi quilting forum.

Go Fish

This is for Quilting Fitzy....the fish I caught from her. I need to take a micro shot of the hanging method, which is string and a fishing thingie, which is how fish are brought home from the lake, right? And how the fish look with the quilt.
These are fabric cutouts stuck into acrylic paint that I put on cotton batt. Stephanie had cut them so perfectly, I didn't want to screw them up by stitching around them, but needed a way to attach them to a WIP wall hanging. I added a layer of decoupage medium on top to gloss them up.

Pine Lake~ DONE!!!!!

Sorry about the blurry picture, I was shaking with joy. We also have an optical illusion with the way the ceiling goes up. The black things on the wall are straight, we used a level. I will get a better picture soon so you can see the way we hung this off a crooked stick.
Sunday was dog clipping day. Both Abby, above, and Page, below, got hair cuts. Page is getting more spots! She is a Jack Russell in a dalmatian costume.
I didn't get my 10 minutes of quilting in for 2 days this last week. Sunday was busy, what with Megan running around making the fur fly! Literally.
This picture is of 2 cards Stephanie made for 2 of the many generous people to contribute to her Spain travel fund. She spent a lot of time working on these, and were of course muchas grande in person. [is that the correct sentiment?]
click to view larger.

Question about fish

Christine asked "Very nice, but where are the fish?" Too funny. Actually they are hiding in the drawer so Megan doesn't play with them....who would have thought that some flat quilted fish would be fun to play with???? I will get them out and 'hang' them too....after I get Dan to put up the stick I want to hang the quilt from. I want it to be like a curtain rod so I can change the quilts now and then, which I could do with thumb tacks, but I have this great stick we brought home from a road trip.

gee....guess this quilt isn't as done as i thought.

22 cats and Pine Lake

haha....but....Stephanie took 22 pictures of this cat, RocketMan, and if I could set up a flip book here you could see the sequence of pix, but I can't, so here are 2 of the same shot altered by moi. Nothing but softness....NOT
He is not an evil kitty, like some, he is just big and likes to get his way.
Pine Lake is done! Well, I need to safety pin the pine cone back on, but it is washed and ready to be hung...unless I decide to add a hanging method...otherwise, where did the thumb tacks go.

Funny moment~ I asked Ashley to hold up the quilt on the couch for photo-ing, [Rockets input--9999999999999] she turned around and stopped in her tracks, "ah, Mom...." and we both started laughing...there were 4 quilts on the couch.

Cats & Threads

See, I do have 2 cats. Rarely do they 'agree' to be in the same photo though. Ok, with all the saving of money we have been doing, so Stephanie can travel to Spain with other students, I have usually just looked, maybe 'added to cart', but not actually clicked the 'purchase' button. Until last week. I am thinking of doing a trout for the Pine Lake quilt. If you look at a much better picture of a trout than I show here, you will see how colorful they are.
So I got a wide variety of DMC Color Variations floss.
I have a hard time picking colors willy nilly, I tend to want them all, so I try to have a 'pattern' in mind. When all I did was cross stitch, it was ok to get whatever, whenever because of course I had to have all the colors!Included in the package from Nordic Needle. com was a catalog. So I looked in it, duh.

I found this in the book section....

This is incredible, all done in threads! [the link will take you to the google.books, i hope]

Table need a Sweater?

Who needs to knit a sweater-tablecloth when you can get the fabric made for you at eQuilter, of course. Can you tell I don't knit? This fabric comes in 3 different colorways too.

10 Minutes A Day Challenge~ I did many 10-min's's last night, quilting Pine Lake, while watching 30 Days Of Night, the movie, and Project Runway, and a bunch of muted commercials.

10 Mintues each day

That's the 'challenge' for quilting. The Quilting Diva has challenged anyone who is interested in quilting 10 minutes a day every day of March and then posting the results. I am on this!I am still working on the Pine Lake quilt, still doing the quilting. The green-yellowish smudges are the crayola washable marker I used to marking the rays. I was 'erasing' some. I had to take the pine cone off because I was messing up the 'satin stitching' on it. the branch and needles look like a dragonfly.
This will be one of the things I work on everyday during the 10 minute challenge.

Small Quilt and Pine Lake part 10

I was in a mini 9-patch block swap back in 2002 at the Quilting Forum at about.com. So I pulled the blocks out today, after re-finding them a couple of weeks ago, and sort of matched them up to make a quilt for Megan to use with her dolls/stuffed animals when she is here... And the backing [no batt] is a flannel receiving blanket I brought her daddy home from the hospital in 25 years ago!
One of my blocks with my signature symbol [I am a Capricorn, and my initials were VJ, before marriage, so I have used this symbol since my early teens.]
These were the 'stickers' on the block pairs with the names of the makers. Thank You ladies! Fish. Fabric fish. Thank You QF! I wanted to 'stuff' the fish, but didn't want to go thru the hassle of turning and stuffing, so I layered batt between front and back fabrics and stitched, then trimmed and painted. The white batt was a little bright, so I used black acrylic paint on my hand and the fish edges, and I figure the paint will help 'fray check' the edges too.

Pine Lake~ part 9

I have been quilting the Pine Lake quilt, but it's hard to get photos of the quilting. I took the second one upside down to get a different view of the 'wrinkled' fabric that quilting creates.
This is my Ashley, my TargetChick, and her boyfriend Danny. They have known each other since preschool, but just recently 'got together'.

Pine Lake ~ 8

Quilting. You may have to click to enlarge [CTE?] to even see some of the stitching, even though I do ji-nor-mous stitches with perle cotton.I had made the windows of the cabin a bright yellow...for lamp light or sun, so I added the lines for sunshine on this one. I made this pattern in EQ6, so I also made it up in darker fabrics. Can't find it of course....

DIL update

Kacie is back in the hospital trying to pass a kidney stone. Ben had brought her home, but home pain meds weren't doin' it for her. On the up side, Ben got to hear the baby heart beat, which is always exciting!

Am working on Pine Lake, but the quilting doesn't look like much right now. Bah.

Pine Lake~ 7

Progress. To the point of sandwiching. Yippee!The red arrow points to my furry friend Rocket who is holding the quilt down while I tug it here and there.Hummmmm....seeing the pine needles on the right, this way, I am not sure I like the back ground covering the pine cone fabric....I embroidered the needles on the same fabric I used for the light areas on the quilt. {it's not a white, more of a gray plaster look} And on the light area, the needles look good, but on the darker area....Well, I won't be quilting that spot for now, so I can see what you all think before that becomes a permanent thing.I added the mantle and hearth to the fire place too. I know the mantle looks crooked, but I am pretending it's a rough hewn block of wood.....I can't get Rocket to stretch out on the batt for a really good photo shot. That yellow thing is a cheese dish for food, I use it for safety pins. Earrings. The girls were clearing out their collection, so I scored some embellishments!The penny is for size. Even though we all know about what size earrings are, it happened to be there, so I left it.
And here is the other cat, Precious, holding Dan down to his chair. Such a serious look.