Monthly Report, Ha

Making journals is like sewing....has a whole bunch of terms pertaining to the subject....like 'belly bands' [for holding stuff to a page, like the red/yellow/black one above] and 'tuck spots' [like the pink and purple on edge of pages] and and...well, I don't know what to call the 'fabric/paper/place-holder' I made [the 'tie' looking thing] The groups of pages themselves are called 'signatures.'

These journals have one each, made up of 20+ pages.  I used liquid watercolor paint to spray papers, and though the colors don't look that great here, they are very happy in person.  I am hoping to donate to a fundraiser, so I wanted these child friendly.  I even added a picture of my own, to a page. No worry about copyrights that way!  The [sprayed] envelopes are for putting stuff in, and I glued them to the page so they have top  'pockets', which is another journal term.  [also a sewing term]

I found word search puzzles  on Etsy and thought that would be perfect for these. I know 'vintage' may not interest a child, but I didn't want to mess with the way the  print set up is.  I printed them on my 'watercolor' paper.  [they come 2 to a page, and since the paper is folded in half, the puzzles are separated]

I also found a great storage idea for all the digi downloads I am getting, and when searching office supplies, I found these pocket-page things. [the orange thing in the pix] Of course I had to make a collage for the front of the binder.

Thought you might want to be able to enlarge this on it's own.

And now for some family news.....This little smiling fellow, Max, also known as #7, is going to be ONE tomorrow.  A whole year old, oh my. 

#7 with #3, his cousin

The party was last Sat. and my husband loves to take pix of our girls eating.  I went around and got autographs in the 'guest book' I made for Max.

I used brown packing paper for the ABC pages, which I sprayed on via large stencils I came across in a drawer [which caused a light-bulb moment], with ink spray from Ranger. I sewed, on the machine, across the tops and bottoms of paper since I doubled it to make it stronger. I added coffee-dyed binder paper between each Letter.  I made up 'cards' of art work by my mom, the dog, me, the 'giraffe lady', and daughter Steph, the bugs.  I also looked for "M" things and found a color sample, 'mixed' berry-something, and a Monopoly game card. Turns out, Mediterranean Ave. is the first property, so very fitting for a 'first' birthday....besides being an 'm' thing.  The 2 'signatures' are held in by elastic, so the 'photo' pages can be rearranged, or added to or...or...The ABC pages and their binder page additives, are all sewn together!  My machine was not super happy, but it had no choice. The hardest part was getting all the correct letters sprayed to the correct side of the page!  The A and Z letters are on the same piece of paper. Other pages have 4 letters on them. And yes, they are all in the correct order!!

Foot Prints In Mud Etc.

Goose, Hummingbird nest, deer print [here], Robin's
egg [here], Ashley's food color test.

Dan tools!  He likes wheels too. He added them to the sander, he just got, free. Table he made for it got the wheels from our old BBQ. Table saw was free too. He is happy!

And below, the 3rd of the 7for7Grandchildren Quilts. So far I love them all!

front and back

Patches 

unfinished

Click to enlarge this one, above...Look at the original threads still holding it 

 together!  I tore from either end, leaving the center.  This is now part of the one below, Wind Chimes. I want to hang it high, inside. I completed this on the 17th, which would have been, or still is, mom's birthday. Pieces of this were taken off the 'magic cloth' I made long ago.

click to enlarge

The Green Thing is now stitched up. Quite a bit of FrankenStitch, listed on side bar, was added to this one. FS was a class taken from Arlee Barr, using embroidery to really have fun. And different from the Sumptuous Embroidery class, I believe it was called.  I think I want to add more of both to more patches.

Red, Blue With White, below, 

is done also, though not made up into a wallie yet.

Wild Life

#7, The Boy, is getting his legs under himself!

From my chair.....

zooooomm in.....

look at that poor Crow being poured on!

This is usually about all I see, the Hummerzzz

This is Jane Doe, she survived the winter, but you can still see her ribs.

I actually didn't see them as well until I cropped the picture so you could see the heart on her side...

click to enlarge

This ABC quilt [made from a fabric panel] needed 4 names added, since the family has grown since I made this, 2013. [i think]

I left the pen marks to show the girls that even with all that Grandma knows, she makes mistakes too. Ashley has it back up on the wall at home and is waiting to see if the girls notice the mistakes....haha

It wasn't until I was cropping this picture, that I noticed that even though I wrote "Malory" backwards, I had stitched the letters forwards....except for the Y. 

I stitched it bassakwards.

And this is the second of the 7for7 Grandchildren quilts, sent home and snuggled under already!

Here is the first one. Can't find my copy of the quilt-covered-kid, so you get the 'covered in laundry' version.

14 Years Ago

"Anything with positivity. She’s on a mission to be as positive and spread as much positivity as possible!”

This is how Megan's mom describe's her daughter.

As her grandmother, I am overjoyed to hear this!

Pic taken on Auntie Steph's bday

Back on my daughters bday, this was still a WIP. A work in progress.  

A colorful fabric collage of scraps from quilty friends and some of my own. 

I wasn't sure, then, who would be getting this one. Until I read that quote. 

Meggie Mac is grandchild #1. The child who added "grandmother" to my list of nomenclature.  She is 14 this year. 

Into sunshine and yellow and strawberries.

I knew just which 'card' to send her!  

I added X's and O's, 2 'strawberries' and my signature and date.  

I didn't add a hanging 'sleeve' to the back. 

Instead I left it alone for her to choose how to use it.  

A backpack patch?    A wallie? [wall hanging] 

A book cover?  On a T-shirt?

Though I have 6 other children who call me Grandma, Vicky grandma, Gup, Megan will always be #One to me, us.

<----- b="">Love you this much Megan!!

The Mend Continues

This mend is on the back of Ashley's flying geese and kites quilt. Keeping with the flying/color themes, [i showed the whole piece I have of this fabric in my last post] I worked around the print and the hole. I also added a bit of batt in the space, so am having to add quilting stitches too. The appliqued patch is hand stitched to the backing cloud fabric, for the most part, but the hand quilting stitches go through all the layers, as they should...

....So the front of the quilt isn't all funked out with machine stitching.* Which will make sense as you keep reading....

{The circle highlights the quilting stitches seen on the front.}

Am also using some dragonfly print I once used in a quilt for Ashley's sister. It has the same color-fly theme too, so why not?

    Turns out there are quite a few areas needing patches!  But...that is to be expected when you tie a quilt, as this one is. Tying is usually done with a larger needle to pull yarn or other heavy threads through.  The needle punches a giant hole in the fabrics, which are then pulled together tightly, and damages the fabrics.  I know this, I still do this. Mainly because I like thick quilts, or comforters, so my family has grown to love them too. Some of our quilts, I used comforters for the batt, so hand quilting was not gonna happen. 

Quilt 1

With this first quilt repair/mend, I used the machine. *You can see how it smashed all the layers together. And shows what I mean by "all funked up." Since this one will possibly be used for inside a duvet cover/quilt, I decided to go with the faster, more durable mend.  Or it might still be used to snuggle on the couch with all your family, or making a tent....Used by children, for sure.

From the back, red side, you can see a lot of lines of stitching. I sewed down the torn front-side pieces and added some batt to fill in. [no pix] On the front, below, you just see the patch-fabric.

More story behind this red and green quilt. My mom bought the fabrics for me to make a quilt for Ben's bed. 1980's. But Ben's bed was really just a Coleman cot, so a twin sized quilt would have been way to big. Ben was 3 at the time, so a cot was for sure big enough for him! I later got a bunk bed that used 'real' mattresses! But that cot was put back into use when his second sister was too big for sharing her [his first] sisters bed.

 ~We were Tiny house living before it became popular. Way before.~

Ben finally got his own room when he was in high school! 

Don't know what happened to the cot.

Mending Madness for March

Ashley's. Flying Geese and Kites quilt. Because when she was little she wanted to fly!

To pull myself out of the winter rut, I decided to take part in a mending-who-ha {March Mending Madness} on Instagram.  Since posting pix of mended granny panties is not something anyone else should see....I will mend, and post pix, of these quilts, for starters.

Ben's quilt, made from fabrics Grandma Evie bought for him, for me to make, in the 1980's.

Speaking of mending. I found an 'egg' once [?] used for mending socks. Perhaps they were known as 'stockings' in that era? {it's that wooden thing, Ashley}

Anyway. My mom had one, that same Grandma Evie.  I think about it every now and then, not knowing where it ended up.  A few days ago, a neighbor gave me a tin full of misc sewing things. Including this egg. 

The same day the mending-who-ha was "announced." Meant to be.

Appliqueing between the lines.

This is not mending. 

This is stitching, applique stitching, which is different from mending stitching...ha....

I first mentioned this work last August....gah...

It's been a WIP [work-in-progress] since the 1970's. I thought about adding fabric in the larger areas, instead of just doing embroidery over the whole thing. Then this scrap came in the mail in those big boxes of gifted goodies last year.  

Ta da.

Now to pick fabrics for the mending.

First Finish

2019

I had to do something colorful!  

I want a gift to give, and I had this piece pinned and waiting.  

I actually started it when the boxes of fabrics came in. That piece of dark red with circles, say 5 inches sq. The only piece of that print in the box. I love those colors. I put it to the side. As other fabrics emerged from the boxes, they got added when they felt right.

So, it was the bird print pinned to the red sq. below, and the tan sq. above. 

That was it. 3 prints. 

That is how it begins. 

Quilting, Gnomes, Deer

I have been working on the Ocean Circle quilt. You can see the texture, finally, the quilting gives it.

****Below****

The tree "christmas card" was made recently, but the gnomes and deer were made way back in ...January ???  Sometimes I get creative right AT christmas time, so I make it for next christmas.  Each family [our kids] got a deer, each grandchild got a gnome, for their own "ornament box". [I hope someday they have a box of ornaments to put on their own trees.]

I stitched the paint samples, after poking the holes with the machine, and a 'paper' needle.  This time I added a 'trunk' to each one, then glued a scrapbook paper to the back to hide the messy parts.  Adding the trunk was a handy way to add a 'hanging' loop too, so they can be hung on the tree.

click to enlarge

I recently got in the mood to make a couple of 'treemen',  a snowman, and a 'tree'.

The stick trees are made with batt I dyed long ago, for a felt substitute. I wrapped each stick, stitched the batt on, then assembled. The first smaller one is a dud, bit time!  BUT I saved it to show the girls that not all creations are a success. The bigger tree is more...rustic, I would say, and could be adorned.  

I did a cropped version, that I couldn't find. The table with holiday decor used to hide the nasty tangle of wires dripping from the TV.  Our 'tree' is behind my chair, and reflects in the TV.

The dark gray days have taken a toll on me. Today the sun shines.

We had a tornado drop down in the adjoining town on Dec. 18, I believe. We and ours are ok, but it made a mess of many houses.  I am happy to say that the community rallied together and started cleaning up with in hours. Many many volunteered themselves, their time, their equipment, motel rooms, food, gifts for all the kids [16 or 18, 6 months to 18 yrs.] and so much more!!

Good Job Port Orchard-ians!

[and no this is not the MID-west, we are the NORTH-west]

Six, Wallies and Whales

Quilt top #6 is assembled!  It happens to be the top for this guy, who is now a whopping one month.  

Recently, like this last week, Dan suggested I move the sewing room into the dryer room. This used to be the 'playroom'.  We didn't heat this room, so we really didn't use it to hang laundry, nothing would dry. 

[except for July and August]

It's nice being in this bigger room.

the 7 for 7 grandchildren quilt tops are stacked on the left, under the table

the stack of blocks for #7 are on the left side of the machine

Look at all that wall space~!  I didn't put things on the walls in the other room, because Stephanie had painted them, so I just enjoyed her art. 

Guess I will need another foam board, like the one behind the iron board in the next pic.

Dan doesn't want to deal with millions of holes from pins, someday.

the stuff to the right is the laundry...oh and the basket.

I have a new view, of the garden.  

I will miss the other view of the birds in the hedgerow. 

But, there will be birds out there also, and the deer, Jane Doe, was out there as I stitched up the stack of #7's blocks.  

{It was the first stage, 

block 1 to block 2 X a bunch.}

Wallie 1 is cats. In the middle stage of completion 

I am also working on more Wallies, in case the grandgirls need fundraiser items.

We have 3 in Scouts [at the moment] and 1 earning for 5th grade Camp, not to mention any possible PTA doings. So far, 1 troop is brand new, so they are selling chocolates and nuts to earn.  And the 5th graders are selling donuts!

Grandma, she gives cash. OR....maybe these will sell. When they are done. I am hoping to involve the girls in the sales, learn to earn it yourself!

Wallie 2 is the yellow backed one, all kinds of things wondering "which way did they go?" Only basted down.

Wallie 3 is the top, smaller, bright bright one. Only basted too.

I was going through albums, looking for Steph's baby one, and found these pix.

My mom had put them together.  Click to enlarge. These were from the 1987 to 1989 album.  I posted the pix on FB, hoping the Orca Network will be able to ID these. My niece chimed in and said, "I remember going on that trip!"

These are phone pictures of the photos, since we can't take them out of the sticky pages without damaging them. 

I think these are from one of the Southern Resident Orca pods. The salmon eaters. The Transient Orcas usually have pointier dorsal fins. The T's, as they are known here in Puget Sound, are the big game hunters. They eat seals, dolphins, sea lions.  

So now you know, not all Orca's, or Killer Whales, are the same.