What's Happening Today

It seemed to be taking forever to get the fabric here for my next project, 

so I thought I'd make a table runner from this nice fabric I picked out of

the remnant bin at Hancock of Paducah several months ago. 

You know how much I love the oriental fabrics. 

I'll use the self binding on this small table runner

We are expecting heavy rain today maybe up to 3 inches and I rushed out

last night and took a photo of this plant cause

I feared the rain would beat up the pretty blooms. 

My mom gave me this plant the year Bobby and I were married. 

 The fabric for the baby quilt finally got her this past Tuesday and I'm ready to

start cutting as soon as the table runner is finished which will be very soon - the

quilting is over half done now. These are the "solids" and prints for the baby quilt. 

I'm using my favorite Moda grunge for the "solids" and some Riley Blake for the prints.  

 My friend Stefanie gave me a gift card from Burgundy Buttons for my birthday and

I got this charm pack to make a little lap quilt with. It will have white in it! Stefanie

is the one who finally got me to use white in my quilts. It wasn't easy for me to make

that jump. She who loves earth tones finds it hard to get out of the dark color box.

I also got yardage for the 2wenty Thr3e Five fat quarter bundle I got a while back. 

And last but surely not least is a model who often gets very tired of his

mom the photographer. I'm so glad thou to get these wonderful photos. 

I've been scrap booking for years and some how with so much to scrap about

now I seem to have less time to enjoy this hobby. So I've decided to start Ian's

scrap books as digital. This will be much easier for me cause I can work on

his scrap books in small time sections and don't have to get out any supplies

or make a space to work in and of course the cost is much lower. 

In what other world besides digital can you

use a sheet of paper over and over?

Here is an example of what the pages are looking like. 

Well that's all for now, need to roll back to the sewing 

machine and finish up that table runner. 

My Invisible Friends

With the big oriental quilt and the 3 Girl series completed I have a bit of quilting down time while waiting on some fabric I ordered to get here for my next project. I didn't want to start something else and get side tracked from my next project. So I thought I'd take a few days off and do some other things. 

Today I did something I've not done in years - I started drawing this morning at around 7 and didn't stop till 2:00! So I was thinking today I might just share several of my drawings rather than quilts or jewelry. 

I have a tendency to draw mostly silly kids illustrations. They just make me happy. So here are a few that I call "My Invisible Friends" - They all have a young woman and her unusual friends. 

An Evening At Home

Patrol

A Chance Meeting In The Park

Spring Flowers

The intro page of my sketch book always gets

a different type of drawing and this one has

all the little bits of things in my life that make me happy. 

This is an on going doodle and will cover the

page at some future time.

So there are my little drawings. 

I know they are a bit silly but I so enjoy them. 

#3 in the series almost done

Well this is the 3rd of the 3 wall hangings I'm doing and I'm getting very close to having it done. I WILL get it done today. I just couldn't wait thou to show you how it's turning out. I've used several different techniques on these 3 for surface embellishments and today I'm playing with angelina. I got a bunch of it at a quilt show several years ago and have never worked with it beyond a few ATCs. It's one of those things that I think might have endless possibilities. 

This is the selection of colors I have.

I used the pink and purple here.

Twisted and mixed the 2 colors together

Folded the paper towel with the fibers in the middle

and ironed at cotton setting

The Angelina is now very flat and all melted 

together - but amazing it won't stick to the paper. 

It's very shiny and the colors merge together

Then I used some left over jelly roll from some 

Christmas fabrics and created the

dimensional flower petals

After the cloth petals were sewn in place then I

added the Angelina. It's sewn between the petals. 

You can see the loops in the cloth better here. 

 

 Now her flowers are all blooming in her garden. Next the leaves...

I'm sure most art quilters have heard of or used Angelina, but

if you haven't you should give it a try, it's really fun. You can sew

it onto your quilt flat as a layer in your embellishments, mix the

colors and make it much thicker too. Lots of possibilities for sure. 

Wee Ones

Saturday morning I had a visit from one of my favorite people - Ian. His dad came over to help my hubby do a 2 person choir and Ian and I played. He brought some of his toys but seemed to find Aunt Woyce's toys more fun. So he learned how to use the Accuquilt cutter, we played with rubber stamps and then his favorite place seemed to be my jewelry work bench. Just too many tools and freedom to bang away was just too tempting I guess. 

With the completion of the oriental quilt (and oh it's been couch tested by the way) I'm getting ready to start my next quilt and it's a baby quilt for the sweet couple across the street. The mom to be likes modern quilts and we've picked out a great quilt pattern with lots of fun color possibilities. So I'll be pulling all the fabric together this week and can start cutting. 

Speaking of baby quilts I just got this photo of

one of the wee ones on her quilt I made for her. 

Her first Easter - what a cute bunny she is. 

A Day At The Bench

One of my first things on my to do list today was get samples made for 

a cold connections class. Got a late start due to a repair guy being here and

after he left a quick trip to the post office and bank - but I 

still got several things done. 

 Here is a simple use of a rivet.

 This sample shows how to make a bail / pendant

from one section of metal. Note the perfect little round bail.

No measuring or math of course.

 OK I had to stop and embellish it

while it was in front of me. 

Had some metal to clean.

And some sawing on a new design

that is just getting started. 

I'm just nuts over little dress forms and when I saw 

this one this week it just had to come home with me. 

My sweet hubby said - don't you have one of those?

Bless him