Exciting New Project

Yesterday a new group was started over at Quilt With Us and I'm so excited about it. It was started by Brenda C. and it is called Techniques4Textiles. We will be following her lead to create a Techiques Journal filled with new techniques we will be learning during the year. 
I'm pretty hyped this should be really fun. Each person has listed 3 things they are interested in learning. I got over excited and listed about 10 and Brenda calmed me down and I came back to 3. Got a little over excited I think.
So this morning I kind of came up with a plan for making my journal which I think I'll do first. I'm falling back on my love of scrap booking for creating my journal. I've made books before and this will be a known area and not require too much thinking, just playing. 

Also yesterday I tried pin weaving for the first time. I didn't use the tiny threads for the warp as my book suggested, but used strips of pleather and cotton. Just wanted to try a quick swatch to see how I liked this technique - well I love it and today I'm going to dive into doing it with a fine warp and make a larger section than the 3x6 I did yesterday. I don't have the correct size thread/cord for my warp, but I think I'll just use double sewing thread and see how that works. 

Little Bonnie's Quilt

As I mentioned a while back my sister's cat Bonnie is a big fan of quilted items. She loves to curl up in them and I thought I'd make little Bonnie a quilt of her own for Christmas. So this little quilt was made from some cute cat fabric I had. I kept it small cause Bonnie loves to roll up in them and maybe drag them around.

This is Bonnie on Christmas day checking out her quilt. 

A few days later Angel put her quilt on the foot stool

and Bonnie took to it right away. 

A White Christmas

We were oh so lucky to have a nice 1" of beautiful white snow on Christmas day. Just enough to be pretty and no fear of the roads. I was so glad that I got all my Christmas sewing done way in advance cause about a week before I came down with a nasty cold. So I had my decorations to enjoy and no worries of things left to be done. Just getting back on my feet from the cold and wanted to share some of my Christmas memories. 

My dear brother in law did a good bit of searching and found this honey bee. 

My grandmother had one of these and I'd been looking for one for many years. 

He was very determined and now I have my oh so dear honey bee. 

My sister also found this darling little children's machine at the 100 mile long yard sale this summer. It's just darling. It runs on batteries and the little light still works too. I've not tried sewing with it yet. I like to put a tiny section of fabric on these and sew a few stitches and leave the fabric on the machine. If any one knows of a site where you can find the ages of these little machines please let me know. I'd love to know how old this is. 


Well with all the rush of sewing presents behind me I'm ready to work on several new projects and to get me thinking in different directions I've ordered 2 new DVD workshops from Quilting Daily. So I've new video's to watch and much new stuff to learn. 

Snowed In and Sewing - Love it!

Yesterday as I was standing in the check-out line at JoAnn I looked out the front window and saw these huge beautiful snowflakes. It was really coming down and snowed most of the night. We don't get a lot of snow and it's normally in Jan-Feb so this was nice to get 2" this early.  

This is a perfect day for sewing and I finished up a wall hanging with some beautiful inchies by Gwen from a swap at Quilt With Us. 

The old off-white fabric was a great yard sale find by my sister. It's wonderful and has rust  and odd sections sewn together. I added some walnut spray and did some fabric painting. 

With some of the fabric left over I made a quick ATC. 

I love the look of copper wire, well metal in general on my fiber art. 

I was toying with beads on this too, but knew when to say stop, at lease on this one.

Need to get back to my civil war blocks, but first I think I'll warm up the kitchen with making some ginger snaps. 

My "Little" Fan

I've given my little sister a few quilted items for Christmas deco and they seem to have made quite an impression with Bonnie. Bonnie is her sweet, silly, spunky little cat. Bonnie sometimes acts somewhat like a dog in that she follows my sister around the house and sits in her lap while they watch TV,  just like my Auggie does. But in all other ways Bonnie is quite the typical feline. My sister keeps sending me these cute photos of Bonnie rolled up, hiding under and sitting on the quilts/pillows I've made them for Christmas. So I dedicate this post to Bonnie.

 Rolled up in a quilted wall hanging.

 Perched on the Christmas Pillow

 Hiding under the Crazy 8, Christmas Quilt

So I decided to make Bonnie her own quilt. 

It's only 27x32 so she might even

be able to drag it around too. 

Merry Christmas Bon Bon.

It's Beginning To Feel A Lot Like Christmas

The first Christmas Party of the season, sparkling lights on the tree and presents to wrap make all my childhood memories of Christmas come alive. My mom made these sweet snow men. Looking at them brings memories alive of how she always went all out on her decorating. I can see her house so clearly with Christmas pillows all but covering the couch and every room having been decorated. She gave me the gift of loving Christmas and I treasure each memory.

New Tools and Supplies

Well I resisted going out shopping the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving, trying to give my wallet a break. So I did miss out on some killer deals but did I really need them? Well maybe, but I was strong. One item that has tempted me 2 years in a row was the large wood container of Gutermann thread that shows up every year at JoAnn. It's over 100 spools and screams my name.  Once again my cheapness over came my desire. I did break down this year and get it's baby of 26 spools with a 50% coupon. 

I am also shamefully behind in making some really cute Santa towels. Stefanie and I were making these and she has of course finished her's and mine are still in the package. But I did get the buckles for Santa's belt on Tuesday so I am getting closer to getting them underway. Hopefully today they might even get sewn together. 

I enjoyed an afternoon sewing with the girls at JoAnn Tuesday afternoon and I took my Civil War blocks to work on. Traditional piecing is not a normal thing for me. I'm learning a lot along the way with this quilt. I was trimming up a block and the Quilt instructor, Edna told me I know an easier way! I asked will this make me want to buy a new tool? - Yes. So after using the class ruler from Quilt In A Day - yep I had to have it. This is just the best tool. So now I have several items I use to make all these little parts for my finished 6" blocks. Each of these squares are 2.5" sq.

The Fons & Porter little ruler for finding the center of any block and also their marking pencil are a must. Now adding this square up ruler, I'm ready to plow into these little bits that were slowing down the block construction quite a bit. 

This square up ruler is wonderful, prior to ironing your block you just place it under the ruler and line up your seams (horizontal and vertical) and then just zip your rotary up each side and you are just as square as you can be. 


Then there is the Triangulations CD - this speeds things up too. Rather than cutting strips, then cutting the little blocks then chaining them all you just print out the sheet from the CD the size you want your 1/2 squares to be and rough cut 2 fabrics, lay them face to face with the paper on top and sew on the dotted line. In just a moment or 2 you have 12 quarter square sections. It's genius to me the way it works out. It even takes the dog ears into consideration. 


So now I'm armed with tools aplenty and ready to get this quilt under way. The block patterns are coming from the book, The Civil War Diary Quilt a wonderful gift from Paula. Paula purchased for herself, The Civil War Love Letter Quilt. Both of these books have original writings from the civil war from ladies who were trying to survive these sad days and hold their families together. I've ready about half my book and wonder at their strength.