Showing posts with label paper piecing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label paper piecing. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Hairbrained

I took Thursday and half day Friday off work so I could clean my poor neglected house. Thursday, I did really well, worked all day and got a lot accomplished. Friday…. Well, after making snow ice cream with cherries on top with my residents and walking home through a winter wonderland, I made the mistake of cleaning off my nightstand. "Why is cleaning off your nightstand a mistake?” you ask. It was a mistake because my charm pack of Nancy Drew fabric was there. It was such a lovely snowy day I ended up sewing instead of cleaning. (I know that none of you have *ever* done such a thing.) <wink>

I had some issues with my math ( you can't get 2.5 inch HSTs out of 2.5 inch squares unless you have super powers or magic and my wand is broken and I am out of fairy dust!) so I needed something brainless to work on to rest after fixing all my calculations.

In retrospect, I should have started cleaning house then  but instead I thought I would start a scrappy trip around the world- I have this wonderful bag of strips already cut. ( Thank you Fairy CaMom)  I sorted some of the strips and then realized they were NOT all the same size and some were  a wee bit diagonal. “Ok, no prob- I will make a wonky trip around the world” so I started stitching strips together. I cut the first set of strips and realized it wasn’t going to work as I had pictured but I could still do something with the strip sets.


I love the tropical colors in these strips


I must have dreamed about the strip sets because as soon as I woke up on Saturday I had an AHA! Moment. I could make some herringbone blocks. I sorta used the tutorial here at bijou lovely –except the pictures didn't come through at all on my phone AND I already had these lovely strips sewn together so I just started cutting my wonky strip sets into diagonals. 





  I was late for work at the store because I was having way too much fun. I had some yellow marble from Moda in my stash (again thanks Fairy CaMom) added some sashing.
I told my moms it was a wild hair –ing bone and then decided it was because I am hairbrained, so I have dubbed this my Hairbrained Herringbone Quilt.
Since I can’t show you Nancy Drew yet ( my day is the 14th) I shall share this with you!
I still have quite a ways to go before it is done- I want it Cuddle size for a snowy day.





































On another note- I also wanted to share my Dr Seuss What's Happening Board that I did for the nursing home each of the trufula trees, stripes and hands has the date and time for an activity happening in march. I love celebrating Dr Seuss with my residents. We have a group of kids coming to celebrate with us - we  will be making oobleck!

Thursday we are having a Quilt Show at the Nursing Home- I will share pictures next week!
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Thursday, August 23, 2012

Bowls with or without Borders Hop

This has been such a fun hop! It is amazing how all of the stacks are so different even tho’ we are all using the same pattern- I bet Regina didn’t know there were so many ways her bowls could be stacked. I have been calling this hop Bowls WITHOUT borders- probably because they were talking about Doctors Without Borders on a TV show and we have so many countries represented that we are without borders. J 
my 3rd stack o' bowls

     As soon as I saw Madame Samm’s Bowls I knew I wanted to make some. I have never paper pieced before and tried a tree for the Think Christmas Hop just to get some practice. Not so good- I was ready to throw in the towel (you can read more on that in my previous post) But now I am addicted. If you know me- you know I can not just follow a pattern- I have to make things more difficult and change things up a bit. My first set of bowls- went into the garbage, my second set looks much better. Then I decided to make a Christmas plaid set- was stitching up just fine, but it was midnight and what happens when you sew tired? I make really dumb mistakes. I was getting ready to stitch the next stack and realized I didn’t have that stack traced onto my freezer paper. So I grabbed the paper- it was too small but in my befuddled brain, I thought I would just piece it. So away I drew. It wasn’t tracing quite right but I went on. Next step – cut it out, ooohkay not cutting right, but I went on and pressed the fabric to the paper and this is definitely NOT right- very gluey looking and sticky too! Then I realized I wasn’t using freezer paper--  it was my appliqué fusible stuff …(I am sure it has a technical name) DUH!!!   I then decided to go to bed. So, my plaid stack isn’t as high as I wanted it. I was planning to use a red plaid and a gingerbread as well, but I will have to do that later. I also have plans for a snowman stack.




The other night as I was hopping and trying to catch up with commenting, I noticed a Winnie the Pooh card I have sitting by my monitor and the wheels started turning- What if I turned my bowls into ….. Honey Pots?  I just can’t leave well enough alone! Another late night sewing! So I made my first bowl a little taller and used the first bowl, upside down to make the lid. It didn’t turn out exactly like I pictured but it is close. I had Pooh squares in my stash but they are only 4.5  inch so I had to do a little piecing. The fabrics with a larger Pooh were also 4.5 inches but were not fussy cut so I only had half Poohs. I used the fusible appliqué stuff the right way and fused him back together as well as using it for the top of the pot and the band around the lid.  I plan to quilt little buzzy bees around the pots and make some honey drips with appliqué.



 
Pooh is dreaming of LARGE honey pots!




I FMQed cherries in the background
My last stack of bowls is the one I thought of as soon as I joined this hop and the Mary Englebreit phrase “Life is just of Chair of Bowlies” popped into my head. (I was thought  that Norma may have had the same idea when I read her post here.)  I decided my bowls needed to be stacked in a chair.  I didn’t have a chair pattern so I made one up- using Lesley, the Cuddle Quilter’s blog banner as my guide. (This morning after I finished all the quilting, I got the brilliant idea to look up the ME picture, don’t know why I didn’t do that earlier but…) I only had one of ME’s fabrics and some other cherry fabric so that’s what I used, along with all the red bits I could find- more 4.5 inch squares and scraps. Now that I have seen the ME picture again, I would love to go back and add bowls to the top of the chair, but oh well!
"Life is a Chair of Bowlies" in a chair with my ME pincushion

I fussy cut the fabric so the word "friend" would be on each Bowl


















Thank You to  Madamme Samm, Carol, and Regina- you all have worked hard and provided help when needed ( and I needed A LOT of help.)  I love hopping with you! Thanks to all the other cheerleaders too!
Be sure to check out these other Blog Cupboards for more bowls!










August 23rd
Gudrun Z. (no show)
Linda B.
Cool Crafty Mom

August 25th
Mice In The Mix

August 28th
Pam R.
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Tuesday, August 14, 2012

If you are not having fun.....

Warning! Picture Heavy post!

I just discovered something that I think is great! I can type my post is Word and have my spell check on and change my fonts and do all the “normal stuff” I do when I type – and THEN copy it over to my post. This is great because, the internet connection is not always the greatest and I like playing with fonts and I am not thrilled with Blogger’s spell check and they don’t have grammar check. ( that was a lot of ANDs J) I also have a tendency to capitalized two letters in a word (holding down the shift too long) and Word fixes that for me. I am liking this!
Have you been following the Bowls with Borders?
if not, you should!


I was getting a wee bit worried about making my bowls- I was NOT having fun! I wasn’t doing something right. My motto is “if you are not having fun, you aren’t doing it right!” I ripped out so many stitches that I wore out the fabric 3 times. Sherman was complaining- "Didn't we just stitch this seam?" NOT FUN! It didn’t help that I thought my day was the 13th (because my day for RWB was the 13th and my day for Think Christmas was 31st) so I was kinda freaking out and thinkin’ “there is no way I will be ready.” I wanted to give up but admitting defeat does not come easy! Thanks to Regina’s help, Carol’s “I am not an expert” post,and the tutorial over at Madamme Samm's the light bulb finally turned on, I got my bowls done and I was having fun too!  I am not good at paper piecing yet but I can now say I am enjoying the learning process. I have a Craftsy class that CaMom sent me and I was so frustrated that I was just not looking forward to taking it- now I can’t wait! I have a few finishing touches I want to add to my bowls and I am excited to say, the plan I had in mind when I first saw these bowls is coming together and they will be ready for the 23rd- which is my day! Until then, visit these blogs for their bowls or you can visit Carol’s blog for the whole schedule.
 August 14th

Oh yeah! I said this was gonna be a picture heavy post- I think its a WORD heavy  post :)
Last weekend, My SweetMommie and I went to a quilt show during Franklin Grove’s Harvest Fest. We made Fredly come too- he was chief photographer and stuff carrier. We also took my friend Christa (who recently asked me to teach her to quilt. She is 8 years old.) Harvest Fest is also when the Chaplin Creek Historic Site is open, so we went there as well. These pictures were taken by Fredly and MySweetMommie- I will save the ones on my camera for another post!




I love the quilting on this! I may have a picture of the front
of it on my camera


I admire cross stitch amd embroidery-
It is not my favorite thing to do but it sure looks great


This one made me smile- the ants are carrying food all around the edges
I have a few other pictures of this one on my camera

There were quite a few vintage quilts and some reproductions too

Kettle Corn being made in a Kettle ( good place to make it)

Yum! Yum!


Pincushion in the Salt box house-
 I will have to look up the dates but I believe its from late 1800's
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