Progress Report

It has a name now! I am calling her (because it is definitely a her) "Pink Tie Affair".

Black and White and Pink all over

So I have three days left to finish this. Nothing like a deadline to get the creative juices (or as I like to call it: "panic") flowing, huh? Kinda gets you moving, especially when you have a whole YEAR to make something and leave it til the last 3 days. But I have been known to do heroic amounts of sewing in very small amounts of time, so there is a chance that I will skate in under the deadline. I think I am going to call a quilt top a finish in this case. (Well, I always call a quilt top a finish, but that's not what we are talking about here.)
I have a box of frou frou to embellish this quilt. It will be for me, so I can have a sparkly, girly quilt to watch t.v. under.

I am a bit of a messy creator as is evidenced by these photos.

Cutting table:

Ironing table:


Do you... smell something?

Yes, yes. In there.

Hmm...


Ah! Someone must have stashed these in here for use in case of emergency.

This situation is not an emergency yet, unfortunately. Maybe on the 31st as I am frantically trying to finish this quilt top I will break open the box. MAYBE this situation won't even turn into an emergency and I can save it for later. ;0)

I've been making BAGS!

I have been on a bag kick lately. I have been making Big Giant BAGS!I started out making a few because I wanted them for groceries. Well, I found a half a dozen on sale at Walmart for a DOLLAR each so I snapped those up. They weren't quite as big as mine, but they rounded out my collection nicely. So now I have enough bags to go to the grocery store, and when they ask if I want paper or plastic, I can answer, "Fabric, please!" :0)

Anyway, it was fun, so when my sister asked me to copy one of my "real" purses, which was just a storebought purse/bag thing, for her, I thought I would give it a go. Here is the real purse- for some reason I can't get it to load right so you all will just have to tilt your heads. I have had this for years and I love it, and always get lots of compliments on it, but it's starting to wear out.

This is the applique that I have sewn to the bag fabric for the new one. The owl applique turned out awesome. It would have been much cheaper just to go buy the bag, but they don't sell them anymore, and plus the one I am making is better made. I may end up making another one so I can retire my poor raggedy worn out one.

I will post pics when it is completely done. I have to make the straps and then sew it together so maybe a few hours of work left on it.

Emboldened by my success I decided to make one for Brady's kindergarten teacher for Christmas. He helped me a little so I can say it's from him. (He likes to peel the paper off the back off the applique pieces.) I made it HUGE- here it is sitting next to a paper bag, so you can get an idea of the size. My cousin is a pre-school teacher and she said that all teachers would love a huge bag to carry all the crap they have to bring in. This should fit the bill! LOL!

I designed the applique myself, just tried to make it bright and fun for kids, but not too kiddish to where she couldn't use it elsewhere. I think I succeeded. She could haul this to the beach or grocery shopping or whatever. My applique is definitely getting better as I practice more.

I think it turned out really cute. The lining on this one was a little loose, and I have not had that problem yet, but I think it is because the bag was SO big and I didn't quilt it much.

These are really fun to play with. I have lots of friends who want them so I am going to be busy making bags for a while. I do have a new quilt in the works, made COMPLETELY from vintage sheets, but no pics yet.

It's beginning to look a lot like... something.

This is how my husband decorates for the holidays:

This is how my kids decorate for the holidays:

This is how I decorate for the holidays (I am proud of this because it was very CHEAP.) :

I got the shelf from the side of the road during city clean-up a couple years ago and gave it about 10 coats of white paint yesterday. (It was bright red.) Those pictures are my favorite ones EVER, and the rest of the stuff was all in the basement (or on the tree) so I didn't pay anything for this!

I have had these silver candlesticks for years and I keep re-using them- they look so cute with the ornaments in them.

We got a BUNCH of snow today- no school for Brady, no work for Paul, and no power for any of us for about 5 hours today. It's back on again and we appreciate it more than ever! I missed our heat, but more importantly the Christmas tree was off!

Caturday

So I am getting a lot of mileage out of my cats on here lately. I figured I would jump aboard Lit and Laundry's Caturday posting and show you the sweetest picture:Brady was up sick all night last night and the kitties came and sat on his lap to comfort him. How adorable is that? He wasn't as charmed by it as I was and said they were "too heavy". (He was pretty sick.) Normally it would be pretty unusual to have that happen and he would eat it right up. He is much better today, poor guy.

How to make a cat applique.

Place cat on level surface:Lay fabric over cat:

Trace cat with erasable marker.
(Try to keep cat still at this point.)
Cut out and applique to a quilt!
Ta Da!

Da Blahs.

*This post is being brought to you from the Land of Blah and Inertia.*

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I have periodically struggled with depression in the past and, for whatever reason, the last couple months I have been dealing with a doozy. I have been seeing my (wonderful) doctor and the lethargy and grayness seem to have lifted now and I am doing so much better. I started sewing again- yay!- and have even recently made some half-hearted stabs at CLEANING MY HOUSE!!!

Unfortunately, I do have some sad news to report- my "old kitty" (as the boys called him), Sly, passed away. Maybe this precipitated the aforementioned funk? (Ok, it was not really a funk, but rather a deep black pit of sadness and despair.) It was rough, but he was old and not doing well, so not entirely unexpected. I cried for a few days, and now I can smile when I think of him. I truly don't think I will ever have another cat that I love as much as I did him. He was MY cat and I was HIS person.

Ok, icky sad stuff out of the way- time for happy fabricky stuff!

I have gotten some of my sewing mojo back, and this is what I worked on yesterday. Every piece of fabric in this quilt top was from a vintage sheet, except for the flower face itself. These flowers were on a panel and were intended to be made into place mats. A place mat would have a very short lifespan in my house, so of course they had to be incorporated into quilts instead. I wish I had a ton more of these panels because the quilts turned out so cute!

I made two identical quilt tops, one for Paul's cousin's daughter, and one extra for my gift bag for a future gift. I didn't like the pink daisy as much when I saw it photographed, so I think I will use both of the yellow flowers and save the pink ones for another project. (There are two of each flower since the place mats were supposed to be reversible.) The squares are sewed together, but the flowers still need to be ironed on and stitched down.

I will post better pictures of the quilts when they are quilted and bound- I have a cute striped sheet that will make a great bias cut binding, so I just have to choose a sheet for the backs and I will be ready to quilt! I had an absolute blast working with the sheets. I have been collecting them for so long now but had never actually made an entire quilt using sheets. This one is for a pre-schooler so it's only 40 x 50, but it still counts.

I have been toying with the idea of making some quilt kits to sell from my vintage sheets, so I cut out a couple sets of 10" squares from the sheets as I was cutting the squares for these quilts. Then, as I sewed the blocks together I noticed some issues with the "squareness" of my blocks. (Or rather, the LACK of squareness!) With some investigation, I realized that my cutting mat has some big ripples in it, probably from incorrect storage, so I have to get a new mat before I go into business. I think I could justify my compulsion to buy these sheets if I could make them pay for themselves. Maybe I wouldn't even need to sneak them into the house anymore?