Saturday, June 29, 2019

My Favorite June Photos

My camera didn't wander far this month, but it did wander outside of the house to get these photos. Here are my favorite photos for the month of June.


 Clematis bud



Three types of hosta


Birds on a wire


 Wild flowers on gravel


mushrooms!


Requisite sky photo


Showing off new haircut



Lovely porch


Second requisite sky and tree scene


Wet hosta blooms.  This fly posed a long time for me to take the picture.


Linked to:
Wandering Camera

Friday, June 28, 2019

Another Set of ICAD Cards

Daisy Yellow has a challenge where you fill up an index card a day. She provides lots of prompts and inspiration if you are having trouble deciding what to do. I'm not so good with the one card a day part of it, but her are seven cards for your viewing pleasure.


This was supposed to be a mosaic, but the paper (cut from a magazine) was too fiddly. I added a stamp with distress ink which didn't work well on the paper, but I do like the look the pink gives to the blue.


Yes I know I already drew rainbows, but I did another one after watching a video on Daisy Yellow of her painting rainbows.  Not much change except here the background is deliberately colored. I am still using  too much water and the card is curling.


I am using a Traditional Home magazine issue, and this issue in particular is more modern and clean, and not as much textile and bright which I like. It does make it easier to cut up though. I thought I would play with the the black white and gray colors in different designs.


All of the collage cards include some words from the magazine. This one said family ties, but it was too big to fit both words. I was originally going to cover over the feet, but once I put it on the card, I decided to leave it as is.


This was supposed to say "Like No Other" but I cut out the other side without looking so I was stuck with No Other.  So I added it to these words. Since I did do something wrong, I liked the No Other in between those words.


I copied this from another blog. She did a better job, of course.


I got some rubbing plates from the dollar store, which didn't work at all with markers, so I drew the design sloppily with another marker (its a flower). The lace is also from the dollar store. I hand stitched the lace on with the closest thread that was by me, which was light pink, so you can't see the thread.

Thursday, June 27, 2019

My Quilt Photobook

In my last post, I mentioned that I had grabbed some photos of my quilts and made a little photo book. Kate wanted to see it, so here it is.  Basically, I let Snapfish choose the layout, although I did change up the number of photos per page and which picture went in each spot if I did not like where it randomly was placed.

It is my hope to make a more official document of all of my quilts with a short description about it, so this was a prototype of sorts.


The elephant will be my quilt model and is helping me hold down the pages.


This one managed to get its own page, and I like the quilt so I guess it could stay. It is the biggest quilt in the set. I did try to get the smaller quilts to have smaller pictures and the bigger quilts to get bigger pictures so there was at least a sense of size of quilt, but they aren't exactly proportional like that.


It is a small book, a little bit smaller than 6" x 8" when it is closed. It is a fun little size, easy to take with you as you go.


I did crop the photos as much as possible so only the quilt showed, but sometimes I left the picture whole if it told a story.







A couple of the quilts got more than one picture in the book. Oh well.

Linked to:
 Friday Foto Fun
Off the Wall Friday 
Finished or Not Friday

Sunday, June 23, 2019

Love and Happiness


I told you last week I was working on a quilt for a friend. I called it Purple Smiles. Today, I am calling it Love and Happiness because of the smiles and hearts on it. It doesn't much matter what I call it, since I wasn't planning on naming the quilt for the label.


I am using the design couch instead of the design floor to avoid dog fur, although I did vacuum. This means I haven't been taking a lot of process photographs.



15 Minutes to Stitch: Week 25

I have been diligently working on this quilt. It is taking me much longer than anticipated, which I guess is normal. Since the photograph at the top of the blog, I have sewn all the rows together and have joined some of the rows as well. It looks really good to me. Hopefully it won't take too much longer to get the top done and quilted.

15 Minute sessions of stitching this month: 7 out of 7
15 Minute sessions of stitching this year: 130 out of 174 sessions

Success Rate: 75%

Monday, June 17, 2019

Purple Smiles Quilt



For my 15 Minutes a Day update, I am happy to report that I quilted the equivalent of 15 minutes every day this week. It all started with a Shutterfly offer for a free book.  I have ideas about books - a recipe book with my mother's recipes, a listing of all of my travel keychains along with the travel story, more genealogy studies about particular family members, the stories behind all of my quilts, etc., but these offers don't allow for that kind of time to thoroughly write anything,  and as usual I decided to participate at the last minute.


I decided to do what I do with my calendars, throw together all my quilt photos and put them in a book. This time, I limited myself to photos of finished quilts only, with no words or labels. It turned out pretty nicely. I think it is a good start to my quilt story book, and I was able to find photos of about half of my quilts in the short time I had available.


Anyway, I was showing my friend my photo book and she asked me to make her a quilt.  At first, she wanted  the Earth Laughs in Flowers quilt, but after I priced out the batik fabrics, fusible, etc., it was out of her price range, and she decided she would rather design her own quilt anyway.  So I've been working on the purple quilt.

She said she trusted me, and since I like purple, I have been able to make this quilt with a minimum of stress. If I make what pleases me, she should be sure to like it as well. At least right now, I have that confidence.


15 Minutes to Stitch: Week 24

Once again I did not keep track of my work, and I forgot to post last week, so I will say zero for last week. I worked solely on the Purple Smiles Quilt this week. I have 12 of the blocks done.  I'll show you photos next time. It is too dark to take photos now. The photos are of some of my bounty from Connecting Threads warehouse sale. I bought more, but I had put it away before I thought to take pictures. I had given myself a generous budget and I stayed under it.


15 Minute sessions of stitching this month: 7 out of 14
15 Minute sessions of stitching this year: 123 out of 167sessions

Success Rate: 74%

At this time last year, I was at 91%. I have a lot of catching up to do!

Linked with:
15 Minutes to Stitch with Kate at Life in Pieces

Sunday, June 16, 2019

More ICAD

It probably would be better to post these cards daily, but I haven't been so good at daily lately, and there is more pressure for each one if they aren't shown as a group.  This is part of the project to decorate one index card a day (ICAD), which is hosted by Daisy Yellow. I forgot to put the date on some of these.



Wanda told me my yellow flowers were called Cup of Gold Evening Primrose. I like the name, and when I looked it up, there were all these vintage drawings of them so I decided to make one for my flowers.


This was a zentangle but for some reason, I just did not like it. I was going to throw this card away, but when I turned it in this direction it looks somewhat interesting - a cross between a chicken and an elephant. Now I am glad I didn't fill in all the spaces.


If you compare this to the drawing I was trying to copy, this looks horrible, but since you can't see that, it looks okay.


Doodling on a survey.


Zentangle. I used a lid to make the circles and then filled the spaces in with markers.


This was a advertisement and I liked the huge word.

Here are the other ones I have done so far:


Linked with:
Handmade Monday

Sunday, June 9, 2019

Fabric Acquisition Adventure

It has been the Year of Fabric Acquisition the past few months, starting at the end of last year.  There have been some real good sales and I opened a few too many of the emails coming into my inbox every day.

I bought a large amount of fabric from Connecting Threads, telling myself that the Year of Fabric Acquisition was over. I had quite enough fabric, thank you very much. But what was I supposed to do when I found out that there was going to be a big warehouse sale where things were up to 75% off? And especially since that the said warehouse was right here in my hometown?

I convinced my sister to come with me and got the free tickets online. We wanted to get an early start, but the tickets for people came before 8 was already sold out.  That's okay, we like sleeping in and decided to go at a more reasonable time.  We wound up getting there a few minutes before eleven and before we even got completely into the parking lot, the workers told us that there was a 2 hour wait. They would give us another ticket to guarantee our place in line and we could have lunch or whatever and come back in 2 hours.


We weren't expecting our adventure to include time away from the shopping!  We drove around to see what looked interesting. No, not the casino. We decided to go to the flea market!



Every vendor at the flea market only accepted cash and the ATM wasn't branded by any bank, and I decided not to take any chances. We enjoyed looking around and seeing what they had. Definitely worth coming back for, with cash! We did hobble together enough cash to buy a big bowl of fruit to share. She asked us if we wanted chamoy sauce on it. What? It is a pepper sauce. We said yes and it was quite delicious. It was a trip back memory lane since these tables are from the original Wendy's. It has vintage advertisements which are even more vintage since the tables are now vintage!

I also found some perle cotton thread at 25 cents a spool.



We headed back to the Connecting Threads sale, and since we had tickets and our group had already gone in, we were able to get ahead of all the people standing there.

The whole warehouse didn't have things on sale, but there was a big area in the front that had a lot of yarn, and quilting supplies, and a little bit of other art, which was my sister's lure.

We had Ikea bags which I filled up. They had charm packs and books for a dollar each.  They had other things, like kits, at 50% off. Yards of fabric were already cut and were $2.50 each. My nephew was the bag man.

Then it was time to get back in line to go to the cashier. That is where we got to see the actual warehouse region. Go down one row and admire all the boxes and rolls of fabric.


Then down another row and yet another. It was nice talking to the line mates, who drove in from Indiana for the sale.  After a while, I went back and got some more stuff while my sister and nephew waited for me. I am glad I went back because they I got more quilting books for a $1. There were plenty of people who were working there and they were all very helpful in finding things.

We finished our adventure at a Yemeni restaurant for some Chicken Shwarma.

Wednesday, June 5, 2019

Quilt Reveal: Eyes

When my calendar said it was time to post the Mini of the Month for May, my first thought was to delete the reminder. After all, making a mini a month is optional, and I can just skip it this month.  And I didn't have any ideas. But it didn't take too long to come up with ideas and requests for compromises.  What if I make something quick, something out of the material that was on the table without looking for anything new?  How hard would that be?


Then I remembered the Sacred Threads challenge to make a quilt with eyes. They had a specific size requirements that was a reasonable amount and they gave a reasonable amount of time to make them, but of course, I didn't manage to make the quilt in time.  Since I hadn't planned on actually submitting my quilt, the deadline was pretty arbitrary anyway. And with the Mini of the Month challenge, the size was pretty arbitrary also.

I had a strip of fabric cut for the yo-yo circles I decided to use for the background and a strip of something (Tmtex, Kraftex?) that could serve as a batting.  I chose the fabrics but didn't get around to actually making it until today.


 I decided to make the eyes simple, without any eyelashes, no hair for the face or ears either. I used the reverse button to make the eyebrows.


That triangle insisted on becoming the nose. The quilt looked better with it than without it.


The pieces were cut out and sewn on, pretty much like I make my 365 circles. No glue or pinning required.  If the pieces move, they were meant to move.


I folded over the backing to the front to make the binding.


It was a fun quick project.