Spontanious Quiltage

I love spontanious quilts. Or at least, spontanious quilting. I have a couple projects that I need to do this week and I am procrastinating like the dickens. Yesterday I got inspired to do a Chinese Coins quilt. I have wanted to do one of these for years and attempted one time but only got 3 strips sewn before I decided that wasn't what I was doing then. This time I went about things a little differently.

First I lugged out my scrap box--boy do I need to work on some scrap box blocks, this thing weighs a ton. I dug through it and pulled out anything that fit my criteria which was a strip of fabric no wider thab 3" (if they were I cut them in half..ish). I filled a diaper box with these before I got bored of the hunt. Then I unceremoniously hacked all these strips into approximate 7" lengths with a pair of scissors. This was very theraputic.

Then I randomly picked up 2 strips and sewed them long sides together a billion times. I paid no attention to fabrics matching or going together. Making the most of tricks known as "strip piecing" and "continuous piecing" I managed to get these billion strips sets made in record time. Then I sat on the floor and snipped thread holding them all together, throwing them in a big piled which Hannah danced in. Then she brought them to me--one at a time--to iron.

I am in the process of sewing all these billion strips together until I have a series of strips roughly 45" long by the approximate 7" wide. Then I can cut it down to 6.5" wide and put big white solid strips of fabric between them. I am not done by far but I made really good progress I think!
Jeremiah is so excited, he made his very own BLT sandwhich for dinner tonight. I helped him to spread miracle whip on the bread but he did everything else. He said I should share a pic. How pretty are my dishes??! So cute with the cherries!!


And also, he took a picture of his baby sister Hannah and of me sewing strips.

Memorial Day Sale!

My husband Tony said, "You know, you oughta do a sale for Memorial Day." So here 'tis!

Memorial Day Sale
20% OFF all Batik Handbags and Purses at
Hamncheezr.etsy.com

Oh well

I am playing catch up today, though I am doing a very bad job of it. I am so tired I have been having a hard time keeping my eyes open. I don't think I'm all the way over the flu, which I have apparently passed on to my Mom.

We did the craft show and sale this weekend as planned. I just about killed myself last week trying to finish up those 4 "learning purses" for it. We went Friday night to set up and arrived to meet Mom to find my baby sister Betsy was running a 102 degree fever--like Hannah had for 2 days earlier in the week. We took turns setting up and cuddling her and then we went back to Mom's house for dinner and to fill her full of motrin, again. The original plan was for Tony to watch the kids for me most of the time during both days but Friday afternoon work called and asked him to come in and work day shift Saturday. Since he had only worked 26hrs so far that week we were very glad they did!

Mom brought Diantha with her Saturday to help me be lion tamer and she was and did and I sold ONE handbag--one of the Learning Purses actually and Dida sold ONE skein of handspun yarn. Together we all sold about $30 worth of soap. So day 1 was a disappointment but we rallied back together Sunday morning. Tony was off and kept Jeremiah for me, Mom traded Diantha for Veronica and together we sold $30 more worth of soap. That's it. No yarn, no purses, no knit/felted itesms. Thankfully Mom made back the booth fee plus extra, but maybe not as much as she spent on food and table cloths for the weekend.

The good news is I finished knitting my cabeled Bella mittens from the pattern by Lily Knitting. The bad news is I can't share the pic cause my camera batteries died. Such is life, eh?

We have eaten a staggering amount of fast food and frozen pizza in the last week so tonight I am making white bean and chicken chili and trying to get my kitchen under control. If I manage that I hope to work on some sewing this evening. I need to make another prototype for a custom purse order but it's been so long since I did any "real" sewing I think I might work on the log cabin quilt I started for my friend. She got married this passed Saturday so I want to get her quilt finished soon. Hope you all had a great weekend!

Where have I been?

I have been down with the flu, though down is a realitive term. Last Saturday I can down with a staggering case of the flu and before you ask no, I don't know if it's the swine flu because I never bothered to ask anyone, okay? Anyway so I've had the flu and Jeremiah has had a cough and nasty nose and Monday and Tuesday nights Hannah decided to run a fever and be awake for all but 3 hours both nights so even though I was beginning to feel better on Monday afternoon no sleep killed that and now it's Thursday and I'm finally starting to recover.

In the midst of that I suddenly realized that "the craft show" that I am participating in as a member of the Knoxville Etsy street team is THIS weekend and did I make those Learning Purses (like I made for my sister Beverly for her birthday) that I wanted to take? No... so Tuesday night my sister Diantha spent the night and helped me cut out and quilt the fronts and backs for 4 of them and finished one but since I was dying that's about all I got done because then I ran out of velcro. Today I ran to JoAnn's to pick up some more velcro and gromets and have finished the other 3 and listed them in my etsy shop. To save myself and you from a majorly long blog post I will just let you visit the shop and see my spiel there. Let me just say that they are totally cute and very educational, LoL!

Remember Tony's war with the birds and the nest filling our grill? Last night my brother Artemas, curious beyond what he was able to bear, opened the grill and this is what we found. There had been 3 eggs in there when I took the pictures last time and from all the noise and cheeping from under there we thought maybe there were more but were suprised to discover 5 baby birds, already looking quite large and fluffy and very hungry. Tony growled.

In that spirit he began to help Jeremiah put together the birdhouse kit my Dad got him at Home Depot's kid workshop thing yesterday. Jeremiah has been so excited about this he hasn't quit bugging Tony about it since last night! Hannah had to get in on the action too, banging away at things with a little plastic hammer. So there was my family, Jeremiah in Cars underoos and Hannah in a Cars shirt helping Daddy build a birdhouse when he is feeling not so charitable towards our fine feathered friends. At least they had agood time!

And speaking of good time! Tony and Artemas took Jeremiah fishing this morning while Hannah and I went to the fabric store. When we were done we drove over and met up with them. Jeremiah was standing there, grinning, holding his fishing poll. When I asked him what he was doing he said, "This is part of fishin', Mama." He didn't catch anything but he had fun anyway.

Lazy day

We've had a pretty lazy day today. Tony took me (and our kids), my Mom and his Mom out to "brunch" as Wild Wings for some hot wings this morning. Then he and I and the kids came over to Mom's house to hang out. A couple days ago a terrible storm split one of their trees in half and so today Tony decided to take a chainsaw to the problem. I have come down with a summer cold/flu and I feel terrible but Mom and I sat around in the yarn surrounded by many and various kiddos and watched my hubby do manly, lumberjack type things.

Once he had finished we pulled out some logs/branches that would make wonderful spindles, buttons and rings for me to use in my purses. I got to play with my Dad's "chop saw" for about an hour, slicing branches that were about 1.5" into a scant 1/4" slices and then with the drill which I used to drill two or four holes in the disks.

Tony played with another log, branch and the power tools and made me a spindle. It still needs to be sanded--along with the buttons--but I think it'll work pretty well! He thought it needed more design so he drilled little holes all over the whorl. When we get home I am going to stick my buttons in my food dehydrator to dry them out quickly so I can sand and seal them.

Mom got me a bottle of Jagermeister--she said "Cough syrup" and a couple little nips did make me feel better for a while. Probably I need to take some nyquil but it makes me terribly sleepy, even the day time formulas, and we are still needed to grocery shop. I think.

My Mother rarely, if ever, asks for anything for herself and when she does it's always something for other people to use too (like a DVD player or something.) She gives to people without ever expecting anything in return. So when we were at the fabric store on Friday and she mentioned that she would love a purse made out of some fabric she found, I couldn't say no. I pushed myself to finish it yesterday, hearing in my head a little voice of guilt saying "When you were 6 and your Mom had a 4 week old baby she stayed up all night making you a jeans jacket." So I got Mom's purse made, to her specifications: long (for toting diapers and knitting projects), with the gold faux button, snap closure and gold rings to attach the strap to the purse. I added a zippered pocket inside for her glasses/cell phone and padded the strap over the shoulder. Gotta love the dragon fabric, too cool! And it's big enough to carry her gun around in now that she's got her CCW permit! ;-D

My kids and hubby gave me (lunch out and also) a set of stacking drawer/bins for me to sort my purse making supplies in. I am SO excited! I really needed these! AND Tony cleaned out my stash closet, rearranging so I have more room and can even get another set of bins if I need!

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Creative Stretching

Every once in a while I get a change to stretch my creativity, think outside my box as it were. Only usually there isn't a lot outside my box, I'm pretty comfortable trying anything. When I got a request to do a purse in a totally different manner than my normal "formula" I was a little nervous! So today I made a "prototype," trying out the new direction. I am really happy with what I came up with!!! It still needs one or two little adjustments to get it where it needs to go but for a first attempt I am fantastically happy with it!

We let Jeremiah play some games last summer at a Chuck-E-Cheese type thing in Pigeon Forge and one of the little cheapy "prizes" he received was a white, plastic set of vampire fangs. They have been an almost constant source of entertainment since then. Hannah discovered them this week and she LOVES them. She brings them to me several times a day to put them in her mouth and then she wears them until they start to make her drool a lot. Then she spits them out and brings them to me to start all over again. This morning while she was wearing them Tony growled at her playfully and now she thinks she needs to growl too. So my baby is running around with vampire fangs and growling. Totally not normal, but oh so funny and endearing!!

My darling husband is cleaning house for me. First the kids rooms, then the living room and now he's moved on to the mountainous pile of laundry we had. He wants something, I am sure. But I am loving the help and feeling like I bum while I've sat on my bum and watched Bones and now blog. My friend said it's good for them to do housework, LOL! I really appreciate the help! Guess I'll let him go fishing tomorrow after all....

It's only been a decade

Actually it's been 11 years since I first started making nine patches for this quilt. You can read the entire sad story in my original post, Artificial Prairie Nine Patch. Finally, yesterday! I finished the binding. My joy and utter triumph was momentally deflated when I realized I had forgotten to make and attach a label. Oh well, I can add that some night this week.

It's queen sized, I machine pieced and quilted it--including the fried egg flower applique in the borders. I backed it with red toile and bound it with green sating binding that doesn't match the backing but looks incredible from the front. Alas, it is too small for my now king sized bed but I love it so I'm keeping it and using it anyway! It is all cotton (batting too) except for one nine patch which has yellow satin in it. The satin binding was for my hubby Tony, who love, love, loves satin anything.

Good Weather

When I was in second grade, many moons ago, we learned about the 50 states and weather they might be particularly noticed for. I learned that Washington state is the wettest, raining almost constantly and my 7 year old heart fell in love and decided I'd like to live there someday. I never made it to Washington but instead have set down my roots in the beautiful mountains in East TN. Tony says if I want to move to Washington he sure will miss me! Living in TN is not really a compromise; I love it here, but it is in a way that 1/3rd of the year it's weather I like, 1/3 of the year it's weather Tony likes (90+ and SUNNY 14 hrs a day) and 1/3 of the year it's cold and neither sunny, rainy or snowing so we're both unhappy LOL!

This week we have been having my very favorite kind of weather: rain. And not just any old rainy weather. Beautiful rainy weather. The kind where it's overcast and dark and very peaceful. It rains or drizzles not continually but enough during the day that even when it's not raining it is damp. As if a billion little raindrops are too small to be heavy enough to fall and so instead linger around playing in the air. The clouds forget their boundaries and settle in the tops of the trees just above your head and some even float amongst the trees looking like smoke--ghosts of past fires. The sky is all different, beautiful shades of gray. Everything that should be is green. Impossibly green with so many shades of the color that your eyes can't take in or understand them all. Everything has more texture too; leaves turn over on trees making them look fuller and different than they usually do.

I love it. Especially driving around in the car and coming over the rise of a hill where you can see a valley and mountains in the distance. It is hard to tell where the mountains end and the sky begins. Truly breath taking.

I am so in awe of God's beautiful creation all around me, even if most everyone else would think it was dreary!

A Mini How to Log Cabin

The Log Cabin is one of my favorite (and is my husband's favorite) quilt block pattern. Traditionally it uses a red center square. This was a popular pattern during the civil war period but still today is beautiful and easy and a great way to use up strips leftover from other projects! I am using all 2" wide cut strips (and 2.5" cut center squares) but you can use any and all sizes of strips you'd like. If you use different sized strips in the same block you'll end up with a sort of wonky log cabin that is visually a lot of fun!!


You will need both dark and light fabrics since one side of the block is comprised of light fabrics and the other dark fabrics.
Start by sewing your square to the end of a strip. Then trim it even and open it flat. I always start with darks but it's up to you. And I always put the strip that I just sewed toward me when I go to sew the next strip. This way I don't get confused going around and around the block. I've now completed one "round" of the log cabin. Now, start again at the beginning (which is my piece with the red flower on the green fabric) and sew a dark strip to that side, then again to the next side, etc, etc going around the block. I typically do 3 "logs" (strips) on each side of the block because I get bored easy. Also, I'm pretty obsessive and I usually square up the block after each round--not necessarily for size but to make sure that it's evenly square so that my next round of strips goes on nice and straight. And there you have it! Now go crazy, cut strips and have fun!

Once you've made enough of these blocks for a quilt top (whatever size you're wanting, baby sized, lap sized, twin, etc) there are many different ways you can *set* the blocks. Do a google image search on Log Cabin Quilts and then also "Barn Raising," "Streak of Lightning," "Straight Furrows"--as these are all names of ways to set log cabin blocks!

Knitted Pinafore

I got a skein of handspun yarn from Fluff4Ewe off etsy. The proceeds were a 100% charity donation which I thought was nice and the yarn was such a beautiful color, mostly black and blue but with a periwinkle color with just a little gold in it. And a lot of glitz! The wrapper said it was 117 yards of mohair/rambouilet mix.

I though it would be so cute knitted up as a jumper/pinafore for my daughter for next winter. I didn't have a pattern so I cast on 100 stitches and decreased slightly (and evenly) as I felt like it. I knit eyelets evenly down both edges so that it could lace up the back with some black satin ribbon. When I ran out of that handspun I substituted black 100% merino that I spun to do the bodice and straps.

I think it will look great over some tights and a long sleeved onesie. The mixed fiber yarn was a little scratchy in places (the glitz added to that) but the merino is silky smooth. I thought of lining it with some posh lining fabric but messed that up so it's getting picked out. I tried it on Hannah this afternoon and it took quite a bit to get some decent pics, LoL! I tied it as tighky as it would go and it fits her now (she's 18 mo size), so by winter I will be able to loosen the ties and it will still fit her wonderfully! Wven though she tried it on with no clothing as a barrier between the wool and her skin it seemed to be fine, her skin wasn't irritated at all when I took it off and I am so glad! The last thin I wanted to do was knit her something she couldn't wear!

Log Cabin

I've been cutting strips for days. Actually I've been putting off cutting strips today, making myself a martyr about what should be a labor of love--a quilt for my dear friend's wedding. So today I decided to suck it up and cut the 36 strips and 16 squares I needed LOL! Yes, that is all... I've been whining about that! Probably I will need to cut more strips as I go but didn't want to cut extra. I cut the strips 2" and the squares for the centers 2.5" and will be making Log Cabin quilt blocks out of them. I am using all civil war repros in "sunflower" colors, or at least colors along those lines.

I got one of these blocks done today. It is rainy, dark and miserable today and although this is usually my type of weather today the gloom is making me slower moving than my children who have trashed my house while I knit (earlier) and cut out strips.

What I am knitting is a jumper or pinafore (take your pick) for my Darling Hannah (who puled it off the needles this morning) to wear this coming winter. I am working without a pattern and I assure you it will look much cuter once it is finished and I can model it on a body. I am knitting eyelets down each edge so that it will lace down the back and tie shut with a black velvet ribbon. The blue/purple/sparkly/black yarn at the bottom is handspun. One of those 100% charity yarns my sister Diantha has listed in her Etsy shop he solid black at the top is black merino spun by me and it looks like I need to spin a little more to do the straps. Awww, might have to spin something! I have decided to line the bottom when I am done with a black satiny lining just because that yarn is a little rough in some places, the merino I am not going to line because it is wonderful soft and I plan on putting this on her over a long sleeved onesie and tights anyway.