Tag: quilting

Spring is MIA!

Hi Everyone,

I hope you had a great week. We are impatiently waiting on Spring. The calendar says it is here but evidently no one told Mother Nature. We had several inches of snow here Saturday night and today is cold and rainy. Where are my 70 degree days??? My toes want to thaw out and walk around without socks. 

This past week was eventful. Thursday my Mom had a health scare and I stayed with her for a few hours in the ER. Because she had recently had knee surgery there was some concern she might have a blood clot, but everything checked out fine and she returned home. 

Saturday I got to spend some time with high school friends at a beginners quilting class that the quilting guild in my hometown held. One of my friends is quite the quilter and ran the class along with several other members of the guild. I have been dabbling in quilting, but had only learned what I could via YouTube and blogs. It was nice to get some real instruction plus get caught up with old friends.  Here is my soon to be finished table quilt. I hope to get it quilted tonight and the binding done by the end of the week. 

Saturday night…more snow. 

I have started several art projects and have a commission I can finally start. I’ve been playing with some new things and processes and finally should have prints of my egg painting in my Etsy shop this week. 

This week Miss L. is on Spring break so yesterday was a marathon shopping day. She has outgrown most of her spring and summer clothes so we needed to get a jump on replacing them before the weather gets warm…eventually. We wore out and ran out of time before we finished so Thursday will probably be another shopping trip. 

I have big plans for Spring cleaning this weekend and continuing on my kitchen remodel. Honestly, my plans always outweigh my time so we shall see. We also have some Easter plans that we hope include some sunshine and warmer weather. 

Oh yeah, the infamous Bob (our always mischievous horse) got out of his stall and turned over all our newly filled cups of soil for seed planting. Insert eye roll here. Just a normal week in Crazyville.

Have a Happy Easter and/or mischievous April Fool’s Day!!

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by Categories: art, creativity, farm life, garden, holidays, learning, life, productivity, sewingTags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Another rabbit hole

Hi Everyone,

I’m squeezing this in just before my self imposed deadline is up. I try to get my posts done before Saturday. It’s 9:17 pm on Friday night and everyone has gone to bed except me.

So I’m feeling pretty good about this week. I finished and delivered my commissioned piece. You will have to wait until after Christmas to see it though. I had a pretty good work week including meeting a tight deadline. The laundry is caught up. The house is in pretty good shape. I have had enough down time to keep me sane. Yep, best week in a LONG time. 

I am planning a series of drawings and paintings and other stuff now that the commission is done. I’m just in the gathering stage right now so nothing to show yet.

Along with my sock knitting I decided to take on another project for my evening lazy hour or two when I can get it. I found a pile of partially pieced quilt sections that we think were started by D’s grandmother and want to see if I can put them together. There were two parts that were almost sewn together so I started by finishing them. Oh please don’t judge. I have never hand pieced before and they have not been ironed yet.


Then I tried to figure out what the block design was. I looked at pattern blocks on Pinterest  until my eyes bled and could not figure it out! So I turned to Facebook. You know there is a group for EVERYTHING on Facebook so I found a quilting group that has about 52 THOUSAND members. Seriously! Surely they would know what it was. I gave them the same photo as here and in just about 2 minutes a lady told me it is a star pattern and how to put it together. From there I did some star pattern research and it looks to be a Tribute Star pattern.

Yes, I have a habit of falling into rabbit holes on a fairly regular basis. But look at all the cool, weird stuff I chase down. 

Don’t look for the finished product to show up any time soon. I am hand piecing these babies (I can’t keep my sewing machine out all the time and will be too tired to sew if I have to drag it out every night) and there are 37 sections which will eventually make 9.5 Tribute Stars. I’m assuming the half is in case of disaster or I’m missing a half, but I can sort of visualize 3 rows of 3 stars to eventually make a quilt. Do NOT hold your breath waiting to see these. It’s gonna take awhile.

That’s all from The House of Weird this week. Go make something! 

by Categories: art, commissioned, creativity, learning, life, sewingTags: , , , , , Leave a comment

A patchwork of things

Hi Everyone!

I hope all is well in your world.  We have a little touch of Fall in the air today but are in great need of rain as you can tell by this photo of my car.  We live on a dirt road. Washing my poor car will not help right now.  dirty car

It has been another non-stop week and my brain is tired, but I will try to share what I can.

I finally finished my dress last week.  Pictures will come later, but the pattern is called the Fen Dress by Fancy Tiger Crafts and I absolutely loved how it turned out.  If I had realized how simple the pattern was I would have finished it during one of my insomnia nights. There will be more made. Next one will be in a plaid flannel I think for winter.

Knitting has been my sanity saver the past few months since I do not have the time or space to drag out my paints.  Here is my next luscious skein of yarn for my next pair of socks.  yarnThis hand dyed yarn is from On The Round in Maine.

Next week should be slower and I plan to possibly finish my daughter’s logo for her blog, Body By Nutrition, then start on a drawing commission.

In the never-ending process of cleaning out three, sometimes four, generations of stuff from my husband’s family I have discovered what talented ladies his Mother and Grandmother were.  Both were excellent seamstresses who made most of their own clothes as well as their family’s.

I think there is a future post on all those unfinished projects we crafty/artsy folk have laying around and tucked into corners of closets.  Here are a couple that I found.  I think the finished star was made by D’s Grandmother and the partially pieced one made by his Mother.  I found the lovely old needle case in with some of these.  It contains all sizes of needles including old, tiny beading needles.  patchwork

Hopefully in the not so far future, I can finish the quilt squares.  There are not enough for a quilt (unless I unearth some more), but probably some pillow tops for the family.

In other news, those of you who know Miss L. will notice her sporting new glasses soon.  She had mentioned she lost some glasses this past winter.  I don’t know what made me schedule her an eye appointment before other doctor appointments that she needs since she never complained about headaches or difficulty seeing, but I did.  Boy, am I glad.  She has 20/300 vision!  The doctor made her pinky swear that she will wear her glasses all the time in an attempt to correct her vision at least to a better point than where she is.  Seems there is a limited age range where this particular problem can be corrected and she is right at that limit.  So if you see her without them on…remind her! Those pinky swears are serious stuff!

I gotta go get some more work done.  I have no affiliate advertising on this blog.  Any businesses mentioned here I share in case you want to check them out.

Have an awesome week!  I will be MIA next week.  We are escaping for some much needed R&R to a secret location.  All I can tell you is that there is an ocean nearby. YEAH!

 

Photos by Christel Huttar

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My current crushes

Hi Everyone!

Hope you are having an excellent week.  Mine has been fairly calm and a little disappointing. I have been on a bee watch, hoping for a swarm of bees to move into one of my swarm traps.  For several days it looked very hopeful with lots of scout bees, then suddenly the activity died down and it turned cold here again. The next several days will be warm and I will be back to watching my hives. The rest of my week has been very busy with work and I have put in long hours on this computer.

I thought I would share a couple of my latest obsessions with you in case you would like to check them out.

In the past couple of years I have become very interested in quilts. Making them to be exact.  I have never made a quilt and have no idea where this sudden interest came from.  I lived in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia for many years and always tried to go to the Amish community’s annual quilt auction.  I would walk around amazed at the skill and artistry of their quilts.  Often these quilts would sell for thousands of dollars and well they should.  I have a Pinterest board called If I ever make a quilt if you would like to follow it or just see what I have been pinning since this quilt thing started happening.

A while back I ran into Sherri Lynn Wood’s book, The Improv Handbook for Modern Quilters: A Guide to Creating, Quilting, and Living Courageously.  It now resides on my wish list on Amazon.  It appealed to me because, try as I might, I rarely am able to follow a pattern.  Not that I can’t really, but because my brain will, somewhere in the middle of making something, go “what if I tried this” and that will be the end of the pattern.  I have always suspected that any attempt of following a precise quilt pattern would end badly for me.  Sherri’s book throws out the precision part and let’s you go off on your own, but at the same time seems to give you the skill set to not wind up with a wadded up mess.

Back to the obsession part of this post.  I ran across Abby Glassenberg’s podcast While She Naps (same name as her blog) and she had an interview with Sherri Lynn Wood and that led me to Sherri’s blog Daintytime and I have been binge reading ever since, starting at her very first post.  I am especially interested in her bereavement quilts.  I think that is an amazing way to work through grief.  They are very different from other quilts and bears I have seen using a loved one’s clothes.  I am also still very much in love with her improv quilts and foresee the day when I will attempt one of those.

We have had a sudden cleaning out of old jeans here and I have decided to start a quilt with the fabric.  Here is what I did last night.  After hours and hours on the computer I needed to do something more hands on so I cut up jeans.  Don’t expect to see a finished quilt anytime soon, but I’m moving in that direction.

The jeans are worn out, but what is left is going to find a new purpose.

 

Any ideas of what I can do with the leftover bits?

Also interviewed on Abby’s podcast (yes, her podcast is an obsession right now as well) was Ann Wood. Oh. My. Gosh.  I love her work.  Go to Ann’s blog and see what she does if you like textile art.  Really, I just want to sit in those lovely rooms with her and touch all that gorgeous fabric she works with.  I’m not a cutesy person. I don’t do cute hearts and fluffy animals. Her birds and animals and insects just make my heart sing.  They are rough and royal all at the same time with the simple and ornate fabric.  Her boats make me want to take a journey with the cat.  Just go check it out.

I have no affiliations with any of these people or their products.  I just found them and thought I would pass them along in case you are looking for some new visual candy or creative challenges.

So, my work load is calling and I must go.  Have a awesome week and if you have some cool current obsessions please share!

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