Whatever Wednesday

Well I was quite productive yesterday. I wanted to make a new tote bag to take to the NQA show in Columbus and I ended up making 3 !!! I was on a roll and I had all the pieces I needed and I just kept sewing. All of these bags use the plastic screen mesh. I have found it in several colors on the web to go along with the standard black that you can find at Home Depot --

Bag #1 - Black and white and red -- always a great combo!



Bag #2- Some Wonderland twill by Momo and off white screening - kinda funky!





Bag #3 - Purpley blue batik with navy bluish screening and leather handles - I picked up these handles at a shop in Louisville and I love the look but they were a pain to sew on -- all hand sewing and it took me forever - hope they hold up to the load.



As for cross stitching, here's where I am on the BBD Mystery sampler -- I want to take a snap of this each week to chart my progress. The last week was definitely more quilty sewing and less cross stitching but I got to work on several projects so that was good.



So, I'm off today for Columbus - I need to take care of some family issues today and tomorrow morning and then I'm going to the quilt show and the knitting show at the convention center. I'm sure I'll get into trouble at both events and I'm hoping to stop at the cross stitch store, Cross My Heart and hit Dick Blick's for some Copic markers. Sooo many hobbies, soooo little time!! ( and money - LOL)

Note - since I changed the template I found that I couldn't double click on the pictures to make them bigger, instead you have to right click and open another window. Hope this helps.

Happy stitching,
carol fun

Design Wall Monday

Yes, I do have something new on my design wall!! Yippee!! Ok, this quilt is the result of inspiration from the latest edition of AP&Q, Summer Salsa, page 30 and the creation on Quiltsalotts blog and a miniature version I saw on Sunshine Yellow's blog.

I have a good start on the middle and I already know that I want my long arm quilter to do a big cherry quilting pattern on this. She's used it on 2 other quilts of mine and it will be perfect for this one too, since all the white square have little red cherries and dots.



These are all my reds stacked up neatly and waiting not so patiently for me to sew them into nine patches. I love nine patches! The fabrics in the front are the yellow setting squares (notice more dots) and the red setting squares (again more dots!!). This is going to be such a happy quilt. My younger son said it looked like a picnic quilt - I like that idea.

Now I should be working on a new tote bag to take with me to the NQA show in Columbus this Thursday but the deadline isn't immediate enough yet.... maybe tomorrow!

Thank you to all the kind readers who've stopped by and left comments -- they absolutely make my day!!

Happy stitching,

carol fun

Sampler Sunday

Busy busy day - I went to see Dreamgirls this afternoon. Great vocals and costumes. I love a play with an interesting wardrobe. I've seen several plays this year and I think my favorite was Mary Poppins. The play took a different spin in some scenes than the classic movie and the actor who played Bert was phenomenal. I left thinking the play should have been called "Bert, the Chimneysweep" -- oh where was I? My mind wondered there a bit.



My offering for this Sampler Sunday is one I stitched back in 1998 called Heart that Gives. It is a design by Ewe and Eye and Friends. I loved these designs and have several of their samplers. When the Twisted Threads shop was still open in Madeira they used to carry all of this line and it was one of my favorite cross stitch designers. This piece is done on a soft turquoisy blue linen and it uses several decorative stitches. The lady's hair is done in french knots and is a lovely shade of auburn (similar to my own hair color but a better shade - IMHO) and there are satin stitch accents in the basket and in the flower centers. But what sets this sampler apart is the wonderful spiderweb roses in the border (click on the pic for a better look.) Now these roses took quite a while but oh I love the look -there are over a 100 of them and yes I am crazy. Now as much as I love this piece I felt it was lacking in the one thing I love on samplers - a house-- soooooo, I ended up sticking a little blue house down over the hill.



Perfect! This piece also includes my initials and the initials of my boys. I like including those details in my pieces.




And here is a pic of the quilt top I finished yesterday on my design floor. After putting on 3 borders (which took all day and I don't know why) it was too big to put back on the wall. I like how it turned out. Now it is off to the long arm quilter. The motivation for getting this quilt finished was so I could start another quilt. Big surprise, huh? I already cut out a lot of the pieces and I spent some time today washing a bunch of fat quarters so I can cut some more out tonight. Check back tomorrow and I'll show you some progress- it has great colors - red and yellow!

Happy stitching,
carol fun

With a little help from my friends....

Oh I get by with a little help from my friends, oh I get.... you remember the song, I know you do! Anyway today I want to show you some stuff that is the result of help from my dear friends and family. First is this good looking fellow. My dear niece gifted him to me and he is feeling quite at home among the rest of my flock on the mantel. I love all the colors in the blown glass - so pretty. Thanks Angela!






And then there is this quilt top. Now this is the one that has been on my design wall for 3 weeks. I was dragging my feet to finish this because I couldn't figure out how I was going to get that small Schnibble quilt into the big Schnibble. This is the X-rated pattern so this quilt is XX-Rated - LOL!! Well Laurey gave me an idea of how to fill in the center at dinner on Monday and that was the solution. When I took pictures of this piece this morning I thought all I had left to do was add a nice wide white border, but after measuring the piece I decided it wasn't big enough. (My friends are reading this and shaking their heads and making that tsk- ing sound because they know I am incapable of making a small quilt. My quilts always get big - I once set out to make a potholder and it ended up a twin size quilt.) So after I measured and realized that adding the wide border wouldn't make it big enough for my queen size bed I decided to add an inner border of 2" finished squares. I have plenty of fabric left over and I sliced and diced it this afternoon and when I am totally done I'll take more pictures. But you know how one thing leads to another - well by adding the inner border I now needed more of the Kona Snow and I wasn't sure where I should go to find more. Then I remembered that Linda said she'd finished off a bolt at Hobby Lobby on Monday. I figured they'd probably restocked and luckily they did. A brand new bolt of Kona Snow - so thanks to Laurey and Linda for helping me finish up this quilt.



And aren't these fabrics gorgeous?? There are 25 fat quarters and the purple piece at the bottom is 3/4 of a yard. It was packaged in a tall cardboard box at Joann's and it said something about Gypsy quilt (I don't remember all the details and my younger son snagged the box.) Anyway I loved the fabrics in this package but it was priced at $60 - YIKES! - more than I wanted to pay. But Stephie came to my rescue with a 50% of coupon - YIPPEE!! 28 fat quarters for $30 -- what a steal!!! So thank you Stephie for making my day.

I am so lucky to have such great friends who help me get by and buy -- get it??? bad bad pun -- LOL

Happy stitching,
carol fun

Whatever Wednesday

This is the large pond up the street from my house. You can see that it has a lot of Canada geese -or poop machines as we call them. And then there are these guys - two white domestic geese and a male mallard duck.



The geese were dropped off at this pond two years ago. I have no idea why someone would abandon these guys since they can't fly and can't fend for themselves. My kind hearted older son has taken it on himself to keep them fed. Through the last two winters, cold snowy winters, he has gone up to the pond almost every single day and brought them something to eat. Now that the weather is nicer and people are taking evening walks in the neighborhood they get fed a bit more since people let their kids feed them. When the geese see my son walking up they come running to him, squawking all the way. We've gotten quite fond of these guys. I consider them our birds since the homeowner's association won't let me keep chickens (they're no fun at all). Well this spring the little male mallard duck showed up. He doesn't have a mate and has attached himself to these geese. They are the 3 amigoes. a tight trio and this little guy has a definite Napoleon complex. He totally bosses them around and runs off any other fowl that might get close. He's funny as he charges with his head down, full speed toward any interloper. I wonder if he'll migrate and fly away this fall. He doesn't seem to be in any hurry to leave at the moment and my son will continue to see that they stay fed.

The weather here has been lovely, temperatures in the 80's - perfect weather to finish up another pair of socks. These beauties are my favorite "vanilla" sock- just stockinette, mindless knitting. The yarn is from Blue Moon Fibers. It is a lovely yarn and it knits up like butter. This colorway is called Lemongrass. I have 3 more skeins of this Blue Moon yarn waiting to be knit up. I think my next pair will be out of the Cattywampus colorway. I've already knit up a skein of the Spawn of Brawn and Fire on the Mountain. Dontcha love the names? Every time I go to their web site I find more colors I want.



And on the cross stitching front, I took another sampler to the framers tonight. I can't wait to show it to you when I get it back. This is the Blackbird Designs Mystery Sampler 2008. It will be a big one about 24" wide by 12" high. Now I started in what I thougth was the middle with that outer border. I stitched to the left and then to the right corners. It fits nicely and I have lots of extra fabric on those edges, but I totally miscounted from top to bottom - it is about 2" higher than I wanted but I had waaaayyy too much stitched to frog it when I figured it out. I'm sure the framer will say bad words when he works on it, but there is enough to work with. I'm liking this a lot. The basket is a turquoise color - very pretty. I've been working on this for about a week and I'm making good progress. I hope I can keep it up and not lose interest. I saw a frame tonight that would look great on this piece, so that should provide some motivation.



Hope your week is going well - happy stitching!

carol fun

Sampler Sunday

So last week the sampler I showed was BIG and this week I'm sharing the one which is my tiniest. This stitching on this piece is only 3 1/2 square. As I remember it is a Drawn Thread design and I used a scrap of a pretty rosy linen I had in my stash and DMC floss.

I've been doing quite a bit of cross stitch this week. I finished a Blackbird Design piece on Thursday and took it to the framer. I really like the frame I picked and as soon as I get it back I'll take pictures of it. And since I finished a piece I gave myself permission to start a new piece. (We will kindly overlook the basket of pieces I have already started and lost interest in, poor abandoned babies.) I started the Blackbird Designs Mystery Sampler from 2008. I've seen several examples of this in the blogosphere and it was calling my name. (Really it was, you just have to listen really really closely. Fabric and yarn also talk to me. I'm lucky that they are so chatty with me. We have the nicest talks and so many of them want to come home with me, I hate to disappoint them.) So back to the mystery sampler, I decided to do it on a single piece of linen rather than 5 different pieces because I knew I would never be happy with the way they fit together. I started on the outer border and I've made some good progress. I used up a whole skein of Weeks Dye Works in Moss and I'm only halfway done with the border. It called for 10 yds and I bought 15 but I wonder if I'll have enough. This piece uses a lot of Moss, and I need to take into account that I miscounted and had to rip out and redo a section. Also, by my calculations I'm not going to have enough of the Charcoal that the blackbirds are stitched in, so its back to the store tomorrow.

Hope you had a nice weekend. I plan to have more goodies to post this coming week so stop by again. And thanks to all of you who've become followers and left comments. It makes my day!!!

Happy stitching,
carol fun

Whatever Wednesday

Today I have a little of this and a little of that to share. I skipped Design Wall Monday because well, I forgot it was Monday and my design wall looks EXACTLY like it did a week ago except for the squares that fell off and I slapped them back up there. I do have a finished quilt to show.



This quilt is from the Anka's Treasure book, Stop, Drop and Roll, and the pattern is called Getting Ziggy with It. I used a Oz by Sanae jelly roll. I really liked this collection. The golden yellow fabric is a small dotted piece (not exactly polka dots but close). And I am particularly fond of the border print. That giant tulip in the border makes me smile.



This is the first Blackbird Design that I've gotten framed. It is called Quaker Garden. I have several BBD pieces waiting to be taken to the framer and another piece that I figure I can finish stitching tonight - it just needs a few spots here and there. I really like this piece, I mean really like it. It is one of the few pieces I've done that doesn't have a house. I thought about replacing the butterfly with a house but at the time I was working on this piece I didn't have the time or energy to rechart the piece. I'm glad now I left it alone. I need to find a place to hang this. I'm scouting out a few different places in the house.



And this is my Beatrix Potter Companion Quaker. This is my first Quaker sampler but it won't be my last. I've got several stashed that I can't wait to stitch. I want to do a whole wall of Quaker pieces. I got the idea for the threads from a piece I saw on Needleprint's website. Doris Hirth did one in these colors and I loved it. My fabric is an R&R called Roasted Crown. It is a warm golden color and I'm using DMC 433, 434,676, 680 and 746. I started this piece during the Chrismas holidays and haven't picked it up for a while. I'm surprised how far along I got. I need to get back to this one soon. However, my plans are to finish the Summer House BBD tonight and do the graphing of my town for a piece I found on Brenda Gervais site about a month ago. Then I really want to start the BBD Mystery Sampler - I finally got all the charts and I picked up my linen and threads over a week ago. I just love starting a new project, don't you?? But I'm trying to be good and not have so many things in process. I'm trying but I don't think I'm succeeding. I have numerous pieces is various stages - I kinda fall in and out of love with them -- oh I'm just too fickle - LOL!!

Looking at the quilt and the Beatrix Potter I realize my love for all things yellow is very evident. Yellow is my FAVORITE color. Now I know lots of people who aren't nearly as fond of yellow as I am but I think yellow just warms up everything. To me it is the happiest color. I have several yellow quilts and I am very partial to hand-dyed linens in golden tones. I had a yellow bedroom as a teen and in my first apartment my bedroom was very yellow - I couldn't paint the walls so the bed linens and the carpet were yellow. In my first house, I got yellow linoleum for the kitchen floor. I have lots of yellow in my wardrobe and my friends know that given a choice of colors I will ALWAYS pick yellow.

So I hope you have a sunny yellow day coming your way. Happy stitching,

carol fun