So which came first???

The dotty chicken fabric or the fried egg pincushion??




Well in this case it is the egg, but it should have been the chicken fabric because it was mailed first. Aren't both of these adorable? I see you shaking your head up and down - very good.

They are both gifts from other bloggers - quilty crafty bloggers are some of the nicest people. Terry at Terry's Treasures made the felt friend eggs pincushion with the smiley little face. And Melinda at Melinda Quilts ETC gifted me the wonderful chicken fabric. Thank you both from the bottom of my polka dot heart!!

Now I just was able to let Melinda know that the fabric had arrived, even though it has a postmark from over a week ago. Melinda's package won the weekly mail mix up lottery. I live in a neighborhood with lots of duplicate house numbers, but different street names and we have had a succession of mail people who don't seem to pay too close attention to this fact. Every week I get at least one item that belongs to someone else in the neighborhood but has the same house number. I usually just take the item and drop it in the correct person's mailbox. However some neighbors mark it "wrong address" and send it back to the branch post office and let the item do another rotation in hopes that this time around it ends up where it should have gone and this adds several days to the delivery time. Sometimes things never show up and I wonder if the people who received it accidentally opened it and then kept it. We've had all kinds of things disappear and it is annoying.

Well I can't believe it is already Wednesday. I've had stuff going on every day. Last night was a fun event. I went and saw these guys...



they put on a great show even if these do look like this...



There were over 10,000 people there and we sang every Beach Boys song. It amazes me how many of us aging Midwestern baby boomers still love tunes like Surfin' Safari and and Catch a Wave and Surfer Girl.

Hope your week is going well - happy stitching!
carol fun

How much???

Isn't this a pretty piece of fabric? It is an OOP from the Swell collection by Urban Chiks. I found a 2 1/2 yard piece of this in the bottom of a plastic box I have been aging.



In googling this fabric I came across this etsy listing -- click here. Read carefully.... she's asking $25 for a fat quarter of this fabric. OMG!!! that makes my piece worth $250! Now I know that a item is only worth what someone will pay for it and she is probably being very very optimistic about this price, but sheesh.... my stash has increased in value exponentially at that rate. That's a better rate of return than we got on our stock portfolio!

Anyway after seeing that price I don't think I'm going to use this as a back. I think this is the motivation to make another quilt with this fabric to go with the Sugar Dish quilt on my design wall.

Happy stitching-
carol fun

Deja vu on Design Wall Monday

Does this look familiar? It was on my Design Wall last July and I have no idea why I took it down and didn't finish it, cause I LOVE it!



The pattern is Sugar Dish by Cluck, Cluck, Sew. Of course my version is larger than hers but you know it is a once in a blue moon rarity for me to make a quilt smaller than a pattern.



The fabrics are from Urban Chiks by Moda. There are 2 collections here and I know one was called Swell and I think the other was called Hullabaloo. I love the soft vintage quality of the colors -kinda like sheets from the 70's. I remember when printed sheets came into fashion. My mother who loved fabric and color as much as I do embraced this new trend and threw out all the plain white sheets in the linen closet and bought printed sheets for all of our beds. Mine were a yellow floral - I've loved yellow since I was a child!



I didn't iron these (as you can clearly see) I just slapped them on my design wall to see how many more I need. Only 7 of the pieced blocks and 6 of the dresdens. The pattern has that row of dresdens at what would be the foot of the quilt, but I moved them up. I often put a second quilt at the foot of the bed and I don't want to cover these darlings up.

Now when I released these blocks from their hermetically sealed plastic casket box I realized I have enough of these fabrics to do a second quilt. I need to think about that. Perhaps another one, not as large as this one in a different pattern. It would be pretty draped over the rocking chair in my bedroom.

Hmmm...I know this isn't a chicken quilt but it certainly has lots of chicken connections - Urban Chiks, Cluck, Cluck, Sew- maybe that's why it makes me so happy! Oh I wish I was going to have more sewing time this week but boy there is a lot on my calendar. Hopefully I can finish up the pieced blocks. Check back next week and see how far this progresses.

Have a great time checking out the design walls today!
Happy stitching-
carol fun

A work in progress for Sampler Sunday

Where does the time go???? Sunday, already??? Seriously I think someone is stealing hours out of my days. And that's my excuse for why I don't have a finished sampler to show today. I am making progress on Willie's Quaker Band by Monastarium Design.



I love the look of this sampler, I just wish I could stitch faster and find more hours in the day to stitch. In trying to remember what it was I did last week, there wasn't too much that was memorable. I did help my son get a small couch moved into his new office at work - and it looks very nice. And I helped my other son study for his final exam of the quarter - and he did well. But the rest of the week was a blur of errands and laundry and running around.

And looking ahead, this upcoming week doesn't look any better. In fact, there is even less time available for stitching from what I can see. Which leads me to believe that I will not get this done in time to use the super coupon for this sampler. I do have another smaller sampler, so it won't go to waste. But I may have to hold out for another super duper coupon to get this one framed. Oh well, such is life.


Here's some close ups of what I've completed.



I love the Quaker motifs and the little leaf and bird and crown make me smile.



I did stitch a couple of evenings into the wee hours of the morning. I would have a motif started and tell myself that it had to be complete before I went to bed. I have no idea why I tell myself this stuff or why I make myself do it - I certainly wouldn't let anyone else boss me around like that - LOL! Tonight there should be some stitching time in front of the tv watching the baseball game - Cincinnati Reds versus Detroit Tigers. They are both playing good baseball, but my heart is always with the Reds. As I kid I spent many an evening listening to the ball game on the radio with my Grandma and now even though I have it on tv, I listen more than I watch.

So I hope your week has some quality stitching time and if anyone finds the hours I've lost I'd love them back. (I know I'm delusional but it is a nice little world - LOL)

Happy stitching-
carol fun

On the needles

Okay technically this is off the needles, but then when have you ever known me to follow the directions?? However, this is still in its unblocked state and I'm expecting a whole lot out of it when I get around to blocking it.


The shawl is Charlize which I found here on Ravelry.



I'm not certain exactly which combination of sizes of lace part and edging part I chose to knit. What I do remember is that this lace pattern while not technically difficult drove me CRAZY! I couldn't "read" it at all. I did lots of counting and recounting and recounting what I had recounted. And while I like this shawl/scarf I will NEVER knit another one like it. I don't think the results were worth the effort - does that make sense? For something I slaved over I wanted it to be a "WOW" and it is just a "nice".

Now I do like that row of eyelets before the edging. In retrospect I kinda wished I had knitted that part in a contrasting color. It might have elevated this project.



The yarn is Malabrigo and the colorway is Turner, a lovely mottled olive and very very soft. I need to have a blocking day here soon. I have another little scarf that needs attention and I'm almost done with my Whippoorwill shawl. Check back next week.

Thanks Judy for starting this link-up. Design Wall Monday always gives me the kick in the butt I need to be productive on the quilting front and hopefully this will do the same for me in knitting.

Well, it is heating up here in southern Ohio -gonna be 90 by Sunday. Think I'll be hibernating in the AC doing a little knitting, a little cross stitch and a little sewing. Have a great weekend!

carol fun

Sunny side up on a Design Wall Monday

Rise and shine! We have fried eggs, sunny side up on the menu, I mean quilt, today.



It took waaay longer than I anticipated to get this border on the quilt. I didn't really know how many fried eggs I would need and after putting them on the design wall I knew I needed to make more.



I had planned just to put them on the upper and lower corners but instead I opted for randomly spaced fried eggs. I'm thinking that a great motif to quilt between the eggs would be strips of bacon.



I think you can see in this picture the fabric I used for the eggs has a swirly design in it. Kinda like the texture of real eggs. It is a new Kona fabric called Dimensions. They have it here at Fabric Shack.

And I've been thinking of names for my fine polka dotty hens. I like old-fashioned ones like Agnes or Beulah or Tillie and I think I'll do some kind of name placards when I get the quilt back from the quilter.



This one is definitely my favorite. That addled look and the appearance of the third eye lead me to believe she needs a special name. My oldest son is quite creative and he looked at her and said we should call her "Cher" - pronounced like "chair". He said it was short for Chernobyl. OMG!!! I know that it is kinda sick but I think it is funny. I feel for her, I really do.

Have a great day and I hope you got a good breakfast!
Happy stitching-
carol fun

A long sampler to start off Summer

Well I'm trying to get back into the swing of things and today I do have a Sampler for Sunday. Several people commented how long the Willie's Quaker Sampler is that I've been stitching but it is a short one compared to this piece. This sampler is almost 6 feet long.....

and it is only about 6" tall. (You can click on the picture and make it bigger.) Each letter was a separate little leaflet and I can't for the life of me remember who the designer was - Lizzie Kate or Heart in Hand or Bent Creek - I'm drawing a total blank and the charts are long gone. (Stasi if you remember who designed these please let me know!)

Anyway I think most people just stitched one or two of these or if they did them as a group it was so many rows and so many columns. I don't know what possessed me to stitch them as one long row, but once the idea was in my head it would not leave! At the time I got all my cross stitch goodies at Twisted Threads in Madeira, a suburb of Cincinnati, and they ordered the linen for me. They charged by the square inch and I don't remember what I paid but I was impressed that I could get a continuous piece of linen. Each chart was sold separately and I remember going to a couple of shops before I could collect all of them. This was pre-internet shopping so the hunt was all done by car. This piece hangs in my breakfast nook way up high where I can see if from the table.

I took these pictures standing on a chair and I have cropped them but some of the angles are skewed but I didn't want to take it down as it was a bear to hang and get straight.

Here we have A-apple, B-bee, C-cow, and D-daffodil...

Okay I repeated the D so ignore it, E-evergreen, F-fish, G-goose...

H-house & heart, I-ice skate, J-jingle bells, K-key...

L-lamb, M-mitten ,N-nest, O-owl ,P-pineapple...

Q-quilt block ,R-robin, S-strawberry, T-teacup, U-unicorn...

V-violet, W-weathervane, X- xylophone, Y- yolk, and Z-zebra.

Now the way I stitched this was I started with the letter Z and worked my way to A. I stitch starting at the upper left side of charts and work to the right. I don't use a hoop and just hold the linen in my hands and this way I'm not squishing up work I've stitched, just the linen I haven't gotten to yet. Does that make sense? Anyway it works for me. With this piece I rolled the finished parts up and put a safety pin at the top and bottom to keep it out of the way.

So you can see that my love of the BAP - big a$$ project- has a long and storied past. Among my UFO are several other BAPs including the Houses of Hawk Run Hallow, And they Sinned, BBD Anniversaries of the Heart, and all the Prairie Schooler letters done on one piece of linen. My son thinks I'm enamored with large samplers and large quilts is to compensate for my being short. I think he took too many psychology courses in college.

Okay, I'm off to stitch some more on the Monastarium piece. I'm still operating under the delusion that I can finish it by the 16th. Stay tuned..

Happy stitching-
carol fun