Whatever Wednesday

Hey it actually is Wednesday, boy this week is moving fast. I thought I was going to be home today but I got the dates mixed up and have to do a trip to Columbus today. At least the weather is nice and I should be home by dinner.



Here is my progress on the BBD Mystery Sampler 2008. This is a very dense section, lots and lots of stitching. I'm trying to get all the "stuff" finished inside the borders of the house and roof so I'll have some mindless stitching for the weekend. Once I finish this section I can consider myself over half way done. Section 1 and 2 should go pretty quickly, I hope!



I got all the 9 patch blocks finished for the Cherry Salsa quilt - now to get them assembled -another project for the long weekend. I'm anxious to finish this top since I still have to finish the Charming Chatter QAL and I have several new things I want to start.

Why is starting a new project so exciting?? Now I can resist anything but temptation(very very true - LOL) and I have been sorely tempted in the last couple of days. First there is this new cross stitch project - The Magic Garden Sampler by Shakespeare's Peddler.


I picked up the graph on Friday, and hand dyed some evenweave a tannish yellow on Saturday, and bought the flosses yesterday. I still didn't remember to find rubber gloves so my hands have a nice jaundiced look -oh well. I have no business starting a new cross stitch project since I'm making good progress on the BBD piece and I do want it finished, but this one is calling.

And then there are not one but two new quilts I want to start. First Darlene of Quilting Daze showed this beauty.
I have this Whistlepig pattern and I have a group of fat quarters that would be very pretty for this. They are well aged fat quarters, at least 2 years old. Ripe for the sewing!

And then there is this QAL with Crazy Mama Sews. Simple and classy and it would work perfectly with an idea I have for a charm quilt. Now the way she's doing it makes this easy - strip piecing- and the way I'd need to do it - pieceing each and every square to another would take longer but I know I'd LOVE the result. I always subscribe to the philosphy that if 20 different fabrics are good then 200 are 10 times better. My plan for this pattern would have me cutting a TON of squares - one from each fabric. It isn't the cutting that takes so long it is the folding and then the refolding and putting it back on the shelf and you know how fabrics get puffier when you remove them from their extremely tight quarters. They never fit back into the space without lots of coaxing and shoving. However,this is my absolute favorite kind of project, big and messy! Crazy Mama is doing a nice sized twin quilt and I want to make an extremely generous queen size (remember I told you I'm genetically incapable of making a little bed size quilt.) I'm still playing with the math for the size and number of pieces but I want it to come out at least 90" square.

I figure I'll succumb to starting all of these in the near future, unless I'm distracted by another temptation which is entirely possible. The ADHD is strong - oh look there's a chicken - gotta go!

Happy stitching,

carol fun

Ckickens in the garden (picture heavy!)

I think like most quilters/cross stitchers/sewers/crafters I love flowers and gardens. I love the shapes, the colors, the million shades of green - they all make me happy! Several years ago I decided that I wanted a garden in my back yard so I got my husband to dig out some bushes and turn over a patch of dirt. The rest was up to me. The dirt we have here is about 99% clay and I knew nothing would grow unless I improved the soil. I have no idea how many 30 lb. bags of soil and compost I dragged to the backyard but it was worth it. I concentrated on perennials and wanted a sort of wild English garden look and I think I have it - although some would say it is getting to be a jungle out there, I like the craziness of it. Here are some pics I took last week. I'm big on daylilies - all that yellow and orange.














Here are my newest garden additions - polka dot chickens!!




I got these at Joanns months ago (there was still snow on the ground when I snapped them up). It has taken waaaay too long to get them into the garden because I wanted to spray them with polyurethane before exposed them to the elements. I read somewhere that this is extend the life of these crazy guys. So last Saturday when I was spray painting the metal baskets I gave them several coats of poly. I need to remember to take them inside in the fall and give them a few more coats before returning them next year.

Hope you enjoy the pictures - I have some more I want to show of cool flower displays I've seen locally. There is a cute little house not far from mine with a wonderful English garden look and the flower boxes full of petunias in the Sycamore area are simply stunning. I'm going picture taking this weekend so look for new garden pics next week.

Happy stitching and gardening!

carol fun

Sampler Sunday and my painting project

Here is another BBD piece -- I do love their style! This one is Summer House. It is Loose Feathers #14 and of course I didn't fall in love with it until it became OOP and very very hard to get. I bid on it on ebay several times and when the price got to be stratospheric I dropped out. Then one Sunday morning I checked on ebay and there it was and the auction was going to be over in 2 hours and it only had one bid! So I jumped in and placed a bid and even set a higher limit if needed but no one ever came back to counter - yippee!! It was mine and I didn't have to pay a fortune for the graph. Since I'm not a real patient person I am surprised that I held out and finally snagged this graph.



My favorite parts of this piece are the house with the 3 hearts, the two bluebirds and the ginormous tulip on the roof. Now that it a big flower! Kinda like my garden at the moment. With all our rain and hot days it is a jungle out there. Anyway this stitched up quickly and I only made minor floss changes- I used a pinky peachy hand dyed floss for the alphabet and the flowers - very summery!


And here is my painting project - I used spray paint to change these ugly metal baskets to a pretty "bermuda" blue (Krylon's name for it). I found the silk flowers and greenery in my storage room (oh its a jungle in there too). A nice update for my front doors.







Not much sewing got done today - a couple of 9 patch blocks for Cherry Salsa. I'm thinking about a different border for the Charming Chatter QAL but haven't made any decision yet. Off to park my butt in my recliner and do some cross stitching for the evening.

Thanks for all the wonderful comments. They really make my day!

Happy stitching!

carol fun

Stick a forked pin in me -- I'm done for tonight!

Well I thought I could get this completely done today but it is not to be. I did get the entire center finished for the Charming Chatter QAL. But I'm too tired to think about putting the borders on tonight.



I love how it came together. All those little squares matched up quite nicely. The forked pins helped that process a lot. This is a pretty good accomplishment for one day and the day included a trip to the big sale at Bath & Bodyworks (got lots of foamy soap and a great lemon verbena candle) and 4 loads of laundry (who wears all these clothes?) and another crafty project involving spray paint (I'll show you that another day). Time to turn off the sewing machine -

Happy stitching, tomorrow -

carol fun

Happy Saturday- getting into something new

So I was up early today (early for me) and wandered down to my sewing machine and what did I spy but the charm packs and background for the Charming Chatter QAL. Well it couldn't hurt to cut up some of the charms squares, could it?? That didn't take long and before I knew it I had the 4 patch blocks sewn and pressed -- aren't they cute?


I'm really loving this background fabric by Nancy Halvorsen - its called Tidings and I almost positive that I need to go get some more and see what other colors it comes it. The big polka dot circles made up of dots is a fabric with my name all over it (I looked to see if my name might be in the selvedge but somehow they left it off- imagine that- LOL!) Oh this is a fun little quilt and I think I can knock it out today or tomorrow. Lets not dwell on the Cherry Salsa quilt that is langquishing on the design wall - I'll get back to it. But right now I need a quick little pick me up finish -- check back later to see what I get done. Right now I'm off to Sonic for lunch --

Happy stitching,
carol fun

Whatever happened to Wednesday??

OK - I know it is Thursday, I don't know what happened to Wednesday. They say times flies when you're having fun, did I have fun?? I don't remember. I think I did. Oh well they also say that ignorance is bliss, so maybe that's why I'm happy. Anyway there has been some progress on a couple of crafty projects this last week.

Here is the yellow/red quilt I'm calling Cherry Salsa. This portion is sewn together and is currently laid out on the floor.


This portion is not sewn together and is still up on the design wall. I have about 20 more blocks to make for this top. This is the time I get bored with a project. I can see the end but it is still several hours (or days) away and I get antsy to start something new.



Soooooo...... yesterday I went up to Waynesville and got these goodies. The charm packs are from the Panache collection by Sanae.



It has been out for a while and I liked it as soon as I saw it, but every quilt pattern I wanted to make out of it used a Layer Cake and for some unknown reason this collection wasn't made into Layer Cakes - darn it!! So then I came across the Charming Chatter's Quilt Along. This little quilt is so cute and the perfect excuse/reason to use these charm square. The gold fabric is from Nancy Halvorsen by Beneratex - it is a Christmas fabric but it doesn't look Christmasy. I love the big dotty circles. I'm going to play with this in the next day or so.



On the cross stitch front here is where I am with the BBD Mystery Sampler. I got part 4 pretty much complete on Saturday and I started on part 3 today. I still need to go back and fill in all the eyelet stitches in the basket from part 5. I think it is really looking good. Notice that I already stitched in a date of 2010 -- I'm thinking positively!! However after completing part 4 I found that I made a mistake in the upper border, ooops. I'm one stitch short and I am not frogging this - no way. I'm glad the whole piece has a nice relaxed feel. No one is going to miss that one stitch and since I know where I left it out I can make any adjustments needed.

Well I'm off to do something fun so that when I can't remember Thursday I'll figure I must have been having a good time.

Happy stitching!
carol fun

Sampler Sunday .... and shopping

This is my latest finish and I am so pleased with how it turned out. The graph is a freebie from Brenda Gervais of With Thy Needle and Thread called May Day Sampler. I downloaded this as soon as I saw it and knew I had to stitch it. I love the rather chubby basket with the house in it. I've never seen this kind of arrangement before.



And then there is the outer border which reminds me of flying geese or prairie points, so this piece has quilting elements for me. Now I couldn't find any suggestions for fabric or threads (they may be there somewhere I'm just didn't see them), so I came up with my own combination. Now the fabric is a piece of 28 ct evenweave from Joann's. I started trying to dye it with coffee and tea but it wasn't getting dark enough for me and then I had a brilliant idea (well they always seem brilliant to me, it may just be the overhead light going on it the basement, I'm not certain). Anyway I remembered I had some RIT dye in the laundry room, so I got it out and added a glug of cocoa and a dash of tan - yes those are the technical measurements. Then I scrunched it up and walked away -- that was the hardest part, maybe even harder than scrubbing the dye off my hands. (Memo to myself - next time use rubber gloves.) So a little while passed, and I squished out the excess dye and water and rinsed it out and then took it to the ironing board and pressed the living daylights out of it. I figured this would set the dye and it has seemed to work. I loved the splotchiness of the coloring and it came out a rosy brown- very pretty. I used overdyded flosses, Gentle Arts in Parchment, Shaker White, Cinnamon, Brandy and Tropical Ocean, Crescent Colors in Jakey Brown for the alphabet (I really loved this one!), and Weeks Dye Works in Moss and I used Brick for the outer border. To personalize the piece I stitched my boys' initials in Brandy and put my hometown on the bottom. I can't wait to stitch more charts by Brenda - I love her style.



On Thursday I went to the NQA show in Columbus with my dear friends, Stephie and Cathy and had a great time. Our strategy is to do the vendors first since the good stuff goes fast and the quilts aren't going anywhere.(Hey, you know this is true!) I didn't get a lot of things but I like what I got. A couple of 1/2 yd cuts of batiks in a orangey purpley range, I think these may appear in a tote bag or two. I also got a kit for a Kaffee Fasset quilt. Stephie bought one last year and I thought about it all year and after all that deep consideration I still wanted one for me!! So they had it and I bought it. I'll show more of it when I get started sewing on it. Oh the novelty fabrics are knitting needles which will probably be used in another tote bag (you can never have too many bags - particularly if they are filled with good stuff) and the rather startled looking pigs are part of another "collection". Lately I've been finding some adorable pig fabrics - I got flying pigs, pink polka dot pigs, pigs in clothes. Don't know what I'm going to do with them but they needed to come home with me. I'll take good care of them.




And the Knitting show was just down the hall so Cathy and I checked it out. I ended up with 4 new skeins of yarn. The deep jade green and the tangerine one are by Fiber Optic Yarn and have 10% cashmere and feel soooooooo soft. The other orangey one is Online sock yarn. Sock yarn is a weakness of mine. I love to knit socks! And the pastel rainbow stuff is a shiny ribbony confection. I saw a pretty scarf made out of it and I really liked it. I wasn't sure how I would get this stuff wound. Cathy read the inside of the label (she's so smart -that's why I take her shopping with me - LOL!)and it says you need another "human being" to wind this and she volunteered to help me with this. I'm so lucky to have such great friends.

Happy stitching -

carol fun