My I.S.T.H. Schnibble!

Ta dah! I got borders on my I.S.T.H. Schnibble yesterday (and did 4 loads of laundry -yeah for clean underwear!)



As you can see the chickens totally commandeered this quilt. Honestly, I just could not stop them! From the polka dot hens in the center blocks, to the chicken tracks background, to the border and the cornerstones. All chickens, all the time! While I was sewing on the border I realized what I.S.T.H. stands for in this quilt. I. S.pot T.he H.en -- get it I Spot The Hen! Oh I crack myself up (oh that was a bad pun too!)

Can you see the hen that well, I spotted? Upper right hand corner- here's a close up.




I am so happy with this little quilt. I'm going to let my long-arm gal quilt this one, because I know she'll come up with something wonderful to show off these dotty hens. This was so much fun. I can't wait to see what the pattern is for next month. Thanks Sinta and Sherry for managing this each month. I know the parade of quilts this month is going to be wonderful.

Happy stitching-
carol fun

A very full design wall for Monday

To reward myself for spending all day Saturday helping my son with his history paper I spent Sunday sewing. Do you want to know anything about the presidential election of 1912? I didn't think so. Anyway I got 16 more blocks done on the Jelly & Jam quilt so I am 75% done with the blocks. There is another row at the top I couldn't get in the picture. The sashing is going to take some time. Down in the left hand corner is my I.S.T. H. Schnibble for this month- and yes it does have a chicken theme.



I didn't plan on this turning into a chicken quilt, it just took on a life of its own. I knew I wanted to do bright colored stars with dotty fabrics. I did one block with a polka dot background. I loved the block but the background didn't do it for me. So I went looking through my stash and found this fabric - chicken tracks!! Well there was no stopping it then.



The dotty chickens in the center spaces were in my stash and are from the Giggle Feathers collection by Robert Roderick for Studio e fabrics. Wish I had more. The sashing is yellow with orange dots and the cornerstones are an orange tone-on-tone dot. Sensing a theme here? Now my quilt doesn't look exactly like the pattern because I like square quilts, I got my idea for this setting from Kim. Check out her Schnibble. My plan for today is to get the borders on this - and do some laundry. Hope your day is great!

Happy stitching-
carol fun

A simple sampler for Sunday

It is a glorious sunny Sunday. The temperature hit 50 and it is February in Ohio??? If this is global warming bring it on. The sunshine puts me in good mood. I've been working on some smaller pieces - all BBD -and this is one I've finished. Its called Simple Harvest and it appears in the book With Needle & Thread by BBD, 2007. I poked around a bit online and couldn't find a copy of this for sale, so it is probably OOP. No surprise to those of us who love BBD.



I did this on a piece of mystery linen in my stash. It is 32 count and the piece finished about 4" X 6". I used a thread that is new to me - Cosmo Seasons by Lecien.I purchased it at Fabric Shack. They have a selection of the variegated colors in floss and in heavier thread weight for big stitch quilting. I used an entire 8 meter skein on this. It cost $1.70 a skein which makes it more than DMC but a little less than some of the hand dyed flosses. I like it and will use it again.



When I stitch with variegated floss like this I try to cross every stitch as I go and it and I feel like I'm painting with thread. I tried to make sure that I didn't get any areas where the colors clumped together. I did unsew one letter and re-stitch it when it ended up being the exact color of the letter below it.



Instead of stitching my initials I added another one of those heart-shaped mother of pearl buttons I love so much. The frame is something I picked up at Michael's for half price. I like the wood grain on it. Now in the book Alma says she stitched this in one night. She must stitch like the wind, cause it took me about 7 nights to finish this, but it was worth it.

Well I hope to get some sewing done today. I spent all day yesterday helping my son with a paper, and by the time we were finished I was too tired. I'm working on the Schnibble I.S.T.H. for the "Another year of Schnibbles" and I need to get it done before the end of the month. It almost done.

Hope the weather is lovely where you are, or that it gets lovely very very soon!
Happy stitching!
carol fun

I forget things......

Yes, I do, and one of the things I've forgotten to do is to thank Brita of Scraps of Happiness for giving me a Versatile Blogger award. I am honored - thank you, Brita. Now you were suppose to list 7 facts about yourself and pass the award on to 15 other bloggers. And because I forgot to do this all the bloggers I thought about naming have already been named. Obviously the rest of you have impeccable taste in blogs. I'll have to skip that part unless you want a list of blogs about subjects like raising pygmy goats or collecting rubber bands. Yeah I didn't think so.

As for 7 facts about myself - wow that was harder than I thought it would be so I only did 4. I also don't follow direction well, but then I think you've figured that out already.

1. I forget things - oh wait I already said that, but I forgot. Actually, I forget where I leave my cell phone about 10 times a day. I often call it from my land line which works unless I've left the battery run down and then I get my sons to look for me. I'm forgetful, not stupid.




2. I have naturally curly hair. Very curly. Think an aging Shirley Temple who put her finger in a light socket. I gave up trying to tame it years ago. As a teen I did the gargantuan juice can rollers and it still had curl. Now the color I owe to my lovely stylist and she will never tell what concoction she mixes up for me.

3. I understand the concepts of cooking and cleaning but just not how it applies to me. Now I love to eat and I like a clean house but I avoid these activities as much as possible. There are lots of lovely places close to my home that serve great meals -and yes some pass me dinner through a window, but that's okay with me. As for cleaning, I haven't been visited by the local health department so its all good. No one on their death bed said I wished I'd spent more time at the office or cleaned more toilets. I'm going to spend my time doing crafty stuff!



4. Now even though I don't like cooking I adore dishes - china, serving pieces, cakes stands! I have a wonderful collection of Fiestaware. At last count I have 14 different colored place settings and I mix them up all the time. Hey, carry out food taste better when it is sitting on a Paprika colored plate and the salad is in a Lemongrass colored bowl and I'm drinking out of a Tangerine mug.

I love reading all the different blogs and seeing the wonderful projects you are working on. The internet offers so much inspiration. I just wish there were more hours in a day. Now I'm off to to indulge in crafty endeavors!

Happy stitching-
carol fun

A design wall from the instructionally challenged for Monday

Last week I didn't even turn on my sewing machine. Nothing was calling my name. Those SNW blocks I put up last Monday are pretty, but not what I wanted to work on. So I took them down and then I had a totally blank design wall and that was just too too empty. So I pawed around in my storage cubbies and found the giant ziploc bag that held these blocks and sewed up a few more on Sunday.



I hadn't totally forgotten about these. They still lurked in a dusty corner of my brain and I was happy to see them again. The fabric is the Verna collection by Kate Spain from Moda. I think it was released over a year ago. I love this collection. Very soft and springy.



That tulip print is my favorite and I have enough for the border, but I just realized that if I want it to all face the same direction I'm going to have to do some piecing. May have to rethink that idea.

Now the pattern started life as Jelly and Jam from Fig Tree. However if you look at my blocks you will see that they don't look like the pattern. This is because I suffer from being instructionally challenged in that I don't pay attention!!! My blocks have the small triangles in the center of the block. They are suppose to be at the corners of the blocks -sheesh why didn't I see that before I sewed over half of them together??? I think the block I am making is really called a Propeller block and no matter what its called it is staying this way.

Now when I was starting these blocks last year, my BFF told me that the blocks looked different than the pattern. I emphatically told her that my blocks were just like the pattern. Since she is my BFF she didn't tell me that I was wrong and let me figure it out for myself. What a great BFF. I also wish that when I bagged these blocks up and hermetically sealed them that I had written a note to myself as to how many blocks I planned on making. In looking at the strips I've sewn together my guess is that I planned on making 64 blocks - I have enough fabric for 64 and that is going to be the correct number. 32 down and 32 to go!

To Sandie who last week asked what was the pattern name for the big heart blocks - it is called Hearts & Stars by The Ginger Cookie Company and the copyright is 1998. I tried googling it and couldn't find it anywhere. There was no email address for me to respond to your comment. If you email me at CFUN53@gmail.com we can chat about this pattern.

Hope you are enjoying a day off - happy stitching!

carol fun

A litte of this and that for a Sampler Sunday

Hope you are enjoying this 3 day weekend. I've been relaxing with a little knitting and a little stitching and even a little sewing - now that's what I call a great weekend! I have a couple of little pieces to share today. This little LOVE sampler is a Bent Creek design and it was included in the project Kris's Stitches, From the Heart, Chart One. It finished a tiny 2 3/4 inches square. I found the frame on sale at Michael's. It measures about 6". I framed this one myself and its not too bad a job.



And these little scissors fobs were my Christmas gifts to my quilty friends. I found the scissors at Anita's Little Stitches. The chart for the stitching is something I copied from another cross stitching friend some time ago. I forgot to write down who's design it is but I strikes me as a Lizzie*Kate or Bent Creek.



I finished these with a beaded edge and filled them with crushed walnut shells. The mother of pearl button accent was my personal touch. I love mother of pearl buttons! Now the only thing I didn't do was make one for me - oh well I'll put it on my list of things to do. It is a very long list - LOL!

Hope you have tomorrow off too! Happy stitching-
carol fun

It has been a woolly week

It has been a woolly week here. Not in the "woolly" way of harried or crazy, but in the "woolly" way of sock yarn.I haven't felt like sewing this week -haven't even turned on my sewing machine. All I've felt like working on is simple mindless projects, so woolly sock yarn has been occupying my time. Now I didn't knit both of the socks in the following pairs this week. What I did was finish up the 2nd sock which in every case was pretty close to being done.

These first socks are done with Cascade sock yarn. It has a lovely feel. The pattern is Firefly from The Knitter's Book of Socks. It was hard to get a good pic of these socks. The color is correct in this pic.



And this pic shows the pattern more clearly.



I had 3 pairs of plain vanilla stockinette socks which were soooo close to being finished but somehow I had lost the mojo and put them aside. This was their week to be completed. This first pair is a Paton Kroy Jacquard yarn- nice and squishy and machine wash, tumble dry.



This pair is done with an Opal yarn. I love Opal sock yarn. Nice to knit with and wears like iron.



And this last pair is Red Heart Heart and Sole. Now this pair shows why I like to knit socks that don't match. Look closely, I tried to make these match and they do until you get down to the middle of the foot - what?? Somehow there is an extra pattern of stripe on the one that doesn't appear on the other. Both of these socks were knit straight from the skein, and the fact that the difference didn't appear until I was almost done with the second sock, drives me crazy!!



So I will return to my habit of rewinding the second skein of yarn so the stripe repeat is reversed. That's what I did on the Paton and Opal socks. They kinda match but they don't. I think it makes them more interesting and I don't have to obsess over making the pair exact.

Hope you are having a nice weekend. I'm knitting a new shawl and finishing up some cross stitch and I think I'll even turn on my sewing machine and do a couple of easy blocks.

Happy stitching!
carol fun