Playing Grandma

Nick spent a few days with grandma and grandpa....life is different with us, that's for sure!  I'm afraid I am a rules kinda grandma..."put things away when you're done with them", "no you can't eat all that sweet stuff.  I have fruit and sugar free jello, etc.", "now it's time for our walk", "brush your teeth", yada, yada!
But in between we did have some fun!  HA

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Nick brought his XBox which he hooked up quickly to show us some of the cars in his 'garage'!

He wouldn't do my 7 Minute exercise routine and instead opted to play soccer on the XBox.

Of course we have to play a game or two of pool!  He only beat me by 2 points!  Hey, last I played was in the fall!

Beside walking Kalee twice a day, each day...we also got to walk Dillon, my neighbors 3 legged dog.  He is so cute and really liked Nick a lot!!

After Dillon, we took Kalee and Logan, my neighbors Labradoodle for a mile walk.  He did so good.  I think we wore all the dogs out!





Thursday, we went  to see Jurassic World in Imax.  It was pretty cool...acting wasn't the greatest...wasn't bad just not great...with the exception of the two kids!  They were really good!!!  I think they out shined the adult actors.   I was quite impressed with them.  And the special effects were quite good, which is to be expected.  And the Imax experience is the only way to see this movie.  I only fell out of my seat once!

We are still debating about what to do until the time to take Nick home....so between "I don't know" or "I don't know" (both comments from Nick)...I don't know what we're doing!  HA

Project Progress!

I most likely won't have any more progress on my projects as Nick (grandson) will have spent a few days with grandma and grandpa!   Nick and I are planning to go see the movie Jurassic World, which I can't wait to see!  Bob isn't a movie goer!   And of course, dog walking, playing his X box (which I understand he is packing up to bring!) and eating...which we do a lot of!

Anyway, I did quilt the leaves on this solar piece.  I'm using a 12wt Sulky dark blue thread for the quilting.

My next plan is to hand stitch inside the 'box' area.  I'm not sure how I'll free motion quilt around the outside of the 'box' area....have to do some playing and planning I think!  Once quilted, it will be attached to a gallery wrap canvas.  I'm hoping to have the canvas painted in the shades of lime green, yellows and pinks, which are in the solar piece.  Another plan in my head that I need to put to action!!   I am requesting the assistance of my bud, Joan, who does paintings on canvas.  You can see a piece she painted that I made into a snap bag for her here.

Weekly Pattern Wednesday #6

Weekly Pattern Wednesday #6

Guess I could have cropped out the background!  Oh well!!!   I do think I am done with the stamping and adding patterns/doodles!  Next week, back to something I can potentially use in my quilting.

 It is fun to play with the stamps but I like to stretch a little more!  Don't forget to head over to Lynn's blog to see what her pattern is for the week as well as all the other participates!  Always great inspiration!  And you can still join in!!!

Hex Horse #2 Progress

I'm working away on my hex background for my patchwork horse!  I have each hex 'column' sewn and started to sew the columns/rows together!

I think the patchwork horse (leftover from my Horse Hex#1 piece) will fit quite well.

Now the sewing begins!!!  I have made quite a bit of progress getting the rows/columns sewn together...well, it might not seem like a lot to you but it is to me!   These are 1" hex's and the background needs to be at least 18" x 21"...as the finished piece needs to be 16" x 18".

I sewed row 1 to row 2 and row 3 to row 4... I have now started sewing row 2 to row 3, you can see on the left side, which will give me four rows finished. I'm half way to sewing those four rows together.

I'll just continue sewing two rows together then sewing four together...whatever...like I know my readers don't care but I like to document my process since I forget from year to year!!   Honest, I do!

And to answer a question posed to me..."why or how do you work on so many different projects at once?"

Well, first off...I'm one of those folks who has every form of arthritis you can name...starting with RA (Rheumatoid) and of course osteoarthritis, yada, yada.....the old hands still work (they don't look pretty!!!)  but I try to alternate the type of stitching I'm doing.
One day I may hand stitch on my Patchwork #2 piece, which is a form of stab stitching...then a day or two later I might pick up my knitting needles....or I'll start stitching the hex's together.  Each of these types of hand work affects my joints differently...hence, I work on different projects at the same time!!  Some days, if my hands are really bad, I might just cut up some fabric to piece by machine or dye some fabric or look at art books for new ideas!  Gotta keep those hands busy!!!!  Hope that answers the question!!  I do finish my projects but you never know which one will get finished first!!!  It all depends on the hands!!!  HA

A doodle winner!

Yep...that was me a week ago!  June, from A Creative Dream, had one of her doodles published in the summer issue of Zen Doodle Workshop and gave away some prints of her piece!  And I won one!!!!

June does some really cool, interesting techniques in addition to doodles as she paints and creates!!  Be sure to check out her blog!   This is the print I won...and you can also see in it the Gallery section of the magazine.

Thanks, June!!!  I really like this piece!!!  She needs to participate in Lynn's Weekly Pattern Wednesday!!    What about that, June???

And as I was putting away some fabric earlier this week...I found some of my fabric I printed using Solar Fast....you can see some of the results here.   I think it pretty cool...I didn't at the time...but I do now!  Go figure!!!

Anyway, I'm thinking of quilting it with black thread and putting on canvas for our Master's Exhibit for the work of Rick Loudermilk.  I'll paint the canvas some of the same yellows/pinks/greens that are in the piece, for the  canvas background.    I played with some free motion quilting on a scrap piece of the fabric and the black stands out quite nicely.  So this is another project in my head...almost in my hands!!!
Well, you know I only have three projects in progress!!!  Let's make it an even four, right!!!  Idle hands are the devil's workshop...or something like that...at least that's what my aunt would always tell me as a little girl!!!

Weekly Pattern Wednesday #5

Here's my Weekly  Pattern Wednesday #5.  

I was looking through my blog at some of the patterns I've doodled over the years and found  some cards I made (doodled)  for a BD gift for my daughter.  (You can see some of those patterns here, but you'll have to scroll down a bit!).  Anyway, I got looking back on those designs and thought combining some of those patterns would work for my Wednesday pattern for this week.   So that's how this lady came to be!  I had the face stamp, which I stamped then played around with some doodles!   Funny, my daughter took a  Zentangle class a few weeks ago so I gave her some of my tangle books.  I know she'll enjoy this form of doodling when she's in all those meetings...at least the meetings that she isn't hosting.

So here is the 1st pattern I made for this week!  A fun piece but I like using the stamp and adding to it.  I'll have to look at my stamps to see what I can use next!  Lynn's Weekly Pattern Wednesday is getting me back into the swing of doodling, which I love doing!

The Queen of Unsewing!

This is the design (on tracing paper) I made for my patchwork #2 piece.  I was so excited to start the hand stitching this weekend, got out my threads...orange and dark blue, needle ready....but a lady came to visit me!  The Queen of Unsewing!!!


Yep, that's me!   I  settled in to watch season 3 of 'Orange is the New Black', and got carried away with hand stitching!  In the first picture below I started stitching each circle with dark blue thread and finished outlining all four circles!

Then I started stitching the inner circles...still using my blue thread, still watching my series and finished about 3/4 of an entire circle, hung the piece up on my board and started dinner.

When I got back in the room after dinner, I looked at the piece and thought...ugh....the dark blue fades right out on the blue fabric!  See the small blue patch with the 'blue' thread outlining.  Doesn't really stand out....Well, duh!!! So...what to do but 'unsew'...and there was a lot of unsewing to do!!!

The white lines are the white pencil I use to mark the arches.  I was removing all the lines I had stitched...you can see some of the blue not removed at the top right corner.

You can really see in this picture at the bottom right how the blue fades on the blue but how nice the contrast is on the orange.

This is the back to show some of the stitches removed...this is just one part of a circle!   Good TV work!!  NOT!!!  It's really called a waste of time...not thinking ahead!  

And this is what it looks like now!  So much better....now the "Queen" will get busy sewing.....let's hope 'she' can retire....but I honestly think she will be around for a long time!

A Little Dyeing Time

Back in 2012, I took an online Mandala class by Shibori Girl (aka Glennis).  The class was great and I  produced some cool pieces (you can see some here).  So my blog/bud, Kay S. from Quilts + Color created some stunning mandala pieces the past few months, which inspired me to give it a go again.  You have to check out her mandala ice dyes..NO, wait...wait until after you've seen mine or else you won't even come back to look at what I've done here!  Kay's pieces are stunners!!!!

My pieces aren't the greatest but it was fun to fold fabric and see how it turns out..oh a note on the dye I used on this piece!  It has been in the downstairs frig for five years!  Yes, five years and it was still perfectly fine to dye with!!  On another note, I do not put soda ash/fixer in my dyes...I do soak my fabric in fixer but do not add to my dye solution.

It was really hot this past weekend therefore very easy to let the pieces batch in the sun!

This is a yard of cotton sateen fabric that was fold based on Glennis' method.

This is an 18" square of some cheap cotton but it dyed up quite well.  I do have a project in mind for this piece.















I also dyed a yard of cotton sateen I had rusted a few years ago for a background to put my beaded leaf on.     I used both green and blue dyes and laid the fabric in a tray, pouring dyes over the folds.
It's a pretty piece and I like the way the rust shows through the dyes.

 But it came out a little too dark for what I wanted but I have some ideas to  perhaps lighten it....then I'll overdye with some pale green or light blue.  This is what I was trying to achieve!

It's actually fabric from a blouse  my friend saw in Chico's!  She called me over to look at it and the colors are really perfect for my leaf...although, I decided I'm going to need to bead two smaller leaves. One big leaf just won't look right alone...but we'll see what happens.

I'm thinking if I brush my dyed piece with bleach I should be able to lighten up the piece to allow the rust show though and remove some of the darkness. Can't hurt to try!!!  Besides...what else am I doing!

This and that!

I made some fiber cards for my Florida friends...now I just hope they receive them!   The red and green is some  fabric I dyed many years ago using bubble wrap.   I free motion quilted and added some pen strokes on some of the quilting motifs.  The first one is just for a friend to say hello.

The next two are for friends for their upcoming Birthday's!

As to my statement I hope they get them....for a friends birthday in Ocala this past winter, it took 10 days for one of my friends to receive her card and she only lived two streets over from our house in Florida!

 Then in April I sent two more cards...one to Michigan and one to Indiana and it took over 5 weeks!  5 weeks!!!!!  That's just ridiculous!!  And I always take the cards to have them weighed and hand stamped.  Yes, this upsets me because I have never had a problem mailing from Michigan (other than once and that was my fault for wrong zip code).

So I make sure I document for now on when I make cards and when I mail them.  Just so my friends don't think I forgot them!! Geezzzz   Yes, my rant is now over....thank you for listening!

Patchwork #2 progress

I drew out a partial quilting design today for my patchwork piece (thanks Susan for the large tracing paper!).  I didn't have any with me in Florida so Susan gave me some pieces...I didn't think to leave the paper in Florida so I brought it home with me...but I digress....here is the design I traced out.

Here it's overlaid on top of my patchwork piece.  I'm liking it well enough so I used some Transdoddle tracing paper to transfer the circles and lines to the patchwork.

  Beth (from Quilter Beth's Blog) suggested I might use light blue or even yellow thread for my hand stitching!!  Who knew!!!  I did try the light blue but didn't like it...here I just laid the yellow along with the dark blue...but I'm thinking the yellow might be a perfect accent for using in some hand stitching!!  Thanks, Beth!!!
When I did the hand stitching on my Hex Horse #1, I used orange thread in just a few of the stitching lines (red and blue were my primary threads).  You can see just two of the orange threads in this picture, in one of the corners.   So who knows...the yellow might be a perfect accent or addition to stitching with just blue thread!!

I've already machine stitched the straight lines from each circle, which you can see in this picture.  I was curious as to how the dark blue thread would look and didn't want to wait to hand stitch...plus, it just secures the patchwork a tad more (I've already stitched in the ditch in several areas).  The dark blue thread  almost looks black in this picture but it really is dark blue.

So another good traveling project...that is, it travels from the sewing room to the living room at night!  I don't plan on starting the hand stitching yet..I like to let work sit and then look at it again.  I've been known to rip out stitches so the machine work could still come out!  You never know do you!

Weekly Pattern Wednesday #4

Weekly Pattern Wednesday #4

This is mindless fun but really gets you thinking about different designs, colors and patterns!!! Oh the possibilities!  

Stop over to Lynn's blog and check out her 'weekly' creation!

Decisions, decisions

Working away this weekend on my Patchwork #2 piece...yea, Florida sports team colors, but honestly I didn't even think of that when I started stamping/dyeing these fabrics this past winter...anyway, here is my finished patchwork piece.  Next up I will stitch in the ditch to stabilize then the hand stitching will begin!  That's the real fun for me!  The piece measures 20"x18" and the edges aren't even....hence the piece looks a little out of whack!  I'll square it up when I put on binding or facing..duh!

So here are some of the other layout choices I had.  Rejects you could say!  I would place the fabric pieces on a  foam board and take pics...stand on my head or tilt my head sideways just to get a different perspective!  I'm happy with what I finished with (above) but these were kinda fun too!  Now to get out threads...this piece will have lots of circles and hand stitching...at least I think so!

this was a decent layout.  I didn't want to use the black binding strips throughout the whole piece...just in certain places...don't ask why...I have no idea!

This was close to what I finished with but I did add another piece of orange on the right...

Not enough small patchwork pieces....but not bad...

Fiber meeting tomorrow and lunch out..Tuesday with grand kids, therapy dog outings at two homes with Kalee on Wednesday...I think I can stay home on Thursday and Friday!  I hope..I hope!!!!

Weekly Pattern Wednesday #3

Here is my third Weekly  Pattern Wednesday tag!  

I do enjoy making these small tags.  I hope you stop by Lynn's blog to see her weekly pattern.  And check out some of the other participates!  There are some really interesting and cool patterns being created!!!

Patchwork Piece #2

Yep, I'm starting on another patchwork piece.  I finished this first one in 2013 and it's was on the cover and in the book 1000 Quilt Inspirations.

You can read and see more detail from my post here.  I really enjoyed all the hand stitching on that piece and have been wanting to do another one.  So, while in Florida this winter, I did some stamping on commercial and hand dyed fabrics.  Yesterday, I decided to do some additional mono printing on two more pieces.

This is a piece of hand dyed fabric I dyed while in Florida.

This is an orange batik, which is really a lot brighter than what shows in this picture.













I've started to sew some of the patchwork and play with the placement of the fabrics.

Ignore the flowers and other 'stuff' at the top!   I have the fabric pinned on a piece of foam board which was leaning against my peg board where I pin small quilts!  Those are a few you see at the top...or parts of!

Yes, I could have 'cropped' the picture but you know I have other things to do!

I'm still in the process of moving fabrics and pieces around.  The only pieces that are stitched are the smaller pieces in middle...that's my starting point!


I have in mind the hand stitching I want to do and plan on putting this in our Masters Exhibit for the artist Mary Ann Beckwith.  Ms. Beckwith doesn't necessarily use blues and oranges but I think the patchwork and hand stitching will reflect her work!  It wasn't so bad when we were using Master Artists that were 'dead'...now we are using a few artists that are still alive and will happen upon our work (we do ask their permission to use their work as our inspiration).   Hope they aren't insulted by our work!!

Just keeping busy!

I've been sewing hex's while watching TV at night but back to playing during the daytime.  I finally finished my piece for the Master's Exhibit: Artist is Rick Loudermilk.  It's a tad brighter then most of his work but still my interpretation of his work, right!   For our exhibit, and only for Mr. Loudermilk, we are using a gallery wrap canvas to put our quilted work on.  If I make another one, I will most likely paint the canvas vs keeping it white.

I fused circles on the outside onto the canvas and using a micro pen, colored in what is suppose to look like a buttonhole stitch! Well, from a 747 it looks like a buttonhole stitch!  The circles on the edges are fused around to the back as well and filled in with the pen.  I just used Perle Cotton to attach the quilt to the canvas.  Pretty easy to do.

This is what my piece started out as....

I'm going to start working on our next artist, MaryAnn  Beckwith, from Michigan!  It will be a patchwork piece and in bright blues and oranges!   Those aren't necessarily Ms. Beckwith's colors but they are what I'm using!! I'll post progress on that piece in my next post.