London Tea Towel Under the Needle

And the next project that i'm working on during my vacation is to quilt this longtime UFO.

This quilt started with a challenge to use a tea towel in a quilt.  I found one with various landmarks from around London and then filled in with other London themed blocks.  A couple of the focus prints came from an online reader of my block who lives in London.

The print fabrics were bought when I was in London back in 1997.   they are by Rose & Hubble and were bought at Mark's and Spencer dept store. Blocks have been pieced and machine appliqued.  Lots of buttons have also been used in the blocks.  There are several custom designed blocks in the quilt.

All of the blocks bring back memories of something (or someone) that I was fortunate enough to see during my trip there. I'm stitching in the ditch on this one.   Am thinking I may use a scrappy binding made from some of the fabric leftovers from the prints.

Gratitudes:

1. Lunch or other meetings with various friends this week.

2. For the beautiful weather here in the southwest while I've been out here.   Hope for the same clear weather when I head back home.

December F2F Blocks

Decembers blocks go to Esther.   And her colors were drawn from the flower pots in her garden shown in this picture.

The three blocks that I made include these:

Gratitudes:
1. A safe drive out to Phoenix for vacation with only one area of construction in Amarillo.

2. Being able to get together with friends in Albuquerque that I hadn't seen for more than 22 yrs for dinner.

URGENT NOTICE ---- Last Chance to Get My Patterns on Craftsy

In case you have not caught the news about the Craftsy debacle, as of December 28th my Crafty site will be taken down because the powers that be  at Craftsy decided that my little store was one of the ones they were going to get rid of.

They claim that any patterns you've purchased either for a price or for free will continue to be available  once the many sites are taken down, but I'm not sure that I would trust them.  I am making sure that everything is at least downloaded to your computer or printed off.

I am working on figuring out where I will be moving my patterns to, but have not finalized my decision on that.   I will post again when I do know that.

In the meantime thank you to those that have accessed my patterns for your patronage.

If you want to take a look to see if there are any you want, click here to to to my site.

Final 2018 Commission Completed

5 months ago I had been asked if I could finish a Christmas stocking for the owner of the small company that I work for.  Time went by and I never heard anything back until the finished canvas was finally brought in yesterday afternoon.  Had to be back to my customer this morning....so lots of 'fun' getting it done last night.  Did get paid more because of the rush job that was needed.

I used black velveteen for the back, gold upholstery cording around the edges, and lined it in a cream w/gold metallic snowflake print.   And not shown in the pics are two little white & gold metallic pompoms glued on for the two knit hats.

Gratitudes:
1. Antibiotics are helping get rid of the infection, and hopefully won't take too big of a hit on my platelets

2. Weather is predicted to be dry (albeit cold!) for my drive out to AZ for vacation the next two days.....YEAH!

Scrap Happy December - Batik Strings

I've started working through stuff here with a view to downsizing at least some of the things in my craft room and fabric room.   My scraps are one of the things that need to be downsized because they no longer fit into the two large totes that I've kept them in for years.  And especially bad is the fact that I still have scraps that need to be put in there!

So I pulled out the batik scraps and strings (2 - one gallon ziploc bags....) to sort through them and weed out...........  This is what I ended up with as strings.  Once the strings and little bits were out I sorted into color families and started making string blocks.















Oranges have now been used and i'm starting on the reds.....


Check out what the others have been doing at these links -

Kate, Gun, Titti, Heléne, Eva, Sue, Nanette, Lynn, Lynda, Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy, Debbierose, Tracy, Jill, Claire, Jan, Karen, Moira (me) , Sandra, Linda, Chris, Nancy, Alys, Kerry, Claire, Jean, Johanna,
Joanne, Jon, Hayley, Dawn, Gwen and Connie


Gratitudes

1. Vacation starts one wk from today.........woohoo......

2. For meds, including cough syrup, to hopefully totally rout this round of bronchitis.  =)

Free pattern for Christmas

For those that paper-piece I've added a free pattern for a Christmas block

Made with scraps these Santa's are dancing around the Christmas tree in the middle of the block.

For the pattern go to my Craftsy store here.

Enjoy!

Gratitudes:

1. For the coming short week at work, nothing like not taking vacation until the end of the year.

2. For friends near and far, may I be a blessing to them as they have been to me over the years.

Completed Commissoned Wedding Dress Pillows

Finished off the latest commission - Four 12" pillows to be made from the customers wedding dress.

After all the rework the pillows came out looking like this - 

 Most of the pleated satin was from the dress.   I pleated two sections to maintain continuity between the pillows.   First two have the lace from the sleeves, and the second two have the lace from the bodice.

Backs are done envelope style with un-pleated satin from the skirt.

Gratitudes:

1. Commission is done and ready for customer pickup tomorrow - yeah!

2. Only one more commission to be done before vacation - a mixed blessing.

Christmas Postcards, Part 2

I've completed four more Christmas themed postcards.   These were made with more Christmas picks from Joann's.............these of plastic Christmas candy that I thought were fun.

I cut the wire of the picks short leaving about 3-4" total - enough to hide the bottom in the "vase".

Vases were made from large pre-fused scraps of fabric from that scrap bag.  The green fabric was bought because I didn't have anything the candy would show up against.

Gratitudes:

1. Vacation is almost here!

2. Getting to see long-time friends on vacation.

December Block of the Month - Jerry the Marine

The December block of the month features Jerry the Marine. 

Jerry was named for a friend who is the husband of a long-time another friend of mine.

You can find the pattern for Jerry at here on my Craftsy site.   It will be free for the month of Decembe.


Gratitudes:

1. For the service that many family and friends have given in the military.

2. For a job that pays the bills.

Weekend wrap-up

Thanks to errands that took most of my vacation day on Friday I didn't get as much done this weekend as I'd hoped to.   But I did get a wee bit done.

All lace is now off of the wedding dress and I've started separating the rest of the dress so that I can cut the sections needed for the pillows.  This part will be part jigsaw puzzle as I figure out how to cut around stains and dirty spots while still making use of the pleated sections that formed the bodice and torso areas.

Four more Christmas postcards were completed.  The machine ended up arguing with me as I tried to stitch them down with a zigzag stitch.....finally got it to behave with a straight stitch.  One of them has already been sent off in a Christmas package.

More of the plaid was used for the backing of the postcards.

And the final bit of stitching was this test block of a new paper-pieced pattern.  Plan is to get it written up and posted on Craftsy for a free download today or tomorrow.


















And this is what my front yard currently looks like....and why my
next "toy" aka tool, needs to be a combo leaf vacuum/mulcher/blower.    I love how the sweet gum tree looks in full leaf......but not so fond of having to clean up all the leaves in winter.  lol


Gratitudes:

1. Totally current on paychecks as of Friday.  Still to be seen how December goes.

2. Plans are starting to come together with my airbnb booking made for AZ.

November F2F wrap-up

My November blocks for Robin went in the mail on Friday.

Her colors were were these -

Cobalt blue, the pink of the flower, and the orange of the clementine tangerine, with a wee bit of white if needed.  The pink of the flower was the one hard to find in my stash this month.



















And the blocks that I made for Robin.  I ended up sending the top two, and the bottom right one.   All blocks are pp'd from my designs except the top left.

Bottom left block ended up staying here because I realized after finishing the block that I had two pieces of the WOW background fabric wrong side up.   So it will go off to the orphan block tote.

These next two photos show the color inspirations for the blocks for December.  I bought fabrics for my blocks on Saturday at my favorite quilt store all from the FQ's they had on sale for $2 each (normally $3.50!).   And of course a goodly number of scrap bags had to follow me home as well......two of them filled with enough light yellow batik scraps to do the background of a full quilt.   Now to find something to go iwth them....maybe a floral.


Gratitudes:
1. Platelets were up a wee bit, so I don't have to go on meds at the present.  Hoping that trend continues.

2. Was able to get my AirBnb booking completed.    Will even have room to sew at where I've booked in my down time....woohoo....