Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Great Cause

In my forever surfing through blog land, I found this great blog I Make Stuff. She is VERY creative! Sit down with a cuppa and take a look around.

But, I found this post and tutorial about her story and mission to help widowed service women with a project she is calling "Write it Out Project".

What a great idea.

Come on, let's give her a hand and get some journals made up for her!

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Color Theory and My Life



On my Yahoo group StitchMap, there is a class going on right now for Color Theory. I'm not in this class but will be taking it later. There have been a lot of photos posted on the group page of people's homework which happen to be color wheels. It has been very fun watching what people are coming up with.

Today, I went over to my mom's to spend some time with her. She has a large box of pictures and what not of "my life" that she is ready to pass on to me. We spent a couple of hours looking through it and still have part of it to go.

One of the things I found in "the box" was some old art papers and the COLOR THEORY papers we made in whatever at class it was!! Woo! It is very interesting to see what I did way back when lol. Hopefully when you click on the above picture, you can read the captions.



Here is the color wheel.



Here is what I wrote at the bottom of the color wheel lol




And, here is a lesson in Intensity and Value. This is really neat to have found. Thank you MOM! :)


And, I couldn't resist posting a very old picture of me lol. Since I was going through the box anyway. ;)

So, all you Color Theory mentors and Shari....Does this count? Do I still have to do homework when I take the class?! ;)

Monday, March 15, 2010

Chew toy anyone?



I found this tutorial to make these cute Cloth Baby Rings. How perfect! I happen to have a baby! Well, grand baby lol. This is the first group of rings I have made. I have 2 other sets of fabric to make a couple more.

Miss Olivia and her parents came in to town yesterday for a couple of days so it was perfect timing to finish these up to give them to her this afternoon.




She took them immediately and tasted them out. I think she liked them. ;)




Miss Olivia and her mommy. Is Miss Olivia intent on chewing the cloth rings...or...is she wondering what mommy is laughing about?




And even though Miss Olivia was enjoying playing with Papaw, she just couldn't let go of the cloth rings!

I think they are a hit!

Isn't she adorable? :)

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Will you take the Challenge?

Make a pillow case....make a difference.

It's just that easy.

Calling all quilters, sewers and crafters! Join in the effort to Make a pillow case, Make a Difference!

You can find all the details on All People Quilt.

What a great idea and so easy. You can even find patterns on the website!

Come on! Join the fun!

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Your Opinion Please!



I showed this table topper a few posts back. It was fun, I was able to get it done in a weekend. My husband even helped! It's like a puzzle making sure all of the blocks work well together so I get him in, on figuring it out. Little does he know, I'm secretly and slowly moving him into the quilting world *evil snicker*. =)

So here is my predicament...

I have never machine quilted so I have no clue how to do that really. I've been reading a little bit about it here and there but I'm really not comfortable having never done it. I have done hand quilting. I really like it but I haven't done a piece this size.

I am thinking of machine quilting this with the "stitch in a ditch" method. I think that is what it's called lol. Nothing to worry about, just follow the lines! At least I think that I am understanding it correctly lol.

If I hand quilt it, it won't be done by Christmas. It would be really nice to have it done for Christmas!

So, what do you think? Would "stitch in the ditch" look OK for this table topper? And if so, do I just stitch in all the seams?

Thank you for any opinions!

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Quilt Show = DANGER!!



The Indiana Heritage Quilt Show this weekend is the first quilt show that I have been too. I was really looking forward to seeing all of the beautiful quilts I knew would be there. What I didn't know was the amount of VENDORS that were there! Holy smokes! There were so many vendors, they spilled out to another building across the street. I didn't even make it over there. My pocket book thanked me.




There was so much stuff to buy it really was overwhelming. I told my husband that there was so much stuff I would end up with nothing. How do you pick? I'll take that booth over there, half of that booth please, don't bother wrapping it up, I'll just drive the car up to the door thank you.

Just as I had accepted that I would walk out with nothing, I found "the" booth. It called to me, you could hear a faint calling of my name over the sound of drooling from the other stash enhancing seekers . You should have seen them....




They were all like zombies, ok, me included. Zombies with drool running down our chins that is. When I first got there, I noticed that a lot of the zombies had very large bags with them. I NOW KNOW WHY!! So they could fill the bags up! What a concept! I've already made a mental note for next year. "Bring large bag.....maybe two".




But, I digress...."the" booth. It's where it finally clicked. I found a pattern, the Snap Happy in the first picture, the batik in the picture above. That was hard to pick, I love batik! The moda fabric and the really cool Charm Wizard that cuts 5" squares. I found the pillow pattern and the brown and gold fabrics at another booth. Oh joy! It was going to be really hard to leave without having purchased anything! I've already started saving for next year lol.




Now, I have a question for you! These needles were in a bag of stuff I purchased at a thrift store a couple of weeks ago. I have never seen curved needles like this. They are huge, I should have put a coin next to them to give a better idea of the size.

Can anyone tell me what they are for?

Friday, March 5, 2010

Quilt show trippin'!



The Indiana Heritage Quilt Show is this weekend and I was able to get over to see it for a couple of hours today. It was my first quilt show and oh my, I was completely overwhelmed by all of the beautiful quilts. It amazes me the time, effort, work and determination that went into these works of art. I took a few pictures, no where near the amount of quilts that were displayed but a few that stood out to me and ones that I thought would be of interest to the people in my Yahoo group, StitchMap.


The photo above is of an amazing quilt. If you click on it you will get a closer view of it. I need a better camera, the fabric is not as yellow as it shows in the picture. The "strings" around the entire quilt just amazes me.




This one just cracked me up. I wish my camera had picked it up better but this 3D quilt is a quilters dream.



And here is the sign that went with it. "Where fabric grows on trees"....wow....I need trees like that! :)


This is really more brown in person. In almost each smaller block around the border are little red birds. The back of it is just as beautiful as the front. On most of the quilts the backs were just as much a work of art as the fronts.




This one was done by a man! Yay for that! I tried to get my husband to go with me but he wasn't interested. It was really nice to be able to tell him that there were several quilts done by men! The "waves" at the top of this quilt are seperate from the background piece, from what I could tell. It was hanging pretty high in the air. And then the crossed strips were hanging from the waves in front of the background piece also with the splashy waves on top of those. Very impressive. Hard to explain lol. And, very cool.



Bright and cheerful!




On this quilt, all of the red "flowers" are beads.




This is one of many very intricate quilts. Needle turn applique and needlework. Like I said, it just amazes me the time and effort put forth.




Here is a close up of the middle of that quilt. All of the purple flowers are embroidered.




A redwork quilt! It's HUGE! I LOVE it!




This quilt was not so small either but all I got was a close up because the tiny little squares were incredible. There were tons of them! And they are tiny!




This one really impressed me. It's a 12 year old's very first quilt. Pretty darn good if you ask me!




And this one impressed me equally. It's an 8 year old's very first quilt! She stated she did every single stitch herself! Her grandma helped her get started. This is wonderful! This is exactly what we are trying to do here: Keeping Needle Arts Alive!



And last but certainly not least, the one and only Crazy Quilt. I like it but it doesn't have much needlework on it. Hmm....should I make one to enter next year?! Tell me your thoughts! :)