Grandmother's Flower Garden Quilt

One more project I've been working on is a Grandmother's Flower Garden Quilt. I've been making the quilt top completely by hand, so it's taking much longer than most quilts.

Please don't think I'm a purist who refuses to make quilts by machine. That's not the case at all. But I've chosen to make this project by hand because I find it soothes my spirit. If things go wrong in my little world, I can sit down and stitch on my quilt for awhile and then I'm fine. Calm. As Alice once said, "Go to your happy place." Stitching on this quilt is my happy place.

I don't know how most people make a Grandmother's garden quilt, but I start with fabric strips 3 inches wide; I cut them into squares, and then I cut the corners off a bit. What I'm left with is a piece of fabric that is loosely a hexagon shape. I saturate the dickens out of the squares with starch and then I steam press each one around a cardboard template that's exactly the right size.

Sometimes I spend a little time just making hexagons to keep my sewing basket well stocked. Then later on I'll take one of this color, six of that color, and twelve of that color over there. I stack them and tack them straight down the center to keep them all together until I'm ready to make the "flowers". In the photo below, you can see a stack that's ready to go, a couple of single hexagons, a couple of the cardboard templates and my faithful spray starch.

When I want a little quiet time, I pick up a stack and stitch them together. Since I used the templates to make them the correct size and shape, the putting-it-together part is real easy. And since I've already chosen the colors (1, 6 and 12) when I made the stack, it's a complete no-brainer to make a flower like this.

When I get enough "flowers" I add them to the quilt top. Some of the colors in this particular quilt are pretty bright -- it reminds me of Mom and how she LUV'd bright, cheerful colors in her quilts.

Haven't a clue when I'll finish this project, but in this case, it's DEFINITELY the journey that's most important, not the destination.

Wedding Present

Another project I was working on recently was a wedding present for a friend. He and his bride work for an non-profit organization called Freedom House of Denton. As many of you know, the Freedom House saved my son's life by getting him off drugs and on a good path. I am ever-grateful for the blessing.

I decided to give the newlyweds linens -- napkins for the dining room and dish towels for the kitchen. I purchased the napkins (on closeout .... WOOHOO!) and towels from target and then started embroidering. This is the result.

I was so pleased with the result that I ran out and purchased a BUNCH of the close-out napkins in multiple colors. I think they'll be great for gifts or to put in my etsy shop.

Baby Boy Quilt

I know it's been AGES since I posted. What have I been doing? I'll show you a little bit today and will show you the rest very soon.

One of my projects was a baby quilt for a soon-to-arrive little baby boy. I studied quilt designs and searched the internet and studied some more. Finally I decided to make my own design (those who know me well know this is where I would end up).

I started with a length of muslin, marked squares with disappearing ink and covered the marks (before they disappeared) with a decorative stitch from my sewing machine. Then I embroidered (using my Pfaff embroidery machine) an appropriate "redwork" design in the center of each square. Using a stem stitch, I hand embroidered four lines (one on each side of the quilt) from a poem about little boys. I added batting and a Debbie Mumm fabric for the back and then quilted the whole thing by hand. Sounds easy? It took me about 2 weeks to make it ... from from design creation to the final stitches. I'm pretty pleased with the results.

Sooooooo, THAT's what I've been doing with part of my time. I'll post some of my other projects later this week.

Wrap and ribbon center

I don't have a wrapping center, but I'd love to have one. Centsational Girl made a new gift wrap / ribbon center for herself and I love it - I'm in deeeeep envy.

But I don't think it will work for me and here's why. I have way-doggies more paper and ribbons. I mean WAY-DOGGIES more.

I usually store my wrapping paper in these boxes ... all standing at attention like long skinny soldiers, jammed together like sardines. It's not elegant, but it works.

During the holidays, this was how I stored the holiday paper. It kept the paper handy and it's not as ugly as a Craftsman weed-whacker box!

This is how I've been storing my ribbons.

So many ribbons.

A veritable mountain of ribbons.

Okay, maybe it's a leetle teensy obsession.

SIGH. I luv me some ribbons.

Sooooo - I think maybe something between Martha (picture below) and CG would work for me - basically - big honking frame with rods for the ribbons.

And I think maybe something like this under-the-bed arrangement I found on Apartment Therapy would work for the paper. Looks neat. And it's not a weed-whacker box.

Whatcha think?

More DIY Christmas

Before I show you my recent projects, can we pause just a minute and look at the acronym DIY? DIY stands for Do It Yourself, but I'm thinking it should be DIM ... Do It Myself. On the other hand, DIM doesn't sound as perky as DIY, does it? Oh, well. Perhaps it doesn't pay to examine these things too closely.

Back to the subject of this post, this year I made my Christmas cards. I was a little late making them, but I did get them finished and mailed. This year I bought some card stock at JoAnn's (50% off) and cut the sheets in half. They were the perfect size for the front of a Christmas card made from card stock -- 2 cards to one 8 1/2 x 11 sheet.

Then I used glittery, sparkly gold thread and stitched a tree shape on the colored card stock (I used a variety of colors ... burgundy, teal, spring green, tan, etc). I made a star stamp (using an eraser) and used the round eraser on a pencil to stamp & emboss gold designs on the tree. These pictures show one of the embossed trees and a couple of unfinished examples. All in all, I'm pretty pleased with the finished card. Wish my pictures were better. Sigh.

Now, for my gift tags. I have some purchased tags left over from previous years, but I wanted to make my own this year. Since our kids come here for Christmas, any gift we put under the tree is obviously from us, so there's no need to say To: (child's name) From: Mom & Dad over and over again. Just the To information is important. As a result, I decided to do a real simple design. I cut some circles from red cardstock and used white paint (the kind that comes in a bottle with a teensy tip) and I put white dots all around the outer edge of the circle. Then I printed a monogram that I got from Martha here http://www.marthastewartweddings.com/article/click-print-monogram-labels?backto=true and printed them on white cardstock. I cut out the white circles and glued them to the red circles. You can see how imperfect the circle and dots are. But ........

I think it looks nice on the packages. Sort of classy & distinct.

Last but not least, yesterday I monogrammed some gold napkins I got at a thrift store earlier this year. I really love the font I used. For my Christmas table I have a special crochet tablecloth I use each year (made by Grandma Moses' sister ... really ... no kiddin' ... I got it at an auction in Vermont years ago just after the sister passed away). Anyway, I use touches of gold here and there on the table and it looks sort of lacy and lush and I LUV IT. And I think these new-to-me napkins will add a nice elegant touch.

Hope you enjoyed seeing my DIY (DIM) projects. I'm havin' fun!

A Few DIY Christmas Projects

As usual, I've been a very BIZZY bee. I've only created a few things this Christmas ... the rest are ... as we said when we were little country kids .... store boughten.

I've made several of these scarves. Earlier in the year I bought a Knitty Gritty (with a coupon at JoAnn's) and I've been knittying my buxx off!

I used this tutorial to make the matching organza flower brooch. http://www.reesedixon.com/2009/03/organza-flowers.html I used 3 freshwater pearls for the center. Sorry about the fuzzy picture.

And I used this tutorial to make the felted wool brooch. http://ohsocrafty.blogspot.com/2009/09/felted-wool-flowers.html These flowers are so much fun to make. I'm using felted sweaters and some of the wonderful felted wool TexNan sent me.

I attempted to make a wine bag using burlap with a silk lining for DH's boss, but my dimensions were wrong and I messed up on some decorative stitching -- it's a lot harder to sew on burlap than I had envisioned. For the embroidered part of it, I used tear-away interfacing underneath the burlap and water-soluble stabilizer on top .... sort of a burlap sandwich ... so the burlap didn't ever touch the sewing machine -- easy breezy. Then I tried to do some fancy stitching without stabilizer of any sort -- didn't work. Sigh.

But isn't the design purdy? I love this font.

Soooo, I made this one instead. It's a silk-look poly.

And I made two of these for the ladies that work for DH.

Notice the little jewels? There are 7 on this design. Do you want to know how hard it is to peel the paper backing off teensy little jewels with big fat adult fingers? First, just separating the paper from the jewel and then the darn thing gets stuck to your fingernail. ARGHH! I don't use jewels often enough to warrant getting one of those tools for bedazzling, so I use the low-tech peel and stick method. That said, I really do like this design and will do it again.




I still have a few more projects to finish before Christmas, but that's all for now. Have a merry!

Once Upon a Christmas

I'm attempting to attach music to my blog.

Guess I put it in the wrong place!! Oh, well.

Since it wound up here in my post I'll just leave it while I'm figuring this thing out.

You can click the start button above and listen to a lovely song (Selah with Dolly Parton) while you enjoy a few family Christmas pictures from this weekend.

After looking the pictures over again, I realized they're almost all of sweet Maxton! Oh, well, he was probably the cutest one there -- enjoy!

Maxton and the train. Hmmm .... interesting!

Hey! Where did it go?

It went down that way!

Wait, there it is again!

Oh the wonder of a little boy and a model train.

And the discovery of a piano. I think a little boy should help the song a little bit down there on that end of the piano. Makes the song better!

A little solo performance by Max. First the "warm-up"

The triumph of success! Give yourself a good hand, sweet boy.

All in all it was a wonderful day for the whole family.