Suzanne Earley

WIP Wednesday

So know that we’ve gotten the toilet story out of the way (and yes, I completely resisted the urge to make bathroom jokes and puns when I told the story)…I thought it might be nice to have some actual FIBER content on my blog….so…a round up of a few things I’ve been messing with when I get a chance…

First, remember these Dresden Plates that I was gifted?

Well, I actually knew almost right away at least part of what I was goign to do with them, and I got started on the hand applique (since the edges are already turned and basted, I decided I HAD to do the work by hand…):

Yup, I pulled out some of my ubiquitous black and white polka dot fabric.  I don’t know for sure how big the blocks are going to end up, or how I’m going to set them, but this is a start.

In knitting news, I’m still working on my scarf, but haven’t gotten much further because I got distracted.  See, I keep getting attracted to BIG projects — it happens with every craft I take on, when I cross-stitched I was into the Paula Vaughan mega pieces that took months and months and millions of stitches.  The same has been true with knitting:  afghans, sweaters, stuff that takes AGES to knit.  SO I went looking for something that would be much quicker, and I started making a cupcake:

Only, it turns out I made a really stupid decision, and then did a really crappy job.  See, the pattern calls for US 6, but I didn’t have a needle gauge that I could find, so I grabbed some DPNs, and compared them with a needle that had the number 6 on it.  I thought the DPNs looked to be close in size, so…worked for me.  I cast on and did the fiddly bits of the base, and kept working.  Then, I did find a knitting gauge and discovered that what I was knitting with were US 10s.  (That 6 on the needle?  Meant 6mm, not US6.  US6 is actually 4.5mm).  I wasn’t really worried about the gauge per se, but I tell you what:  my cupcake looks ridiculous in real life.  The ridiculous is also due, in part, to the fact that I have some really loose stitches, and the column of stitches where they switch from one DPN to another is really loose.  I haven’t decided if I’m going to even try to finish it, but I have cast on another one on US6 DPNs.  Maybe I’ll like it better.  Or not.

If you want to try to make one of your own, the pattern is by Spud and Chloe:  Cupcake Pincushion

Speaking of knitted things that take a long time to finish:

I started knitting this bag 2(?) years ago when Lynn came to Overland Park, KS to help me out when I taught at MQS.  I made her go to a knitting shop and we both got yarn to make these bags.  (I taught her how to knit, only I actually taught her wrong.) The yarn is Noro Kureyon, and is much prettier in real life.  This bag has been sitting on my bed side table fully knit for months.  All that it needed was the handled attached to the other side, the thread ends buried and then thrown into the washer to felt it.

A week or so ago, I threw it at my Mom and she kindly did all of that for me, including burying the thread ends, and now I’m just waiting for it to dry.  I think I’m going to line it, and need to decide on a closure of some sort.  How is your bag, Lynn?  Need to throw it my Mom, too?

If I had a brain…

I’d be seriously dangerous.  Yes, it was one of THOSE days today.  I probably shouldn’t have even attempted to drive my car or run the quilting machine, but I managed to do both of those things just fine.  The problem is all of the little stuff that makes me crazy.

Mark asked me to do 2 things for him.  Print a report and write a check.  About 10 minutes after I’d gotten downtown this afternoon, the phone rings.  I had forgotten to do BOTH.  SO…Mom kindly let me run home while she kept watching the shop (tough job, I don’t think anyone came in…), as long as I took her coat with me, so Mark could look at the zipper.

I was nearly out the door (not 30 seconds later, after promising to do so…) when she says “The coat?”

I’d almost forgotten it.

There were other examples, but…I’m so brainless I can’t remember what they were. Oh, one of them was that I couldn’t actually print the report right when he wanted it, because I had done something stupid when I entered some transactions, so I had to fix that brainless mistake…

I did manage to make some pretty feathers though:

I also worked on moving some stuff out of my sewing room, so that Mark could begin some deconstruction.  After my second trip down the stairs, I suddenly thought to myself:

“HELLO???  THIS IS WHY YOU HAVE CHILDREN.”

And then I made the boys carry the rest of the boxes downstairs.

I was going to sew or do some more straightening up and packing, but I got distracted by a big wad of yarn in my yarn drawer.  It was pretty nasty:  a whole bunch of yarn that had gotten all tangled together.  I dominated it, though…there may have been some cheating by way of cutting some of the yarn free…but still…I cleaned that mess up.  I also found a scarf that I had started knitting….more than 2 years ago.  The scarf was plenty long enough to wear, so I took a few minutes to go ahead and a bind it off.  Now, I’ll probably stick it back in the drawer, because a whole bunch of ends need to be sewn in, and that sounds like too much work.

I think I’ve finally managed to finish the things that Mark asked me to do…so I’d better get to bed before I hurt myself.

TTFN-

Suzanne

We have some winners!

Phew.

There were a LOT of entries.  Between blog comments, blog links and shop orders, we ended up with 1996 entries in the giveaway.

Everyone got entered into a spreadsheet which, of course, is numbered.  I used Random.org to generate a sequence of numbers and took the first 6:

We figured out who each of those numbers corresponded to, wrote them down on a slip of paper, and then I had my lovely assistant (MOM) draw the grand prize winner out of a bucket…

Carol Candlish

Has won her choice of a 100 fat quarter collection (chosen by me) or a yarn collection (chosen in conjunction with the winner) valued at $125 (full retail value)

Five more winners will each get a Baker’s Dozen fat quarter collection (that’s 13 fat quarters, chosen by me) or yarn of their choice that totals $15 retail.

Those winners are:

Paula (e-mail starts with:  ap_l…) and Susie (e-mail starts with drho…) (who left blog comments)

Maya M, Janice C, Lenore N (who each ordered something from the shop)

I’ll be in touch with the winners to make arrangements, thanks to everyone that commented, shared the link, or bought something at the shop.  I can’t give you the exact numbers, but in the last 2 weeks I’ve emptied approximately 80 bolts and sold over 1000 yards of fabric.

Firing up the quilting machine and embarassing the dog

I haven’t even been able to get to my quilting machine for most of the last week, but today I finally reached the bottom of the piles and started trying to catch back up on some quilting.  This little cutie was a quickie.  It was made by a young lady whose grandmother brought it to me to quilt.  I think the quilter was in the 8-10 year old range, but I’m not positive. Freehand allover swirls (in lime green thread!) were easy to do and helped hide the little bit of waviness around the edges.  It was actually pretty well pieced:  I wish my first quilt had been that nice.

I’m not really sure how this happened:

There was Mark, taking off his work shirt, and there was the dog, wanting attention, and the next thing I knew, we were sticking her arms in the sleeves and I was running for the camera.

Feather Boot Camp 2010

Despite evidence to the contrary lately, my main interest in life is actually machine quilting. (I think my neglected quilting machine heard that and said “yeah, right…”)

Ahem.

Really, it is.  (OK, and that doesn’t include my husband and children, but I think you know what I mean.)

Anyway.

In 2 weeks, I’m going to be proving my love of machine quilting in general and feather quilting in particular, to a new crop of students in my next session of Feather Boot Camp.    If you are a machine quilter that wants to work on perfecting your Freehand Over the Top Feathers, I’d encourage you to check out the details of my class.  The class is online:  and it’s a really great experience, if I do say so myself.  You get e-mails from me every single weekday, you get handouts to read, drawings to trace, videos to watch (I do drawing screen captures as well as videos of quilting stitch-outs), and tons and tons of feedback and interaction with me and the rest of your classmates.

The best part, of course, (well, other than spending 5 weeks with me at your feathery beck and call…) is that you can do all of the classwork at your convenience:  in your jammies at 2 in the morning, if necessary.

Check it out!

Feather Boot Camp

What I did on my day off

I had a whole bunch of things I should have been doing yesterday, but mostly I worked on this:

A few week’s ago, someone posted on their blog that they were going to be starting this quilt (and I wish I could remember who it was, so I knew who to blame…) and just had to have it.  The book is from Blackbird Designs, it’s called When the Cold Wind Blows.

I started doing some of this as soon as I got the book, but spent yesterday finishing the cutting, and working on piecing.

That large applique panel with the stars was already pieced, I worked the square in a square blocks yesterday.

I’m still debating about the applique.  The debate is hand vs. machine applique.  It’s a question of which lifetime I want to have this finished in.  This one?  Then it had better be machine.  THe next one?  Yeah, the hand applique would be awesome but I’m notoriously slow at all.  I love doing it, but it requires sitting in one place, and I don’t seem to be able to do that lately.  Although, that’s really dumb, because I spend plenty of tiem sitting at the sewing machine, so…I’m not really sure what the problem with getting handwork done is.

I do really like the quilt, although I have to say that the Blackbird Designs style of pattern writing is not necessarily for the faint of heart, or for the type that needs to be told exactly what to do.  That doesn’t sound right:  the instructions are complete, but could be confusing.  The way they list the yardage and then how they tell you to cut isn’t quite as…I don’t know.  Obvious? Specific?  Something.  I’ll try to be more coherent tomorrow.  I’m pushing my luck on my ability to type straight as it is.

Anyway.  That’s what I was doing yesterday.

I also had to make supper for Mark’s birthday, and I had to make him a card.  (It was his last-birthday-of-his-30s yesterday.  He’s so much older than me, you know.  OK, 18 months older, but from now until June, I get to pretend that he’s TWO WHOLE years older than me.  Which is way older.  And if you can unravel all of that, you can figure out how old (young?) I am, too.)

His card read:

Happy Birthday to You

Happy Birthday to You

You live with some monkeys

They escaped from the zoo.

The light was horrible.  I tried to get a good “serious” picture of them as well, this was the best of what I took.  It looks better here small than the full-res version does:

As I said, we had lighting issues, but it also didn’t help that they are not very willing subjects.

Cute, though, aren’t they?

Want em?

Just Kidding!

(Mostly…)

TTFN-

Suzanne

Couldn’t say no to these

I just finished a project (and am in the midst of two other projects) that I kind of wished I’d said no to.  But this, I couldn’t refuse:

41 hand pieced Dresden plates, all of the raw edges are turned under and hand-basted.

They appear to be VERY flat, and in EXCELLENT condition.

The woman that brought them to me is cleaning out her mother-in-law’s home, and has no idea of the history.  She doesn’t know if her MIL made them, or someone else made them.

She GAVE them to me.  They are now MINE to do with what I will.

Yes, I know.  I have more than enough of my own UFOs, without taking on this one, and if they weren’t in such beautiful condition, both in terms of the workmanship and the stat eof the fabric itself, I’d probably not be excited about them.

It’s crazy to think about the woman that made these — why didn’t she ever do anything more with them?  Why are all the hand-basted, but not attached to something else?  What was her plan for them?

I literally got these about 15 minutes ago, and already I’ve got plans…oh, yes, have I got plans…

How many sweatshirts?

In the great sewing room clean out this weekend, I uncovered lots of interesting things.

The room is on the 2nd floor, and between heat rising, and the fact that when I’m in there, the lights are all blazing, and I’m working hard…I get warm.  So, I usually take off the top layer (we keep our house really cool, so there’s always at least 2 layers on , if not 3…or 4…), and then drape the sweatshirt over the back of my chair.

Usually it gets added on top of the sweatshirt I was wearing the last time I got too warm.  Sometimes they get set on a pile, which ends up swallowing them.

I counted this morning.  I retrieved a total of 7 sweatshirts.

Sheesh.  No wonder I can’t find anything to wear.

Note to self

If you want to applique motifs on cute little girlie clothes, maybe stick to just one or two or even three cutely placed motifs.  ALl the way around the hem of the skirt is cute but…

Actually, that should be a note to my mother, as she’s the one that cut out and fused all of those flowers and stems and leaves.  She started hand buttonhole on the edges, but decided she didn’t like it (can’t remember why, it’s been awhile), and I volunteered to do it on the machine.

The dress is a 24 month size Osh Kosh denim jumper.  It’s even cuter in person.

Did I mention that she started making this back when it would fit my niece Sofia?  Who is now 10?

Um, yeah.  Apparently it dropped into the abyss and while I’ve seen it every so often, I couldn’t quite bring myself to tackle it.  I don’t know why not, because even though I might complain a little bit, once I got going, it didn’t take forever…

I was inspired to get it done because little Miss Hannah is actually the right size for it (and will have an occasion to wear it next month! i promise to send it to you in a timely fashion, deb), and then when she outgrows it, it can be passed on to some other small fry.

In addition to that little project, I also spent part of today pulling out and examining various projects, and then putting them back away.

One thing I did spend a little more time on was this:

It’s designed by Country Threads, and I actually bought it as a kit at their shop several years ago. The lettering is supposed to say “Liberty Basket” — all of the applique on this one has been done by hand, with good old-fashioned needleturn, but it’s been sitting in this state for awhile.  I’ve never been really happy with the lettering, partly because it’s a pain to applique, and partly, I realize now, because I really dislike the folksy look of the “font” they used.  Yeah, the big flowers are very folksy, etc, but the lettering just isn’t cutting it for me.

SO, it’s gone:

And it has it’s final red border, only now that I look at it in the photograph, I think that top red on the right might be too dark.

But now, that great big basket looks kind of empty.

It’s back it in it’s plastic bin, awaiting the day when I decide what to do next.  Maybe some different lettering?  Maybe different words?  Maybe some really cool quilting?  The skies the limit!

So what did you do today?  Anything fun?

TTFN-

Suzanne

Mucking Out

After finishing piecing the quilt I showed off the other day, I decided it was time to muck out the stalls.

My sewing room, while not as smelly as a stall, was messy enough.  Messy enough to finally overwhelm even MY ability to ignore the disgustingness of it.

I have more work to do, but here’s the proof that I have a floor:

I never really completely moved in to this room when I moved up here…whenever that was…not quite 18 months, I guess.  I just piled stuff in, and started making piles on top of piles and piles next to piles, and pretty soon, there was barely a path to even walk through the room.

My closet of shame stash is not very attractive, I’ve just been shoving things in it, but it’s better than it was, and I’ll go back later and refold and attempt to get those tubs of strings and scraps into usable condition.

Ironically, I’m getting it all into shape just in time to move it again.  But that’s a post for another day.