Suzanne Earley

Weekend report

Well, the blue jeans are sewn back together and I’ve abandoned the cuff idea.  I forgot how long the jeans actually are, and after consideration, I decided that (a) it might not look good and (b) I didn’t really have time this week to mess around with them.  Thanks to everyone that made comments. I’ll be sure to have someone take some pictures of me in my outfit so I can share the whole “look.”

I’ve also decided that I just don’t have time for beads, but I am going to go with some hot-fix crystals for sparkle:

In my previous post, I forgot to mention that the other thing I needed to do this week was to help my mom finish the wedding quilt we are making for the bride and groom.

Saturday consisted of running to some quilt shops with mom to pick up some additional fabric (borders and backing mostly), a soccer game, supper with some friends and bugging mom to get the blocks done.

Sunday consisted of literally taking the last 2 blocks out of her hand as she pulled them out from under the iron, and then coming back home to sew the blocks together, sew the borders on, and then start quilting.  Amazingly, the quilting didn’t take nearly as long as I had expected it to.  All afternoon, and part of yesterday evening, plus on and off today.

The quilt is actually all quilted, and the binding is attached.  As soon as I finish typing this (and fixing my typos…), I’m going to go get comfy and start hand-sewing.

I’m not going to post pictures of the finished quilt yet, as it has some blue and purple pen markings on it that I’d like to get rid of before I take any pictures.

It’s a very elegant log cabin, done in tans/creams/whites.  I had envisioned a creamy back as well, but we ended up falling in love with a wide backing fabric that is actually a really pretty sage green.

How’s that for a teaser?  LOL.

Have a great evening!  I’m off to bind, bind, bind.

TTFN-

Suzanne

(Tonight I called mom and informed her that SHE needed to make a label, and that it needed to be embroidered.  Can’t wait to see what she comes up with in response to my order….)

Blue jeans and hydrangeas

Several months ago, I opened up the seams on a pair of jeans that had developed a hole in the knee.  The idea being that I would embellish the jeans in some way, and then sew them back up.   Opening the seams is as far as I got at the time….

Next weekend, my mom and I will be going to a wedding in Texas.  We were talking about what we are planning to wear — there is a party Friday night, the Blessing of the Wedding on Saturday, and a brunch on Sunday.  OK.  I’d better stop and explain first:  the wedding itself is actually tomorrow.  In Sweden.  (The groom is Swedish and the happy couple lives in Sweden).  The bride’s parents live in Texas, and *next* weekend is a great big party for the American friends that couldn’t make it to Sweden.  But it’s easier to say that we are going to a wedding, than it is to say that we are going to a Blessing of a Wedding — obviously it took me a long time to explain just what the heck I meant.

So, back to the story, and why this has anything to do with my jeans.  The Friday night event is Western themed party, and we decided that blue jeans were probably acceptable.  But I started thinking….wouldn’t it be cool to wear something I had made….and wouldn’t it be fun to actually finish embellishing the jeans I had torn apart?  The problem has always been that I simply didn’t know what to do with them.   So, I started brainstorming today.  Yes, the event is next Friday.  At least I’m starting today, and not next Thursday….

No matter what I do, the ultimate goal is to cover the rather large rip in the left knee.  This requires a fairly large patch of something, and I just haven’t been able to figure out what.  I don’t want it too look dorky….

For some reason I picked up a piece of Michael Miller fabric with big hydrangeas on it — which reminded me that I have a jacket made out of the hydrangea fabric.  OK, the reason I picked it up was because it was sitting on top of one of the gazillions of piles strewn around my studio at the moment.  But, it must have been sitting there for just this purpose.

Here’s the jacket: (You can click the picture to view it larger)

It’s longer in back than in front and is kind of swingy.  It’s an Indygo Junction pattern, and is actually reversible.  And *I* made it!  Amazing! And oh, I guess it needs to be ironed….

After contemplating the fabric and the jacket, I thought about turning the jeans into a companion for the jacket.

I decided to cut out some of the hydrangea bunches, and am planning to fuse them on.  The sleeves of the jackets get folded up to show the red lining fabric as a cuff, so I’m also thinking about adding cuffs to the bottom of the jeans:

Once the flowers are fused on, I’ll use monofilament thread to stitch around the edges.  I’m also thinking about adding some beading as an accent to the flowers, both on the jeans and on the jacket.

Any opinions on beads on the jeans?  Obviously I don’t want beads on the backside, because I don’t want to sit on them…..but if I use Nymo thread to apply them, they ought to be OK, don’t you think?  I’ll probably even try to remember to make a knot before and after each bead for extra security, maybe fuse something over the stitching on the inside once it is all done, just to help secure it.  Plus, these will be special occasion jeans, not meant to be worn every day.

Are the cuffs going to look OK?  Part of why I’m adding them is that the bottoms of the jeans are fraying slightly, so I thought it would be nice to help neaten those up a little bit.

That’s what I’ve been up to this afternoon.

I bent the truth a little yesterday — the day wasn’t completely wasted, as I did do some beading on my May 12×12x12 quilt.   I’m couching the beads on, and I need more practice apparently.   Additionally, it points out to me that the beads I was using were not as uniform as I thought.

We are headed to a movie tonight (Meet the Robinsons),

I hope you have a fun Friday night!

TTFN-

Suzanne

Vying for Wife of the Year Award

I’m pretty sure I’m not going to make Mother of the Year, so I thought I’d try for Wife of the Year.

Several months ago, my DH came home wearing a shirt that had a hole in the sleeve. I’m pretty sure that he had probably GONE to work with the hole, but I don’t want to think about that.

He spends a lot of his day with his left elbow on his desk, his left hand on his chin, keeping his head up while he endlessly clicks things on his computer with his right hand on the mouse.

He handed me the shirt and asked if I could cut off the sleeves and turn it into a short sleeve shirt. Other than the rather noticeable hole in the elbow, the shirt was still in pretty decent shape. He dug into his closet and handed me another short sleeve shirt that had a sleeve length he particularly liked so I had an example to work from.

This was winter time, so I wasn’t in any hurry to do the job. I hung the shirts in my closet thinking I’d get to them some day before he needed them. Over the course of several days he began to hand me other shirts with similar elbow holes — a total of 4 of these, in fact.

On the hanger they went, as I tried to ignore the fact that he had probably worn all of these to work several times with the holes already hole-y.

It’s nearly time for him to wear them, so I finally decided that today was the day. I’m not really sure why I avoided doing it — I guess I thought it was going to take me forever to do it. Yeah right. Maybe an hour total and he has 4 new short sleeve shirts to wear to work:

Unfortunately, because of the position of the holes, I had to cut the sleeves slightly shorter than the sample shirt, but they aren’t too far off.

I think I mostly avoided this project because despite the fact that I’m a quilter, I don’t really “sew.” My garment techniques are woefully inadequate. You’ll notice that I am not showing you a close-up of the hems, as the stitched lines are little bit wobbly. They do the job, though, which is all that really matters.

In case you are wondering, the reason why I am not a candidate for Mother of the Year is because I have forced the boys to eat school lunches TWICE this week. If looks could kill, Joe would have had me dead about a million times over this morning.

After school, I asked him how lunch was today.

“Kind of Good.”

Uh-huh. That’s what I thought. Twerp.

I’m going to try to angle for Mother of the Year with supper tonight, though, pancakes and scrambled eggs…better get cooking!

TTFN -

Suzanne

Overalls

I pulled on my overalls today and it got me thinking about overalls. I’m not really sure why I like my overalls so much. They are something of a pain when it is time for a trip to the bathroom….

But man, they are comfortable. And they do have lots of fun pockets. I wore mine on the trip home from NH, and was able to stick my iPod in the bib pocket, which was really quite convenient.

I started wearing overalls about the time that my boys stopped wearing them. Is there anything cuter than a little boy in overalls?

I know something cuter: the backside of a little boy wearing overalls:

Nope. I lied. Here’s what is the cutest: TWO little boys in overalls mugging for the camera:

For those of you wondering why the boys STOPPED wearing overalls when they were as cute as the dickens in them — I have two words: Potty. Training.

Part of why I’m bringing up overalls today is travel tip #376.

Overalls might be comfortable, and they might be convenient with all those pockets and things, but: flying in overalls is not advised. Unless, of course, you enjoy getting sent into the glass fishbowl and having the nice TSA person scan you and pat you down because your overalls are covered with metal buckles that don’t make it through the security scanner.

You’ve been warned. I’ll probably forget and have them on the next time I fly.

I have some quilt related posting to do today, too, but that has to wait until I go take a different picture. The one I took earlier is very blurry.

TTFN!

Suzanne

(The overall pictures are from December 2000, we were taking pictures for Christmas cards. I had so much fun dressing them when they were little. We usually tried for “same, but different” if we could. They look so much alike that we try to make it easy on people by at least going with different colored clothing. You can’t tell from the pictures but the boots they were wearing matched the outfits — Pooh and Tigger….)

Happy New Sock Day!

What?!?!?  You didn’t get the memo?

Yes, today is New Sock Day.

No, not officially, but it is at MY house, anyway.

Look at what the sock fairy brought me this morning:

The sock fairy (AKA my mother) learned to knit socks this fall.  She’s been wearing that first yellow pair of socks for months bragging about how wonderful they are.  I thought I was going to get a pair of socks for Christmas, but Mom decided to move from 4 double pointed needles to 2 circular needles and had to start over.  I expect to be sporting a pair of striped socks sometime in the near future, too.

Thanks, Mom!

(And yes, just in case you are wondering from this picture or the one that’s posted in my 365 Photos album…I do have big feet.  Size 11 in fact.  I’m tall, OK?)

Glass dresses

I saw that A Dress a Day was updated, so I surfed over to see what she was talking about.  Oh Wow.  Today’s entry was a glass dress sculpture by Karen LaMonte.  I’m partly linking the website here so I can remember where it was, because I want to go back and spend more time looking.   She makes lifesize cast glass sculptures of dresses (among other things).  They aren’t just dresses that are hanging on a hanger — they look like someone was just in them — all the shape and movement that you would expect it to have if there was a body inside.   One of the funniest things I saw in my quick visit was a clothesline of the Emperor’s New Clothes — all made of glass.

Cold season

Ugh.  I was having such a great day, and then I started sneezing and my nose started dripping, and my throat started getting sore….

Phooey.  I am just barely recovered from the last cold, and now I’ve got another one.  Sure makes it hard to want to do anything but crawl under the covers. 

It’s really tempting to just go to bed, and not bother posting, but I’m afraid to take a day off — if I take one day off, it might extend to 2, and then pretty soon it’ll be 6 months later and nothing will have been posted.

I’m working on a small quilt for a challenge (the only "rule" for this challenge is that the quilt is supposed to be odd-shaped…).  I’m really happy with how it is turning out.  I’m very proud of myself for picking an idea, and just running with it.  Which, really, is the whole point of the challenge — to get it done within a week.  I’m at a point with it, though, where I’m starting to agonize over how to embellish it.  How much is too much?  Or really, how much is actually enough….I need to get some quilting for customers done tomorrow, so my challenge piece will probably get stuck up on the design wall for me to ponder.

Speaking of customer quilting…I did finish a nice piece over the weekend.  I posted pictures on my website

Here’s one of the detail shots of the motif I quilted.

I used Superior Gold Metallic thread to do all of the stitching.  On the white fabric, I actually stitched all of the lines twice, as a single stitch just didn’t show up well enough.

And last, but certainly not least, I found a cute jacket pattern at one of the quilt shops I visited today.  It’s an Indygo Junction pattern, designed by Mary Ann Donze.  I think one of the other jacket patterns I have is her design — I like her work.  This one is called Easy Silhouette Jacket

You don’t suppose I liked it because the jacket on the right is RED wool, do you?  The jacket is not lined or faced, and the collar is actually the reverse of the  fabric.  I didn’t quite realize this when I bought it, and of course, I don’t really have any fabric that’s appropriate.  Yet…..

Oh — one more thing….I did mean to work on the book today, but darn it, I’m going to bed, so I’ll do it tomorrow…..

Fear and a pair of jeans

I did something sort of scary this afternoon.  I opened the seam in a pair of my old jeans.  Why is this scary you ask?  Well, even if you don’t want to know, I’m going to tell you.

First off — it’s scary because who in their right mind takes apart perfectly good clothing? OK, OK, "perfectly good" isn’t quite accurate considering the fact that this particular pair of jeans has a gaping hole in the right knee.  But honestly, why on Earth would someone choose to rip a seam?  I wondered this as I did it, seeing as how I avoid unsewing as much as possible in my line of work.  I didn’t actually realize until I tackled it how well the seam was sewn, either.  In addition to the seam itself, the raw edges were serged.  Do you know how much thread was involved?  Yards and yards and yards — and it’s allover my sewing room now….in leetle teeny bits…

Secondly, it’s scary because it means I need to get going on the next part of the project.  Which is trying to embellish the jeans in some fashion.  The first goal is to patch the great big honkin’ hole in the knee.  The hole didn’t used to be quite so big.  Back when it was just a thin spot, I kept thinking that I ought to use my fancy schancy embroidery machine and do some embroidery over the whole leg, and somehow this embroidery would help patch the knee.  Eventually the thin patch became an actual hole, and I kept thinking the same thing about embroidery.

Well, the hole kept growing until one day I managed to stick my foot through and rip it even bigger.  I’ve worn the jeans a few times since then, but finally quit because the hole is almost seam to seam now.

Over the last few days I’ve started dreaming about an outfit (wearable art…) that I might like to try to make.  A vest, a shirt, and an embellished pair of jeans.  Now that the jeans are all pulled apart, it’s time to get serious and get it done.  Although, a trip to the fabric store might be in order first….I’m thinking about some fun fashion fabrics that I don’t ordinarily use, so, of course, it is necessary to go stock up….what a trial!

The before picture!  Hopefully the after picture won’t be years behind — maybe only months! LOL!

Girly’d Sweater

This project started out as a red project, but I quickly realized that the red fun fur was too much.  It occurred to me that the pastel rainbow fun fur I was using for a different project (which I will probably never finish…) would look much better.  I was able to do this in front of the TV a few nights, plus a couple of hours at the quilt show on Sunday while we were just sitting around (it was pretty slow on Sunday at the show…)

I just did a row of double crochet with the fun fur, and I also changed out the buttons.  And Look!  The buttons don’t even match (well, they are all pink…but…you know what I mean!)

The sweater used to belong to my Dad.  I stole, er, borrowed it from him when I was in high school.  I’ll bet that he doesn’t even remember it.  Do you suppose he would like it back?

The title of this post could also be "Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery" as this project is inspired by my friend, Carla.

She posted pictures of 2 sweaters that she had altered with some crochet and I thought "Hey!  I can do that!"  And then I thought "Hey!  I have the perfect sweater to alter, too!"  So, thanks, Carla.  I’m getting some of my best ideas from you….