Sew Artfully Minded

Sew Go Stitch is Live!

2011-10-06T02:58:00.000-05:00

I wanted to let you know I just went live with a new website, SewGoStitch.com. There is still quite a bit of work to do on it, and still lots (LOTS) more info to add to the pages, but it is available to take a quick peek and set your bookmarks so you can find it again easily later on. I will be working more on these pages later this weekand next week as I find time to fit it in. And of course it will be an on-going project as I come up with, and post, new projects and ideas using the cutter and dies.

This is something that has been on my mind for quite some time. In fact, I conceived of the idea before I even purchased my first Go! cutter and dies. As the year progresses, I will be uploading a number of new projects and patterns. I am looking forward to working on this whole concept for the website and for new ideas with using my Go! cutters.

So far I have been having a blast cutting up fabric from my stash to make my own pre-cuts. There are SO MANY books and patterns out now that have to do with charm squares, turn-overs, jelly rolls, etc. The AccuQuilt cutters and dies are perfect for cutting your own favorite cuts of fabric to make these kinds of quilts. Plus . . . I've been thinking of other ideas to incorporate my own digitized machine embroidery designs with fabric shapes that I have cut - like the dog, the flowers and leaves, bugs, etc. In addition to those ideas, I enjoy the scrapbooking hobby and have some thoughts and ideas for paper and mixed media projects using this great tool.

I see lots of die cutting in my future!

A Girl Can Dream

2011-08-24T22:07:00.000-05:00

I enjoyed my day off from work today. It seems as if it went by too quickly. I accomplished some things I wanted to get done, but there are still others. I can see I will need to get more proficient in listing my goals for my days off and working more to fulfill them. I will have to get back to using lists to work on that.

Meanwhile, it was a great sunny day, and fairly pleasant weather outside. Whenever I walk the sidewalk from the driveway to the front door I pass by weeds growing in my front walkway area. They are getting so big, they are actually blooming flowers now. That's one more of those little things that needs to be done, that is yet left to be completed. My goal later this week is to get those weeds pulled before they go to seed! Actually I had been putting off any gardening tasks till it wasn't quite so muggy and hot outside. Thankfully the climate is more to my liking now with a bit of cooler weather.

I was thinking about dreams and hopes today. I have learned through past experience that it is a good thing to set your mind on hopes and dreams, to look forward to a future that holds a brighter, encouraging aspect to work toward, and to look forward to. I've long thought, and said to others, we can have anything in this world that we want if we just pace ourselves. For me this an encouraging way to set the stage for your future. It establishes a goal to work toward. It helps me to delineate what is important to you and cut through the haze of other nonsense that goes on in life. Sometimes it doesn't always mean that is the future you get. Sometimes dreams change and morph into other dreams and desires. That's okay. I'm the type of person who needs something to look forward to everyday. It is good for me to visualize my goals, dreams and hopes. How about you? Do you think the same way? Do you have a hope to look forward to, or a dream to work for?

Working Outside the Home

2011-08-13T06:02:00.001-05:00

I'm back!!!

I have to say I am delighted to return back to my previous place of employment at J&R Vacuum and Sewing in Bismarck, ND. I have been missing in action over there for a little over two years now. Honestly, I've enjoyed every minute of being away while learning new info on web programming and designing . . . and I know I'll also enjoy every minute of being back. It has been fun this week to meet up with many of my previous customers and friends who I haven't seen in such a long time! I am just about ready to wrap up my first week of being back and have already met up with (and talked on the phone with) a number of great people.

That's one of the most enjoyable things about other sewing and machine embroidery enthusiasts . . . they're all such great people to be around. The enthusiasm for sewing and being creative is contagious. I've already got some ideas rolling around my brain regarding some new things I'd like to implement. Some of those ideas pertinent to this blog and my website will be showing up over the next several weeks.

My job at J&R is sales . . . sewing machines and embroidery software sales . . . along with all the other related products you'll find at a sewing machine dealership. They still carry the Pfaff line I am familiar with from my previous years of employment. I have truly grown to love the Pfaff machines and own a few of those. J&R has recently taken on the Brother line of sewing and embroidery machines. These are new to me, but seem to be very user friendly. I have been spending time during this first week back learning how the Brother machines function and some of their many wonderful features and benefits. I absolutely love the big 10-thread PR1000. There are many new things for me to learn still as I get reacquainted with my way around the store and all these fun sewing and embroidery machines. If you are in the local area it will be fun to meet you. Feel free to stop on by to say "Hello" and welcome me back. I'd love to show you the new things I'm learning and doing there in the store.

Proofing the Cupcake Stamp

2011-04-11T01:01:00.000-05:00

I took a few minutes to pull a proof of the cupcake stamp. It looks pretty good for a first view. I see lots of little bits of the block that still need to be cleaned up. And I am correct in assuming my letters look like Flintstones lettering. Too funny! Yep, lots of little places that need tweaking!

In a way I kind of like all the extra little markings. To me it says "hand carved" or "old fashioned rubber stamp" with those little black specs. but they won't stay. I want to carve the lines thinner and more smooth. And I will clean it up, too.

The day seemed to go by quickly. I've spent time on the computer today. That's an easy way for me to lose all track of time. I'm going to have to get my little egg timer back out again and try to be a bit more efficient in that department. I was going to do more work on the studio - moving stuff and maybe start in on some more painting work. But I decided to just make it a quick trip down there to get my ink and try to stay focused on my tasks . . . only to lose all track of time on the computer. But I feel I accomplished quite a bit so not a whole waste of time. For now it is getting late and I need to head off to bed. Just wanted to show I'm making a bit of progress . . . slow progress!

Stamp Making Inspiration

2011-04-09T20:32:00.000-05:00

When I posted yesterday I forgot to tell you about another stamp carving artist's site that I find very inspirational. She is a master stamp carver! You will be amazed to see her work at her blog site called 'Girls Are Crying'. I haven't read back through her posts to determine why she named her site with that title, but I will search that out at some point. She does exquisite work with hand carved stamps!

When I was holed up at home last weekend mending from my oral surgery I spent some time getting reacquainted with some of my art books. I pull them out from time to time for inspiration. I signed up for a journal swap on swap-bot a short while ago. It isn't due till July so I have lots of time to work on it. I've got some ideas in my head on how I want to put it together, but I like to review things I've seen before to spur me on. I'm collecting some ephemera in preparation for what I have in mind. I will be recycling junk mail and incorporating other odds & ends in it as well. It should be fun to put together. It will be a mixed media compilation.

On another note, the 'Somewhere in Time' journal swap I wrote about previously has been cancelled by the host. I have to say I am disappointed in that, but have moved on. This new journal project should be fun as well. It will be an excuse to get back into more painting again, too. Okay, enough for tonight . . . I've got some things I need to be working on . . . till next time . . . Adios!

The Cupcake Stamp

2011-04-08T15:22:00.000-05:00

I am hosting my own swap over at Swap-bot.com right now. In fact, I am hosting two of them. The swap that this hand carved cupcake swap is for is called "Hand-Carved Stamp & Card/Envie". The goal of this one is to carve your own design into an eraser or an artist carving block to make your own rubber stamp. Then create a card and envelope decorated with that stamp for your swap partner. You will then drop the stamp and the card into the envelope and mail it to them.

I decided to make a cupcake. So I drew it out onto a piece of paper with pencil, then turned the written side down onto the carving block and burnished the pencil onto the block. This results in a reversed image of the drawing so when it is stamped it turns out having the same image as the drawing. This reversed/mirror image of the original drawing is important when one incorporates words as a component of the stamp. If it is not reversed, the words would read backwards when it is stamped out onto paper.

I started carving on it a couple days ago. I did a little bit here and there between working on the computer and doing other stuff around the house. It made for some relaxing break times between other chores. At this point it is mostly finished, but I have yet to test stamp it. I know I need to do some tweaking around the letters, but want to test stamp it before I go too far with that. Right now I'd guess they look an awful lot like Flintstones letters . . . all jagged, uneven and maybe slightly illegible. I need to go downstairs and get my inks to do that. As you'll remember in a previous post I mentioned that I hauled all my arting-scrapbooking-drawing stuff down there in what I'm now calling the big "Queen Bee Scrap-Art Migration of 2011". Okay, not really . . . just trying to see it with a bit of a sense of humor! The queen bed is now full ensconced in the Yellow Room awaiting a new head-board and rails that should be showing up at the furniture store sometime today. At present it is piled high with boxes filled with Cloth & Clay Doll Flowers. I'm hosting a swap over there at Cloth & Clay Dolls right now, too. More on that in a later post; this post is supposed to be about the carved stamps.

So, back to the stamps . . . as I said, testing comes later today to see what I'm working with on this stamp.

I used a Staedtler Mastercarve Artist Carving Block for mine. It started off at 4" x 4" and the cupcake was positioned on it diagonally. I wanted to make it as large as possible from the block and still have some little tidbits of scrap left over to play around with. The corners came in handy to carve a few little extras: the leafy twig, the cherry heart and the arrow. Nothing has come to mind for the fourth little corner at this point so it remains to be seen what becomes of that.

I wanted it to be fairly large so it could be used as a notepad image. I plan on stamping out a whole bunch of memo pad images so I can enjoy this stamp awhile even after it leaves my house. I was unsure about the lines on the memo pad being curved like they are. But I decided to go with it as it seemed more artistically sound to mimic the curve at the bottom of the cupcake. I slightly curved the baseline of the text, but not quite to the same degree as the other lines because the letters seemed to visually appear to be falling down too much in the middle - they looked cramped. Hopefully that turns out to be a good call. I'll consider them more when I test stamp. I have it in the back of my mind I can always just carve them out completely if they look horrible - same with the lines. I am also considering cutting into the lines to make them dashed or a series of dots and dashes. I am concerned about them overpowering the whole image and think that will help to lessen their impact. There again, I will see about that later after testing.

Here is an image of the first photo without the extra photoshopping mark-up layer. I've seen some lovely images at some other blogs, and in books about blogging and image manipulation. Just thought I'd play around with that concept to see what I come up with. I have to chuckle at myself . . . I think I need to keep working to get better on the layers and additional mark-making. Yet, I post it for all the world to see anyway. Hee, hee . . .tell me what you think . . . is that kind of thing appealing or distracting? In a way I like the look. You often see it in mixed-media type work, shading the edges of pages in scrapbooking, primitive art, some print images and many blogs showing the Somerset Magazine influence. But other times I see stuff like that and think it just looks grungy and dirty like a distraction that should be left off. Maybe it depends on the setting or to what extent it has reached its grunginess. And again, I'm no expert at everything photoshop either. Perhaps it's just that I need more work at doing my version of it.

Show and Share on Flicker

2011-04-03T22:21:00.001-05:00

I have been busy working on various projects for swaps on Swapbot.com lately. This tote bag is one of those projects I sent away recently to one of my swap partners. The other day I decided to upload some of those photos of things I've made recently to my Flicker account. If you want to go take a look at those swap items you can follow this link.

I know I have been absent from this site and not posting much lately. Don't know quite why that is . . . just been staying busy and distracted I guess. Anyway, the link there at Flicker will show you a bit of the things I have been busy working on. There are others, just haven't posted images of all of them. I planned to add more photos as I go along. It just takes a bit of time to sit down and actually do that. Uploading photos takes more time than one might imagine.

So far I have been enjoying my swaps - both the making and sending, and also receiving mail from others from around the country. It's kind of fun to get stuff in the mail.

This past weekend has been a bit draining for me. I had a wisdom tooth removed on Friday, and have been drained of energy and sleeping quite a bit over the weekend. It is partly due to the pain pills that were prescribed following the oral surgery. Since I've been loopy and lazy the last several days it seems like time is passing so strangely. I've been in and out of sleep at odd times of day and night. It seems like I get to feeling better at times, then there are other times of achy soreness in my mouth/jaw that is irritating and distracting. Mainly I've been loafing around doing a bunch of nothing this weekend - feeling lethargic.

Last week, prior to the extraction of my wisdom tooth (the last one as the other three were removed years ago when I was younger), I was engaged in doing a major move of my scrapbooking and graphic art supplies. We got one of those sleep number beds to replace our traditional queen-sized bed. I had thought to move the queen-sized bed downstairs to one of the bedrooms in the basement, but we ran into trouble. The size of the mattress and box-spring was too large to fit down the basement stairs. So . . . we did a major upheaval of the Yellow Room where I did my scrapbooking and computer work. That room is now the new guest bedroom with the queen-sized bed relocated there . . . and all my scrapbooking and graphic art supplies are currently in a jumbled conglomeration from the move out of the Yellow Room and down to the basement.

Last week I had been working on re-painting my Sewing Studio and moved some of the furnishings around in the process of painting the walls. There is still a bit left to finish with that painting job. On top of that, there is a whole lot of other "stuff" to go through and sort now with dragging all my stuff down there. It is a major mess of disorganization down there right now. In a way I have been okay with this weekend's blissful ignoring of any responsibilities, due to the oral surgery, because I really wasn't looking forward to putting everything to order at this particular point in time. This moving/dumping of all my art stuff down there this week was an unexpected interruption to what I planned and anticipated to be a relatively easy and orderly repainting of my Sewing Studio. I thought I had an orderly and well thought out method to my redecorating. And it had been moving along smoothly . . . until we discovered our queen bed would be an issue. It was either just get rid of the bed, or rethink our room arrangements to make it fit. It is nice to have an extra bed should we ever need to make use of it to put someone up during a visit.

I have to say it has been nice to still sleep in the queen bed that I've been used to. . . in my Yellow Room now . . . as I laze around in a sleepy relaxed state of being from my medication. I've had to sleep propped up upon numerous pillows - to help to ease the swelling of my cheeks and upper jaw. I look and feel kind of like a silly puffy faced chipmunk ensconced among my pile of pillows. It has been a bit different to be waited upon by my caring and generous hubby who brings me warm soup and cold pudding. Soft foods have been so easy on the jawline. And I have to say my hubby has been great with helping me out. He does tend to be a stickler on making me follow ALL my discharge instructions - like gargling with salt water three times a day. I just try to think about salty potato chips so I don't gag. I did graduate to a bite of roast elk tonight for supper. It had been roasting in the oven nearly all day and was really pretty tender. But I ate a couple chunks of it then shared the remainder that was on my plate with the dogs so I could move on to my toast. I think I'll go for another cup of tomato soup before I head off to bed. I never thought soup could taste so good. That's been my mainstay now for the past several days - tastes wonderful when one is hungry! Yum . . . soup and pudding . . . a great combination . . . and toast!

Gone to the Dogs - Back to Websites, Blogs & Other Goals

2011-02-21T18:22:00.000-06:00

I know I've been absent from posting to my blogs for awhile, but here I am, back again. We just got back from a quick visit with my younger son. The weather was mighty cold, with a bit of blowing snow, when coming back home. But overall the roads were good. It was a good trip. I was glad I went along for the ride. At first my husband was talking about taking a drive up there by himself. Last time he did a trip I stayed home because someone had to take care of the dogs. But we decided to pack them along with us and make the four hour drive. I was especially glad to go along since it has been a while since we saw Josh at his place. It was kind of cold to get out and do much in his town, so we pretty much stayed at his place, relaxed and visited, and watched some shows on DVD.

This picture shows where Ginger hung out pretty much the entire time we were there - under the kitchen table. She had a yucky potty accident on Josh's rug shortly after we got there. Perhaps she stayed under the table because her tummy wasn't feeling well . . . perhaps it was because she was mad at us. We trimmed her toenails several hours after we were there - because it sounded like she was a tap dancer clicking on the hardwood floors whenever she walked or paced around. Her nails have been long for some time now. The last two times she was at the groomer she wouldn't cooperate with them with any nail trimming. She really fights it. So their policy is they don't do it if the dog puts up a lot of fight and gets worked up about it.

Josh got out his dog nail-clipper and my husband helped to hold her down to do the trimming. I was assigned to hold onto Lucy's collar and keep her from getting in the way during the process. And I also tried to help distract Ginger by talking to her - to calm her. She hates getting her toenails clipped. She was not in a good mood. She came through it well enough in the end. Maybe that table seemed like security to her. I've heard it said dogs were formerly cave-dwelling animals and like it better when they can duck underneath any type of covering that forms their "den" when they lay down.

Here's a picture of Lucy. She is Josh's dog. We thought she needed company (hee, hee). . . so we brought all three dogs with us. Actually, the choice of having our dogs come with, was so we wouldn't have to be in such a rush to get back home to tend to them. It was basically an overnight weekend trip, but the weather forcasts indicated we might be hit with a winter storm. We didn't know if we might end up staying an extra day due to snow. In many ways it didn't seem like it lasted long enough. But when spring starts showing up more on the prairie we'll have to plan another trip with nicer weather. Then we can take the opportunity to have more things to do while we are there.

By the way, please ignore the horrible quality of these photos. The camera I had been using got broken. I am trying to get accustomed to using one of my camera's I haven't used in a long time. It has got some really nice features on it and will likely end up being a great camera to use, but so far nearly every picture I have been taking is blurry from me moving the camera. It has an unfamiliar sequence to how it focuses the frame, analyses it then processes it before it is stored as a digital image. I am not in sync with it apparently and move it slightly while it is still processing the data. Aaarrrggg! Sorry for poor quality. I'll keep trying . . . it has to get better, right?

Here you can see Lucy has a brand new toy in her toy box. She came over to check what Sugar was doing there. When I let Sugar out of the kennel to walk around a bit, she went straight for Lucy's bed filled with chew toys. Sugar tried to grasp hold of one, but they were too big for her. She did manage to find a little tidbit of a rawhide chewy that I thought she was going to confiscate. But even that got left behind in the end. She went on to explore a bit more once she was out of the bed, but was slipping on the hardwood floors and seemed a bit disoriented so I put her back in the kennel. She's getting "older" faster these days, more frail, and doesn't keep her balance real well when she walks around. There are times it seems she must not be able to see very well, or hear well, either.

There you can see Sparky in the kennel chewing on his dog food. He's a much more timid little guy and seemed most comfortable in the kennel. The few times he ventured out was just when they were being corralled to go outside.

I have to say this bunch of dogs were kind of hard to corral off to the same place when it came to going outside. We had to walk down two short flights of stairs to get to the back door. There was a little landing with a pillow/cushion (mini dog bed?) sitting there. That's the spot Sparky bee-lined it to when he was coming and going. He seemed to want to claim that spot. I'm sure it was warmer sitting on that little bed than standing on the wood steps.

Then it didn't help that is was COLD (below zero) outside with the wind whipping around the corner. None of them seemed to want to go outside. I felt like I was herding a bunch of cats instead of dogs. You get one outside, then open the door (trying to hold it so the wind doesn't slam it against the side of the building) and another one is darting back inside. Yes, the next trip with the dogs (if there is one) will have to be when the weather is nicer.

Sugar is such a funny goofball. She doesn't have a bed like this and apparently it didn't occur to her to exit out from the lower side. She got hung up with her back legs on the side of the bed. I couldn't help but start laughing out loud at her crazy antics. She kept trying to get her front legs to try to pull her off the side, but they were too slippery on the floor to allow for an traction. Then she worked to scootch and try to propel her little body off the edge. Finally she ungraciously ended up dumping herself face first onto the floor. Yes, she was a bit disoriented from her exertions and walked in a couple circles before she tottered off to explore a bit more. It wasn't too much further I just picked her up and put her back in the kennel. She acted so lost . . . maybe she was if she cannot see too well.

And here is little Sparky. He certainly had his eye on all the activities there at my son's house. It's an open floor plan - which is different from our house. Here at home they stay pretty much in the kitchen most all the time. From his vantage point where we set up the kennel, Sparky could watch all the moves we made nearly everywhere in the apartment. It was kind of funny. He didn't really want to come out when the kennel door was left open, but he sure was attentive and kept an eye on things.

Now that we are back home today I started in with working toward some of those 101 Goals in 1001 Days. Part of that goal is to revamp my blogs and websites and to be more active in posting, listing some products to sell, and achieve steps neccessary toward getting my small business up and running. Earlier today I worked on moving some things around in the weight room downstairs. I got some the the stuff that accumulated there moved out of the way so I could get a start on walking on my treadmill. I cleared the area for access to the weight benches and free-weights. Plus I'm working on laundry while I was down there. Tonight's plans include getting back down there to do more laundry, then to continue working on cutting up fabric to prep it for more quilts. A little here, a little there, and those goals will start showing results. I posted some updates to some of those listed so there is some progress being made.

Swap-Bot & Yummy Mexican Hotdish

2011-02-11T20:56:00.000-06:00

My daughter-in-law directed me to Swap-Bot.com. It is an on-line swap community. She has been talking about it for awhile, so I finally decided to check into it and see what it is all about. I am signed up for a number of swaps so I can start building my rating and meet the qualifications for more future swaps I want to participate in.

As I was looking through the list of current swaps (in the US - got to think about postage afterall), I found one that is all about making a journal and writing a short story about time travel. It is called "Somewhere In Time Journal". This is the one that fascinates me the most. One of the requirements to be a participant in the swap in to have 10 complete type #3 swaps under your belt and also have a 4.9 rating in the Swap-Bot rating system. My goal over the next couple months is to achieve the 10 swaps required before the May 1st sign-up deadline. We actually have to have our journal mailed by May 31st, so I am going to start working ahead on mine. I feel pretty confident I will be able to meet the requirement of 10 finished swaps by the deadline. Of course that is if there are not any major upheavals in my life between now and then!

The Time Travel Journal has been on my mind ever since I saw it on-line. I have already begun to "spin the tale" of how my story will go, but I remain open to specific details, because I want to be able to incorporate some little trinkets and ephemera I'll be collecting, between now and then, as part of the journal. I'll weave my story around whatever little trinkets and paraphenalia I can find to put in it. Plus I plan to do some art - pen & ink drawings and maybe some little watercolors to "document" my travel through time - where I started from, how I got there, what I did, and how I got back home. Upon thinking about this subject, I realized there are an awful lot of time travel stories and movies out there: The Time Traveler's Wife, Wizard of Oz, Return to Oz, an old movie with Christopher Reeves entitled Somewhere in Time (1980), the Back to the Future trilogy (1985), Kate & Leopold, TimeLine, and others, lots of others. I like reading books about time travel and seeing these kind of shows. Making the journal should be a lot of fun.

I stopped into our local antique store today for a short bit after getting groceries this afternoon. I was looking for some small items for the journal. I found some old photographs in a box and a couple little ceramic items to dangle on a ribbon from the spine of my journal. As I've been thinking about it, I realized if I am going to be pouring a lot a effort and work into this piece, I will probably find it hard to part with it. Afterall, working for several months extended time on it will make it somewhat precious to me. Okay, some of you might be thinking - NOT! But unfortunately I tend to get attached to things. That would explain how I have managed to surround myself with so much "stuff" and why I am not leading a minimalist lifestyle.

I made a Mexican Hotdish tonight for supper. My mouth feels "hot" right now as I'm eating and typing at the same time. My hubby pronounced it "really good" . . . in a high energy exclamation as to its status. Yay! I found another great meal that's pretty easy to prepare, and is well liked! Basically it's a pound of ground meat (ours is elk tonight, from the freezer) browned with half a large white onion a 10 oz can of tomatoes and green chili, about a teaspoon of chili power and a half teaspoon of cumin. (I'm guessing because I just sprinkled some in from the little spice bottles). Of course you would drain the ground meat of any fat - elk does not have fat - it is a very lean meat . . . and yummy! I had quite a bit of what was left in the bottom of a bag of crushed tortilla chips (we like the Mission Tortilla chips in the brown paper bag) - about 2-3 cups worth, but slightly crushed, not teeny, tiny particles - just not the whole chip. Plus I had some hard corn taco shells in the cupboard that I needed to use up as they had been up there awhile. It was about 9-10 hard taco shells. I crushed these up as well with my hands, right into the pan. My hubby does not like sour cream, but I do. He cannot eat refried beans anymore, but I wanted some . . . so . . . his portion had Ricotta cheese instead of the sour cream and beans. I layered half of the crushed chips and taco shells in the bottom of a large glass baking dish that I had sprayed with a Pam-type cooking spray (we just buy the less expensive store brand). I used a hard taco shell, split into two pieces, to separate my side of the dish from his side. He didn't want my sour cream and beans mixing into his portion.

Next spoon on half the meat mixture. Then spoon on half the sour cream/beans or ricotta cheese (mixed with a generous sprinkling of garlic power in the cream and the cheese). Layer on several hands full of Colby or Colby-Jack cheese. Then repeat the layers: chips, meat, sour cream/ricotta cheese (beans). At this point you will want to pour a whole can of enchilada sauce over the whole thing. Then top with a couple handfuls of Colby cheese. Pop it into the oven for 35-40 minutes with a foil covering. After it has baked this long, pull it out of the oven, remove the foil covering (add more cheese if you want - mine didn't need any more) then return to the oven for 5 minutes to brown up a bit.

We had a Rice-A-Roni box of Mexican rice to go along with the hotdish. Soooo Yummmmy! My tongue is hot and tingly from the spices (hot spices don't bother my hubby!) but that's okay . . . I'm washing it down with a cold beverage. Meanwhile, the dogs are acting like they're starving with their little whimpering, whining noises . . . especially Sugar. I'm being mean to the dogs - like the soup nazi on Seinfeld, "No hotdish for you!" Poor things . . . I know the house smells good right now.

101 Goals in 1001 Days

2011-02-05T03:15:00.000-06:00

This clock is a signal it's time to get serious about setting and achieving goals. I didn't really set any New Years Resolution type goals this year, but have had a number of things on my mind that I "ought to do" for quite a while. I have probably mentioned a few of them here on my blog at one point or another.

Recently I've come across others who have been writing down their goals and making an effort to work on them each week in order to accomplish them. This seems like a sensible idea. Since I'm one who tends to think I'll "do something" at some point in the future, or that I "ought to do" a certain thing or other at some point . . . you can see where I'm going with this. It's time to get more serious about goal setting. Write them down . . . review them on a routine basis to remind myself . . . check them off . . . get them accomplished.

In response to this whole idea I took some time tonight to lay out a few ideas via a web page here on one of my websites. This is just a preliminary list. It's is not complete since it doesn't add up to the 101 items suggested at the websites that advocate this type of organization. Check out this site or this one if you want to look more into doing something along this line for yourself. It could be just the thing to lead me (and you!) on to bigger and better things. You can do a google search also and find lots of ideas from lists made by others.

So, here's to writing down your goals and getting serious about addressing them!

Quilts for Christmas

2010-12-24T15:29:00.002-06:00

I heard from the recipients of these quilts that they were opened yesterday - to provide warmth during this wintry cold - so now I can blog about them. These are the two quilts I've been working on recently. Thankfully I was able to finish them in time for Christmas. This quilt is for one of my sons. The other one is for his wife. And just so you know, Josh . . . I did finish yours first, before I finished Sam's quilt! He saw this quilt top and made a comment once that given all the time I've had to make quilts during the time the boys were growing up, it wouldn't be fair to make one to give to Samantha before I made one for him. So, there you have it. I'm a terrible mother! (Just kidding! If you know me, and could see me, you'd see I'm laughing as I say this!) I've been sewing on quilt tops all these many years. And finally after all these many years I get some finished - after the kids have grown up and left home! How horrible I've been. And yes, I have one waiting in the wings for my other son. One that was intended to be for a high school graduation gift, but it never got finished. My goal is to get that one done before the new year. But that's another story for another day. Here's the rest of this story . . .

Here's another view of the front of Josh's quilt. I laid them across our bed to get the photo. There's not too many places in our house to lay out something this large. Josh's quilt measures approximately 81" square. I'll have to think of something else to photograph the quilts I work on. Those quilts shown in magazines seem to be so nicely and artfully displayed. Yes, I realize they are made that way by "professionals", but I should be able to do that! But I was trying to hurry to get them done and wrapped. Will have to attempt better quality photos and proper lighting when I photograph future quilts. If I keep working on my stack of quilt tops I should be a professional at it too, by the time I finish them all.

Flip it over, and here's what the reverse side looks like. I wanted them to be reversible. And these five inch charm squares were cut out already and waiting in my stash. Another of my goals with these, and future quilt projects, is to get busy using up stuff in my stash . . . so I can buy more! Just kidding really. I've got such a large collection of fabric it only makes sense to use it up. I figure with all the quilt tops I've got there in my Sewing Studio I can go through a large chunk of my stash just finishing them all up.

And another view of the back from a slightly different angle. I like the way it turned out. I look at the front and really like the color combinations of those 2 1/2" strips. Then when I flip it over, I think maybe this side is the best side. Actually, I like both sides. Depends on if you want to see more brighter colors, or the darker subtle shades of a more woodsy nature look. I guess you do see all the bright colors in nature, too. Often have the brights in the colors of flowers and even some of the colors of animals such as birds and such. Don't you just love color!?!

Here we go - all folded up and ready to wrap up in Christmas paper.

This one is Sam's quilt. One time she came over to our house and looked through some of my quilting books. She flagged the pattern of this quilt, and a few others, with sticky notes indicating the ones she liked best. When I saw her choices I selected this one as a great pattern to sew. Later on I ran into a conundrum. She was going to come over because we talked about sewing together and again she looked through the book and navigated right to the page with this quilt pattern. Problem was, about a week or two prior to this I had shown this quilt top, which I was working on, to Josh. But I told him not to say anything to Sam about having made it. At the time, I wanted to double check with him that he thought she would like the colors of the fabrics I put into it. The fabrics were based loosely on the colors Sam said she liked, and had selected for their wedding. Having asked a number of times if Sam might ever want to sew with me, and being told she doesn't really sew (she enjoys scrap booking a lot), I one day got a positive response. Sam and Josh were going to come over for a visit. She would sew with me and Josh would hang out with his dad. So we head downstairs to sew and right off Sam picks this pattern from the book again to work on that afternoon. Well . . . what to do? Tell her she cannot sew that one? Tell her I already made that one for her? Just let her go ahead and sew it and then she winds up getting two quilts the same in the end? Give the one I made to someone else? or keep it myself? Hmmm . . . what would you do? I told her to wait, just a minute, and went to get the quilt top. Come clean, that's my motto . . . just can't keep it a secret. I told her I already did that quilt for her, she could go ahead and sew one herself if she wanted, but let me show what I already did. She said she liked the quilt top I made and we worked on something else that day.

And a closer look at this quilt - and the quilting of it. This stitching is called stippling. It's fairly closely stitched loops, swirls and random jig-saw puzzle like shapes. Sam's quilt measures approximately 74"x86" in size.

Here's another view of it from the back. I was being kind of a slow poke about getting the quilts done . . . huh? what? me? no way! LOL! me slow? I had already told my friend Deb during our sewing and quilting sessions that I was planning to finish up these quilts as gifts this year. Then Josh and Sam dropped big hints, "We want our quilts for Christmas." Now, wait a minute . . . you'll ruin the surprise! Ha, ha! I don't think it was really that much a big secret in the end.

I saw a quilt in one of my recent quilt magazines that showed this pattern for a quilt. I thought it would make the perfect back for Sam's quilt. That pattern was somewhat the inspiration for the back of Josh's quilt, but I decided to use the charm squares I had on hand because the colors were right rather than cutting the 13 1/2" random width fabric strips. I liked the idea of filling up along the sides with the larger fabric yardage. It made the backs go together much more quickly.

And here's the quilt all folded up waiting to be wrapped. Sam actually saw her quilt before I got it wrapped. Yep, I was a slow-poke and still hand stitching the binding in place when she came over to pick up their packages to take home to Josh. Sorry, I had to make her wait and get the packages the next day. So they were late - long, long hours working on them - but they made it in time for Christmas.

Next up on the agenda . . . finish up Ben's quilt and get that mailed off to him. Then I have some other recipients in mind for quilts I want to get done. That's right . . . quilting is going to continue on for some time. Check back occasionally for progress updates! Ha, ha, but don't hold your breath . . . you already know I'm a slow-poke . . . a slow-poke with a plan . . . am I describing a turtle quilter? Hmmm . . . it brings forth ideas for a drawing, but then I distract myself. LOL! Focus now, focus . . . work on quilts . . . forget about drawing and other artistic distractions! Forget about all those other things in life that are fun! Quilting is fun! Ha, ha, ha!

Got Oranges?

2010-12-18T15:47:00.000-06:00

I had a craving for oranges to go along with my tea today. They were yummy! Have you had your vitamin C yet today? Have to admit I've strayed from taking daily vitamins. No reason, just have been neglecting to do that. My body must have been telling me, "Eat more fresh fruit!" We did enchiladas last night for supper. Hadn't made those for a while. Mmmmm . . . good! I ate some for lunch, too. Still have one left for a snack later tonight if I stay up to work on stuff. It's likely I will, I've been staying up late into the night working on various projects. Some of these projects need to get done within the next few days to make it in time for some body's Christmas. Not telling, but if they're reading this, I think they know already what's coming to them. The view you're seeing on my computer screen is from Lucy Knisley's site - a photo of her studio work area in her apartment. Here's a link to her on-line journal. I just love to look at photos of other people's studios and work spaces. To me it's fun to see what others place around their environment where they spend time being creative. It's also fun to see what inspires artists and creative types. That must be why I enjoy reading blogs. It's fun to glimpse a peek of their world from time to time.

I took some time for photos and to make a post about my December Daily progress. This is an image of one of my recent pages I posted about here , along with the snowflake paper punch I used on this page. I found blogger has changed the parameters for posting photos here on the blogs. It used to be you could go back after post some photos and add more later after uploading those. Now when I try to do that the program doesn't work the same way. I think I could publish the post then go back and edit it and add more photos, but am not really sure as I didn't try that. The improvement is better in some ways, but not in others. I had wanted to upload this photo showing the snowflake paper punch, but it would have meant starting again all over with the post or trying to work it as a edit after publishing. What a headache. This is like the third time I've run into this issue with the new blogger change. Kind of irritating since it looks like I have a tendency to do this same thing over again. And you may, or may not, have noticed I no longer am putting photo tags that show up when hovering over the photos. That's something they taught us we should do when I took those web design classes. Getting lazy with it I guess.

This is progress on one soon-to-be Christmas gift for someone. I will blog more about it later . . . after the 25th. It's coming along well. The thing should be done in time unless something drastic happens between now and next Tuesday. That's my final deadline to have it finished and wrapped so it can be hand delivered to the recipient.

And here is the progress of some hand work (yes, that's two four letter words - hand work!) that is showing progress. Doing this part by hand gives me an opportunity to sit back and kind of relax. The only problem I've encountered is I tend to do this later in the evening when my eyes are protesting. They seem to be telling me to let it go and do it another time - they must be tired and lose focus - or I need stronger glasses!

Well, I guess I cannot say too much more than this, or the whole surprise of the gift will be thrown out the window. So until a later date . . . Oh, and if you are a member of the 'Quilt Police' please avert your eyes. Sorry I don't pay bribes! Just asking for leniency as I already know the quilting on this is not perfect. Just look at all those jerky, un-even quilting lines. LOL! It is what it is, though . . . a gift meant to be given with all my best intentions!

Happy Festivus!

2010-12-15T00:29:00.000-06:00

I spent some time today playing with my Photoshop Elements program. I wanted to make some goofy postcards to celebrate December - and gain more experience playing with software. I'll be sending out Christmas cards tomorrow, but wanted to just surprise everyone this year with something out of the ordinary, too. This idea of making the Festivus postcards came about from hearing on the news that a man in prison (death row?) was trying to get the authorities there to feed him kosher meals. Apparently he started a lawsuit and it went to court. When the judge asked what religion he was, I assume to establish the need for 'kosher' meals, the inmate said he celebrated Festivus. It struck me as funny - in an idiotic way. This led me to do a quick look on-line to read more about it. I remembered this episode of Seinfeld, but not all the details of it. One thing leads to another and I decide it would make a goofy card to post in the mail.

Here's the back of my postcard with the explanation of what this is all about. I left just a little room at the bottom to write a few short lines of text. I'm mainly just being goofy in doing this. Hoping all the recipients won't think I've given up on Christmas . . . that is not the case at all. It just struck me as funny and I wanted to share some quirkiness this winter. After all, we all could use some extra levity in our lives in the middle of a cold winter with white, snow-covered winter wonderland out there!

The photos are of the kids. Ben on the left in the green shirt was from this summer. It was the 30th? 31st? of May - Pat and I drove to Minnesota to help Ben move from one apartment to another place. It gave us an opportunity to visit with him for a short while before we headed back home the next day. Thankfully we were able to make a stop, a very short stop, to visit my Grandma C. in Minnesota on the way back. We were in a hurry to get back home because of our three dogs. There ended up being a snafu with the arrangements we made for someone to come into our house to feed and care for the dogs. They were having none of it and barked and were ferocious with our dog-sitter. Aaahhh, the interesting times one experiences with pet ownership.

Josh and his wife, Samantha, are in the winter coats to the right of Ben. This was a photo taken just a few weeks ago here in December. And I think most people know the other 'characters' in the photo. I pulled it from a publicity shot posted on the internet. The background history of the Festivus holiday was taken from Wikipedia. If you want, you can read more about this Seinfeld episode and the origin of the Festivus holiday. You can click onto each of the images to see them larger.

I had picked up the book 'Good Mail Day' some time ago. I have always enjoyed receiving mail, and this book advocates making and mailing mail art on a regular basis. At the time I got the book I thought, "What fun!" and fully intended to jump in and get started right away with making/mailing more mail art. I've been slow, just signing up with a few postcard swaps via some groups on-line. But this activity is something I think would be fun to do more of. Does that saying, "If you build it they will come" translate to "If you make & mail our mail art some will come back to in return"??? Maybe . . . Okay, these postcards are going out into the mail tomorrow, then it will be Christmas cards and a few packages I still need to get sent out of here. Hope every one of you are enjoying your holiday activities.

Snow Games and Warming Up with Hot Tea

2010-12-08T23:45:00.002-06:00

I went outside yesterday to take some photos of the new layer of snow we received. The day before, on Monday, I wanted to go out and get photos of the lovely frost on the trees. I missed my chance because the sun melted off the frost before I went outdoors. Thankfully we got the same fluffy frost the next day, on Tuesday. I hopped on the opportunity to get outside and snap some digital photos. This shot looks kind of misty and foggy. It wasn't really like that. It's an illusion caused by the moisture built up in the camera before it equalized to the outdoor level. Ooooooh, it's eerie . . . ghosts in the garden.

I like the way the dogs, and maybe the rabbit, have created trails around my raised garden beds. It made me smile. When I look at it the thought that comes to mind is a snow game we used to play as kids. We called it Fox and Geese. The way you play is to run through the snow to trample down a circular path. Then trample down the snow across the center of the circle in the shape of a big cross. The whole thing kind of looks like a wheel with four spokes. One person is the fox who has to chase, and tag, the others who are the geese. All players must stay in the trampled down paths or you're out of bounds. When a player is tagged, that player becomes the fox. It was a fun game for playing outdoors on a snowy winter day. Hehehe . . . looks like the dogs enjoy playing it, too!

Here's a view of the garden swing and our stacked patio chair frames. We tucked them up under the lilacs to get them out of the way, and to offer some protections under the limbs of those bushes. I see there is a trail leading under the chairs. I believe those are the tracks from our neighborhood rabbit. It seems to have its preferred paths to make the rounds of our yard and other areas of the neighborhood. By the way, it finished off the remainder of the parsley and other garden vegetation a couple weeks ago. I'm not sure what it finds to eat through the winter, but likely gnaws on bushes and other underbrush. I'd throw some kitchen scraps outside for it (ends of carrots and apples), but I really don't want to encourage it or make it more able to breed and produce more rabbits in the spring. It took out too many of the garden plants that I would have preferred keeping for us.

Ginger was excited to go outdoors with me. Here you see she's checking out where I've been with the car. I'm sure there are lots of areas to sniff out front. We don't usually let her wander there. She's got all the free reign she wants in the back where it is fenced. She was funny . . . got to the sidewalk edge and plunged her snout into a deep snowbank surrounding the trees on the boulevard. She walked around with snow on her face, then when we came inside, had melted snow - turned to water droplets - on her face. She makes me laugh. Apparently it doesn't faze her in the least! She would rather spend time outdoors, regardless of the cold, so she can go around exploring and tracking down all those intriguing scents.

And yes, the car is plugged in. For those of you who might be reading here, but do not live in a cold, northern climate . . . we have to plug in our vehicles in the winter-time. No it's nothing to do with electric cars, it's to power the block heater so on those really cold days your car will start. We certainly don't want our engine blocks frozen up or cracking on us. At the time I got my car they weren't selling the car starters with them. By the time I ever considered I might want a car starter I figured I was already going out in the icy cold to start my car and let it idle enough to warm the engine for driving. Now all these many years later I still don't have one. I figure it's an older car now, so what's the point of putting an engine starter in now. I'm used to going out there 4-5 minutes prior to taking off in it to let it warm up. Next car though will definitely have one on it as long as we're staying here in North Dakota. My friend even has seat warmers in her vehicle, and they keep theirs in a garage, not out in the open like we do. Now that's luxury!

I love the look of all this frost on the trees. This is a close-up of the lilac bush. It was so beautiful the way the sunlight came streaming through the branches. It's too bad photos don't reveal the true, awesome 3-D beauty of seeing it in person. It was a sparkly, glittery wonderland!

Another view of the swing through the lilac branches. So peaceful . . .

When I came back inside I couldn't see a thing. I experienced immediate fogging of my glasses.

Here's some of my stash of cold weather drink choices. I have them handy - sitting on top of the microwave. They'll likely go back into the cupboard soon. I filled my pottery containers with a bunch of tea flavors. See them peeking out from behind the boxes? One says tea, the other says coffee. I like to keep them stocked during winter weather.

This is one of my favorite activities when it is cold outside, and sometimes chilly in the house. Yum! I love a nice warm cup of tea. Lately I've been warming up with those fruit flavored teas. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy iced teas, but sometimes a warm cup hits the spot better. And actually, right now I have a cup of each on my desk as I'm blogging. A touch of the iced when those 'personal summers' present themselves, and a cup of the warm version when I feel a chill. Warm makes me sleepy, so can only do so much of that. After all, I've got to stay awake so I can get some stuff done.

Playing with Photoshop and Other Gadgets

2010-12-01T23:38:00.000-06:00

I played with photoshop earlier this week, and again tonight, to make up some badges advertising my new blogs. Here's a pic of the link to my scrapbooking blog. Pretty exciting to start working on some pages for my mini Christmas album. If you're interested in scrapbooking, and want to see how I am progressing with this hobby, click on the badge in the sidebar and go take a peek.

Just now, looking at this one from a fresh perspective . . . I'm thinking I ought to increase the size of the text here. This one may be photoshopped some more in the near future. That lettering is looking kind of puny to me.

This is my new badge for my doodling and drawing blog. I wanted to get more into hobbies that I can partake in while watching tv with my hubby. The act of drawing is something I can do that doesn't involve a noisy sewing machine, a noisy cricket or other gadgets. There's a time for gadgets . . . after all, I'm a "gadget girl" . . . but there are also times for doing things by hand - the old fashioned way. I love finding out about new gadgets that make hobbies (and life) easier. But when it comes to just relaxing and watching tv in the evenings with my hubby, I want to keep in mine that "relax" is the principle word. Sometimes that means doing things by hand one stitch, or one pen mark, at a time.

It has been a little while since I did some playing around with my Photoshop program. It gets easier the more I do it. Actions necessary to get the program to do the things I want it to do are easier to pull from my memory banks when I keep at it. This photoshop program is the "baby" one - Photoshop Elements 6 - not the full-fledged program. It would be fun to have the big master program, but for the present time I am doing just fine with this one. Some day when I've got lots of money burning a hole in my pocket I might think about upgrading. For now this works for my needs. They do have an updated version of this Elements program.
But even getting that update can wait for another day. I think I spend so much of my time doing so many different things it doesn't make sense to spend money getting an upgrade when I wouldn't use the program on a routine basis. When the time comes that I do more digital scrapbooking, digital drawing or altering digital photography more I'll give it further consideration. Splitting my time right now between so many different things keeps me moving between many machines and software programs. Currently my time is spent between sewing, quilting, machine embroidery, computing, building websites, and now scrapbooking and drawing. See what I mean about liking gadgets? I have gadgets, machines and programs for all these activities. I just love to learn new things . . . and learn to use new gadgets.

Scrapbooking my Holiday

2010-11-30T00:11:00.000-06:00

This year I am doing something different. I have decided to jump into scrap booking by making a mini book of our Christmas holiday season. I came across Ali Edwards' blog and info on December Daily 2010. It seemed to perfect opportunity to just get in there and start scrapping. In honor of this mini book concept, and the hope to make scrapping a more daily/weekly event in my future, I also started a new blog devoted to my new scrap booking activities. Perhaps you might like to follow my efforts at chronicling our lives and our memories over there. The new blog is called Doreen Scrapbooks, Too! My plan is to do all my blogging about scrap booking over there, so if you want to watch my progress and see where this takes me, then go ahead and bookmark that page. As I keep active with other artsy type projects, you'll find the artsy stuff here . . . and the artsy sewing stuff. You didn't think I was planning on giving up sewing, now, did you?

Hallelujah! King of Kings, Lord of Lords, For Ever & Ever!!!

2010-11-23T23:57:00.001-06:00

One of the best videos I've seen in awhile! If I had been there that day I would have stood up and joined in on the singing - have to give it a standing ovation, too! It was excellent enough on it's first public appearance before King George the II - that he stood to his feet with a standing ovation - it's even better now - sung all across the world via the internet.

In case you are not aware of the story of Handel's "Messiah" I am including a link with some history of this extraordinary song and the setting in which it occurred.

Check these links out for more info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah_(Handel)

Here the words are written so you can sing/follow along: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdRyNea19PE&feature=related

Here a very clear, crisp rendition with wonderful orchestra and vibrant chorus: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76RrdwElnTU&feature=related

A resounding version featuring several 16th-note (semiquaver) melismas referred to in the Wikipedia article: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__gnmuzq6HI&feature=related

Hope you enjoy the music . . . I know it's Thanksgiving in a couple days . . . just getting a jump on getting into the holiday festivities now for the next month!

"You will have a song, as in the night when a holy feast is kept; and gladness of heart, as when one goes with a flute to come to Yahweh's mountain, to Israel's Rock."
http://bible.cc/isaiah/30-29.htm

Snow Day!

2010-11-22T13:41:00.000-06:00

I came across this video while visiting some of my favorite bloggers. And due to the fact that we are getting more snow today . . . and the cuteness factor of this little girl . . . I am declaring this to be a SNOW DAY! We're supposed to get 10 inches by Thanksgiving Day here in North Dakota.

You can see more from LoobyLu found in the sidebar to the right, or just click here. Her daughter, Emma, did a fine job with the musical stylings of the song. Such a cutie when she musters up all her courage to sing in front of this audience - then lets go with one of her radiant smiles. Love the high five at the end!

Cold Tracks and Dry Leaves

2010-11-21T22:21:00.000-06:00

The plant at the top of this image is my bay tree. I purchased the bay tree at our local garden center. The tag attached to it indicated this plant was not a good choice for our growing region. I have misplaced the original tag, but an on-line source says these plants are for zone 8-10 . . . we are zone 4. Big difference, huh? Makes one wonder why they were selling it here. I left it in its original clay pot - just sunk the pot and all at ground level outside in my raised bed garden area by the patio. I planned on bringing it indoors for the winter. I have hopes it will survive in the house till it is nice enough to move back outdoors early next summer. The leaves have really dried up. I gave it a good watering when I brought it in. And have watered it a couple times again. I am wondering if I should switch out the clay pot for something else, something that is not quite so porous. It seems to continue to be drying up. Then it occurred to me this plant may lose its leaves in the winter like most other trees. Might have to do a bit of research to find out more info. Actually about half the branches and leaves have greened up nicely and become supple again. If the rest of it doesn't respond better in a few days I may give it a little trim job.

The plant at the bottom is my Christmas cactus. This lovely plant was a gift from my daughter-in-law. It came to me filled with blossoms in bloom. Over the past year it has done well. I look forward to it blooming again. Don't know if I am supposed to do anything special with it to make it bloom again, though. Will wait and see what it does.

I looked out the kitchen window into the backyard this morning to see these animal tracks. Those going back on the left side are from our dogs. Those in the raised bed planter are from our backyard rabbit. It seems to enjoy nibbling the last of the frozen parsley. That's pretty much all that's left of any green plants out there.

Funny, you don't notice the screen so much when you're looking out through the window in person. It's really rather distracting in the photo - darkens the whole view.

After checking out the backyard animal trails, I thought I'd take a look at the front yard. That rabbit (or it's relative?) sure gets around pretty well. Here's the view of animal tracks in the front of the house. I don't think there's anything edible for it out front . . . just passing through.

Looks like we only got a couple inches. Not so bad. I heard a guesstimate of 6-8 inches the day before. Not a problem to get less! It turned out to be pretty cold out there, though.

Postcards Ready to Pop in the Mail

2010-11-14T00:01:00.000-06:00

Yay! They're finally done! Here is a peek at all five postcards together. They will be dropped off at the post office in the morning . . . it's too late for them to be processed tonight. So glad to be finished. Hope all the recipients like the one they end up getting.

I wanted each one of these images to have its own distinct appearance. They do, yet I can see similarities in them as well. Doing this project has brought me back to painting again. It has been a lot of fun to try this activity again. Many, many years have passed since I last worked at painting. I can see I need to practice more . . . and I need to pick up a few more colors of paint as well. I could have used a few other colors to create these faces. It would have helped with some of the color mixes and the shading. But considering the number of colors I currently have on hand, I don't think I did too badly.

After standing back and looking over all of these I have to say I'm okay with them. I was a bit bent out of shape by one of yesterday's images, but have settled down since then. I really need to paint alot more to get better at faces, and work from some photos to help with the shadows and reflected light. These are more cartoonish than portrait like even though I tried to get some shading in so they wouldn't look flat. I want to keep working at it so I can get back to a more realistic portrait style like I used to do. I'll have to dig out those canvases I tucked back away in the closet.

Here's a look at the final postcard. I won't say which one I like the most, but I do have a favorite. Like I posted yesterday, they will mixed them up and I will randomly pick which card is sent to each of the swap participants.

Another thing I realized doing this is how much I've missed doing arty stuff just for fun, and as a challenge. I flipped back through some things I did earlier this year with Terri Stegmiller's Creative Cue. I only did two of those. Been thinking I should jump back into that and do some more of those, especially since the year will be coming to a close before we know it. I'll have to get over there and check it out, see what her current word is. Anyway, hope you've enjoyed watching my progress on this project. More arty stuff to come in the future.

Postcard Progress Update

2010-11-12T19:20:00.001-06:00

I have been busy painting more on these fabric postcards. I finished this one the other day. I think it turned out pretty well. Not quite what I envisioned, but I am happy with it. I wanted to incorporate alot of color in the piece and feel I achieved that.

After finishing this one I completed the reverse side of the postcards. The back sides will be the same for all five of the cards. It is created on my computer and printed out on heavy weight cardstock. I incorporated a photo of the pawn - cropped to show just the gamepiece - as a feature on the backside. Once I get all the painting completed I will take them downstairs to my sewing studio and stitch the fronts to the backs.

I decided I will write the addresses on the backsides then turn them all upside-down and shuffle them. Then blindly pick a front and back to stitch together and each participant will randomly get one of the paintings. I figure it is too much trouble to pick and chose who would get which specific painted image. So far there are some things I like and don't like about each one. Random selection seems the best way to go. There were only four of us in this round of postcard swaps. I planned to keep one of these for myself, so that means I will have one extra. I've been considering to whom I will send it. Hmmm . . .

Here's the second one that I was working on last night before I went to bed. Honestly, I expected to be done with these a lot more quickly. I really am a slow-poke. Thinking I was putzing too much on them, I decided to move on to work more on the other three. I'm not sure if I will call this one done yet. It can pass for done. But once I stepped back from it and studied it with a more critical eye, I see several things I would like to change. Time will tell if I decide to paint over part of it and rework it. Since I'm already past the deadline on getting these mailed, I likely will let it go and just call it done. I'm not sure how I feel about releasing something, which I am not entirely pleased with, out into the universe. What do you think? How do those of you involved in the creative process handle something like that? Have you worked it out somehow where you've reached a comfort level that says it is okay to give someone something you might not be entirely pleased with? Just curious.

I goofed! I am currently taking a break waiting for my postcards to dry - and get started with making supper. In the process of working on these cards today I grabbed a black ink pen to draw in some details. I didn't realize it till I started painting again that the pen I grabbed was not a permanent ink pen. Here I was painting away, floating in some additional color, and noticed my black ink from the pen was streaking and smearing. Yuck! I touched up what I could before it could dry, then went in search of my spray fixative.

My hubby came walking in here not too long ago telling me, "I'm getting high over here!" Me, too! I took the cards outdoors to spray them. However it was too cold out there to stay out for long, so I brought them back in while still damp. That's some stinky spray! And my asthma started kicking in gear with a reaction tightening up my bronchials. Thankfully most of it has either dried of evaporated now - it's much better in here now. Thank God for modern medicine and pharmacy products that help with asthma! Aahhh . . . I could make a comment about 'suffering for my art' but won't go there - just kidding! And let's not have anyone calling the EPA with anonymous tips on me creating a hazardous work environment! :)

Here's a closer look at those on the left.

Here's to hoping my next blog post will have me reporting these postcards have been dropped into the mailbox!

And here is a closer look at those on the right side. Still a ways to go before I can call them finished.

Okay, so there they are . . . still not ready to mail out, and the day is really getting away from me. I'm currently eating supper (chicken, chicken and brocolli Rice-a-Roni, and sweet corn) Yummy!!! I will be back to painting in just a few moments.

Look What Is On My Drawing Table

2010-11-11T00:58:00.000-06:00

Here is a peek at what is currently on my drawing table. I am working on another postcard swap. I should have put these in the mail by the 9th - I'm late. But I anticipate finishing them up tomorrow. They need a bit more detail work and have their back side stitched in place before I give them up. There is no mail delivery because of Veteran's Day tomorrow, so they will just be sitting in a bin at the post office when I do finish them and post them. "Sorry" to my recipients, if you're reading this. So sorry I am late with them. Soon, very soon your postcard will be in your hands! I hope you like this version that I came up with.

The assignment for this postcard swap was under the theme: Game Day. I kept thinking about pawns --as in the game of chess-- ever since the election and the previous months of politicking, speeches, advertising and news coverage that has been going on here in the US. It seems to me that we, the people of this country, get short shrift from leaders who make poor decisions and choices on our behalf. I was thinking about the similarity to chess where your pawns are expendable in favor of those game tokens with higher rank - anyway, that is what has been on my mind. Originally, I thought of doing something with domino images since we like to play Chicken Dominoes, but this image of the chess pawn kept coming to the fore front of my mind the most.

The way I made the postcards was to stitch together scraps of fabric and over stitch them with extra decorative stitching on my sewing machine first. I had in mind that there would be an underlying stitched pattern beneath the painted image. This was intended to reinforce the idea that there's more, at a deeper level, than meets the eye . . . more going on behind the scenes that affects us 'pawns' - the common everyday people of America.

After the background stitching I started the under painting with acrylics. First a base of paint across the whole background to cover over the stitching while not entirely obscuring it. Then I sketched in some of the basic image, blocking in the main components with pencil. Then I moved on to using some permanent markers, which showed up better and were not prone to smearing like the lead from the pencil, to lay in the basic features of the face. Next came the painting to create the faces and expressions. They still need detail, and also some shading on the pawns to give them dimension, highlights and shadows. I've been working on these a bit, off and on, but have been sidetracked with other stuff lately. That's why they're not finished yet and off my desk.

We got snow today. It wasn't a whole lot for us. The storm that came through North Dakota was more west and north of us. Yay! We got bypassed for the most part. And I heard it was supposed to warm up a bit tomorrow again, so the snow that fell today will melt by tomorrow. This is the second snowfall so far this fall. This photo is a view out the back door at our patio.

We covered the boat for the winter season and put all the patio chairs and table, the cushions, flower pots and various other garden things away in the sheds for storage.It looks so much larger and open now that it is empty. But it will make life easier for my hubby when he goes out there to snow-blow when the big snows hit this winter. We have to keep moving the snow back from the house so the dogs can get out there to do their business. Ginger, our bigger hunting dog, is more adventurous about going further out in the yard and exploring when the heavy snow is on the ground. But the chihuahuas will only go as far as the bottom of the stairs if the way is not cleared of snow for them. Plus, it melts so much nicer away from the house and the water run-off in the spring isn't such a mess when the snow is blown further back.

Notice my big planter box? My hubby built this raised bed planter for me this past spring for herbs, tomatoes, onions and the like. You can see a bit of some of the herbs still there. It looks like our backyard neighborhood rabbit was sitting there nibbling on parsley the other day.

I cut some of the herbs and hung them to dry on my laundry drying rack. I believe they are sufficiently dried now so that I can put them in zip-lock baggies and crush them. I need to go out shopping to get more zippy bags. We used the last of them the other day sending sandwiches with hubby for lunch and snack breaks at work. It won't hurt the herbs to hang there another day or two while I finish up painting my postcards tomorrow. After all, I've been side-tracked enough . . . first things first tomorrow is to get those postcards done.

This large pot of soup is one of those things that side-tracked me today. I've been meaning to make up another pot of this Potato Chowder. I ran around and got all my errands accomplished this morning, and when I saw the snow start falling after lunch I decided supper today would be soup. And it sure was tasty! There is plenty left for lunch tomorrow . . . so that means I can paint and not get involved with cooking anything till tomorrow night. I'm looking forward to another great day with art in the morning!

Peek a Boo! See, I'm Back!

2010-10-22T22:32:00.000-05:00

Hello again. I'm finally getting back to posting here at my blog. {Smile} Sorry to leave you hanging, but I've been doing all kinds of things, and enjoying the wonderful fall weather we are experiencing this year. My hubby and I have been getting in some boating and fishing. Had to do it a few times - get out and enjoy the balmy fall season. It was so peaceful out at Governor's Bay on Lake Sakakawea.

Here we are about to back the boat down the ramp into the water. It was peaceful, smooth water most of the day. Just a slight breeze. The water was higher than it had been last year and also earlier this year when we were out here. You can see the tops of the trees a little ways off to the left of the dock. Those were all well above the waterline last year. There is a buoy set out near these trees that we had to maneuver around last year to get out more onto the open, deeper water of lake.

It was fun to be serenaded by these wild Canadian geese that flew in and gently glided down to the water. We slowly took the boat to circle around near them so I could try for some better close-up photos. They kept a close watch on us, but we were never that close to disturb them. So they settled down for a mid afternoon snooze and a rest while we continued fishing.

We got several bites on our lines, and caught some fish each day we were out on the lake. But we decided to throw them back. We were hoping for some Salmon or Walleye, but ended up catching Northerns and Perch. No matter . . . it was mainly just an escape to the outdoors anyway. Our main goal was to get out and enjoy the days we spent out on the lake before the cold and the snow set in. Looks like that might happen here in the next week.

Spending several weekends out at the lake was a wonderful way to finish out the summer and fall seasons. Now that it is dipping at or near freezing temperatures, we have started tucking aways the patio furniture, various flower pots, pulling up dried foliage and other things to prepare the yard for winter. The first batch of leaves has been bagged. Fall is in full swing.

On Broadway - Cats Postcards Mailed

2010-09-22T21:39:00.000-05:00

I mailed off my Cats Postcards a few days ago, but am just now getting my blog updated with info. These are more photos showing my progress through the production of this mail art. I made a total of five cards. Originally there were going to be six, but one of the participants dropped out because of an injury. I thought I'd go ahead with all of them, but as you'll see in a photo further down, I goofed up on one of them. I decided to toss the messed up postcard. I planned to mail one to myself, so it worked out alright doing five cards.

This first photo shows the embroidery process of the Cats logo name. I downloaded a photo of the image from the internet and ran it through my embroidery digitizing computer software program. It is an easy digitizing job since the lettering was so simple. I just followed the image - easy, peasy digitizing. They didn't take very long at all to embroider out on my Pfaff Creative Vision.

This next photo shows my goof! I embroidered one of the cards with the logo upside down! I decided to toss this one. It was the very first one I stitched out, too. Obviously I wasn't paying attention. Good thing I caught it when I pulled it out of the hoop or I might have messed up more of them. I paid more attention after that. :)

Here you see a bottle of the glue I used to adhere the fabric pieces. I like to use Roxanne's Glue Baste It since the tip on this bottle of simple white glue places a fine, thin bead of glue directly where you want it. I can use just a tiny bit and not end up getting it all over everything. It's neater than regular plain old Elmer's white glue. I suppose I could refill my bottle with Elmer's glue when it gets low. So far, I've had this bottle for awhile as you can see from the crinkled label. I find it a bit irritating to have to always use a long, quilter's pin to clear the thin hollow tube applicator between uses. But that's a small matter considering it works so well - aside from that slightly irritating feature. I got this glue at my local quilt shop. They sell it for quilters who like to do hand applique without pins to hold down the small fabric pieces. It's so much nicer not having pins all over the place. And it is quicker and less expensive than fusible web that is ironed in place. It doesn't make your piece stiff like the fusibles. Plus it washes out if it were used on an item that is washable. Obviously that is not the case here for the postcards. Just a fine bead of glue does not show up from the front side, either.

Here is a close-up of one of the faces. I trimmed around the face and positioned it in place over the outline of the fur head. I purposely made the necks a bit long since I knew I would end up trimming them off on the final cards. Fit looks good. Time to glue it in place.

This next photo shows the neck piece trimmed off at the bottom edge of the card. I am glueing the face into place. It doesn't take much time at all to dry when you are using only a thin bead of glue. Glue, press in place, move on to the next one . . . by the time I'm done with the fifth one, the first one is dry enough to start stitching.

I used a variegated ocher/tan piece of fabric to lay in some color to the cat's fur around the face. Using fabric was a quick way to add additional color to the piece. Originally I thought I would do all the additional color with a thread painting technique, but figured it would go faster filling in blocks of color with fabric snippets. After all . . . I was already late getting my cards sent off. Trying to make it go a bit faster cut down a few extra hours of sewing.

I set my Pfaff 7570 up with the darning foot, dropped the feed dogs, and did some thread painting to add details to the fur around the face area. Thread painting is just a free-motion technique to create an image and add color by sewing details with different colors of thread. It is basically simple stitching here to simulate fur around the face. As the artist, I just move the fabric around to sketch the picture in thread. I had a movie set up in the DVD and listened to background 'action' on tv while I sewed. I 'watched' several shows on DVD while creating these cards. It's a good way to pass the time.

After doing some simple thread painting with the tan color thread that coincided with the fabric snippets, I decided I ought to stitch around the outsides before I ended up fraying my edges. Here I set up the machine for a simple zig-zag stitch to cover the perimeter around the edges. This goes quickly, but I went around each card twice.

Previous work on fabric postcards has taught me that it is easier to stitch around the perimeter twice with a stitch that isn't set too tight. I used to try to go around them just once with a denser stitch and always had trouble with the way the cards were feeding through the machine. They tended to bunch up, skip stitches or snag at the corners where they wouldn't feed through at all. Lots of trouble! Now I just set the stitch length slightly looser than a dense, satin stitch and sew the card twice. Itt looks more dense and is easier to sew without problems with those nasty feeding issues.

After stitching around the perimeters, I went back and did more thread painting in a darker brown thread. I was going to add some black into the fur to match more to the original photos I was refering to as reference from the broadway play. I could hear my needle 'thudding' through some of the denser areas of stitching so decided against that. Sometimes when the stitching gets too dense it can get harder to sew. I didn't want to overdo it. It looked like it had the proper amount of stitching to suit me. So I called it done!

I like to make up the back side of my fabric postcards on my computer and print them out on index card (110# weight) cardstock. This allows me to add detail about the project, the date and some info and provides a nice, stiff heavier weight paper base.

I use an old graphics program I've had on my computer for a long time for this step. I actually used the program years ago when I had an older computer. When I got my current Vista computer several years ago I figured this old program wouldn't run properly. Thankfully it did, so I didn't need to invest in yet another computer program. I like it when things like that happen. The graphics program I use is called Art Explosion Publisher Pro. It takes awhile to learn to use some of these graphics programs. I know enough of this one to get by, and I'm glad to still be able to make use of it. I really should use it more often and learn it a bit more thoroughly. I have to work to keep refreshing myself on it when I am away from doing graphis work for awhile. Computer programs seem to take lots more time to learn than they do to forget!! LOL!!

So . . . that's my mini lesson on how I make my fabric postcards. Now, I'm looking forward to the next time around. This group of artists will soon be coming up with another theme for the next Postcard Swap. Go check it out at Three Creative Studios if you want to join in the next swap!

Clever Photos with Baby

2010-09-19T22:13:00.000-05:00

I'm about to head off to bed right now . . . quite a bit earlier than my usual bedtime, but I'm sleepy tonight. Ready to call it a night. I was on-line checking on featured blogs and ran across this one. I thought this photographer did such a wonderful job coming up with her clever baby shots that I wanted to share. You'll appreciate taking a peak over at: http://milasdaydreams.blogspot.com/. She makes up all sorts of little vinettes and poses her baby in as part of the scene. So cute . . . so clever . . . must take lots of patience and planning. This one is titled "Bookworm". Go take a peak at her work!

Cats On Broadway

2010-09-17T00:52:00.000-05:00

This is an image showing something I have been working on for awhile. It's been kind of hit-and-miss since I got sick and wasn't feeling well recently. I'm late in getting these finished and sent off in the mail.

I like to do research before I begin a project to prepare myself. I spent some time on-line when I originally decided on my subject. I went to various websites trying to find good, up-close images of the actors who played the parts of all the cats. I have not seen the show, and don't really know all the details of the storyline. But I enjoyed watching the news and interviews of the participants when this production first made all the talk-show circuits. Years ago I remember thinking the costumes were so inventive and interesting.

Here's an overview of the progress on my cards. Still more work to do before I can drop them in the mail. I stitched the pink and black background fabric together with decorative stitches. They were corner scraps left from another project. I made hand-drawn faces on fabric using colored pencil. The fabric was ironed to a piece of freezer paper to hold it steady as I drew. I enjoyed this process as drawing and doodling is a fun pastime for me. I had to stop periodically to re-heat the fabric . . . both to heat set the color a bit and to re-adhere the fabric as it came loose from the freezer paper during the drawing process. The faces are then spritzed with a fixative to maintain the color better, then will be cut out and stitched to the postcard. I like to use Roxanne's Glue Baste-It to hold little fabric pieces in place prior to doing the stitching.

And here is a shot showing a closer view of the detail. (If you want to click onto any of these photos you will see a larger image, then click your back arrow to return back to this blog). Once I get all the faces applied to the postcards, I will do some stitching called 'thread painting' on my sewing machine. This is a creative way to add detail and texture. It is done by dropping the feed-dogs and free-motion stitching to create the sewn details. This will be mainly using black thread, and a bit of a couple other colored threads for accents.

I have already digitized the 'Cats' logo using my computer digitizing program. The design is on the Pfaff memory stick already (see previous photo, top left). It should go quickly to embroider the logo in place in the corner of the postcards. Then it's just a matter of stitching the back side of the postcard in place, addressing, write a message, apply postage and drop them in the mailbox. Yep . . . a bit more work to do in order to get these postcards sent on their way. (Please bear with me, fellow postal artists! I apologize for being late with mine . . . soon, very soon!)

I've already received my postcards from the other four participants. Aren't they nice? It is so interesting to see what everyone comes up with. There are so many possibilities on a theme like this. Two artists selected the Phantom of the Opera as their subject (top left, bottom right), and they are each so different. I like to get mail - Art in the Mail is such a fun thing to receive. At the far left you will see a lovely card that protected the postcard at the lower left as it traveled here from Australia. This artist said the gold star represents that muscicals meant 'being a star' to her. Such pretty, colorful flowers shown on the card . . . so unlike anything found here in North Dakota, and a lovely postcard. And the marquee showing 'my name in lights' at the top right was totally unexpected. The postcards are each so nicely done. One thing about postcards made with fabric - they are fun and interesting for the texture inherent in the piece. I love that these postcards are stitched together. All so interesting and unique.

So . . . first thing tomorrow, when I get up, my goal will be to hurry and get mine finished so I can move them on out of here and get them on their way to their destinations.

Life Giving Water

2010-09-02T01:36:00.000-05:00

I saw this extraordinary video via a friend on facebook. I wanted to share it here for all my friends. Please take time to watch. It is such a good one, with some profound information. You'll be glad you did.

Water - The Great Mystery from Ritchy Niburu on Vimeo.

A New Improv Challenge

2010-08-22T00:31:00.000-05:00

Want to join in on this? Something new for me (and you?) to get involved in.

I see over at TallGrass Prairie Studio there is a new 'Quilt Movement" taking place. I say 'Quilt Movement' in jest. It is actually a new challenge to get ME & YOU moving more. An encouragement to get a bit more exercise and do something about the 'quilter's butt' she talks about.

All the info is there, just click the image to find out the details. Each mile you walk means another piece of fabric to add to your improv quilt project. Get a bit of movement, sew an improvisational quilt, what could be better? Inprov(e) Your Butt! Go check it out . . . you might want to join in also.

Life in a Garden - Bug Experts

2010-08-09T14:28:00.002-05:00

Life in a Garden is filled with lots of flowering plants. This potted arrangement sits on our patio. I took the photo a couple days ago. These plants are probably feeling the excessive heat today. It is definitely a hot one out there. I know I need to get out the garden hose and give all our plants a drink this afternoon.

I am working on my changes to my Sewing Studio today, picking up where I left off yesterday. Today involves moving some hefty stuff around. I didn't eat my Wheaties this morning, but had half of a tasty sub sandwich at lunch. That should power me up enough for some heavy lifting. So I'm about to go to it, but just wanted to link a post to some bug experts and let you know I found out some info on the insects I have shown in recent posts.

I came across the site, What's That Bug, this weekend and submitted a few photos of insects from the garden. If you are fascinated by these small (and some not so small) creatures you may enjoy visiting their website or facebook page.

It turns out this bug that I photographed catching and eating a bumble bee is called a Robber Fly.

And last year I posted this photo of a dragonfly that was resting on the tiki tourches in the garden. This turns out to be a Mosaic Darner. Who knew? Not me, but the bug experts over there at http://www.whatsthatbug.com/ knew. Have fun browsing through their bug pictures and info . . . if you can stand it . . . and don't get squeamish.

It is amazing that some bugs can look so intersting and colorful while others just look downright fierce. So glad I'm not a small bug. It looks terribly frightening seeing the faces and mandibles of some of these creatures enhanced and larger than life through the wonderful digital cameras available to us today.

Just think, it wasn't that many years ago that we had to use magnifying glasses and microscopes to see the things we can so easily see now via our digital cameras and a computer. It's fascinating to see the little micro-worlds all around us looking through all this great technology.

New Work & Arrangements

2010-08-09T04:09:00.000-05:00

I have started working on some new artwork. Here's a glimpse. I decided to start taking pictures to show the progress as I go. But I don't want to reveal the whole thing just yet. For one thing it's no where near ready to start showing it off. Plus, I have a deadline of September 13th on this project. I'll show tidbits as I go, but you'll have to wait till mid September to see a fuller image. I'll keep you posted on it.

I saw a link to a wonderful singer, Joan Osborne, via a facebook friend's link. I spent a bit of time listening to some of her other musical stylings. Until the other day I had not heard of her, nor listened to her music. She's a very powerful singer. I love the rendition of "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted" in this u-tube video. Talk about a powerful voice and a great musical arrangement with all those musicians and backup singers! I like her style, so am including a link here so you can listen to it for yourself. Enjoy!

Yep, I'm up late tonight. Was busy re-organizing the Sewing Studio. Photos of the re-arrangement to come at a later date. Ready to head off to bed for now.

A Bee Fight and a Bee Killer

2010-08-06T22:24:00.000-05:00

I went out to take a look at the garden yesterday. Still lots of bees doing their thing out there. I went back indoors to grab my camera and took these shots. Here, in this first photo of my cone flowers, a bee was busy working away on one of these flowers. Then along came a different kind of bee that started working on the same flower.

The first bee didn't like being ousted. It started assaulting the larger bee, dive bombing it repeatedly. The larger bee wasn't budging, though. It kept right on working away on the flower. Can you see both bees here?

I edited the photo to highlight both bees. If the one on the right didn't insist on hovering in place, and repeating the same dive-bombing flight pattern I wouldn't have been able to get this shot. Pretty good photo, huh? Catching a bee in flight with just a simple, basic camera. No special lenses or settings on these shots. And yes, apparently I am easily entertained - as evidenced by all the bee watching I've been doing lately.

I wanted to start pulling weeds in this area of the backyard, and remove the bulk of the overgrown basil the other day. But I didn't dare. One of the larger type of bees kept coming close to investigate me while I was snapping photos. I didn't dare get them all riled up. I would go out there later after sunset when the bees are gone, but the mosquitos have been fierce when it gets late into the evening. Not a problem, there are still plenty of weeds elsewhere in the yard to clear out. I'll wait with the basil area until later. I need a plan to get this part of the garden cleaned up. Maybe what I need is a bee suit? a smoker unit to calm the bees?

I noticed an unusual looking insect while I was out there. I first saw this one the day before. It was still hanging around today when I had my camera. I managed to get a few good shots of it. At first glance I wondered if it was some type of dragonfly. We get quite a few dragonflies in our garden. It went about landing on the flower heads similar to the way the bees were behaving. I thought it must feed off the flowers.

But no, next thing I knew, it grabbed a bee and started eating it. I got off a few shots with the camera. It moved on to another flowerhead, taking it's bee meal along with it. I followed it, trying to get more photos of it - such an odd, curious-looking insect. It didn't seem to like that I continued following it around, snapping photos. It eventually flew off, with it's bee meal, to evade me by hiding in a crevice.

In this close-up shot of the 'bee killer' I got a side shot. It tried to hide behind this grape leaf. As I kept shooting with the camera it continued to slip further and further behind the leaf till all I could see at one point was its feet holding on. By the way, the dark wing you see poking up belongs to the bee hidden behind the leaf.

I left all these images of the insects in larger .jpg formats. Therefore, if you really want to see a 'close-up' photo, click onto each image and you will see the image even larger.

I have one red Roma tomato right now. It is the only tomato in the garden that is red. I am leaving it in place just a little while longer. Perhaps I'll pick it in a few days. I enjoyed a tomato in my salad today - store bought. It was good, but fresh home-grown ones are always so yummy. I look forward to having some great meals.

The Tomato Jungle continues to flourish. Some of the heavy, fruit laden branches are now draped down over the sides of the box. Yep, lots of tomatoes to turn ripe soon. Yum!

Third Time's a Charm

2010-08-04T09:27:00.002-05:00

I saw the link I Write Like on a facebook friend's website. It looked interesting, so I decided to give it a try. I randomly selected one of my recent blog entries as my copy to submit to the inquiry box. I chose the Scraps and Dryer Sheets post. The analysis said my writing style was like Margaret Atwood. Interesting. Assuming that a person's writing style is partially the result of the way a person thinks, reasons and believes (along with whatever education and linquistic training they may have received along the way) I would deduce she and I likely have some things in common between us. Okay, I can see some similarities in the things Wikipedia has to say about her.

But, me being the ever curious one and always questioning "why?" couldn't settle on just one analysis. My mind is wondering: What are the things being considered in the analysis? Who came up with this program? What is the process? Sentence structure? word selection? syntax? use of metaphors? command of the English language? use of vocabulary? inventiveness? creativity? How is the computer parsing all this data to arrive at an answer?

Because the anaylis is followed by a presentation of another query: "Do you want to get your book published?" and a link to learn how to secure a book publishing contract, it occurred to me this is just a tool to fish for leads in a marketing or sales campaign. Obviously someone has come up with a clever way to build their sales leads list. Too cynical? Well we are on the internet which is driven by commerce just like everything else, right? (How many banner ads, sidebar ads and pop-ups have you seen so far today?)

I decided I should enter another portion of text and see if I got the same results. Next I chose my last post about Busy Bees Buzzing in the Basil. Well that was interesting. The analysis determined that post was writen like Stephenie Meyer writes. Okay, that's an author's name that I recognized. I cannot say that I recall Margaret Atwood's writing, although I've heard her name before. Don't believe I ever read any of her books. Can't say I read any of the vampire books Stephenie Meyer wrote either. I've seen plenty about the movies based on her books, though.

Okay, ever persistently curious, I wondered if the analysis program was just randomly popping up names with no real analysis to it at all. So I re-entered the copy from the first try. Yep, came up with Margaret Atwood's name again. This called for a third try. Question: If I submitted a third sample would I get one of these two names again? Perhaps the analysis just shows similarities in common with both these writers. Obviously I need to submit copy once more. I chose the Fabric Basket with Grommets post.

I'm chuckling now. At myself. At the things that keep me amused. Ha, ha . . . not only do I think it's funny that I experiment with this analysis engine three times, but I'm taking the time to blog about it. F U N N Y ! Are you all entertained as well? Have you stopped reading and gone over there to try the program yet? Chuckle, chuckle . . .

Third time is a charm - right? It popped up the name Cory Doctorow with the analysis of this copy. {Chuckle, chuckle} Yeah, a tech-geek got thrown into the mix! {chuckle, chuckle} Sweet.

What do all three of these writers have in common? Science Fiction! Or as Margaret Atwood classifies some of her writing, Speculative Fiction, or Social science fiction. Ha, ha, too funny! I do like to read science fiction, though. There have been some of those in my hands over the years. Perhaps that writing style has rubbed off because of things I've read over the years. I'm going to go out on a limb and make an assumption here. Perhaps each of our writing styles are influenced more by what we read than how we are educated, trained and our linquistic skills. Not only can we agree with the conjection that we are what we eat, but we also are what we read. Read any good books lately? Are you keeping them in the realm of happy, wholesome and uplifting? What do you want to be? Do you like horror? mysteries? suspense? romance? history? autobiographies? You are what you read. What a concept. What do you think?

Busy Bees Buzzing in the Basil

2010-07-27T22:40:00.002-05:00

Say that three times, fast!
I went out to take a look at the garden this afternoon. There were lots of these small creatures in the garden. Yep, the bees were out enforce, busy working away, doing what they do. I had thought about getting outside to pull up most of the basil that spread like crazy all over in the back. However, I did not make time earlier in the summer to get out there to do so. Thus, it is quite overgrown with basil. The bees love this stuff. They always have every year.

So, there is a lot of basil out back. That means there are a lot of bees out there right now. It seems to be the more prolific plants growing this year. Here is a narrow view of these flowers. Sometimes I wish I had a video camera. I would take some footage of the garden and the bees to really show what it looks like. These still shots don't show the full scope of the beauty of the flowers and the number of bees present. It's hard to see them all in a still shot. With the addition of movement they become more easily visible. They are buzzing and flying throughout this whole area. It is fun to watch all this activity. The garden is so alive with movement. Can you see the bees here?

How about now? I photoshopped a circle around the three bees I could pick out in this shot. This is just a very small view. If you saw this area in person you would be just as fascinated with it as I am. The photo shows just the larger bees. There are several breeds, much smaller than these, as well. Such a variety of things to observe.

It's a tomato jungle out there!
We planted lots of tomatoes this year. I picked up a few plants at the local garden center. I also planted the extras that my son and his wife didn't fit into their garden. Here is an image of several plants packed together in my raised bed 'Square Foot' garden plot. I followed the instructions about planting one tomato into each 12"x12" square area. The amount of growth on these plants makes them seem really tightly packed together. I'm not sure how we'll possibly see into and reach into these tightly knit plants to find all the fruit as it comes ripe. Even up close I can barely see through the leaves. Hopefully the red color of the tomatoes will make harvesting easier. They're still green so the tomatoes blend so well with the leaves.

The ones you see here are vines that were left to sprawl along the ground. I ran out of tomato cages and didn't want to invest in any new ones. It isn't likely we would plant this many next year. These tomatoes are doing very well. Lots and lots of beautiful green fruits. I am really looking forward to some ripe red tomatoes. We absolutely love eating tomatoes.

I need to take a look on-line to see if I can freeze tomatoes or tomato sauce. If I remember correctly, I believe I read tomatoes need to be canned under pressure. My pressure cooker isn't that large so it would take forever to do this many plants. I need to do a bit of research into preserving them. If I can do hot water bath canning I could probably manage that. Freezing the sauce might just be faster, if that would be a viable choice.

My other flowers are doing well out on the patio. I saw today I need to get out there and do more dead-heading. Here's a look at the ones in the larger of my two chicken planters.

Okay, off to take a look on-line at tomato preserving techniques. Hope your summer is going along as well as mine.

Fabric Basket With Grommets

2010-07-26T09:28:00.000-05:00

I know. It has been a month since my last post. I can't say that there's any particular reason for that . . . just haven't been here to post. I could say I've been out there, busy, living life. But there really hasn't been all that much new and exciting going on around here. It seems like a lot of the same thing. Maybe I haven't posted this past month because life seems so homogenized for me right now. One day is very much like the next.

So, got to shake it up a bit and find something a bit more exciting to do! I'm working on it . . .

I will mention that we had the opportunity to visit with our son and his wife early last week. Samantha came over to sew with me - a first! And Josh accompanied her. He visited with his dad, upstairs watching tv for part of the time, then came down to the basement to see what we were up to in my Sewing Studio.

Sam and I made up a pattern we used from a photo of this little container I saw on-line last year. I requested permission to post my instructions on my own version of this project from Sue over at PerpetualPlum's Weblog. I'll post my FREE instructions when I hear back from her that she doesn't mind. Meanwhile, if you like this idea you can go visit her and jump ahead with making up your own version.

Here's another view without the stuff inside. I'll post more a bit later on.

I spent time this past weekend photographing all the different quilt projects I've been working on. All the UN-finished quilt projects. I need to have a FIU (Finish It Up) month here for August. I want to wrap up all these projects and be ready to start in on some new fall projects in September. So that is my goal from now through August 31st. I photoshopped, cropped and color corrected the FIU photos and will post them here to my blog later today or tomorrow. Got to run for now . . . Ciao!

Scraps and Dryer Sheets

2010-07-06T09:18:00.000-05:00

I thought I'd pop on over here to my blog first thing this morning. Must be some 'meeting of the minds' going on . . . some cosmic info . . . passing from one person to the next. I have recently found the same string quilt show up in three places. First I log onto Facebook to peep at the new chatter and follow Terri's link to her blog. What do you know? It's a string quilt made from dryer sheets. And so cute, too. My thought went immediately to a conversation that took place last week at a local quilt shop about saving scraps and using them up. A woman at the quilt shop was talking about making a scrap quilt with fabric strips and old dryer sheets that she hangs onto.

First off, saving scraps is cost effective. It only makes sense to me. I've always saved my quilt scraps. After all, those scrap quilts cost me $9.00 a yard for fabric just like any other planned quilt. Unless, of course, someone gifts me with their scraps because they don't like to deal with them. And by the way, that is how I've come across some of my scraps. Thank-you to all my friends who have gifted such.

Amazingly, the very next blog I click onto . . . lo and behold . . . there is another post about making a scrap quilt with dryer sheets. Susan's blog features a wonderful, bright and cheery version. Obviously there is a trend going on here. It could be lead because of somebody's blog post earlier this year on this subject and these quilters are getting to the point in their stitching to show off their creations. It could be a response to the sagging economy and quilters realizing those scraps are good fodder for quilt projects. It could be a conviction to reduce, re-use and re-cycle in our quilting studios. And probably it is a combination of all these things. Afterall, quilters and artists are resourceful. In my opinion scrap quilts are lovely and well worth the time to make.

This particular pattern sounds easy. Use an old dryer sheet as your base and sew the strips to it aligning them from one opposite corner to the next. By the way, if you peek at Terri's blog, she says she's written up the instructions on making this quilt and will have it posted soon. I'm sure it will be worth your while as she is very good at producing clear how-to instructions, usually accompanied by good photographs. I'll be watching for it myself.

I've still got lots of scrap strips left over from the spiderweb quilt I have been working on. Perhaps I'll do something like this string quilt.

One of the more recent projects I have worked on is this string quilt, my spiderweb quilt. I have only two more blocks to sew for mine. Then I can finish with joining them to make the quilt top. Most of them are sewn together already. That is until I realized I needed to make two more blocks. Somehow I miss counted, or got mixed up on how I was sewing them together, or something. Anyway, when I was browsing through my drawers of scrap strips I came across more of the deep red color fabric for the 'kites'. You can see in this photo I resorted to using two different colors of fabric on some of the blocks. I didn't realize there was more hidden way back under some scraps. I know . . . it pays to be more organized. {Grin!} My next step for the completion of this quilt is to get those two blocks done and sewn into the rest of the quilt top.

Several days ago, prior to the weekend holiday, I was working on joining together blocks into quilt tops. I will soon have on my hands four more quilt tops with three more soon to follow. It has been a long time working on quilts with no finished results. That is because I have been bouncing around from one project to another and not completing any of them. My goal this summer is to get those projects wound up and completed. I want to clear the slate for more NEW quilting this fall. And just think, all those new quilts will mean we and other family members will be alot warmer this coming North Dakota winter (at 40 degrees below!) under nice warm quilts. Yeah! Yay for us!

Long Time No Post. Busy Gardening

2010-06-24T22:54:00.000-05:00

I had a furry visitor in the large clay flower pot in our front yard one day this spring. I think this squirrel was digging up and eating the roots or bulbs to last year's plants.

After visiting our local garden center I came home with lots of plants to brighten up our yard. This is what our large clay pot looked like after digging out and replacing last year's dead material.

I read about the "Square Foot Gardening" method after seeing a neighbor to the east of us with outstanding results from her own square foot garden. She told me all she did was just follow the advice and instruction given in the book. I got started late this year since we had some clean-up to take care of in our yard first before we built the boxes. My husband moved our patio (which used to be here where the boxes are now) up closer to the back door. These boxes are 2"x6" boards screwed together to form 4'x4' boxes.

I know we'll get a great crop of tomatoes among other stuff this year. We'll have to see how it all turns out with the late start. The long planting box area, just beyond these four planting boxes, has strawberries. We've had strawberries for a few years, but it was just too small an area to get much of a crop. This year we'll expand by spreading the runners out and fill this new strawberry box area.

Here's a view of some of the great plants I got to plant this year. It is a mixture of annuals and perennials. I've learned in the long run perrenials end up being less expensive (though they cost more at the check out stand) because they will continue to come up year after year. Plus you can divide them and get more plantings over time. I'm learning to give them plenty of room to expand as they grow. When I first started gardening here I used to plant the perrenials too close together. It didn't take long to see they tend to spread out and become larger and more robust over a couple years. Some of those along the back fence need to be divided and moved around a bit.

It was a wonderful day for planting with the warmth of the sun on this day. It took quite awhile to get all the planting accomplished. You'll notice the pots near the grape vines. Here they are as they looked after the winter, filled with dead plant growth still. We emptied the top half of the potting soil and renewed it with some fresh soil. Then I filled these pots with flowers and positioned them around the patio.

I backed up a few steps to include this other new planter box in this photo. I requested my husband build this box taller for me so I wouldn't have to do so much bending to weed and harvest here. It is a nice height that enables me to reach across to each section easily. These are 2"x8" boards stacked two high.

The sections closet to the back door contain a variety of different herbs. That makes them quick to pick for cooking up some yummy meals. This view shows how things looked once I got these boxes planted.

Shortly after getting all the plants into the ground we got a good rain to water everything. Then within a couple days of planting we went outdoors to find our local neighborhood rabbit taste testing the broccoli and kolarabi. Those two seemed to be its favorites. We decided pretty quickly we needed to go out and purchase some netting and create a barrier to keep the rabbit from getting to our new plants. That night we built a frame and secured netting over the four planter boxes in the back. We didn't think the rabbit would hop up onto the taller planter box near the house so left that one uncovered. By the next day we could see the plants in the back were safe from scavenging, but that pesky rabbit had nibbled the kolarabi in the taller planter box all the way to the dirt and was starting in on the broccoli plants that we had planted there. So we defended our garden again . . . this time with a bit of fencing around those plants.

It was a pretty persistent rabbit as it came back again the next day. I saw it run off with a broccoli leaf in its mouth when I let the dogs out. My hubby told me to keep an eye on it while he ran into the house. He came back out with a sling shot. Apparently he needs to practice a bit more since he missed the rabbit with each shot as it dodged the rocks whizzing past its head. I think it got the idea, though. I haven't seen it since that day, although I'm sure it is still around. And no more nibbling of plants that I can tell so far.

Quilt Whirlygigs

2010-05-21T15:52:00.000-05:00

This little quilt is something I worked on this week. More on that in just a second. First let me share a great site for you to visit.

One of my NEW favorite web sites is PioneerWoman.com. I have visited Ree's site lots of times in the past, but it has gotten better and better over time. She's got great photography to go along with her stories. Her writing style is pleasantly down to earth. She's got a refreshing perspective championing her family, hubby and lifestyle. Lot's of good content there if you want to go over and browse. Then check out all those great recipes she so generously shares. I was at Barnes & Noble a few days ago and happened upon her cookbook while I was browsing. I flipped through it - yummy visuals. It was fun to flip through and peak at all the great photographs of mouth watering food. The book has as much eye-candy as the blog.

Well, today is a rainy day. The clouds are supposed to linger for a while. I had thought to get outdoors and do some garden planning. I need to measure and draw out the layout for my soon-to-be square-foot garden plots. We'll have sun again soon according to the weather forecast. Less rain will allow me time to measure and plan later tonight or tomorrow, I think, I hope no rain. So today is a blogging and sewing day for me. I have a number of projects in the works. I want to try to wrap up a few of those over the next week. I noticed Pat Sloan was having a FIU week last week. I need to do one of my own here in the studio. FIU is 'Finish It Up'. I have to chuckle when I think of all those acronyms in use now days. It reminds me of a line from the first Transformers movie where the statement, "Come on, keep up with the acronyms," is said in response to Shia LaBeouf's quizzical look. Huh? FIU? what's that? Check out Pat Sloan's blog about FIU.

Earlier this week I attended a quilt class. The following images are of the little whirlygig quilt we worked on in class. First task is to sew together 36 of those five inch charm squares. These can be from a charm square pack or just coordinating scraps you have on hand. I used some charm squares I won in a quilting horse race game. They are each miss matched, yet somewhat color coordinating fabrics.

There is a specialty quilting ruler (you can see in the lower right hand corner)of this picture. Our class instructor got her husband to cut the acrylic rulers for her. The idea for the class was from an old, long ago, out of print magazine/book she had that called for making up a plastic template of the shape with the criss-cross mark on it. She updated this idea to the DIY acrylic ruler for us.

Prior to class (because I'm just so curious about stuff) I searched around the internet for a ruler that was available to do this. I found a similar type of ruler online. And there is now some online instruction from another site similar to what we did. The ruler we got at class has the pattern inscribed in the plastic so it won't eventually wear off. Our instructor had two sizes, for 5" charms and also 9" squares. These make 3 1/2" and 7 1/2" cut pieces that form the whirlygig.

Our instructor, Lois, made up three sample quilts to display for class. They show how the quilt looks in different colorways and with different border configurations. I am going to finish my little quilt off with a narrow inner border and a larger outer border.

When finished mine will look closest to hers at the top left, but where she has a red, black, blue border, mine will be green, orange, green borders. It's on my cutting table right now waiting for me just as soon as I get done blogging. A final picture to come soon.
And just for kicks I'll share my own DIY style thread holder. It works great. This is a Disney Mini Mouse drinking straw clipped to the lid of my sewing machine with a bulldog clip. The extra large spool of quilting thread sits on the table behind my machine, out of the way. Just wrap the thread around the spiral shape of the straw to feed it into the machine's thread guides. It's my best no-cost(the straw was a give-away), travel-friendly version of a thread holder for quilting away from home. I use a standard heavy metal thread stand at home, but that's too heavy and awkward to pack for classes. This option works great.

I used to just use a bulldog clip on the lid and feed the thread through the wire grips. But I found this method didn't hold the thread out away from my machine, and away from the stitched fabric as it exits the needle area. And worse yet, once I had the extra large spool too close to the back of my machine and thread got caught up and wound up into and beneath the handwheel. Talk about a mess! I managed to unreel it from its tangled mess around the handwheel. I was determined not to have to bring my machine in for servicing for something that lame. I know my Mini Mouse straw raises a few eyebrows. She always gets me comments when I take her with to quilt. But Mini certainly does a fine job. She's my little quilting class mascot!

Take a Peak

2010-05-19T10:30:00.000-05:00

I was roaming the web a bit today, following links from one great site to another. Following some links for Sisters On The Fly brought me to Alison's blog. She has a knack for taking photos and publishing interesting stories. You will be doing yourself a favor to go visit her blog and take a peak. Her blog is called Alison's Travels. I browsed through several of her recent posts. The photos are all very good eye candy.

Quilting and Friends

2010-05-13T18:44:00.000-05:00

Hello again! Yep, it has been awhile since I last posted anything here to my blog. I have received a challenge from my sewing friend, Deb, to get one of my quilts mounted onto my quilting frame this weekend. So there you see the frame, behind me. As you can see I need to clear off some 'junk' that seems to have accumulated on it. Why is that? Why has so much 'stuff' accumulated on and around my frame? Well . . . because I haven't put it to use yet.

I used to sew with this machine A LOT when I had it set up on a table by itself. It is my Pfaff Grand Quilter that stitches 1200 stitches per minute. I can remember a time I was afraid to sew with it that fast. I had to turn the speed control knob to the lowest setting in order to sew. Since it is a semi-industrial machine it can go pretty fast compared to home sewing machines. Later, after using it for awhile, I got used to sewing with it at full speed. Man! I could sure zip through my sewing then!

However, since I set up my quilt frame upstairs (moved it up from the basement) and mounted this machine on the frame, I have yet to use it. Ahem . . . tsk, tsk. My sewing friend and I were talking about that a few days ago - thus the challenge. I'll have to let you know how I fare on it in my next post.

Today I ran into another sewing/quilting friend at Barnes & Noble. It was fun to sit and visit over an ice cold, frosty mocha frappacino. We hadn't seen each other for some time. And earlier this week I had the opportunity to stop in and say 'hi' to some other long time friends at a local quilting store. How great is that?! It's always fun to visit with these gals. I feel like we should do it more often. Sometime I tend to become a bit of a recluse. Guess I need (and want) to get out more.

For now though, I'm headed back to my sewing machine. I'm in the middle of a spiderweb strip quilt. This quilt is helping me to use up some of my pile of strip scraps. I originally saw the idea via Tallgrass Prairie Studio and her reference to this page at the Quiltville site. I am not doing the selvage method as I always just throw those away. I have plenty of leftover strips and scraps, I don't need to start saving selvages, too! I love scrappy quilts, but I have accumulated so much in the way of scraps I sometimes wonder when or if I'll ever get caught up with using them all up. But, the mission to quilt my scraps goes on -- ha, ha!

More Projects On My Cutting Table

2010-04-21T15:01:00.000-05:00

Ever thankful for God's healing . . . I am back to work on sewing projects again. I had the opportunity to sew with a friend the other day. The picture shows a couple of the current projects that I am working on.

The strips you see on the left are made of leftovers from those Leaf Quilt blocks. I cut enough strips to make three or four of what I'm calling the leaf quilts. There is actually only the one quilt that has those embroidered leaves. Another one has more simple embroidery, and the rest don't have any embroidery on them. The blocks for all the quilts are completed. They are just sitting here waiting to be sewn into quilt tops now. I figured these extra leftover strips would make a nice size Table Topper. My friend suggested that I do some applique sunflowers on it. The colors certainly lend themselves well to that suggestion. I need to either draw up some sunflower shapes to create my own applique, locate a pattern in one of my many quilting books or magazines (or on-line), or check through my many machine embroidery designs to see if I have something that would be appropriate.

After getting the strips sewn into these three long pieces I also thought it would work well to cut some fabric as inserts between the three pieced sections. The fabric inserts could have some machine embroidery on that portion of the table runner. I still need to look through my stuff to find an appropriate embroidery for that. So I am placing the decision on hold for the moment until I make time to go on my search for sunflower designs or patterns. I'll post images as this project progresses.

The other blocks on the right side of this photo show the start on my Pink and Brown Turnover Quilt. I purchased a turnover package at a local quilt shop. Turnovers are pre-cut fabric triangles. They are cut from a 6" square that is then cut in half on the diagonal. The package contained two each of forty different fabric triangles. The predominant colors are browns, pinks, reds and tans. When I got them home I decided to cut some of my own fabric to go with them. I found some dark brown and tan prints from my stash that I cut into 6" squares. I then further cut the squares in half to form my own turnovers. These triangles were randomly sewn together with the fabrics from the purchased turnover package.

The next step is to clip off the 'dog ears' that result from sewing them together. What you see is a square made from two different fabric triangles. I'll lay the blocks out to arrange the colors in a random, but pleasing pattern, then sew the blocks together. Afterwards, I plan to add some extra borders to make the quilt a bit larger. It should end up being a good lap-sized quilt for watching TV.

Memories On The Shelf

2010-04-13T23:56:00.002-05:00

I was on Facebook this evening and happened to hear from someone I knew way back in highschool. There have been a few recently who I've 'met' again on-line. When I saw the message from this particular Facebook query I had to go grab my old highschool yearbook to help me remember her from the name. Once I saw the old school picture I could see the resemblance to her Facebook image and I remembered right off having known her.

Isn't that fun to run across someone you haven't seen for (many, many) years and have all kinds of old memories re-materialize in your brain? I took a little time to flip through that old yearbook . . . to reminisce just a tiny bit. Boy does time fly! So long ago . . .

The painted doll on the shelf with my old yearbooks is one I made many years ago, too. Back then, when the kids were young, I sewed and painted these cloth dolls to sell at craft shows. It was my part-time, side job, that I did after coming home from my full-time job. Ha, ha . . . that was back when I had so much more energy! I've mellowed a bit since then. Still enjoy sewing and painting after all these years. Need to dip my brushes a bit more often, though. It has been awhile since I painted anything.

Today I worked on one of my websites for most of the late morning and afternoon. I accomplished some good work, but haven't uploaded the pages yet. I still need to tweak them some more. I spent some frustrating time yesterday and a while today trying to work out some glitches with my Photoshop Elements 6 program. I was attempting to input text blocks into a layer on some photographs but the program was glitching up on me. It would not accept the commands like it was supposed to do.

I resorted to un-installing, re-booting then re-installing the program. Still couldn't get it to work right. I sent an inquiry to Adobe to get a service response on it. Spent an hour or so looking on-line at other's requests for assistance on the same issue at various sites. All the suggestions offered were things I had already tried. No luck there, so I put it off till today.

Mid-morning my response back from Adobe was basically that it was an out of service program and the service person suggested that I update to the newer version. Uuugghhh! That doesn't help me. At this time I don't have any interest in updating. The program worked just fine a few days ago! What the h . . . ?

I re-booted my computer again today after my anti-virus program quit running - telling me I had 51 minor tracking cookies that it would delete for me. Maybe something there was interfering?? After I re-booted, it worked just fine . . . then it quit so I re-booted again. Then it worked again, well enough for me to get the projects done that I was working on. Aaauuuugggghhh! Technology. Got to love it when you want to hate it!!!

I wanted to work on making some badges for my websites. This is one of them that I came up with. I'm not sure what I think of it yet. Something about the balance of the piece just doesn't sit quite right to me. Not sure if I'll use it for long since it is an older doll anyway, and not a recent one. I should put this doll up for sale on-line.

She's got kind of a funny story. I made her and sold her once upon a time during a craft show years ago. A fellow came by my booth and said his wife also made dolls. He wanted to buy it for her since he thought she would like it. Later on I went to attend a doll class at a local sewing store. I thought it would be fun to get together with others to make dolls since I mostly just did that on my own. Thought it would be fun to meet some other dollmakers.

The gal who was teaching the class was the gal whose husband came to my booth several years prior. This gal, Cathe, a talented artist herself, convinced me I should go talk to the store owners. She and the others working in the store thought I should be working there. That's how I got my job at J&R Vacuum and Sewing. A few years later Cathe was down-sizing stuff in their house. That's when this doll came back to live with me again. Way back when I painted those dolls I had originally kept just one of the many dolls I painted for myself. So now I've got two. Perhaps it's time to release her back out into the universe again. I'll put her up on my Etsy shop, or E-bay, later this week.

Here is further evidence that my Photoshop program is working correctly - for the moment anyway - ha, ha. This image is going up on my Vintage Trailer blog. You'll have to go there for more info on it. Look for it after tomorrow. It's getting late and time for bed. Nearly midnight . . .

One more thing to add: If you want to place my badge on your blog or website, copy and paste this via your dashboard/layout.

[ a href="http://sewartfullyminded.com/" target="_blank" ] [img src="http://www.sewartfullyminded.com/images/hpdtbadge-125.jpg" alt="Sew Artfully Minded (dot) com" width="125" height="125" / ]

Okay, I had to change the <> brackets to [] brackets in the code above. Got to figure out how other designers showcase the code as a copy and paste feature without it just showing the image. Come on some of you knowledgeable code wizards, tell me secret. Otherwise I need to go hunting for more information tomorrow. This is going to bug me till I find out now. Curious minds want to know!

Please, leave me a comment to let me know.

On My Desk - Yucky

2010-04-12T15:24:00.000-05:00

Here's what is on my desk today: Iced tea, hot tea, over-the-counter sinus medication and a box of Kleenex tissues. Have you guessed how I'm feeling? Yucky! I went to the doctor on Friday and got on an antibiotic. I've been sleeping and resting alot in an effort to get over this illness.

One may wonder about both the hot and cold drinks . . . depends upon the moment. There are times hot feels better on my throat and times cold feels better to cool me down when I'm overheated. Half the time that cup of hot tea cools down quite a bit before I get a chance to drink much of it. Then it just becomes iced tea anyway. I usually have an iced drink with me when I'm at home. It's usually tea or water, sometimes fruit juice.

Okay, since I've been sick lately I haven't done much in the way of sewing or anything. Dear hubby says I should just stay in bed and get more rest. I told him the other day it doesn't take that much energy to push buttons on a computer. So I've been playing some on-line facebook games and checking out blogs here and there. It's a bit overcast, breezy and rainy today. At least I'm not missing one of those fabulous sunny days today.

I am also interested in working more on my websites. I have been pitifully slow to update them. But that is a big 'To Do' on my list. I want to devote some time to that the next few days. So, not too much to report around here . . . just wanted to drop in and say 'Hi' and let you know I'll return to posting better stuff soon.

Scrap Therapy Beaded Tote Bag

2010-04-06T22:48:00.000-05:00

Yey, it's finished! I finally got my new beaded tote bag completed late on Monday night. It always feels good to get another project wrapped up. I will be using it as a shopping and all-purpose carry bag when I'm out and about. At least for a little while anyway. I want to make another one in brighter spring colors so I can set this one aside to use later this autumn.

The tote bag was a class offered at a local sewing store. It is part of the Scrap Therapy series taking place at Bismarck Sewing & Quilting. It was a two-part class, but there was quite a bit of stenciling and sewing required to finish. It took me longer than I originally anticipated to complete the project. The second one should go faster. I plan to do another one with some machine embroidery instead of the stenciling you see on this bag. The bag is large; approximately 12" x 16" not including the straps.

Here is a closer view of one side. If you click onto the photo you will see a larger image. You can see I chose to do some free-motion stitching around the stenciled leaf area to enhance that feature further. That was not called for in the pattern. It basically instructed to just 'quilt as desired' but I went a bit further to embellish it.

The leaves along the upper portion of the bag and the swirls on the large and small flying geese are all stenciled. There are four large flying geese on each side, and eight small flying geese on each of the narrow ends of the bag. The pattern showed instructions to use a specialty ruler called a 'Wing Clipper' to make the flying geese. It was the first time for me to make them this different way. It was actually pretty quick and easy with the ruler. Now I want to make up some quilts with flying geese blocks. Those quilt rulers can be pretty spendy so I feel I need to use it for more than just this one project to gain from my investment in buying it. Flying geese will need to be landing here in my studio soon so I can feel I got my money's worth - that I got good use of this new tool!

Here is another view of the bag from the other side. The flying geese vary from the typical flying geese one usually sees on quilts for a couple reasons. For one, the geese are made using a darker fabric for the geese rather than the typical lighter fabric. Secondly the corner triangles are made from 2" squares pieced into nine-patches. These are sewn and cut to form the corners. It is supposed to look scrappy. I like that part. I have lots of fabric to select from my stash to use for a scrappy, yet coordinated, look.

There are lots of pockets in this bag. You will find two large outer pockets on either side and six inside pockets with plenty of room in the middle to carry things.

Initially I thought the wooden beads that are incorporated into the bag handles would press hard into my shoulder. That is not the case. At least not yet. I have only carried a few things around in it so far. I will have to judge if that is the case one day when I end up toting around a heavier load. There are also a couple wooden beads on either end to cinch in and gather in some of the width of the bag. It also adds a decorative accent to the narrow ends of the bag.

All in all, I'm pleased with how this bag turned out. There were a few variations I made in construction compared to what was shown in the pattern instructions. When I make the second one I already know a few things I will be doing a bit differently to simplify construction. My sewing friend took the class with me. I was the slow poke compared to her, but that meant I got to benefit from some of her comments as she worked ahead of me. We both liked the pattern, but both of us agreed there are a few things we will be changing when we make another bag.

It's a fun project. I love my bag! If you find a quilt shop that has this Scrap Therapy bag project you might want to take the class so you can make one, too.

Scrapbooking with Samantha

2010-04-04T21:49:00.001-05:00

It has been a while since we started this project. My hubby and I helped to get our son's new wife, Samantha, set up with her own scrapbooking room. It is a case where we all pitched in to help get it put together for her. This included contributing excess furnishings from our house, helping to acquire some supplies purchased from a local hardware store, drilling holes and hanging storage shelves on the walls, re-purposing furniture, using items she already had on hand, etc. This is the layout I drew as the proposal for arranging the room. It isn't quite finished as I still have some curtains to sew as well as re-cover an ottoman with new fabric she selected. Yep, I'm a slow-poke about getting that done. But Samantha is already working on pages for a scrapbook. So the room has already been put to good use. She says she loves her new room. I know she will enjoy it even more when I get it in gear and finish up with some sewing for her.

Samantha invited me over to do some scrapbooking with her one day. These are a few photos my son took of us that day. It was fun. I haven't been doing much with scrapbooking so this was a great opportunity to indulge in the hobby. I toted over several bags of stuff, but being the slow-poke that I am I only got one page 'mostly' done. Ha, ha! Of course I had to show that one page off when I got home, and to my sewing friend when we saw each other on the next sewing day! I just know there has to be some tricks of the trade to learn to be more of a speedy scrapper. I'll let you know what some of them are just as soon as I figure that one out myself! Ha, ha . . . it might be not spending so much time looking at the scrapbooking magazine as I am in this and the next photos. :)

You can see Samantha has lots of room to spread out her papers and all the embellishments when she scraps. We modified a table (the old ear piercing table that was being thrown out long ago when I managed a Claire's store - it has a nice big drawer with dividers to hold all kinds of embellishments) and an old TV stand to make one extra-large table to work upon. She and her husband sanded and painted it. Then she covered it with clear plastic so paint, glue and other spills could be easily wiped up.

In the far corner is Samantha's paper storage unit. She and her hubby made this using a set of wire grids, plastic tie straps and wood from the hardware store. Next time I go there I'll see about taking a better close up of it. If I had more room here at home where I scrapbook, I would make one to use myself. It's a pretty nifty unit with lots of 12"x12" paper storage while using only a little floor space.

One fun thing to share: Samantha has started her own blog. You can access it here to see more of her scrapbooking adventures.

And aren't the pink tulips fabulous!?! Oh, so glad it's spring!

Quit Your Day Job

2010-03-29T23:27:00.000-05:00

It was the title that drew me to the article. I was flipping through blogs and facebook for awhile tonight and came across this Etsy article about LoopyBoopy and her story of becoming a successful artist and entrepreneur. Colleen certainly has her own unique spin on her little art dolls. A bit on the creepy (sad) side for me, but they certainly are engaging to look at. I usually go for a more upbeat and cheerful countenance on my dolls. It is good to read a story of how others have found a way to overcome their hardships in life. It seems everybody has something that happens to them which puts them in a challenging position at one point or another.

I didn't know it till now, but there are other 'Quit Your Day Job' posts to read as well on Etsy. I'll have to take some time now and then to look around over there. It has been awhile since I have posted anything on Etsy myself. I've been thinking I need to get some things on-line soon. Time seems to just keep on whizzing past.

Today I went to sew at my totebag class again for part two of a two-part class. It is always fun to get together with others to sew. I didn't get my bag done yet. I plan on doing more work on it tomorrow. Hope to wind that up later this week. A photo of it will be forthcoming.

I spent quite a bit of time working on my websites this past week. Now that is something that seems to take a lot longer than I think it will. I know; I'm slow. I've got some ideas and am working on lists of things I want to get accomplished for my site in the near future. I spent quite a bit of time photoshopping some photos. I will be adding some tutorials and some sewing project freebies soon. I still need to write up some of the copy, proof-read it all then will upload it as a PDF copy ready to be downloaded and printed. Yes, it all seems to take so much time.

It turned out to be a wonderful day here on the Great Northern Plains! Last I heard on the radio late this afternoon was that it got up to 69 degrees today. Yahoo! What a wonderful temperature for late March in North Dakota! And yet I was too busy to get outside much to enjoy it. Tomorrow is supposed to be equally as nice! I will definitely take advantage of that and get out for a much needed walk.

Sparky is definitely ready to be outdoors. Today I positioned the screen door to stay opened out to the backyard so the dogs could freely go in and out at will. Sparky spent nearly the entire afternoon outside laying on the sidewalk in the bright, warm sunshine. He was probably thinking, "Aaah, freedom!" He was very pleased with himself.

Sugar can sometimes be a bit exacerbating when she often and repeatedly "yells" about wanting out. She is our most vocal dog and it is often several notches higher on a noise scale than when the kids were little. She was content to go in and out since the door was propped open. What did she end up doing most of the afternoon? She slept in her kennel keeping a watchful one-eye-peeked-open glance at me while I washed the dishes after lunch. Nearly fell asleep there several times while I was busy. When I was done with that task and moved on to working on the computer she would sneak around the house to peak at me and what I was doing, then scurry away like she was 'caught' when I checked to see what she was up to. She went in and out several times, but regardless of the beautiful weather - she stayed indoors - for much of the day and occupied herself by stealthily spying on me.

Ginger spent half the day outside laying in the sun, and half the day laying on the livingroom carpet in the sun from the front window. Definitely a lazy dog day around here today.

We went walking with the dogs a couple days ago, around the neighborhood. I had to end up carrying Sugar most of the way. She is getting too old (15 years) to keep up. I purposefully walked an extremely slow pace because of her. But when she kept stumbling and tripping, then took a tumble and actually rolled over on the sidewalk, I knew she wouldn't make it further. She seemed a bit confused that I was carrying her. It almost seemed like she would rather walk, but then she calmed down a bit and relaxed as we walked along. The last half block home I put her down again and she seemed to enjoy being back on her own for our slow walk back to the house.

Yesterday we took Ginger out around the state capitol grounds without the two smaller chihuahuas. We kept a bit faster pace that way. It was a good walk and a wonderful spring day. I so look forward to more of these days.

One Day Last Week

2010-03-21T01:40:00.000-05:00

Yey! The sun has been coming out from behind the clouds more often the last several days. Everything in the world seems more rosy and pleasant to me when that happens. We are enjoying the days more. The dogs are staying outside a bit longer. We all are definitely looking for spring to arrive.

This photo was taken way back on the 8th. It seemed that it was so foggy and gloomy for so long. I'm so thankful that the weather has changed and the sun is now brighter with less clouds.

I mentioned in a previous blog that I would tell you about a visitor we had who stayed the weekend with us.
We had a doggy visitor for the weekend a couple weeks ago. It was our grand-dog. I'm just now getting around to blogging about it. Here she is. Her name is Bella. She's a very pretty and intelligent dog. She is quite a bit different from our dogs, though. She is much more active. There seemed to be very little of her time spent relaxing and lounging around like our dogs tend to do. The first day was especially interesting. She was walking around inspecting our dogs and things in the house, checking out every noise, going to the window often to look out (looking for her own pack/people/mom & dad???) and wanting attention. She seemed to catch on to the lower level of activity that goes on as the norm in our house after the first day and a half. Yep, things are pretty boring around here, Bella. We have our routines and you happened to have shook things up for a bit.

Bella's visit came during the height of me clearing through clutter - so I had all kinds of stuff drug up to the living room for me to go through it. Josh and Samantha warned me that she might try to jump up onto the furniture since they allow her to sit up there with them at their house. I said, "Not likely, I've got all my stuff on the couch so I can sort through it." So she was welcomed into our house, stuff and all.

Ever curious, Bella has to see what I am up to. While I tried to stay busy sorting through old papers and magazines with my recent purge, Bella seems to say, "That's not more important than me! Come on, let's play!"

But, here I am . . . starting in the middle of this tale. When she first got here we worked to try to get her integrated with our three dogs.

At first our little dogs show-cased their very territorial behavior. This is pretty much how chihuahuas are. They claim their place and guard it against all comers. Okay, maybe some of that is our fault as owners. Ours are not very social dogs since they are only exposed to a very few and limited number of people (and pets) on a day-to-day basis. Initially I kept a closer eye on all of them so Bella would have an opportunity to get to know each dog and blend in better with our pack without being barked at and ostracized right off the bat. I made sure each dog had a chance to greet her, and she them. I knew I'd want my camera on hand to document their time together. So I tried to snap some photos that told the story. Turns out our dogs weren't too open to increasing the size of our pack. And being dogs, it's not like they can understand that it was just going to be for a few days. The experience was not without a bit of strife.

Bella did the doggy thing of course - to check out all the locals. Here she meets up with Sparky. She tried her best to be friendly with him, but Sparky shied away, looked to me to get away from her. It was like, "Mom, pick me up, this strange dog is all over the place." I didn't pick him up. I wanted him to get used to Bella being here. He gave up pestering me, then ended up running away into his kennel.

Here Ginger tries to avoid Bella's friendly overtures. She insisted on turning and walking away in the opposite direction of wherever Bella went.

I think Sugar is actually the alpha female of the pack. She was giving the most pronounced signals to back away. The others picked up on that. Sparky and Ginger just seemed to be trying to walk away and ignore Bella. There were times it seemed like Ginger was interested in playing and being more friendly with Bella. Of all the dogs, she was the most interested in interacting with her. But it was just for very short periods of time. Then she would change her mind and abruptly turn away, try to walk away with Bella following after her, "What's wrong, don't you want to play?" Sugar and Sparky would often vocalize their opinion of Bella. And it wasn't very favorable.

Sugar was so funny. She came out of her kennel to bark, sniff the newcomer, and spy on stuff that was happening outside her range of view from her spot in the kennel. But right away, if Bella headed her way, she would go back and sit at the open door of her kennel ready to bark anytime Bella passed too closely to her territory. She definitely wanted to claim this spot as hers and made sure Bella and the rest of us knew it. I kept scolding her to be quiet, to quit barking. Several times I did what Caesar (The Dog Whisperer) does and pin her down in a submissive pose till she settled down.

Here's a picture of Ginger laying on her bed, head down, but eyes following all the activity as Bella wanders around the house exploring. Sugar is maintaining her reign over her little kingdom from her spot in the kennel. Sparky is on his side of the kennel, out of view in this shot. When Bella would walk by, Sugar barked. At times Ginger would give a low growl, but wouldn't budge from her bed. Obviously letting Bella know she had her spot she wasn't willing to give up either. Bella did not try to take over their beds. She found a spot on the rug near my chair.

"Humpf," as she slumped down on the floor and laid her head onto her paws. "No one seems to want to play with me," she sighed. It was a long and loud, audible sigh. She seemed bored, or maybe disgusted and dejected. Awww . . . poor Bella. Sorry to say she didn't get the arms wide open welcome from my pack. They were shameless in their rejection of her.

After trying, and failing, to get our three dogs to play and interact with her I figured I'd go back to sorting through my paperwork and leave them be. I thought maybe if I wasn't paying too close attention to them, then they would decide to investigate her and accept Bella. Perhaps they would interact with her on their own a bit more. Nope, no way, nothing doing. They went on ignoring her. You can see here she's asking me to come play with her and they're watching on to see what happens.

In a way it was comical. They were really interested in her and what she was doing - and how I was reacting with her - but on the other hand they were trying to shun her and be un-welcoming toward her. When I paid attention to her, to pet her and play with her, then they tried even harder to get me to pay attention to them and to ignore her. Ginger is a jealous dog sometimes when it comes to the chihuahuas getting attention from us. The ploys for attention were even more exaggerated with an extra dog in the house, not only from her, but from all the dogs.

While I was looking through papers I was surprised by Sparky coming over to my chair. He never does that! He is usually the one to stay put in his spot in the kennel. If anything, it's Sugar who comes out of the kennel to do some exploring.

Apparently I was not paying enough attention to the fact that there was a stranger in the house walking around. Here Sparky is taking the initiative to come tell me I need to handle this interloper, Bella. He's saying, "Something is up, something is different, we don't like it and you're not doing anything about it. Pay attention to us. Stop looking at papers!" Soon after this he ran back into his kennel and stayed there till I got up and put them all outside again.

We managed to get through the weekend without any big mishaps. No dog fights. The sniping and barking and growling tapered down after awhile. They never really became one big happy dog pack though. They more or less just tolerated each other.

Bella loved to romp around out in the snow. She is definitely different from our dogs in this respect. Our chihuahuas just like to do a quick job out with their business then right back in. Ginger will stay outdoors longer, but seems to be fairly bored with the backyard. She's used to things there, but she sometimes enjoys staying outside longer when she is laying out on the sidewalk on a sunny day.

Bella seemed to truly enjoy the snow. She would dig her nose into its fluffiness and toss it into the air. She seemed to love to dig in it - by the time she left there were a number of holes in the snow around the yard. She explored all around the perimeter of the fence visiting neighbor dogs. She spent time checking out all the sheds and paths in the back. Her favorite thing seemed to be playing "Queen of the Hill" when she would run up onto the highest pile of snow and watch the other dogs below. She was the exuberant newcomer. She was challenging them to come up and play with her. They were having none of it though. Just a quick trip out, then back in for them.

At times it took a lot of calling to her and cajoling to get her to come back inside. Long after our dogs were back inside I would repeatedly go to the door to caller her, trying to get her to come back indoors. I was concerned she would remember she climbed on top of the snow and jumped over the fence the last time she stayed with us. I didn't want her to run off or go down the street when I wasn't looking. So I didn't dare leave her out on her own for too long outside. Ginger often came to stand next to me and peer out at her when I was calling her to come in. When she didn't come, Ginger would look up at me as if to say, "She's not listening to you. She doesn't want to come in."

Yeah, I know, Ginger. She didn't get too good a reception around here from you guys. Can you blame her?

We're All Looking for Sunshine

2010-03-15T09:46:00.000-05:00

This is the perfect illustration of how we are all feeling here in the great northern plains of the United States. We're all LEANING out the windows looking for some sunshine. Yep, another day of cloudy weather. Not that I'm really complaining - LOL! I hate to complain about the weather since it doesn't do any good to change it and it just seems to make me and everyone else around grumpy. I am just so anxious to open the windows in the morning and see sunshine and spring coming to our area. It has warmed up enough to start to feel like the beginnings of spring. I AM THANKFUL that those really cold, deep-freeze temperatures are no longer with us. And the snow is melting some. We are experiencing those late winter, very early spring, dirty scenery days. You know those days where so much road dirt and sand is on top of the snow. Where the sap and accumulated dirt from the trees has run down the sides of the trees and shows up as a dirty yellow ochre run-off onto the surrounding snow. Where there is a crust of ice on everything from the faint bit of rain mixed with misty fog. It's an interesting time of year. And yes, I'm watching around town as I drive for the first brave flowers and grass that might dare to pop their little heads out from below their wintry blankets of snow.

Every morning I get a chuckle at the expense of my lovely yellow daffodils. They are a curious lot. You see, when I go to bed at night they are positioned so the blossoms are somewhat facing out toward me and the room. Then every morning when I get up to let the dogs outside they are leaning over facing the window. (Smile, chuckle, chuckle) He-he, they remind me of that plant in the movie "Little Shop of Horrors". They certainly do a lot of moving around! If they could scoot that pot over closer to the window I bet they would. I'm surprised I don't see it tipped right over, as much as they lean! I don't blame them though. I lean over as I open the blinds every morning and look to see what it is like out there as well. I am one of those people who talks to my plants. I am sure they are saying they want to go outside and get more sun.

Well yesterday slipped by without me coming on-line to update you on my photos from last weekend. I'll have to get to that real soon. Maybe later tonight. I've got some great dog photos and info about us dog-sitting our grand-dog when J and S were gone for the weekend. More later, got to get ready to GO SEW!

Daffodils Brighten Our Home

2010-03-13T20:58:00.000-06:00

I was commenting to my hubby a few days ago about all the foggy, cloudy and dreary days we have been witness to these last few weeks. It seems this weather pattern has been hanging on for a long time. I noticed in photos I was viewing the other day that some homes and buildings in Northern European countries often had bright colors painted on their front doors and other decorative accent areas. I told my hubby I figure it must be a way to brighten up everyone's outlook because there have got to be a lot of people who suffer from that Seasonal Affective Disorder. Lack of light and dreary cloudy days is bound to take its toll on people there, as well as here. The next day he brought home a flower pot filled with blooming yellow daffodils. How nice! He said the bright color should help chase away those dreary winter doldrums. And they are bright and cheerful to look at. Almost all of the buds have opened already. We enjoy having them around to greet us. Notice all that snow through the window in the background? Right now nearly everything is cloudy, dark, dingy and dirty - even the snow.

I've been away from blogging for a while again. I have some photos and events to share with you from the past couple weeks. It will have to wait till tomorrow, though. I'm tired right now after two full days of participating in a local Embroidery Education and Entertainment event here in town. It was fun. We learned all kinds of stuff about embroidery history, digitizing hints and tips, embroidery design info, stuff about current machines and tool, etc. Two full days have got me beat. More on that and other things tomorrow!

S'mores and More

2010-02-25T22:44:00.000-06:00

It's a Christmas ornament I purchased at Cracker Barrel a year or two ago. I don't really remember when. I have it on a shelf in my Sewing Studio just because I think it's cute. Plus it reminds me of being a kid . . . being easy on myself . . . and a simpler time. I can remember when I first heard the work "S'mores" one day. Okay, so most of you 'young' folks think "S'mores" have been around forever. They haven't! At some point someone thought this up. Maybe it was a dessert or snack that people had been making for awhile, but someone thought up the name "S'mores" (guess why!!) and it stuck. It became a household word. Now when someone mentions the word "S'mores" EVERYBODY knows exactly what they're talking about.

Well, I can remember the first time I heard the word "S'mores" and I had to ask what that was. I thought it was strange that anyone would think up a dessert with marshmallows and chocolate between two graham cracker crusts. Why would anyone want to put something like that together? But it's a great treat. Kind of an awakening to other possibilities. Hey, if someone could think up "S'mores", why not make up other great stuff, too?

You don't have to wait for someone to tell you it's okay to make up stuff . . . you can just start to MAKE UP STUFF!! You can create whatever you want! Experiment and try stuff. One day you might have the next big idea. One day someone else might be looking at something you came up with and have the light bulb go off, triggering their creative spark of ingenuity. Make! Create! Invent!

Visit my Website

2010-02-22T03:34:00.000-06:00

I have been spending time working on some websites. This weekend the challenges of working on my Sew-N-Bee website have been interesting. It still needs more work, but I've got a fairly good start on it. Right now it is pretty basic - some prep work of the general overall look and navigation around the site took place. If you would like to take a peek then let me know what you think I would certainly appreciate it.

I have a couple other websites I want to develop, but have been slowly putzing around with them. You can link over to those from the Sew-N-Bee site as well if you want to wander around for awhile. They're not completed either. Aaah, more web work in the works! It's late now so I'm heading off to sleep.

Earlier in the day on Sunday I made lasagna. Then we stopped to browse the Sports Show at the Civic Center this afternoon. Later at night my hubby and I watched a bit of tv movies. A relaxing day while computing. More tomorrow!

Prepping Background Fabrics and The Next Quilt

2010-02-18T23:52:00.000-06:00

Here's a view of what is on my desk . . . er, cutting table . . . the Rattlesnake Quilt. I spent a generous part of my day yesterday and today ironing the background fabrics that I pre-washed the other day. Yeah! Now they're prepped and ready to go. I need to gather together the freezer paper and trace the pattern onto it. The plan this weekend is to get the background red and golden yellow fabric corner pieces cut out and ready to sew. I want to sew all the background corners in place by the end of the day on Monday. This weekend I will work to pace myself on task. There are forty-two football shapes that need two corners each. From the photo it looks like just red fabrics here. The viewpoint here is a bit deceptive looking down from the top. All the golden yellow fabrics are underneath the red ones. From the side this fabric stack looks thicker. It looks like I will have to cut these corner pieces individually, by hand. I don't trust myself to cut that curve with the rotary cutter. Okay . . . warming up my grip on my scissors hand now. that's a lot of cutting.

I have another quilt started. Most of the pieces are cut for it anyway. I love Amy Butler's fabrics. I used her Lotus Brick Path Quilt pattern found on-line here to cut the blocks for this quilt. I used the fabric from her Midwest Modern 2 line of fabrics for my version though. I love the combination of colors and large visual graphics of her designs.

When I started my version I did not originally start with the use of as many different prints from her collection as indicated on the pattern. As I was cutting my fabric I thought I could get along with more pieces composed of fewer prints for a more simplified look. But upon laying them out and thinking about it I found that with so few fabric choices that would mean more like prints would be touching or close to other like prints. I was getting a completely different look than what I was going for. So I went out and purchased a few more prints . . . several times . . . and . . . now as I have so many blocks cut out I can see I will be able to sew two of these quilts. So I'm willing to go with the flow of it. I'm make an extra quilt. One to keep and one to gift away, give away or sell away. Hmmm. Funny how not planning well and veering off from the instructions gets me into a whole other situation. What to do with the extra quilt? What would you do? I'll keep you posted on my progress. I know they will be pretty! Just two more chunks of fabric to cut out and I can start stitching these quilts together. At least the cutting on this goes faster since I can use the rotary cutter. All straight cuts!

Will It Blend?

2010-02-17T12:40:00.001-06:00

Several years ago someone told me about the "Will It Blend?" website. At that time I spent a bit of time watching some of their inventive 'blends'. It was pretty humorous. Well, I ran across this clip about blending credit cards. Have fun watching.

Now isn't that a good way to cut your credit card habit. If you want to see more fun, go to the "Will It Blend" website.

Today I am spending time pre-washing more fabric. That means more ironing! I am making some tab curtains for someone. I think it is best to pre-wash these fabrics to alleviate any shrinking. The curtain fabric is black with a pink swirl pattern. I will be making a lining from a bolt of black fabric I purchased a long time ago. It has resided on a shelf for years. I haven't used much fabric from this bolt since it is not as tightly woven as I like. It wasn't appropriate for quilting or doll making. But it should work just fine for curtain lining. Okay, off to sew!

- - - - LATER IN THE AFTERNOON - - - -

Oh, I went to watch more of those "Will It Blend" clips. You have to take a peak at a few at least . . . I burst out laughing at this one after watching several others. Too funny!

Okay, now I'm really going to my sewing studio. (chuckle, chuckle!)

A Brief Studio Tour

2010-02-17T01:42:00.000-06:00

I spent some time this evening taking photos of my sewing studio. It is located in the basement of our home. When I go down there to sew, I can easily relax and lose all track of time. I have revamped this area several times and never quite been happy with the way everything is positioned. But now, with this floorplan, I enjoy the space very much. I would still like to tweak my studio a bit further - to try to make it less cluttered looking - and to beautify it a bit more. Everything is fairly easy access and is basically organized. As I work my way through more of my stash I will be able to shift some things around for even better utilization of the space and materials.

Just the other day I threw these pieces of fabric into the wash to get them ready for quilting. Now that they are pre-washed I need to iron them. If you'll remember, these are the background selections for the Rattlesnake Quilt that I selected last week. Quite a pile, wouldn't you say? What a jumbled mess! I didn't take the time to serge the edges of the fabric with my serger. Because of that, I ended up with lots of long strings and threads that unraveled. Thus, the washing and drying made the fabric even more twisted and tied up than it looks here. This will be ironed flat in no time; then on with the quilting.

Here's a little bit wider view of the shelf that holds most of my quilting fabric. I have a bit more fabric than this cut as fat quarters that is stored in another location. I like mixing and matching colors of fabric. That's half the fun of quilting. These pieces are cut to a variety of lengths. The mini bolts of fabric on the upper shelf are some of the longer lengths.

I have been working on wrapping any longer chunks of fabric on boards so I can access them better. I cut up foam core boards into four smaller 10"x14" boards. This makes a great size for fabric storage. I fold the fabric in half (selvage and folded edges together) along the length of the fabric, then wrap the fabric around the board. I use quilter's pins to secure the end.

Hey, did you know selvage could also be spelled selvedge? Learn something new every day! I had to look it up as I was writing since it looked funny to me.

And here's a bit of a bird's eye view showing where I sit when I sew. I held the camera up high to try to get as much into the picture as possible. I like to sit in this swivel office chair so I can turn to any one of my machines when I am sewing. Sometimes I get both of the larger embroidery machines going at the same time. Depending upon how many stitches each color sequence has, I may be bouncing from one machine to another fairly quickly. Often I try to run one of them with a single color job like a redwork or lace pattern that takes a while to stitch out. Then things are not so hectic. Other times I just get an embroidery design going and sew or quilt on another machine.

Across from my seating area is another spot for a sewing visitor to sit. When a sewing friend and I get together at my house, my friend sits across from me so we can see each other while we sew and chat. It makes for an enjoyable afternoon. I've got so many machines right now because I never traded any in when I purchased a new one. I think it would be great to get my small business going to a point where I can hire employees who could use some of these machines. That will be awhile.

The view of my fabric cutting table is obscured a bit by all the stuff I've got sitting on it. I will be making curtains from the black and pink swirl fabric over the next couple days. It's a project for someone's scrapbook room that I am helping to arrange and decorate. The shelf on the left is mostly garment fabric with a few other flannels and other odds and ends thrown in. There is a lot going on in my studio - lots for the eye to take in - but it is organized with like things grouped together.

Shifting to another viewpoint here, you can see the extra sewing machine set up on the right for any sewing visitors to use. Also featured here are my serger and a punching (felting) machine. I like to sew garments occassionally on the serger. Unfortunately I have not used my felting machine for some time. But I have it set out, instead of in the box, and plugged in for easy access if I do choose to use it. I'll have to make a point of using it more often - at least once or twice a month! How about that for a challenge? I downloaded some of the free patterns from the Pfaff website, but haven't made those yet. There are also great felting patterns at Husqvarn Viking's site, too.

Let's Sew! I got this flag type banner at a Husqvarna Viking Convention one year. That was a fun convention. I like the bright color highlighting one of my favorite activities. The mermaid is a cloth doll/cloth book I told you about here. I had hoped to make over my studio with a bit more decorative bling. Once I got all the absolute, must-have things placed into their positions I wasn't left with much room to decorate. This room is really packed - thus it looks so cluttered. As I work on using up some of my stuff I want to tweak things to be a bit more decorative and stylish. Over the years I have sewn lots of items that would be fun to have on display, but one can only show off a limited amount of stuff at a time. Maybe I'll have to rotate stuff from time-to-time to refresh it occassionally.

I am getting a small pile of quilt tops finished. They are ready to be quilted any time I decide to get going on that. Plus there are at least six to eight more quilts in progress in my studio right now. I'm real good at starting projects, but more slow to finish them. That's what has been on my mind a lot lately - getting more of my quilt tops and projects finished. At some point I'll have to go into a frenzy and put them on my quilting frame, one right after another, to complete the whole lot of them. Meanwhile, I am enjoying the process. And I always find more projects that look interesting. There's always another great project do sew. Ideas seem endless!

Testing Out Some Quilt Fabric Selections

2010-02-13T00:44:00.000-06:00

The blocks of this Leaf Quilt are all sewn together now. I finished sewing and pressing seams tonight. I think the final choice for border fabrics will be as shown. My sewing friend and I sampled a few fabric choices by laying them along side the quilt top. These two pieces of gold and green fabrics seemed to strike the right balance for the quilt borders. I am glad this quilt is in its final stages. I cut the border for the inner gold fabric tonight.

Then I got distracted with tidying up my studio, re-rolling some fabric pieces onto boards so they could be lined up nicely on my shelves. It is always good to stay up on keeping things organized and in order. I am trying to stay current with that task so things don't get so out of hand like they have in the past. For my way of thinking, I believe staying on top of the chaos will help me get more accomplished in the long run.

This photo shows a bolt of fabric I am considering for the back of the Leaf Quilt. It is a printed fabric, but I like that it reminds me a bit of a batik. At this point I am not entirely sure this is the way I want to go with the back. I'm going to leave it sit out for awhile and see if it still seems okay in a day or so. I'm concerned it might be too bright for the quilt. There are a lot of colors going on with the front of the quilt. Perhaps the back should be more subdued. I didn't really want to go out and purchase more fabric for the back since I have such a large stash of fabric now. I will have to take another look through my fabric to see if there is anything else that appeals to me for this quilt. What do you think? Is the orange color too much? Does that bother anyone else? Maybe the bolder color choice is fine?

Tumbler Quilt Top Done

2010-02-10T00:38:00.000-06:00

It's already getting pretty late. It's that time of day when today turns into tomorrow. I'm about ready to head off to bed, but thought I'd share with you what I worked on today.

Ta-Da! It's the first tumbler quilt top I've completed - made with blocks cut on my 'Go' fabric cutter. These were all scraps of fabric from my stash - actually a huge box of scraps I wrote about last fall. It feels good to have another top completed and ready to quilt. This quilt is small - just a tish over four foot - not quite square, but close. When I randomly cut all those tumbler blocks I was just cutting with no pre-conceived notion of what the quilts would look like in the end. The idea was to just try to work my way through some of the odd-ball scraps and reduce the size of my fabric collection. These fabrics were the odds and ends from an eclectic group of left-overs.

I wanted the quilt to look very random and scrappy. I didn't pre-arrange the blocks ahead of time, but just randomly pulled them from piles to sew them together. The fact that some prints link up with others of the same color is part of the unplanned effect I was going for. I'm considering the idea of doing some sort of applique design on it. Not sure what, yet. I thought the scrappy look would make a good background for some vining leaves. The colors along with the duck and deer prints seem to denote this as a guy's quilt. I don't really want to applique flowers or anything too feminine. What do you think about a leafy-vine sort of thing running near the perimeter. Would that enhance it? Or detract from it?

At this point I'm not sure what I'll do with this quilt. It's a bit small for a lap quilt. Maybe a table topper or just to hang on the wall? I could add a few more borders to enlarge it a bit for a lap quilt. Hmmm - decisions, decisions. Oh well, as Scarlet O'Hara is known to say, "Fiddle dee dee. I can't think about it now. If I do I'll go crazy. I'll think about it tomorrow."

Nitey-nite. More tomorrow.

Snowbirds

2010-02-07T21:16:00.000-06:00

We have received more snow this week. I went outdoors for awhile to shovel some of it off the sidewalks. I knew the kids would be walking home from school in the afternoon. By the time I stepped outside it was already several inches deep. Hopefully the effort to clear the walks was helpful. When it comes down consistently throughout the day like that it accumulates quickly. You can see my large decorative planter is fully covered now from all our recent snowfall. When he got home, my hubby got the snowblower out and cleared the walks even more. He commented the other day about teaching me how to use the snowblower "in case I needed to do it." Just as quickly as it came out of his mouth he hastily amended that statement to add, "not that you should be going out there to snowblow, but just in case you wanted to - or needed to." Hmmm . . . not quite sure what to think about that. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to know how to start it up and use it, but . . . well . . . it's not likely I'd be the one to do it. I always pretty much think of it as 'his toy' like my sewing machine is 'my toy'. I was just thinking it might be a good idea to share some knowledge though. When he teaches me to use the snowblower I can teach him how to use the sewing machine - just in case he want to, or needed to, sew up a rip or a loose button - or something. Maybe we could even do some bonding over this interchange of lessons. Just a thought. I'll have to bring that up sometime.

Surprising as it seems, I saw robins out in the yard on Saturday when I took these photos. There were quite a number of them flying and chasing one another about. I was pretty surprised and did a double-take when I first saw them come fly around the corner of the house. I usually think of robins as the first harbingers of Spring. It seems interesting to see them out in the yard so early in the year, especially given all the snow we have received lately. Perhaps these birds are some that chose to stay put for the winter here in North Dakota. These were darting back and forth, under and around the back end of the truck, resting on the snowblower handle, on the handrail at the front steps and in and out of the tree limbs overhead. Some of them ducked under the back end of the truck, knocking the dirt and snow from the ledge just under the wheel-well. I would guess they were gathering sand for their gizzards - or making a game out of it.

I love the look of this image with the robin in silhouette along with the iron rail on the steps. I did not convert this one to black and white. It just naturally looks that way with so much snow offsetting the darker colors of the other objects in the photo. It reminds me of that paper cutting technique - scherenschnitte. Pretty cool! And if you have never seen it before, I found a few websites promoting this craft here and here. Type the word into your search engine to find more. I'm starting to wish for spring again. If these robins are any indication, it is just around the corner. I know . . . it's just February now. We have to wait quite a while longer for Spring here in North Dakota. I am looking forward to it.

Auditioning Colors

2010-02-06T00:38:00.000-06:00

My sewing friend and I finally were able to get together at my house for a little sewing therapy. Again, I have to say how thankful I am to be over that yucky sinus infection. I missed our sewing and quilting get-togethers. I thoroughly enjoyed the days we spent together this week. And I accomplished a lot so that was a bonus as well.

One of the things I accomplished was auditioning some fabric choices to go along with the black and white football shapes of my Rattlesnake quilt. And I think the choices of reds and golden yellows we selected will be wonderful. I've decided to hang this quilt on the wall of my 'Yellow Room'. It's an upstairs bedroom where I have my quilting frame set up waiting to be used. I also do some scrapbooking and various paper art projects here as well. I haven't been using this room for much lately other than as a storage place for lots of photos, memorabilia, boxes of old papers, files and magazines I am slowly (very slowly) sorting through. As I was cleaning out and de-cluttering other areas of the house I ended up hauling 'stuff' into the Yellow Room and in the hallway. De-cluttering is an on-going project I need to keep working on.

Now that the fabric choices have been made I can procede with stitching the background corners for this quilt. I want to pre-wash the background fabrics this weekend . . . especially the reds . . . so they don't end up bleeding into the other fabrics when this quilt eventually gets washed. I think this color combination will work out fabulously and fit my Yellow Scrapbooking Room perfectly. I've already got quite a bit of black and white with some touches of red and yellow happening in that room. After I get the quilt completed and hung on the wall I want to continue to tweak the decor in this room so it looks more appealing. I've got a few decorative elements I want to hang on the walls and add some other touches. This decorating project may take some time. I'm guessing it may be done around late March or early April. I've been moving very slowly at sorting and purging some of the old paperwork. I always seem to find plenty of other more interesting things to do instead. I'm good at avoiding some of the not-so-fun sorting part of it. But I look forward to getting it done so I can make better use of this room to scrapbook and quilt some of the many quilt tops I have waiting.

Views Of The Day So Far

2010-01-29T15:57:00.003-06:00

Most of this past couple weeks while I was sleeping a lot, recovering from this sinus infection, I have kept the window blinds closed. Pretty much just holed up resting or sleeping. Yesterday and today I have raised the blinds open wide to let in all this great sunshine we are receiving. It is glorious. Mid-winter cold weather, but lots of sun. I can take that. My desk is positioned in such a way that it helps me take advantage of this sun light. I'm basking in it right now. Warm and wonderful, but I just might have to put my sunglasses on!

Here is a view of our snow-filled front yard. There isn't as much snow as we had last year, but that pile covering my big flower pot is pretty high. Most of that is snow from the driveway and sidewalk. I am okay with piling it on my pot since that is the easiest when clearing it off the sidewalk, but I cannot help but wonder about possible damage to the pot considering what happened to my chicken planter last year. I'm thinking now that it might have been better to have covered it with something to protect it a bit. Next time I go to our local garden center I'm going to have to find out what they suggest. Does anyone else have any large clay pots or decorative garden items? How do you deal with them for wintery weather?

Switching to an indoor view, this is what is currently on my desk. I'm keeping warm with delicious hot tea soothing my throat and warming me up. A couple days ago I started playing with changes to my websites. I'm experimenting with color combinations and changing up the formats. I love to play with color. That must be one of the reasons I like to quilt and paint. The color choices shown in these two books are not the full selection of hexidecimal color lists available for web design. I would love to have this poster and color charts to help chose website colors. Unfortunately I haven't invested in any of these yet. Perhaps one day I'll splurge on them. For now I play with things I find in my books and assorted info from websites on html and xhtml suggestions.

I am working now on changing the format of my websites. I received a suggestion to make the pages more fluid. This means when the window is resized the page resizes as well. When you have multiple windows open at the same time this allows you to see more of the page and its content. It involves using more floating divs and less absolute commands. I can see there would be a benefit to this, so am working on converting my pages to accomplish this different format. At the moment it seems to make the codes a bit cleaner . . . easier to read. I'll reserve judgement on that till when I'm finished with these changes. It is taking me awhile since I seem to be easily distracted. I haven't been devoting enough time to learning the codes. Aside from being sick, I'm spending my time doing lots of other things. One thing I want to work on this year is being more focused on specific things. Learning web programming and keeping up-to-date with my websites and blogs are at the top of my list. I also have a desire to devote more time to garment sewing, quilting and some other artwork. Now that I'm turning the corner on being sick, feeling stronger, I'm more conscious of things I want to work on. I want to plan my time better and Focus, focus, focus! I want to not only organize my rooms and supplies better, but organize my time better also.

An Apple A Day

2010-01-27T22:45:00.000-06:00

That's the traditional saying . . . an apple a day keeps the doctor away. Well I'm going to be trying harder on this. More fruits and vegetables coming in my future. To help keep me healthier, and for lower calories.

I watched a bit of tv this afternoon (switching channels for awhile - guess who is rubbing off on me :) and saw a piece on Oprah Winfrey's show about eating more 'real food' instead of all the processed foods that are so readily available now. There was a statistic presented that 20-30 years ago people would spend 15% of their income on food and 7-8% on doctors and medical care. Her guest speaker says now days the statistic is closer to spending 7% of our income on food (because of lots of low cost, government subsidized processed food, and including all the less healthy fast food) while we are now spending 18% and more on medical care. I didn't jot down the actual numbers given, but that was the relative gist of the percentages. I watched a couple shows on big business farming and food processing ('Food Tech' last week was one) and today the bit on Oprah about where some of our food comes from. Interesting. Makes me want to get that garden going even more this coming spring and summer. And I would be one to have oh, maybe . . . three 'pet' chickens (for fresh eggs) in place of three pet dogs if it wasn't against city ordinances . . . and if my hubby would let me cheat and sneak them in under the cover of darkness. Guess I'd have to work with city council or county regulations to change the laws. Currently one has to own 40 acres of land before they are allowed to have chickens. Unbelieveable! a whole 40 acres for a few chickens! Not 3, 5, or 10 acres. My hubby has already told me I can't have chickens till we move out to the country and buy that 40 acres. What would I do with a whole 40 acres? All I want is a nice garden and a few chickens. Maybe, one day . . . till then I need to find a local farmer who has chickens for some of those wonderful farm fresh eggs.

Anyway, more fresh fruits and veggies and some honest to goodness whole foods will be on the menus for us more often in the future. It has been a while since I was sick, but my opinion is it's better to be well and healthy than sick. This past week has been unpleasant to say the least. So glad I'm on the mend and feeling better.

Sick, a Bad Four Letter Word

2010-01-19T23:13:00.000-06:00

This was one of the views outdoors yesterday. The frost stayed on the trees all day into the evening. We were surrounded by fog and low lying clouds throughout the day. When driving things before me were only visible for about a block and a half. This photo was taken later in the day, probably around 4-5pm. It was somewhat magical because we just don't have fog and frost stay around that long. I missed the sun though. This time of year a bright sunny day does wonders.

I have been working on de-cluttering some of the stuff around here. We will be moving a large assortment of my excess stuff later this weekend. I'll be helping do a Scrapbook Room Make-Over for someone. We had an opportunity to get together and talk about it the other day. We've got big plans. They might take a few weeks to get everything into place, but it should be a fun process. Doing this helps me clear space in my house and will make a fun room for someone else to have some scrapbook and craft-y enjoyment.

Yesterday I had a tremendous headache on the left side of my head along with a couple days with stiff neck and achey shoulders. I woke up today with sinus drainage, feeling run down and exhausted. I'm hoping to get past this yuckiness by this weekend. I'd hate to feel sick when we have so much great stuff planned.

I found these storage boxes and this pretty glass jar with crystals on sale last week. I think they will come in handy in the new scrapbook make-over. She has chosen a deep pink, almost fushia color along with black and white as the theme colors. We're going for 'stylish and pretty' as our goal.

Meanwhile, here at home my hubby and I started working on some re-arranging of our bedroom. We're de-cluttering in there as well. It will be nice to open up the space more. We got this large shelf to house some of my hubby's tennis trophies, books and other stuff for him. Here it is laying face down as we worked to put it together. It is still currently in the living room because I felt too horrible to do anything with decorating and moving stuff today. It was a sleep and recovery day today for me. I pretty much took it easy. I hate being sick.

I did spend a little time on the computer. I signed up for a Cloth and Paperclay doll-making class and the Izannah Walker Workshop. I downloaded the pattern pieces and cut them out this afternoon. Didn't feel up to sewing a lot so only worked on putting binding on a tablerunner before I got exhausted and went to take a nap. I found Susie McMahon's Doll site and blog. She's done some amazing cloth doll work. You'll be doing yourself a favor to go take a peak. I spent a while this evening being charmed by her amazing dolls. She's involved in the Izannah Walker doll site as well. Time will tell how good I can get in this new medium. I've got all my supplies now and downloaded and prepped the pattern pieces so will get started on my first dolls soon. I'll keep you posted.

Movie Night and Other Fun

2010-01-17T00:49:00.001-06:00

My hubby and I went out to see a movie tonight. We watched the new 'Avatar' movie. We both thought it was really good. Can't wait to see the sequel. You just know they're going to come out with one. It was too good a story line not to. If you haven't seen it yet, you should. Here's a link to check it out. Of course you can see more links just by typing 'Avatar movie trailer' into your browser and follow the link to see more trailers. But don't stop there, go see the show! Okay, enough of that.

The day wasn't too eventful beyond the movie. Here at home the two smaller dogs got to have a bath and a change of bedding. They usually like to sit wrapped up in their towels and cuddle for awhile after their baths. Our female chihuahua seemed kind of indignant that I made her have a bath. She didn't want to do much cuddling afterward. I think she was mad at me. She couldn't wait to get down and go run to her kennel afterward. By the time we got home from the movie tonight she had changed her mind. She actually came running out to me greet me as I was taking my coat off. Hubby was trying to get all three of them to head out the door for potty breaks but she wanted to get a greeting from me before she went outside. Looks like I'm forgiven. Yay! Dogs are such wonderful, loving and easy to forgive creatures. It's good to know all is well now. They're all sleeping peacefully as I type now.

I didn't get any sewing done today, but plan on doing some of that tomorrow. I forgot to mention the other day I received the Creative Paperclay shipment I ordered on-line. I checked around town last week for it, but didn't see it locally. Then yesterday I received my on-line order, later stopped in to return something at Hobby Lobby and saw some on the shelf during that return visit. Go figure. If I knew they were going to have some I would have waited. I usually like to buy locally when possible to support our local economy. I ended up getting more than I would have originally in order to get a better price. Now I have got plenty of paperclay to make up lots of the Cloth & Clay dolls I am currently lined up with taking on-line courses. I can start on The Original Cloth & Clay Doll Workshop doll now that I have my clay. And the Izannah Walker Doll Workshop lessons start on Monday. It should be lots of fun to get creative with dolls again. I'm looking forward to it. If you care to join me in some doll making fun, click on the links in my side-bar. Come on! It'll be fun!

Sewing and Drawing

2010-01-16T00:53:00.002-06:00

I had some time to sew this week. I've been working on more quilts while visiting my sewing friend. Some of the quilts are getting further along. The other day I worked on finishing a table runner. This will be a give-away to somewone soon.

I took a bit of time tonight to start drawing my entry to Terry Stegmiller's Word Cue (Heel) for this week. I decided to incorporate the word 'heel' as part of the drawing. I think if needs to be defined more. You can see the 'h' forms the elongated curve of the back of the shoe and the long spike of the heel. The 'e's are used as a decorative element along the top and side of the toe box. The 'l' is formed by the open toe area of the shoe. Maybe I've been looking at it too long tonight, but it reminds me of the jaw line of a large mouth bass a bit. Okay, I know that's goofy and the idea makes me chuckle. I'll be working on the image more tomorrow. For tonight though, I'm already pretty sleepy (and goofy from lack of sleep?) and ready to head off to be. Nitey-nite.

First Word Cue - East

2010-01-10T21:41:00.006-06:00

Okay, so . . .

I said I wanted to participate in Terri Stegmiller's once a week Word Cue . . .

well,

here it is already Sunday again,

and I hadn't completed my first prompt.

So I worked on it tonight. This is where I am right now.

Such complications due to the fact that 'Chuck' premeires tonight on NBC. And of course since I'm such a 'Chuck' fan I have to watch the show. This is where I'm at for now. Update to come soon . . .

- - - E D I T E D L A T E R - - -

Okay, So here's what I've got for tonight. I'm about to head off to bed for the night, but thought I'd post the image I worked on after the season premiere of 'Chuck'. By the way, I think the new third season is headed off to a good start. Stay tuned for Chuck to start it's regularly scheduled programming tomorrow night. And maybe I'll work on this more . . . or maybe not. I might start in on this week's cue: HEEL. Hmmm . . . what to do with that?

Short Cuts

2010-01-07T01:47:00.000-06:00

I got my hair cut the other day. See how short it is? Occassionally I decide to do it short in the middle of winter, in the middle of freezing cold January! It has been quite a while since I had it this short. Even though it's cold out, I have to say I like it this way for a change. After my morning shower it dries so much faster and is super easy to work with.

I had an opportunity to meet up with Terri Stegmiller at the Bismarck Art Gallery. She is another North Dakota blogger who shares so many similar interests in the art, quilting and sewing areas. I would like to invite you to stop by her blog to say 'Hi'. You will find links in the sidebar on the right for her Creative Cue and Technique of the Month. I am going to try to participate on a regular basis with these projects. So far I haven't taken the time to do my first entry. The first cue word is 'East'. I've got an idea in my head, but haven't manifested it on paper yet. Hey Terri :) It was fun to finally meet you in person!

I did some work downstairs in my studio today. Didn't get photos of my projects yet today. That will have to wait till tomorrow. I was busy with some organizing, some sewing, quilting and paper piecing the last of the football shapes for my Rattlesnake quilt. All this activity took place in the midst of washing laundry and folding several batches of clothes. Still, there's more to do on that front. Aaah . . . don't cha just love doing laundry? Me? I like to see it over and done. It's a good feeling to get the last of it folded and put away. Unfortunately there are no shortcuts for getting it done. It's just a matter of sticking to it. Sewing and working on my projects between loads is a good way to break up the tedium of chores.

New Year's Sewing

2010-01-02T03:41:00.000-06:00

I was awakened early (3am) this morning by one of our dogs wanting to go outside. Since she got me up so early I decided I would get all three of them up and send them outside. That way they wouldn't be anxious to go out when the sun came up. It was bitterly cold out this morning, but tonight is worse. It got down to -20 degrees out there - not counting any wind chill factors. That was actual temperature. Brrr.

Once I was awake I could not fall back to sleep. So I got up and went down to my sewing room. I decided to cut up some scraps that were piled on my cutting table. I cut this pile of 'bricks' for a quilt I'll be working on this month of January. These are 3 1/2" x 6 1/2" rectangles. They will be laid out like a brick path so I won't need to match any corners. This should make it easier and quicker to put together. There shouldn't need to be any pinning since I don't have to match seams. I have not counted how many are in this pile. And I haven't taken time to figure out how many pieces I'll need for a queen-size quilt yet. I think I'll just start sewing some together and guesstimate it as I go along. I'll post photos as it starts to take shape.

I finished sewing these two Clutter Bug bags today. I actually started the first bag when my friend came to my house to sew with me earlier this week. I was busy talking with her that day and not paying attention. I had to rip some stitches out and do part of it over, not following the pattern very well with all the gabbing. When I went back to finish it, I had a minor change in the way I machine quilted the layers together. I just found it easier to do it my usual way rather than the way the pattern instructed. I've already put some stuff in the one I'm thinking about keeping. I'm planning to post the other to my Etsy account and try to sell it. I'll look into doing that tomorrow. It's getting late for now and I want to head off to bed.

Here's a closer view of the pattern. It was fairly easy to make. I used a 9" zipper in both of mine since I had some on hand that I picked up at a clearance sale. One was plastic and the other was a metal zipper. It's been awhile since I sewed in a zipper. I have to say the plastic one was easier since I didn't have to go slow and take care not to hit the zipper teeth with the needle. The pattern instructions for the zipper were a bit different than how I would normally do it. If I make any more I would likely change the way this is inserted. It worked out fine, just different.

Well, since it is so late I'm off to bed. Nitey-nite!

New for 2010

2009-12-31T00:05:00.000-06:00

Visit Cloth and Clay Dolls
I was browsing the internet over the weekend. This was fun to do as I randomly followed blog links from one interesting site to another. I came upon this Cloth & Clay Doll website and fell in love with the unique, hand made dolls. So many of them have an aged, antique appearance. But there are also many with a fun and funky modern tone to them as well. Each one is hand made, one at a time and unique. If you are interested in dolls, cloth dolls, and hand painted dolls you will have fun browsing through those posted here.

I signed up for one of the on-line classes to learn some new techniques on doll making. This would be a paper-clay over cloth technique. I've been aware of this type of doll for a long time, but never took the time to learn to make them. It is one of my New Year's desires (no resolution here - just a desire) to learn to make this type of doll. I'll keep you posted on the results by uploading some photos of my progress. Right now I'm partially through the series of video lessons I signed up for the Cloth & Clay Doll class from the website. I'm watching through all the videos first to get the general ideas expressed, then will re-watch as I work my way through the process of my first doll. I'm looking forward to getting started with this.

Tonight I was browsing through some of the blogs I periodically check on when I saw this project proposal for 2010. Terri Stegmiller lives across the river in Mandan. She is actually located nearby although I have not met her before. Isn't that funny that you can run across someone over the internet and discover they are living so close. You would think with such similar interests we would have run across each other and had the opportunity to meet one another by now. Strange.

Anyway, this proposal to use a word cue once a week to inspire an art project sounds interesting. I know there are several other projects similar to this on-line. I even have a few posted in my side bar. But given the fact that Terri is located so close to me I've decided to participate in her on-line activity this next year. I'll see how long I stay active in this project. I supposed that depends on how busy I get with other things and how inspiring the word cues are. Stay tuned on this project.

New Year Anticipations

2009-12-29T23:00:00.000-06:00

I found out a few days ago that my uber favorite TV program - did I mention my very mostest favorite TV program - Chuck will be coming back on the air. It will be starting off its 3rd season on January 10th with a special premiere opening program at 8pm central time on Sunday. Yeah!! And the regualarly scheduled Monday show starts the next day -- the NEXT DAY!! -- on their regularly scheduled Monday air time. We cannot wait. We LOVE Chuck. It's the ONLY really GOOD program out there on TV now. After a fall and winter of reruns of watching NCIS (we love the crew here at NCIS also!) and CSI we're so looking forward to some new material.

I purchased the first season of Chuck on DVD when it first hit the stores. We've watched those episodes several times. I know there are some season two episodes available to watch on-line, but that is just not the same. I'm looking forward to the release of the season two episodes to DVD in January, also. But the big kicker is that the new shows will be airing soon. You can watch a trailer for the Jan. 10 2 hr premiere here.

My hubby had signed up to play tennis in the past on Mondays, but will be holding off with that now that NBC is advertising the new season of Chuck. We'll be setting up the TV and snacks, snuggled under a warm blankie, ready and waiting for season three to begin.

Oh, Joy! Did I mention I love the show Chuck? We've been discussing it amongst ourselves the last few days since we saw the new trailers. Hoping 'they' (the NBC executives) don't ruin the charm of Chuck this season. It appears as though they'll be giving him more of a secret spy persona. We just don't want to lose our Buy More nerd as we've come to know him. We see they've spun off the 'Bryce' character (Matthew Bomer) into his own TV series (White Collar). That show doesn't carry the same charm as Chuck. So we are hoping 'they' don't veer off from the loveable Chuck character we've enjoyed in the past. It would be so disappointing if 'they' made Chuck's character just like every other spy show character out there. I'm hoping he won't be all 'super-hero spy guy' and lose the charm of the funny, quirky, nerd-herd Chuck character of the first two seasons.

So . . . waiting . . . with anticipation for season three to begin. It you haven't watched it yet, you'll want to go peek at some episodes available on line then tune in to see the new ones. Chuck is charming, loveable and funny, clever with it's turn of events and humorous/playful banter between the characters without all the overly used gratuitous sex and violence shown so much these days to get viewers. That kind of programming has become so trite - it's why so many people are disappointed that there are hundreds of channels now available on TV, but nothing good on. We're looking forward to seeing if season three is as good as the first two seasons.

In more local news, I get to sew with my friend tomorrow. Sweet!

The Things We Eat

2009-12-28T10:14:00.000-06:00

Now that we've got lots of snow (12-14 inches) my hubby has been spending lots of time outdoors with the snow blower. He is good about helping out others on our street when it comes to dealing with the snow. One of the neighbors down the street is a chef at a local restaurant. You know they have to eat well with an expert in the house like that. My hubby came home with a surprise box from them as a thank you for helping with the snow so often. It was a box of big, giant crab legs!

My hubby has ordered crab legs at restaurants before, but we don't get them often. This was something new for us to try to cook for ourselves. What to do? He got on-line and looked up instructions on preparing them. First off he had to break their legs so they would fit in our pot. Then my hubby cooked them, along with a second pot of rice. It was good, but I have to say I'm not a big fan of crab legs myself. I told my hubby he could eat more of them than me since he was the one doing all the work to receive them. He had a whole bunch compared to what I took. It was a good surprise.

This weekend I baked home made bread. I used the recipe from the book that came with my Kitchen-aid mixer. It makes two loaves. I decided I wanted some buns, so I formed a half dozen of them before I made the rest into the two loaves. That made the loaves a bit smaller than they would have been. No big deal. Our slices are just a tish smaller, and the buns were good.

I had a craving for some yummy potato soup this weekend, too. I've made the Gooseberry Patch recipe before and we loved it. This soup recipe was a free download in early October from the 'Taste of Autumn' cookbook called 'Corn & Potato Chowder'. I leave the corn out since my hubby doesn't eat corn. This time I loosely followed the recipe, but made the batch a bit larger with more carrots and potatoes. This is what I had on my desk yesterday . . . potato soup and cinnamon toast made from homemade bread. And of course a nice warm cup of tea - I love tea. Yum! I divied up the pot of soup to individual bowls so they would be easy to reheat in the microwave. There are still several bowls with soup in the fridge right now. That'll make a great lunch for us today. Home made fast food.

Christmas Ornaments

2009-12-22T15:15:00.000-06:00

My sewing friend gave me the snowman ornament seen here on the left. Isn't it so cute!?! I told her it reminded me of some of the German ornaments we saw at kiosks years ago when we were in Germany. The little painted wooden sheep ornament at the right is one of those from Germany. Pull the string and the arms and legs move. The snowman functions this same way by pulling the string. I love it.

I had to try another frame without the camera flash. It was washing out all the detail. This one is photoshopped a bit to help with visability of details. Sometimes I wish I had better lights and equipment to get better photos. At this point I'm limited to shooting either with the flash, delayed flash, or no flash. I do my best with what I have. Funny how the green wires of the Christmas tree lights appears similar to the color of our artificial tree, but once they are illuminated by the flash they appear to be so different. I like leaving the lights on all the time - day time and night time. The colorful lights are pretty.

This is another of my favorite ornaments. I found a booth at a craft fair about ten years ago with these home-made pheasant feather ornaments. The woman who made them did a beautiful job. She said her husband and sons did a lot of pheasant hunting. Said she loved the colorful feathers and hated to just discard them after the birds were put up in the freezer. When she came up with this idea for ornaments she thought it was a better use of the feathers than just throwing them away. She used a styrofoam ball, glue, a long decorative stick-pin and ribbon along with the feathers to create them. They were hot sellers that year.

The last of the ornaments I'll comment on are not on my tree this year. I actually have not used these vintage ornaments for a long, long time. They are very delicate, paper-thin blown glass. I used them a couple years after they were given to me, but if they got bumped off the tree they broke immediately. I haven't hung them up since. These old vintage ornaments were a gift from an older couple I knew 18-20 years ago. She said she got them during the first years they were married. They have lost most of their shiny quality and now have that patina that only comes with age. To me that is part of their charm. They remind me of the old fashioned ornaments I saw as a child at my grandma's house and on our family tree in the late fifies and early sixties. The fact that they bring back memories is another reason I like to hang onto them even though I don't use them on the tree any more. Considering the age of this older couple, I would guess these vintage ornaments were made in the early to mid 50s. Some of them have those indented sides that were popular back then. They are all hand painted, some have glitter applied. The boxes don't reveal any further information.

Digitizing Machine Embroidery Fun

2009-12-22T01:51:00.001-06:00

Just thought I would share with you an embroidery project I worked on recently. One of my son's friends wanted to get some personalized embroidery designs sewn onto some things for his dad's Christmas gift. I digitized the logo shown here on my Husqvarna Viking 4D Professional software program then sewed the designs onto garments for him. They turned out great. The garments should make a good surprise for his dad. Apparently he's involved in a club/group that likes to brew their own beer. This logo design was drawn/created by another club member. His dad should have fun showing off in his fancy new threads next time the group gets together. It was a fun project to work on.

I've been embroidering and digitizing for quite some time, but I learned a few things doing this project. One of those things is that you don't always need to have all the automatic features of the program turned on. In fact, it would have been better on this project to click onto the Preferences icon and uncheck the 'Remove Overlap When Combining Embroideries' option. Had I done this earlier on in my test sewing I could have alieviated a bit of aggravation on my part. You'll notice the narrow black outline surrounding the red fill of the lettering. I wanted a slight overlap so the pull (compensation) of the fabric while it was being stitched didn't cause any gaps between the red fill area and the black outline. I went into the design manually several times to move the wire frames in the .can files in order to reduce a few small gaps that kept showing up. Then when I clicked the icon to 'Create Stitches' this automatic overlap feature kept undoing what I was trying to accomplish. So just a heads up to any other home-based digitizers out there: You might want to uncheck this automatic feature of the program at certain times.

You will notice I also changed the thickness on the black outline bordering the red letters. When I digitized this I did these letters manually. After the first test sew-out I decided to increase the black outline from 1mm to 1.5mm to see if a slightly wider border would solve the gap problem. Until I turned the aforementioned auto feature off I still had a gap because the program was eliminating the overlapping areas. It was pulling back the stitches from the red fill area underneath the outline to do this and I still had some gaps. Plus I didn't like the way the thicker black border was muddying up the look of the overall design. It was excessive. I scaled back on the border to 1.3mm and liked it better when I test sewed the sample. The other new thing I realized playing with those border widths was that even though I digitized each letter individually I only needed to reset the border parameter as it was a global setting and affected all the borders of each letter. At first I thought it would take a long time to change all the borders manually on every letter. I was excited to find the global setting are useful to make these changes very quickly. You will find this feature when working with the .can file in 4D Design Creator - under the Preferences icon, click onto the Border tab then change the 'width' setting in milimeters.

I ended up sewing several test sew-outs before I was satisfied with the design. That's okay though. I decided to play around with testing out some patch making techniques. I've heard there is a specialized machine used in industry to stitch around patches to create that narrow rolled-hem type stitch around the perimeter of patches. I used some of those test sew-outs with my serger to try to duplicate that look. I set it up for a two thread folded rolled hem and got a pretty good result. I might play around a bit more with the serger and do a few other stitches to try for better results. I threw in some buckrum as a base material under the fabric to create a stiffer patch with some of the test sew-outs. That material doesn't fold over with the rolled hem since it is so stiff. I want to try just a standard rolled hem to see how it compares. And I might even try a three-thread rolled hem. I know the edge won't really 'roll' either, but replicating the way the thread wraps around the edge of the badge is the effect I'm going for. On another project I already tried just incorporating a satin stitch edge as part of the embroidery design when making badges. You can see that previous badge project on these chicken bages. The edge treatment wasn't quite the look I was going for. And the satin stitch width was harder to control compared to just running the badges through the serger once the embroidery was sewn.

Today I got together with my sewing friend and did some more work on the Rattlesnake quilt. I've now got only four more paper piecing sheets left to sew. It will be nice to move on to the next stage of this quilt project. I'll need to peruse my stash to find the fabric colors I want to use for the corners on this quilt . . . soon, very soon.

Sewing, Sorting, Speaking in Tongues

2009-12-21T00:56:00.001-06:00

I had a 'blue screen' show up on my Pfaff Creative Vision embroidery machine a few days ago. As I recall this was the second time ever in two years that one of these showed up. To resolve this I just shut off the machine and rebooted it. When the screen came back up things were back to normal . . . no residual effects. The machine works fine.

The most recent things I've been embroidering were some garments for someone who wanted to give them as Christmas gifts. I digitized a logo using my Pfaff 4D Suite software program then sewed it out on some garments. Prior to this assignment I was busy working on some quilting projects. I've been back to work on the Rattlesnake Quilt among others. There are only about a half dozen more paper piecing wedges to complete. Then I can move on to sewing on the corner pieces to finish off the quilt top. It's coming along - slowly.

Yes, I've been away from blogging for nearly a month. I've been busy with holiday events and spending time here at home doing a variety of things. It has been a pleasant month. Lots of things keeping me busy.

During this past month I also worked on re-purposing some of the spaces in our home. I've learned I'm very good at packing away LOTS OF STUFF in nooks and crannies around here. Actually I've known that for a long time, it's just that the point has been driven home really well for me lately. I've been tossing stuff that has been collecting dust and no longer serving any purpose for me. Hauling out stuff has been great for freeing up more usable space. I find myself sometimes getting bored with going through it all. Yet it has been a process to work my way through it all, remembering when I got some of it. There is still quite a bit to go through . . . lots of it is old paperwork right now. So I've been sorting through files and containers. I need to shred most of this stuff before it leaves the house. Sometimes I think I should just light a bon-fire in the fire-place and burn it. Then I wouldn't have to listen to the shredder mutilating all that paper. There's also stuff for give-away. I've got a box of stuff and some winter coats already in the trunk of the car to drop off for charity donation.

Lately though, the last several days, I've been procrastinating with sorting my way through all the paperwork. I've got it consolidated into some bins so it doesn't take up quite so much space, but am getting to the point I hate to sit down and deal with it . . . I know, just buckle down and get it done. The more I procrastinate with it, the longer I will have to look at this pile. Anyone else find themselves procrastinating with something? I read something recently that procrastination is a form of passive-agressive behavior - it is being passive-agressive against yourself. I never thought of it like that before. What do you think?

So, a few more days till Christmas. We are looking forward to spending time with some of our family. It will be fun.

My hubby and I are looking forward to the New Year as well. We've been talking about things we'd like to do differently next year. We had a conversation the other day about doing some things together as a couple. My hubby suggested we learn another language together. Deep down I think he'll probably be a lot better at it than me. I told him so and he balked at that idea. I told him I was up for it though. He has been talking about getting a Rosetta Stone language course for quite some time but put it off because they are so pricey. Plus he said it would be easier to learn a language if a person can make use of it in everyday life with conversations to others. He already knows Spanish - and enough French to communicate a bit with some of the Canadians who come down to the states. I suggested we learn French then we could take a trip to Quebec next year to celebrate. He suggested something completely different like Russian. Then I suggested why not Arabic since that's so much in the news these days with what's going on in the world. He's pushing for Russian at the moment. I'm open.

I took two years of Spanish in High School, but am certainly not fluent in it. I never got to the point where I could think in Spanish. In fact, I don't remember much of it from so long ago. I think my mind works more on a visual level, being interested in art and all, not so much on a verbal level. It might be fun to work at learning a new language together. We talked about setting aside certain times of the day or week as language day. Then only speak that language during those times. That way we could get more of an immersion effect. So what do you think? If you were to learn another language what would you choose to learn? And how would you make it easier to accomplish?

Studio Re-Organization Nearly Done

2009-12-01T00:03:00.000-06:00

Here's a view from the studio. Yep, a stack of fabric.

Sorry it has taken me so long to submit a blog entry. Hey, what can I say? I've been busy working on the re-organization of my studio and enjoying my Thanksgiving holiday with the family. Okay . . . no apologies for that. Everyone deserves to take time some time with their family.

Yeah . . . but I've been really E - n - j - o - y - i - n- g it. For the last several days I've been a big bundle of lazy bones, doing some sorting, organizing, re-arranging to be sure, but also just enjoying some time off to goof off and do N O T H I N G ! I've been enjoying myself.

Today I went to sew with a friend. It's fun to take some time off, but equally fun to get back into the swing of things.

I worked on paper piecing my rattlesnake quilt. Yes, this is the one I made the big OOPS on and cut off the tip of my finger. But now that I'm working on it again (with those cool plastic guards on my ruler) to prevent further accidents, I've gotten past the queasy feeling I felt when I first picked up the rotary cutter and ruler (after the accident) and started working on this quilt again. I'm now being more careful and aware of those kinds of quilting accidents.

It's going well. I got three more of those paper pieced football shaped segments completed today -- while we quilted and chatted the afternoon away. It was a good day. I rather enjoyed sending the month of November off with a good day of sewing and socializing with my friend. This evening I've enjoyed watching tv and relaxing with my hubby. Bye-bye November . . . hello December. I hear on the news tonight we've got wind heading our way tomorrow -- 50 mile per hour wind. Hold onto your hat!

Oh, and just for gee-wiz . . . in other North Dakota news . . . this past week the Police and the Game and Fish Department killed a mountain lion IN TOWN, on the north side of town, (and I emphasize -- IN TOWN) as it was passing near the Home Depot store and the vicinity of the north Walmart store. In the recent past several years some people had made complaints about cougars around here (example: scratches from large animal attacks found on horses) and received rebuffs that lions don't attack that way and how they wouldn't come this far, and not so close to town. Well . . . lo and behold . . . how interesting.

Now, here I sit at the computer watching the colorful lights twinkle away on my partially decorated Christmas tree while I type. My son and his new wife had an opportunity to look through the Christmas ornaments and take what they wanted from our collection of ornaments to add to their holiday tree decorations when they were here for Thanksgiving. Meanwhile our tree is up, lighted with twinkly lights and awaiting the rest of whatever decorations I decide to finish it up with. Some years I've done a themed Christmas tree and other years I just throw on a variety of stuff. I'm thinking this might be a year for a theme, but just not sure how I want to go with it. I'm thinking red and gold perhaps, but not entirely commited to that yet. Meanwhile we've been enjoying the room lights dimmed while we watch tv and have the twinkly lights going off and on. It's pleasant now even in its simplicity with just the light. Perhaps it's time for a humble tree this year with only home-made decorations. The beauty of the lights -- it is pretty on its own. A selection of hand-made designs might be just the thing. How are you choosing to decorate your Christmas tree this year?

2009-11-12T23:22:00.001-06:00

I just want to emphasize the give-away that I have open right now. I will be giving away a bundle of 40 five inch charm squares in a drawing ending November 14th. Please leave a comment to get your name into the drawing.

Ok . . . enough said. I've been thinking cartoons lately. I ran across a flicker site that showcases cartoon drawings of "What I Wore Today". I found it a couple days ago and had fun looking through quite a lot of drawings. Apparently this is a site that gets a lot of submissions from artists and cartoonists. I clicked through the entries for the month of November. There are a lot a really cool drawings to look through. Some are better than others. That's to be expected. I'd love to sharpen my pencil, and dip the nib of my ink pen in the well . . . It would be kind of fun to submit one of my drawings . . . but I'm hesitant. It as been ages since I did any drawings. And even more ages since I did any cartooning.

But . . .

Oh . . .

the . . .

posibilities . . .

I'm tempted.

We'll see how strong that temptation is.

Meanwhile . . .

You might want to go take a peak at this web site . . .

What I Wore Today.

Have fun!

Just one more addition to this post. There is a flicker site that shows all the "What I Wore" submissions. It's worth a look. Okay . . . that's it for tonight.

Studio Floor Plan

2009-11-10T23:36:00.000-06:00

My sewing friend came over to my house to sew with me today. She had an opportunity to see the new arrangement of my sewing studio. We are both in agreement that the space seems more confining now even though one piece of furniture has been removed and all the 'stuff' has not even been moved back into the room. Obviously I need to 'go back to the drawing board' and rethink this current arrangement.

I made up a floor plan of the room on gridded paper so everything is to scale. I also have all the furniture and shelves drawn out to scale on paper so I can move furniture and change the layout the easy way before I expend all my muscle energy to do it in reality. I bet somebody's got a software program somewhere that lets you do that kind of thing on the computer in virtual world, too. This current arrangement looked promising on paper, but didn't hold up so well in real life. How disappointing.

We did manage to get some sewing done together. And lots of chatting to go along with that. It makes for a nice day to combine those two things together. Today I was busy sewing together some quilt blocks for another quilt. This will be another quilt top to add to my collection of completed tops ready to do the quilting on my Pfaff Grand Quilter quilting frame. I'll have to do some digging through my bins of supplies and check out how many quilt batts I have on hand. Some time ago I had bought up a number of them to stock up when they were on sale. I don't remember how many I have. At the rate I'm going I might be getting to the point where I have more finished quilt tops than quilt batts. I'm curious just how many I can get completely finished before the end of the year.

The image leading off my post today is a photo of the way I have some of my fabric stored on my shelves. The first board shown with the curved corners is from a set of fabric storage boards I purchased. The others I cut from foam core board. I can cut four pieces this size from the foam core. If you are looking for a way to organize your fabric or store it in such a way that it stays neat and orderly this is one way you could do it.

I usually use these boards for any lengths of fabric that are purchsed in lengths of 2 yards or more. It is easier to handle when you want to use the fabric. You only need to unroll the amount you want and cut it with your rotary cutter. It's like a mini bolt of fabric. They are easy to store vertically on a shelf. That makes them easier to access than fabric that is in piles. I hate it when I work so hard to neatly fold my fabric then when you want to pull out a piece of fabric from the middle or the bottom of the pile they all get messed up. Folded fabric can sometimes be hard to get back into the piles if you like to keep them in color order or with a grouping of like fabric.

I purchased about a dozen more foam core boards that need to be cut down to size. As I work on getting my studio back into a good, satisfactory working condition again I want to do a bit more organizing of my fabrics. If you are like me, you can always find something else to organize a bit better. My studio is a work in progress. It probably always will be as I work through my current stash and make changes in streamlining the way I work. I like to see how other people decorate and organize their studios. I sometimes pick up good ideas that others have found inventive ways to do things. What are some of your favorite studio organizing tips?

Mermaid Fabric Book Doll

2009-11-10T01:52:00.000-06:00

I thought I would take some photos of this sewing project from the past. I will be writing up a pattern with instructions for this Mermaid Fabric Book. Just wanted to share some of the images here on my blog. This was my entry in a round-robin type doll swap I participated in three years ago in 2006.

Someone mentioned to me awhile ago that I should write up the pattern instructions for this doll/fabric book. They thought others might be interested in making up their own Mermaid Fabric Book. I plan on using it in a zine swap I am currently participating in. Alma Stoller's "I Heart Zines" swap is ending this week with the due date this weekend. I'm hoping to include these instructions as part of my zine for the swap. That is if I can get them typed up and printed to include in the book before I drop my zines off in the mail.

I couldn't fall asleep yet tonight when I tried earlier. So I decided to get up and take the photos ~~tonight~~ early this morning. It's about 1:40 am and I'm starting to get sleepy now. Will head off to bed shortly, just as soon as I'm done posting here.

The book is held closed by the mermaid's hands. Each hand and finger is created with wired armature so they are pliable and able to be posed. This feature allows the fingers to be bent to allow her to clasp onto her tail and thus hold the fabric book closed.

This was a fun book/doll to make. When I sent it off for the swap, I had completed the front and back covers (that made up the doll's body). And I created one page (the zippered pouch that holds the signature mini-book). Each artist who participated in the swap was to add their own page then send it on to the next person. Everyone had the freedom to do whatever they wanted to add for their page. When she arrived back home it was fun to see what everyone added.

Fall Leaves and Sewing Studio Progress

2009-11-09T13:21:00.000-06:00

We worked in the front yard to rake leaves this past weekend. We bagged up eight of those black super-large size yard & garden trash bags. They were jammed full of leaves. Periodically as we were bagging, my hubby would step into the bag to crush the leaves and compact them so more leaves would fit inside them. He also raked the back yard, but those leaves are still there in a pile. We knew there would be more to rake and clear out. There always are several rakings every year before it is over. But we wanted to get started to get a handle on it before it rained or snowed more. That just makes them harder to deal with.

Looking at the trees above, I'd guess there are another 6-8 bags (or more?) up there that have not fallen yet. We'll be raking again later this week. And unless we get a really good wind that blows them all away, we'll probably be raking next week also. I don't mind, as long as the weather stays as nice and fall-ish as it has been lately. Some years we would have already had snow by now. We have been enjoying the pleasant sunny days lately, so no complaints here with leaves or anything else. The sun can make a huge difference in one's outlook.

As far as my progress in the Sewing Studio, I got the basics in place for my re-arrangement of the room. I'm not entirely sure if things will stay this way. I'm feeling a bit displaced since things are not in their usual spots. I'll give it a few weeks to see if the flow is working better . . .if not, I'll have to give the arrangement of this room more consideration. One thing I'm coming to grips with is just how much 'stuff' I have in that room. I know I need to pare down on some of this 'stuff' but that will have to take place over time. Right now I'm more interested in getting to work on some holiday sewing projects.

I have several projects already in progress. Plus there are more ideas percolating in my head. I am interested in getting started with them. I also uploaded a few pages for my website. It is not quite ready to advertise yet as I need to get the content pages finished. I'll post the link to the website soon. I need to tweak it further. I'm also working on digitizing a logo for someone. This will be used on some garments and is intended for a Christmas gift. I've started on it, but need to get that completed and test sewn so I can embroider it on the garments. I've got to have plenty of time to get it back to the customer in time for the holiday.

2009-11-06T00:12:00.001-06:00

Just a reminder of the 5" charm square quilt block give-away I have open right now . . . Enter a comment to add your name to the drawing.

I did some sewing with my friend today. I worked on sewing some tumbler blocks together. I will be cutting out more blocks to add to what I already have on hand. I need to go through my stash and select a few more fabrics to round out the colors I've coordinated together so far. These fabric combinations look good right now. So far so good. Onward to more blocks . . .

I've been thinking more and more about doing some re-arranging around here with the layout of furniture in several rooms of our home. I've got changes in mind. Yes, change is on the way . . . as it always is . . . you can't stop change. But I can control the layout of furniture in my home environment. I'll update with photos in a future session.

Change can be good . . . I'll see how I feel about things in a short time. . . I can always change back . . . right???

Busy Re-Arranging Studio

2009-11-05T02:29:00.000-06:00

I was busy almost the entire day doing to re-arranging and organizing my Sewing Studio. I've nearly got it complete, but some fine-tuning left for tomorrow. I'll see how well this new configuration works over the next few weeks.

Needless to say I'm a little tired out tonight. I should sleep like a baby. So . . . on to beddie bye.

5" Charm Squares Give-away

2009-10-28T20:04:00.001-05:00

I've got a big pile of 5" blocks ready and waiting to be sewn together into quilts. Some of these were already pre-cut prior to getting my Accu-quilt cutter. But I managed to add quite a lot more blocks to the pile a lot faster once I got the cutter.

The tumbler blocks were all cut with my Accu-quilt cutter. I don't have enough coordinating colors cut of those yet to create a quilt. Still working on this. I started just with cutting from a large pile of scraps and managed to work my way through the bulk of that. Now to select some coordinating fabrics from the stash to round out the number of tumblers needed.

When I went to sew with a friend earlier this week I brought the 5" blocks along to sort them by color. I've coordinated some blocks together for a future quilt. But I need to lay them all out again to color coordinate the rest of them. Then I need to sit down and figure out how many blocks it will take to make them into a quilt. I'll do some figuring - and math (see you do use it after high school!) - a little later to help decide if I have enough color coordinated blocks to finish into a quilt. Then once I figure out how many blocks to create a quilt I can tell how many quilts I have sitting here in this pile.

The other project I brought along to our sewing get-together was the second version of the leaf quilt. This version has trees embroidered on half of the blocks instead of leaves. When I got home I worked on more of these blocks. Last night I stayed up to sew and finished the rest of the blocks for this second quilt. Half the blocks are embroidered and half are not. And still I have lots and lots of the logs left over. Does that mean another of these quilts? Perhaps.

When I was at my friend's house I laid all these squares out on the table to match like squares together. It helped to see them all laid out when it came to matching up a grouping that went together. That's what I'll need to do again to see the colors better.

Can you guess how many squares are in this huge stack? It measures to approximately 15.5 inches high. Take a guess. Submit your guess as a comment below. Whoever has the correct number - or the number closest without going over - will win a bundle of 5" charm squares in their choice of color (reds, blues, greens, whites, yellows, etc.) Submit your response before Nov. 14th. I'll announce one winner on the 15th. (I'll take a little time tonight to count this stack and keep the answer hidden away in a hermetically sealed envelope.) LOL! Just kidding. It won't be 'hermetically sealed' - an old Johnny Carson reference. Anyone remember that? Never mind . . . I'll just keep it a secret till the 15th. Okay, take a guess and make a comment.

And here's a bird's eye view of the stack of 5" charm squares. I just love looking at all those colors. They are my own little 'quilt rainbow' spread out on my cutting table. Okay, off I go. Time to count the squares. Good luck guessing!

Sewing With a Friend and Other Stuff

2009-10-23T23:17:00.000-05:00

My sewing friend and I got together for awhile today. It was fun to sit around and chat while we spent the day sewing. We started off with an early lunch of Happy Joe's Pizza then on to her home to get started sewing. We recently talked about doing the same project together. I brought up the fact that I have accumulated so many of those old-fashioned 30's prints and wanted to make something from those. This past week I happened upon the perfect pattern to make use of them. I like this Moda pattern that looks like taffy candy wrapped up in colorful 30's wrappers. We decided we would both work together on making this quilt after we've finished all our Christmas/Holiday sewing and current projects.

Also pictured here are some blocks I'm working on for a second quilt similar to the leaf quilt. The leaf quilt by the way is still all laid out across the beds downstairs in our soon-to-be painted guestroom. They're patiently waiting for me to join the blocks together to form the quilt top. Yeah, I know, I'm slow to get that done. Feeling under the weather lately has made me not care to accomplish too much other than lounge around. I'm slowly getting back into the swing of things again.

The last several days while I've been working on the computer I've been burning these lovely scented candles I picked up on sale at Pier One Imports this summer. They smell so nice. I love candles. The little squirrel was a quick pick at Hobby Lobby earlier this fall. It reminds me of the baby squirrels we had running around the yard all summer long. Those babies have grown big and fat now. I see them quite often in both the front and the back yards.

I've been getting MaryJane's Farm magazine for awhile now. The recent Oct-Nov 2009 issue had a button up knitted shawl project shown on page 78. There are two more variations of the pattern available on-line at her website. When I was at JoAnn's Fabric last week I decided to pick up some knitting needles to make the shawl. I wanted to search through my stash to see what I have on hand for yarns before I purchase new. They've got their yarn on sale through the rest on the month. It has been awhile since I knitted anything. As I recall, the last thing I was making was an afghan when the boys were still in high school. I cannot remember if I gave away the remainder of my yarn. I think it might just be stashed down in my sewing studio amongst all the rest of my stash. I'll look around tomorrow to see what's left. I used to enjoy sitting on my chair in the livingroom watching TV in the evenings with my hubby while I knit something. This pattern seems so easy.

Today my hubby took our hunting dog, Ginger, out to see if they could get any pheasants. They saw some. He said Ginger did her job in flushing them out. But apparently he didn't hit the ones he was aiming at. Ginger was so tuckered out from walking/hunting for a couple hours. She just wanted to lay down on her bed all evening. Hubby gave her a baby tylenol for her aches and pains. Poor thing.

We ate Parmesan Chicken for supper tonight instead of pheasant. Again, that's another thing I haven't made for a long time. Yum, we love Parmesan Chicken. Basically it's a simple pan-fried chicken dish with Parmesan cheese mixed in the milk (or buttermilk if you have it). Soak the chicken in the milk mixture. Enzymes in the milk will tenderize the chicken. While it's soaking you can crush some crackers (I use Ritz Crackers - about 1/2 to 3/4 of one sleeve) and mix together with some flour, black pepper, onion powder, garlic powder. I also like to add a bit of ground red pepper for a bit of zing to it. Then just heat up a bit of oil in a large fry pan, dredge the soaked chicken in the crushed cracker/flour/spices mixture and place in the hot oil. Allow the chicken to cook in the oil till nicely browned on one side then carefully flip with a spatula and brown the other side. I only flip them once. Too much handling and the breading will come loose. Yum! I'd give you actual measurements for all the ingredients, but I'd have to look for my recipe. I just tossed in a bit of this and that when I made it tonight. This is an old recipe I've made off and on for the last twenty years while the kids were growing up. Let me know if you need more specifics. I'll search my old recipes if someone needs it - leave me a comment then I'll see if I can locate it.

So, essentially it was a very good day. Lot's of sewing, visiting, good company, good food. What more can you ask for? It was a great day!

Grapevine Wreaths Giveaway

2009-10-21T23:45:00.000-05:00

When my hubby got home from work today we did something we've been talking about doing but have been forced to delay because of rainy weather. We cleaned up the debris from the garden area, the flower pots on the front steps and pruned some of the grapevines. It was cool today, but at least it wasn't too cool. With this reprieve from the drizzling rain we took our opportunity to get outside and take care of the yard a bit.

This set of grapevines shown here is on the back side of our property. It forms a nice barrier between our backyard patio and the neighbor's backyard. For whatever reason these vines never really produce much fruit. We pretty much just let them grow wild and thick to obscure the view between the yards. It makes a great backdrop for the other plantings back here.

We put in this set of grapes several years ago between our yard and the neighbors to the north of us. This year was the first year with a very robust crop of grapes. I was a bit disappointed to find out they had seeds. When we purchased them at the greenhouse I could have sworn they were labled as seedless. Other than that, they're very tasty as sweet green grapes for eating. We made some juice from them this year - strained the seeds and skins. It was good, but had a greenish cast to it (from the skins I would assume). The appearance of the juice was not like the white grape juice you get at the store - although it tasted just as good. It wasn't clear juice. I'll have to look into that for next year to see what to do differently. I did some research on a few websites, but most info is on purple concord grapes, not green grapes. It could be a matter of straining the juice through a finer mesh than cheese cloth.

This set of concord grapes, along with those in the back, were here when we purchased the house. We've long pruned and cut back these vines numerous times over the years. They always flourish nicely. This summer was an exceptionally good year for grapes. We had more than usual when we harvested them. We made juice and lots of jars of jelly.

This is just some of the vines that were lopped off when we started pruning the grapes. Most of these in fact were overgrowth from the back set of vines that grew up and over the shed and the among the branches of the lilac bushes that surround the shed. There were very little grapes to harvest on this set, just lots of vines growing rampant. We pulled them all down out of the trees and lilac bushes. They reached nearly to the phone lines than run along the back of the lot. It's time to trim back some of the lilac bushes again this year. They're reaching up and over the wires as well. We often see the squirrels run from tree to tree and along the vines to the wires. They can cross the yard, above the dogs, without having to touch the ground.

At first I was going to just try to wrap the vines to wrangle them into a trash bag. Since I had such nice long pliable vines I thought it was worth while to form some grapevine wreaths. I managed to create four of them before it got too dark. My hubby continued to prune more and cleared through some other yard chores while I wrestled with grapevines. I had gloves on and my regular reading glasses. Good thing, too. Those vines get to whipping around while I worked to untangle them. That smarts when the tips lash out at you when untangling them. You definitely need protection when you're vine wrestling. LOL!

This is a close up of one of the four wreaths I created today. There are still lots and lots of vines laying out there on the patio to form into wreaths. If I get another nice day outside tomorrow I'm planning on going outdoors to create more wreaths. The vines will only stay pliable for a short while after being cut. After tomorrow they'll likely become too dry and brittle to work with. There are still more vines to cut from the other two sets of grapevines . . . so could be lots more wreaths to come. It mainly just depends upon the weather and how long I want to stand out there and wrangle vines.

As a thank you to my blog readers -- and all you creative types who enjoy decorating with wreaths -- I will gladly offer up three of these wreaths FREE for the taking to three randomly selected blog readers who post a comment here. This FREE offer is open for the next two weeks through Nov. 4th. I'll draw three winner's names on Nov. 5th and mail one wreath to each of three winners as soon as I get your mailing address. (Sorry, I have to limit this to U.S. residents only please). All you have to do to enter: Please leave a comment indicating how you would use your wreath. Do you decorate for fall? winter? holidays? floral wreaths throughout the year? Will you use it on the wall? on the table as a candle centerpiece? or something else?