71 Degrees Warm Today!

I purchased these two chicken planters at a local garden shop a couple years ago. They usually house some annuals like petunias or other simple kind of flower. I'll clean them out for replanting over the next few weeks when we're experiencing consistently warm days and nights.

Oops! Unfortunately this winter was a bit harsh on my smaller chicken. She lost a portion of her head. I'll have to rearrange their position so she faces the other direction this summer. She looks a lot better from the other side. Next winter they'll both have to move into the shed for better protection from the elements.

We've got a small rock garden along the west side of our patio. There are a variety of perennials planted among the rocks. I'm pleased to see them starting to shine. I will have to look closer at this tag to remember what type of plant this is.

Another of the perennials in the rock garden. It's so exciting to see new green growth again.
We've got lots of trees in our area. Now with most of the snow out of the picture all the underbrush, leaves and dried plant material needs to be cleared. I'm hoping to be able to get outside to do that kind of clean up soon. I'm trying to pace myself; allowing enough recovery time post-surgery before I can be more active with all the bending, kneeling, raking and pullng up dried material.

These iris plants were relocated from the backyard to the side of the house when we put in the patio. I may relocate a few of them again this year. I think they may do better in a sunnier spot.

We put in a few strawberry plants along the border of the patio. We've managed to pick a few berries just as they are starting to ripen. The birds are usually the beneficiaries of the fruit. They seem to keep a close eye on the ripening process. We have not bothered to put nets across the strawberries yet, but probably should. It seems they're all picked clean the morning we plan to go out to harvest them. Smart birds!

The dogs enjoyed going outside with me for awhile today. In fact they were in and out numerous times throughout the day! They got in some sunbathing while I took lots of digital photos.

The temperature reached 71 degrees today. It was such a wonderfully warm and sunny day I stepped outside a few times to take it in. Most of the snow has melted around here; with just a bit more to melt from both the front and the back yard. Here Sugar and Sparky are waiting for me to open the door so they can run back inside. They truly are "house dogs". One would think they'd want to stay outside longer with today's warm temps.

Tossed Chickens

Tossed Chickens - that's what this type of fabric is referred to . . . tossed . . . when the images are scattered across the surface. Somehow that strikes me as funny. Okay, to really "toss" chickens isn't funny, but the idea, the cartoon image, of chickens being "tossed" strikes me as funny.

Too many goofy cartoons as a kid? Nah! Just a unique way of looking at the world! Tossed chickens is funny, it's just one reason I like this fabric. Another reason is I've noticed I kind of have a thing for chickens. I've been noticing how many chickens I have around in the house. I've somehow been collecting them for a long time without really noticing or trying. (Maybe I have some farmgirl in me). I'll have to one day do a chicken inventory and see just how many it adds up to. In fact I recently purchased an embroidery design to make accessories for the kitchen with chicken designs. I haven't embroidered them out on my machine yet, but that will come someday soon.

I made this hang tag to label my scissors. It is one of the projects I did for a recent class I taught. These quick, easy little hang tags can be used for labeling items, gifts and packages, organizing labels, even on a tree as a Christmas ornament. They would tuck into a holiday card easily.

Here the little chick is the featured image on the front side of my scissors fob. When it is flipped over the label reveals the owner's name (that's me). It's a great way to identify your items when heading off to attend a class and to keep track of your personal items.

I printed info onto card stock with my computer to use on the back side as a label. It is an easy project and really doesn't take that much time to make them.

As demos for the class I taught, I made some hang tags at each class session. One doesn't need a fancy sewing machine to make these. Any old sewing machine will do the job. If you want to sew the basic little hang tag, your simplest machine will work. Those who want to make the embroidered ones would need an embroidery machine. And fussy cut fabric is a great way of making use of printed fabric images. These would also be fun with photographs cut to feature the faces of family members as well.

I used a punch from my scrapbooking supplies to cut the circle shapes from the printed paper labels. It is fast and easy. You can get perfect alignment of the words by turning the punch upside down and viewing the words from the back side as the paper is being punched. The cording that forms the handle and the tassle is a polyester or nylon cord used to string window blinds. I also use a similar thin cording like this to make my Piping Hot Binding for quilts. It's fun to think of other ways to make use of these tools aside from their original designated purposes.

This chicken tag features the fabric fussy cut to highlight the chick. The others shown are actually cast offs of embroidery projects that were goofed up and had flaws in them. I didn't want to just throw them out - I save them thinking I could use the flawed sew-outs some day in another project. This was the day. Cutting circle shapes from parts of the sew-outs yielded these cute little hang tags/ornaments.

I glitzed up the hang tags with heat set crystal embellishments. That is another very easy thing to do. The heating tool (mine is a L'Orna Heat Wand) heats up the glue on the back of the crystals. When applied properly the crystals don't come loose even with machine washing and the heat from a clothes dryer. Once set, the crystals are adhered for good.

The heat set crystals certainly add that extra touch of glitz and sparkle. I like the way these little beauties turned out. I'll make a few more and use them on our Christmas tree.

This project is also a good way to make use of those practice sew-outs when doing machine embroidery. There's always times something doesn't turn out right - a mis-alignment of the black outline from not stabilizing properly, a mis-threading with the wrong color thread sequencing or something along those lines. I have quite a few un-used embroidery sew-outs I can make use of on small projects like this. Using them up with another project makes it so much better so I don't feel so bad (and wasteful) about embroidering something out that I don't end up using right away.

The idea that's very popular right now - to reduce, reuse, recycle - is manifested perfectly in this project. It goes right along with the current "hand-made" craze that is all the rage and getting so much press of late. I picked up a book a month or so ago called Handmade Nation. To read the book one would think this current generation is the leader and inventor of all things crafts. They've certainly got their spin on things in the current craft world today, but a lot of it is certainly not new. Some of the "new" crafty ideas seem very nostalgic to me. They're not re-inventing the crafts of yester-year, but updating some of the techniques that have been around for awhile for a re-vamped look.

I love it though. To see some of the "new ideas" is pretty cool. It takes me back to younger days in many ways. And I always like to see a new twist on ideas.

Sewing Studio

I'm working on clearing clutter and organizing the studio today. I was here for awhile yesterday starting some work on it, but ran out of steam before I got too far. Here are a few glimpses of what I am seeing: This golden chicken is something I made several years ago. I used it as a sample for a class I taught once. It was about using the decorative stitches available on our machines for a useful project - small, quick and easy to sew together with just a few seams.


These pics are just some of the current fabric stash. I have them stacked right now, somewhat by color. I am going to be working at cutting most of the fabrics into 2 1/2" strips for jelly roll quilts. I'm also planning to cut blocks in 3", 4", 5", 6" sizes. These work right for most quilts.

I have this stack of whites and off-whites to use for lights in quilts, and some to use for backgrounds for machine embroidery. This is pretty much my full stack of lights. Looking quickly through the stash I could probably use more lights to balance so much of the darks.

The third stack is a mix of black and white prints and some assorted colors. This grouping of color pieces are fairly small. They'll likely be cut to 2 1/2" strips as I get time. The scraps of plaid you see are already left overs from other projects. They are not very big, so I'll cut what I am able to from them and see how many blocks I come up with. Again, they will be 3", 4", 5" or 6" blocks.

Here's a look at how I have chosen to sort some of my smaller scraps. These are mostly odd-ball sized strips narrower than 2 1/2" but I hated to throw them out. They will make a String Quilt - a scrap quilt with randomly sewn narrow strips of fabric scraps. I recently saw some sites on the web that talked about Crumb Quilts. This is somewhat along the same idea, but crumb quilts use tiny pieces, not narrow strips. I had not heard this term before this week, but apparently I have been making Crumb Quilts for awhile not. I've got several blocks pieced like an old crazy quilt using up random small scrap pieces. I like the name Crumb Quilt.