What I've Been Doing

I'm finally tackling some of my WIPs and PIGs.  First, I recovered this ottoman in zebra print.  I have another larger ottoman, but haven't yet figured out what fabric to use.  I like this corner of my family room, but have more work to do with other corners. 

I apologize for the poor quality of the pictures.  They were taken with my iPhone.

I finally made little pillowcases for Devin and Corinne.  I've had the pillow forms for six months. 

This last poor-quality picture is one I took of myself wearing my new ruffly scarf that I made from an old nightgown.   It's called a T-shirt scarf, and there are tutorials for several versions on other blogs.  This could have been called a no-sew project, but I ran just a few stitches to tack it together.  It's a great way to add some spark to a plain t-shirt. 

Life is Full of Coincidences and Wonderful Blessings

Okay, so this is NQR, but it's a pretty neat story.  So, first for the exciting news -- my fourth grand (in less than four years) arrived one week ago!  His name is Landon, which is also our last name or surname, and our eldest of two daughters is doing great.  He has an older sister (ugh, maybe second mother), Corinne, who just turned 3. 

Okay, so here's the coincidence...  Our younger daughter is an RN, and just transferred from ICU to postpartum at the same hospital that this baby was born.  Uh huh, you can guess, right?  Her very first day on the new job, no more than one hour into her first day in postpartum, and she gets to observe her nephew's birth, and her preceptor/educator was her sister's nurse!  How convenient that mom waited until her sister clocked in, huh? 



Decision Making for Indecisive People Like Me

I'm much better at following patterns than creating my own.

Imagine being me...  you go to bed and envision tomorrow's quilting plan.  You are pretty sure what you want to do with your next quilt. 
You export a picture of it from your camera to your laptop or Ipad,
you draw on it with a drawing program and a stylus,
and then you bring out your plexiglass and dry erase markers, lay them over the quilt, you work out different scenarios for each section,
you ask the experts at MQR for their advice,
you get excited,
you start quilting,
you wonder,
you quilt some more,
you question yourself and your thread choices,
you remove stitches,
you quilt some more,
you remove stitches,
you change thread colors,
you quilt more,
and DAG NAB IT, that dang indecisiveness has gone far beyond "creeping in" - it has taken hold of your head and you are frozen - you can't decide if your quilting decisions are right,
so you clean the kitchen,
you eat a snack,
you check out a couple blogs,
you want to remove the quilt from the frame and work on something else.

Here is a solution that I just came up with this morning...

I slow the speed of the machine WAAAAY down, and quickly "draw" out something on the machine.  It's not permanent.  It can be easily removed.  You can really see what your plan will look like on the fabric. 

I wish I would have thought of this earlier before I stitched eight squares...  Oh well, once again I am friends with the seam ripper and tweezers.  I guess I'm a glutton for punishment too.

Wholecloth....lessons learned #3

Well, here it is.  It's gone from the frame to the table.  I am not done with it yet, so I'm sure I'll have many more things to learn.  ha!   First of all, I really do like it  The front is a celery green, and the back is a royal blue, with lime green thread.  The lighting wasn't the best, obviously I'll have to learn how to take better pictures before it's all done.  There are so many errors in this quilt, it's a shame.
Back to the lessons. So...  here we go:

1)  Don't pebble all the feather stems.  I wanted to leave some unfilled, but once I had done it to one quadrant, I then realized I must do it to all those same feathers. 

2)  Make sure you've got a good audio book going while you bury and tie off those threads.  It really helps.  I've always suspected that I am a bit twisted, (if you read my older posts you'll learn that I actually loved  "skinning" a queen sized quilt) because I was really starting to enjoy all that tying and burying.  Uh?

3)  All crystals are not alike.  I am planning on adding some crystals to this, and I think the first set I bought at JoAnns are the wrong type, they're not adhesive.

4)  When you start a project like this, make sure you have lots and lots of time.  I couldn't even begin to count the number of hours that has gone into this, beginning with learning how to create feathers, then drawing the wholecloth, then marking, yadda, yadda.

5)  Get your design perfect, and mark it perfectly before you begin stitching. 

Where do I go from here?  Well, I'm still learning about this, but I believe I need to

1)attach the crystals first

2)get it wet, and then I'm going to attempt to remove the pencil lines that I idiotically drew on the fabric (before I starched it).

3) if I cannot get the pencil marks out, I am going to paint those areas with a textile paint.

4) block it (I've never blocked a quilt so this will be another learning experience.

5)  bind it.

If you have any suggestions or tips for me, please comment, I need all the help I can get.