Coffee Cozies

Here is the finished wallhanging.  It is a keeper!

These are some coffee cozies I made to donate to my niece's school for a fundraiser. My aunt got this great coffee fabric when we went shopping this past weekend in Richmond while waiting for the dogs to be finished at the groomers.

I used ponytail holders for the elastic closures and vintage buttons from my stash.

I have a bit more fabric left and will probably make some more. I have heard these also come in handy for those of us who like to eat ice cream straight from the pint carton.

They are not too hard to make.  The tricky part is getting the design to be right way up when all the sewing is finished.

Toad Chokers and the Coming of Spring

UPDATE:   I spent an hour on the phone Friday with the Dell Customer Service Tech and finally got an authorization to send the computer back.  I also bought an additional year's warranty for a very reasonable price to ensure that once the computer comes back to me after the original warranty expires, I will still be able to get it worked on if need be.  Today-- March 17, I was finally able to get the Dell shipped back via Fed-Ex. Had to make a special trip to the Fed-ex store. Will attempt to wait patiently for it to come back.  I miss you cherry red, Dell Mini 9!

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It was not that great a day yesterday.


My beloved Dell Mini died. DIED.

I had to work late for Parent-Teacher Conferences.

It started to pour down rain as I walked through the dark school campus to get to my car.

It continued to rain--toad choker style all the way home.



Then I saw these. Occasionally, along the roadway, awake from hibernation

to herald the arrival of another SPRING!

There is nothing a toad likes more than a warm spring toad-choking rain!

(Unless it's a lady toad)

I love toads--I had one as a pet for a long time.

Sooo, I took a personal day today so I could enjoy a nice relaxing three day weekend.

Before the relaxing can begin, I need to call Dell and get directions for sending my dead Mini back to them.

That's right-- it was still under warranty-- for 14 more days! Take that dead hard drive!


Meanwhile I will keep limping along with only my backup desktop (not portable) and my Ipod for my computer needs.

It's rough, people!
Hope some happy signs of spring are headed your way soon!

Gale

Three Flowers Wallhanging

I started this today after seeing a great wallhanging done by Sheree on FLickr.  I chose 2 fat quarters of a swirly fiesta print in two colorways, purple and red. Freehand, I cut some circles from the red print and some petal shapes from the purple.

I played around with the arrangement of the red and purple pieces until I liked the way the flowers looked. The one in the center is my favorite!

I used a leftover strip-pieced section discarded from another project for the grass at the bottom of a sky blue field. The leaves and stems are hand cut from a deep mottled green cotton.  I tacked them all down with some scraps of Steam-a-Seam to hold them in place until I could stitch them. 

I used Sulky Blendables in 12 weight for the decorative stitching and the free motion quilting of the applique pieces.  It is hard going, even though I am using the recommended needle in the machine. I figure if I keep at it, eventually I will figure it out! (In the meantime, I have ordered the book Sulky Secrets to Successful Embroidery hopes of getting some useful help.)

I will finish this up with some echo quilting around the shapes of the flowers. For the backing I have chosen a section of a vintage navy floral sheet from my scrap pile. Since the blue background fabric is a fat quarter, it will finish up at around 18x22.

Happy Creating!

Gale

Marching Into Spring

It makes me so happy to create something beautiful! 

I finished up one of the Shamrock Wallhangings I started. (Haven't managed to take a good picture of it and it already went to school.)  The second one I decided not to finish because the contrast between the green solid fabric was not enough with the pieced background.  I was just going to throw it out, but I did not.

I wanted to make a wallhanging celebrating the coming of spring (which some days feels like it won't be coming at all.) I needed some fabric that would suggest blue skies and I picked up some today at the little fabric store on my way home from work. (The selection is limited, but I was lucky today to find what I needed.)

I cut the yard of background fabric into fat quarters and decided that would be a good dimension for my completed wall hanging.  Then I got the idea that I could use part of the discarded green wallhanging for the ground.  I got out my rotary cutter and hacked away.  I ended up with 2 good sized pieces that can be used for grass at the bottom of the scene I was to create.  These pieces were already quilted because I went ahead and did all the work on that wallhanging except for the binding.

Then I decided that I could further use the leftover pieces of the discarded project and freehand cut out leaves for the flowers I planned to make.

The rest of the fabric for the flowers came straight from my scrap bag.  The pink and cream print was a scrap that was already fused to some fleece and was left over from my cousin's laptop case.  I cut all the parts of the flowers freehand--no patterns or freezer paper this time!

The fact that some of these pieces already contain batting gives those areas of the wallhanging a more defined texture. In the picture above you can see I added some loopy red petals around the edge of this flower using some free motion quilting.

Some of the quilting is done with only the batting and the front, but without the backing. That is to hide some of the stitches and to make a cleaner, neater backing. Once I got the applique part done, I could go ahead and assemble my quilty sandwich.

I used free motion quilting to echo the shapes of the flowers and to create a shape in the top left corner that suggests a cloud or the orb of the sun. The quilting thread is the same color as the background fabric to provide only a subtle contrast.

This is backed and bound with a leaf print and I even included folded triangle corners on the back for hanging. 

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this! 

Here's hoping Spring finds its way to you soon!

Quilted Garments, AKA Wearable Art

It takes a great deal of self confidence to wear some of these outfits, but think of the hours it took to craft them!

Floral Quilts

Gardens crafted from fabric,

inspired by nature's glory!

Stunning Landscapes

Painting with Threads and Fibers! 

 Awesome!

Quilts Featuring Animals

Fantastic Quilts!

Quilts Inspired by Children's Literature

Today is the anniversary of the birth of Dr. Seuss. 

Here are a few quilts made to depict classic children's books.

Miss Rumphius

Very Hungry Caterpillar

Cat In the Hat

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

Shamrock Wallhanging

Today at school I took down my Love wallquilt and the thought occurred to me that I needed to make something for March to replace it. Here is what I came up with.

I searched through my stash of green fabrics and tore off strips of varying widths. Then I put them in a bag to make it easy for me to just grab a strip and start sewing!  The strips are foundation pieced onto a rectangle of batting.

Using some Steam-a-Seam and clipart depicting shamrocks, I traced the designs on one side of the fusible web. After ironing the web to the opposite side of my green almost-solids, I cut out the shapes. The last layer of paper came off and I ironed the shamrock shapes onto the strip-pieced background.

The next step will be to blanket stitch around the shamrocks with some variagated 12 weight thread.  I plan to use the new Sulky Blendables I got this weekend. I will do some free motion quilting as well, then trim and bind up the finished wall hangings.

UPDATE:
I quilted both of these up using the new thread. It was harder than I had hoped and involved some ripping out stitches and researching possible causes of the problem on the Internet.  Here's the problem-- I had the 12 weight thread in both the bobbin and on the spool. That is WRONG!  Once I changed the bobbin thread to what I regularly use (Essential Thread from Connecting Threads) it worked much better. There was still some thread breakage to contend with, but I muddled through.

In the end I decided not to bind up and finish the one with the lighter green shamrocks. I stashed it in my scrap bag not knowing what I would do with it, but reluctant to toss it in the trash yet.  The other one is bound with a pieced binding made from green scraps, machine sewn as is my preference. It is at school decorating my classroom and was even used as an example of how to deal with your efforts not working out right away.