What's new?

Happy Easter

Everything old is new again

When Caleb and I went to the library a couple days ago I thought to look at the How To Make Soft Toys books from the 60's and 70's. Funny, how similar some of those crafts were/are to things we're seeing pop up as 'new' ideas today. I'd like to find a couple things that I could get good at making. I liked the idea of this round block stack both for the counting and the size sorting

but it really took too much time to ever sell for a profit. Darnit. If you have a sweetie you'd like to give them to however, it's a really fun way to mix and match your new favorite fabrics. These of course are my recently received Wee Play fabs from Moda.

 

That number 1 is 1.5" across.  It was very hard trying to sew it in the round. I'd suggest starting with a 3" circle (which would sew up as 2.5) and go up in one inch increments. The side strips are 2.5"...just what the jelly rolls come cut in. OH. And pay close attention to the messy skipped stitches on the number 4. That's what happens when you use a heavy duty do not sew version of iron on adhesive. Pays to read and heed directions. Anyway, chalk the above up to Prototypes I'll Probably Never Do Again.

Tomorrow I'm signed up to take a four hour machine quilting class with Pat Durbin. I sure hope I can get good at that... Honestly, at this point I'd settle for mediocre. We're instructed to bring several 18 - 22" fabric 'sandwiches' (backing, batting, top fabric) and I can't tell you how hard it was to put my hand on a piece of fabric that I didn't mind wasting for practice sewing! I really just couldn't do it. Luckily I remembered a stack of older pretty sheets I've bought occasionally at the thrift shops, so I cut one up and made a few. We're also told to bring a 'pretty' fabric for an end of the day stitching and I thought this 17" square might be interesting to do some creative freeform stitching on

I have several rainbow sets cut out and ready to make into 'something'...not sure what. Maybe just little wall hangings. What studio couldn't use a color wheel?

I went to the mall a bit ago to find something appropriate for a pudgy grandma to wear to church on Sunday. I just wanna know who the hell took over my body and how come I wasn't lookin'?! Dangit. The patheticness of it all made me pull into Rite Aid on the way home to get booze...it IS Friday night after all. ;-) Anyway, here's what came home in the bag and I really had to laugh (while getting the camera)

I ate the egg within seconds of taking the photo and am about to finish the cocktail. Think I'll read the book? And where can I buy the energy and desire to actually DO what the book tells me to do?

The REST of the story (and some new fabric!)

I was running long yesterday so I didn't finish The Rest of the Story regarding our dessert auction last Friday night. So; I gotta get out of there before they bring my pile o' crap to the auctioneers podium, right? I tell John, "Look. We want to donate the money but Lord knows we don't need the calories so just bid on somethin' pretty, make sure you win it, then go give it to the person who had bid just below you." He liked the idea very much and soon came the perfect thing; a gorgeously decorated lemon cheesecake on a big blue glass pedestal plate. He wins it for $100, and it is brought to our table.

Me: Oh. I think that pedestal is Fire and Light glass!
John: So?

Me: Well, that stuff's expensive! We can't go givin' that away! I know. I'll go get a paper plate, slide the cheesecake off onto that. You go give 'em the cake and we'll keep the glass.

John: No. I can't do that. It'd look lame. It's all or nothing.

Me: {grumping with arms crossed that he won't "mind me")

John: Well, I guess we can't agree so let's just take it home.

Two days later, after eating two pieces each, giving some to the kids, and freezing the other half, I look at this blue cake plate still sitting on our kitchen counter (I have since realized it is NOT Fire & Light glass) and holler to John in the living room; "What the heck am I supposed to do with this cake plate?! I have no cabinet space to store it and we don't even DO blue for cryin' out loud!"

So, while it really is hard bein' me sometimes, I've a hunch it's even harder to live with me. ;-)

Got some faboo fabrics from The Fat Quarter Shop recently. Thanks again for the share, Doe!) Here is a collection of 27 Lecien (Japanese) fat quarters.

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As soon as I opened the box yesterday I ran to the thrift store to snag a little Easter basket to hold them in. Sweet, huh? I haven't gotten an Easter basket in ever so long. How thoughtful of me! ;-) I just checked the shop to give a link and it seems they're currently out of the fat quarter offering. I also bought a hot new-on-the-market rolll of Wee Play . OH SO very cute!! I really wanted them to make this quilt

but as you can see I just couldn't wait and made it up with strips I already had cut. But I do have enough of those panels (they're from American Jane's line of last year) to make another one with the new strips, and I think I probably will go ahead and do that. Why? I really have no idea. Just to be makin' it, I suppose.

I'll close with a tip I've been meaning to share. We all know about and probably use computer printer fabric sheets. Not long ago I decided to start doing embroidery in the evening (something to do while sitting next to John watching TV at night) and even tho I'd bought a light box, I ran the sheets (I always use my JoAnn's coupons on the packs) through the printer using those Hektograph pages I had scanned and shared a couple months ago.

I thought I'd just stockpile the pieces for future use on bags. Or something. I don't know. Can't have idle hands, dontchaknow!?

I just may never bake again

Hi all-- I've let too much pile up to tell all in one post. I think for today I'll unload my recent horror story re: baking. Maybe then I'll "get over it". Last Friday was Caleb's little school's last big fundraiser for the year. A spaghetti feed and then a dessert auction afterward. The cheesecakes have been known to garner $350 bids. It's all for a good cause, dontchaknow. This year I thought I'd bring quite the spectacular dessert. EVEN THOUGH I've known for my whole adult life I really do suck when it comes to baking. This excuse and that excuse...bottom line is I just never got the baking thing going on. Well, I've got a new Cupcakes book with a recipe for white chocolate cupcakes. How can I go wrong? Two hours and lots of real ingredients like butter and eggs and milk and sugar white chocolate bits later I had 16 hard dry little...lumps is all I can call them, really. Of course they tasted good, you know; dunked in a cup of coffee, but people want them to look good as well. Cleaned up the whole mess, went to bed and slept it off. Woke up the next day with renewed vigor. This time I started with a box mix. Added white choc flavored syrup (like they add to coffee drinks) and chopped up bits of white chocolate. Made cream cheese frosting. Bought a white cardboard three tier cupcake display stand. Applied 24 glue dots all around the three layers. Attached decorative paper cupcake cups to the glue dots. Used a piping tool to frost the cupcakes (shoving said tool full of cream cheese frosting 8 times, because when full it only frosted three cupcakes, was a whole 'nother fiasco), artfully placed 1 white chocolate disc on top of each cupcake, sat the cupcakes in their outer jackets which were glued down and waiting on the display stand. Went to the dollar store to buy a roll of clear celophane and a couple of helium balloons which matched the cupcake papers. Enclosed the whole three tier stand in a celophane tent, clipped it off at the top with the balloons and curly ribbon. Voila! Wouldn't it just be the showpiece of the evening? Here's the part where I should admit I've recently read A New Earth, and I know all about the ego...I guess 50 years of being one way is kinda hard to just stop overnight. Okay. Melissa and her family pull up and honk. It's lightly raining. I teeter out to the car holding this thing, somehow get in the car, sit next to Caleb, ask him to hold the thing while I get out of the car (the school's one block away. I shoulda walked!) and somewhere while he's handing it back to me, my butt stuck out in the rain so I'd really like to hurry, all 24 cupcakes flop over and out of their outer 'jackets'. Some roll further than others. ARGH! Of course, I have to fix them before I take them in and anyone sees them, so there I am in the rain, shoving my hand in this little side slit of the celophane, trying to upright 24 cupcakes from all over the place, getting frosting up to my elbow, cursing up a storm.  OH the confused looks I got when I presented this frosting smeared rain dripped mountain of a mess to the dessert table. I couldn't even stay and watch it be auctioned off. It was just too humiliating! Poor John. He arrived from work later and had no idea that all had gone on. Thought I had a black cloud over my head during dinner 'cause I was mad at him or something. Not until he heard me telling the story to our friend Bonnie over dinner last night did he finally 'get it'. LOL! I think next year we should just give them a check!

Well, I can't hardly stand to post without pics, so I'll share this of our sweet Caleb and Madison, who is now four months old and looking so much like her brother did.

I did a whole series of shots with them a couple days ago. Changed the quilt out a couple of times. Never once thought to move the IKEA cardboard boxes that are stored behind that chair, so whatever pics we choose to save and print will have to be tweaked with for twenty minutes in Photoshop. OH it is SO HARD being me sometimes I can't even tell you....

Somebody had a birthday this weekend...

Me! Yep. It had to happen eventually. I turned 50 on Saturday! A few weeks ago Erica (my oldest) and I were talking about what we should do in honor of the big event. I half-jokingly said, "Hey, we oughta all get tattoos!" As soon as we hung up the phone I went online and came across the chinese symbol for goddess. I really liked it, and even more I liked the idea of me and my daughters having a fun bonding experience. Three of the four girls were able to join me

Amy was gone on a long-planned vacation so she was the only one absent. Here you see Melissa, Kate and Erica signing releases in the tattoo parlor (Melissa looks guilty because she just initialed that "NO", she's not currently breastfeeding )

Here's me getting the template applied

and here's me saying 'owowowowow!' while what felt like a hundred plastic toothpicks kept poking me! 

I guess it doesn't really hurt that bad, but I wouldn't want to do it all the time! Well, it was fun hanging out that way. Quite the time the four of us will remember for a long while to come. It was funny--when we first went in we were all over the map about where we each wanted to have ours applied. One wanted the foot, one the upper inner arm, one the back of the shoulder...yadayadayada. Erica went first and when the other three of us saw it on her mid-upper back we all piped up "I want mine there, too!"

Miss Madison will have to wait a while to get hers. Oh, and what made our multi-generational goddess tats even more meaningful is that March 8 was Int'l Women's Day. Girl Power!

Later that evening John treated us all to much-needed cocktails and a lovely dinner at a very nice restaurant

and I promise this is the LAST photo I'll be posting of myself til I lose AT LEAST the first twenty pounds.

Cheers!

ps: my apologies to you who I've not answered emails or left blog comments for. I was covered up in kids all weekend and I just gotta start the week fresh if you know what I mean!

How many quilts can you get

out of one jelly roll?

Okay. For my non-quilting friends; a jelly roll is a group of 2.5 x 44 inch fabric strips...one strip of each fabric in a coordinating line. Between different colorways, etc; there's often upwards of 45 different pieces! When I saw the Celebrate Spring line by Sandy Gervais for Moda Fabrics last year I just had to have it all! and jelly rolls make it affordable to own the whole line.

Ahhh. Those colors just make my heart sing! Luckily, I was thinking ahead and I bought a charm pack (one five inch square of each) as well. The downside of so many groovy fabrics being designed these days is they don't have very long runs. Once they sell out they're gone! Well, after just enjoying looking at the roll for nearly a year I decided to crack it open and see what all I could make from it. First I made this baby quilt.

I had 42 five-inch squares which I used as the centers combined with the 2.5 inch randomly cut strips to make seven inch squares . I backed this quilt with yellow dot Minky (super super soft!) and hand tied it. Next I had to come up with a strips-only pattern.

I know I saw something real similar to this somewhere recently but right now it's escaping me. I'm saving this top for when I want to try machine quilting again. I guess I'd call this a toddler quilt. I still had a few pieces left and when I saw this yellow 'leaves' quilt mentioned on SewMamaSew's blog I knew I had to make one, too.

I have a Sizzix die for those leaf shapes so it came together super quick. Each square is 5 inches. Since taking this pic I backed it in the yellow dot Minky as well, and edged it with the green dot border. This is the smallest of the three quilts. I love how that green dot fabric from JoAnn's matched the line so nicely! And I love LOVE LOVE the blanket stitch on my new Bernina

I swear; I'd have bought the machine for that stitch alone!  So, with what very little I had left I pieced the strips together to edge the first quilt I made (with the squares) and that's that. I'm now on the lookout for a new jelly roll that I love so much I just have to have it, and then have fun coming up with different ways to use it, too. :-)