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Misc Stuff before it all eludes me

Sometimes I think I oughta blog almost daily. All the bits and pieces I want to share pile up into a heap that makes no sense together so I end up scrapping it all.

One of my favorite Creative Jens is Jennifer of Hope Studio. Wind chimes or an artistic pair of wine glasses used to be my go-to wedding gift, but now that I found her it'll be one of Jen's frames for future events. Starting with John's oldest daughter's wedding this coming October. The hard part, just like writing on walls around here, is just picking a quote! Jen is a really funny blogger too. I enjoy reading her posts. Today she posted her prom and high school photos. I, of course, didn't walk the traditional course of growing up so I don't have the typical photos to share. I went to four high schools in three years and finally dropped out and got married after my junior year out of sheer exhaustion from the whole teenage thing. I did attend (one of my) high school's graduation ceremony. Only as a spectator.

 

1976 in all it's glory. My sweet young husband looks pretty hot there! Me...well; my mother had a baby four months prior to this photo so yes, I'm wearing my 40 year old mother's hand-me-down maternity clothes. All polyester, of course. The hat? A leftover from one of my bridal attendants who skipped town the night before the wedding. truly! Hey, it gets better. Here I am the next day sitting on the front porch of my mother's new house (she's still in that house today).

 

Yes, I am smoking. Six months pregnant and right near a little baby (my new brother). Sorry, but there's no denying; those were the times we were in. I guess the icing on the white trash cake of my shares above would have been if I had gotten married so early because I had to (wink wink) but no, I was just tired of what my teenage life entailed and luckily a nice boy offered to be my husband while I finished growing up. It was a good 13 years. Erica is one of the two best things to come of that life we had.

I get to go see her and Brian down in Monterey for a few days tomorrow. Always so nice to spend time with these two. I love them!!

Last week you may recall we travelled down to the old homestead for a family reunion of sorts. The party hostess was a cousin I hadn't seen since I was 12. She was four years old than me. I thought she was SO COOL back then. Had just the right straight blond hair. Her Lee's jeans were cut off just right. She introduced my ears to their first taste of James Taylor! Seeing her now was like, "Hey! You look just like you only old and chubbier!" "Hey! I was thinking the same about you!" LOL.  My aunt loved the piece I made her. She took it around to everyone for closer inspection and would say, "See. Jennifer knew I should have been a princess!" 

Here's a cute photo I snapped of the backseat traveler's we took with us.

I laughed at how they both have that tongue-out "HUH?" look on their faces.

I want to show you a quilt I found at an estate sale while down there.

 

(I photoshopped out the blue painted walls because they really fight with the quilt and they're not gonna be blue much longer anyway). There are 144 squares set on point in each of twenty blocks. Each little square is just under an inch wide.

  

What a delectable smorgasboard of 30's prints,huh? I LOVE this quilt. I did replace the binding with some 30's repros my mom gave me as well as some vintage fabrics from my own stash. Someone in the recent past had put on a horribly ugly solid purple binding and it just had to go! I like it so much that I'm entering it in our Guild's quilt show this summer. I want as many people as possible to see it. Speaking of the quilt show, I've got my Blue Zinger all but finished.

 

I'm going to have to hang this somewhere that I will see it several times a day because I always see something new in it. And it makes me smile.

 

I just have to sew on the four-inch borders, which really sucked up the last of my selvage stash! It'll take me years to build up that variety of stash again.

A final quilt pic. A smaller ABC quilt that I just knew I would like using my American Jane stash. I took this photo as an example for the ABC sets I'm selling on my terribly neglected etsy site.

 

I guess Sandy Klop has done five or six lines of fabric for her American Jane line now, and I love how they all just go nicely together. A seamless transition from one line to the next. Love it all!

John figured updating Internet Explorer might help out with my blog visiting grief I've been having lately. Thanks be to God it worked so I promise I'll get better about visiting you all soon!

ps: No Wednesday tutorial for this week. Have a good one!

Write it on the Wall Wednesday #3

 

  I did this wall in my grandson's room here at our house. It was my first experience with cutting my own stencils. It's really pretty easy. Just like I did in the first week, I measure the width of the writing I want to do, create a banner that size in MSPub, and according to what that tells me I create letters in a super large font. 

  

for this project I only need one each of the letters used, because as stencils I can use each letter over and over. The quote I'm using for the sample here is "It is a happy talent to know how to play." You can tell in the pic above how many of the letters I need fit almost on just one page. The font I'm using is Poor Richard, in about 270 point size. I like this font for cutting stencils because of all the little openings--see how the a, h, p,y e, n don't completely connect? It's useful when coloring in a stencil.

Aside from the sheet(s) of paper with appropriately sized letters about all else I need is a small pane glass, blank sheets of stencil plastic, a stencil burning tool, like a wood burning tool (use your coupon at Michael's) and paint pens.

 

The stencil burning tool heats up quite fast. The sandwich you make goes: paper with letter, glass, stencil plastic.

 

I cut the sheets of blank stencil plastic in small squares...it's handier to work with. In this case I fit two letters on each square. Just outline each letter with the heated tip as if it's a pen...it melts right through.

 

It looks like a rough cut but it doesn't matter. It'll all be good.

Now use a level to draw a light pencil line on your wall.

 

Spray a light mist of adhesive on the back side of the stencil.

 

The *I* in the pic above looks like it has already been used because I tried painting without the adhesive-- it was difficult enough that I remembered this step right away!

 

See, now I don't have to hold it up to the wall--I just press it on and start painting. The trick with these paint pens, especially working sideways like this, is to keep dabdabdabbing the nib onto a paper plate or piece of waxed paper...it brings the paint out in a nice flow. These pens I worked with today are years old. Fresh ones would've been better, I'm sure.

 

Luckily I'm using black today. This wall is rather bumpy, so my edges aren't as nice as I'd like. No problem---I just come along to even out here and there with a black Sharpie marker.

One other quick thing I did while at the computer was to print out the quote with a silver highlight. I take this to the project wall with me. Not only is it reminding me what I'm writing ;-) it also shows where to use the highlighter pen for a more authentic *shadow* look.

 

The combination of old pens, medium nibs(I think a fine point would be better for the shadow) and this bumpy wall, I have to say my original completed wall came out a lot nicer. Here, let's look again, for another perspective of the shadowing, this time in gold.

 

Seems that plaster is smoother than the wall I painted on today. I did this blue wall about four years ago. I used thefaux leather paint technique and then went over that finish with a clear coat. I think that helped create a smoother surface for the writing. Also my pens were probably fresh and unused.

I hope I was clear enough for someone to want to try this. I loved seeing the first week's idea with scrapbook papers put to use by some of you crafty readers already!

I feel I should explain the strange cafe au lait and purple striped wall that I used for today's sample. It is the half bath in the laundry room that I did when we first had it built five years ago. First I wanted to stipple and sponge some combination of mainly purple (don't ask me why). Well it was way too cavernous looking so then I masked stripes and brought in the coffee color that was right there in the laundry room. When I pulled off the *magic blue tape* it hadn't done it's magic AT ALL...the lines where the paint stripes met were not sharp...they were all wobbly. So THEN I thought to go to the auto supplies store and bought several packs of silver pin striping to cover each line where the two paints met.

Funny, huh? Hey, it's worked for over 5 years, and that's a record for me! After painting random letters on it this week and maybe even next week I reckon this little room's gonna get a redo real soon! :-)

Write it on the Wall Wednesday #2

I've shown these bird decals here before, but maybe you didn't see them or maybe you didn't realize you could have letters made this way, too. 

  

There are all sorts of sellers on etsy. Just search the words "wall decals" and you'll probably find most anything your heart desires already made. I bought these from Dali Decals, and I was very pleased with the product, price and most importantly their communication and desire to please. I want to design on the computer a quote for my bathroom wall. She told me all I had to do was send a jpeg of the image (my font of choice and placement design) and they'd make whatever size I need. The hard part is picking just one quote that I want to look at every day!

Sorry to cheap out on my actual tutorials so early in the game (it's only week 2!) but I've had a lot on my plate this week. Going to a surprise birthday party back in the old home town this week for an aunt who's reaching a milestone year. I got it in my mind that I wanted to make a piece for her using this old technique, which I still LOVE doing come to find out. (LOL! I just read the article again and learned about using a silver sharpie for chrome accents. Wish I'd have remembered that when I did this car!)

I was emailed this darling picture

And did this to it

What a sweet little miniature girl. Reminds me of a frozen Charlotte doll. I'm pleased with the job I did on the photo, but reeaaally struggled with how to frame and present it. I've just been all about fabric for too long I think. Speaking of fabric, I cut a piece right out of it so looks like we'll be using the hexie quilt top for crafts after all. I had it in my mind that I was going to scan the colorized photo, shrink it down, and make fridge magnets as little keepsakes for 15 or 20 key people in attendance at the party (cousins I haven't seen since I was 12, etc). I'd done that once before. But I was still painting the frame as of this morning and we're leaving at noon, soooo....I'll just be glad to get this wrapped!

PS to my weekly Monday weight loss report watchers...I'm holding at an 18 pound loss. Not gaining, but not losing for the past couple of weeks, either. Having a 17 month old from 9 in the morning til 7 at night really has squeezed out the treadmill time for me. I'll get there, just maybe not as quickly as I'd have liked. :-)

How to make a Red Zinger quilt pretty darned fast

At our monthly Quilt Guild meeting last Thursday they were all but begging for more quilt submissions for our bi-annual public show coming up in July. While driving home it hit me; "these people need to see a selvage quilt!" I've a feeling most haven't seen one. So I scoured Karen's blog for inspiration (of which there is plenty! Thanks again for being such a good sharer, Karen!) and decided to make a blue version of her Red Zinger. I started last night and, necessity being the mother of invention; had to come up with a way to make progress without a sewing machine (mine is at the doctor's office).  Following are a couple of time-saving tips mixed in with Karen's original instructions. I'll just post the whole step by step here so you don't have to keep clicking over to Karen's post for the rest of the story.  I'm sure there is a zen-like pleasure in sitting and sewing one strip at a time, but I needed to git'rdone, and maybe you do, too. :-)

First of all, with some basic paper folding (think Origami 101) I devised a template and cut it out of cardstock, then used it to pencil the lines on each block.

 

Then (here comes the BIG time-saver) I applied iron-on adhesive strips. I had bought some by the yard (in the bolts of interfacing section) and just cut it in half-inch strips and tore off as needed.

 

For anyone who's unfamiliar with such a product, after pressing the strips on your fabric you peel off the white paper and are left with a shiny adhesive layer

 

All of this is being done at a waist-high counter or other flat surface. At this point you're working in a station with a lot going on. Stuff you'd have to keep getting up for if you were trying to sit at the sewing machine. For one, you are constantly ironing.

 

For example, the selvage on the left needs a quick press to be flat enough to lie on your block and the one on the right has too much white space along the edge for me so I pressed (hemmed/folded) it up at the first row of poked holes.

You are also standing and working at the station so that you can trim strips as necessary

 

This strip had too much print left on it for where I wanted to use it.

 

You also will have the space to pick and sort at your station. Here you see I am using them from the basket, then tossing them on the table so I won't pick the same one right back out again. As the basket empties, I'll just pile the bunch on the table back in and start over.

 

No pre-planning required with this process. You're just picking from the basket and designing as you go, trimming the width of a strip when necessary, then pressing down each group of strips as you go.

 

The above block is pressed and ready to flip over for a trim. The adhesive strips you have pressed the selvages to will hold it all together until you sew them down.

 

Flip it back over and it looks like this.

The entire process above took less than 10 minutes.

NOW you take it to the machine and just zip up and down the finished/bound edge of each strip.

  

In keeping with the assembly-line process, I would wait for the sewing part til I had several blocks pressed and ready. Then sit and sew several at a time. I'm glad I woke up this morning remembering I had this Hello Kitty machine. Works just fine for straight stitching!

In 45 minutes I had one 14 inch block done

 

And I only have eight more to go for a  quilt set 3x3, so I'm no longer worried about meeting the July deadline. :-)

If you decide to give this a go, don't forget to send pics to Karen. She's great at spreading the selvage love!

Weekly on Wednesdays for a While

 

Over the years I've written on my walls, soffets, fireplaces in a variety of ways. I've been thinking for a while now that I should share some techniques here. Deciding to share wasn't so much the hard part...finding the time to take pics and make the post IS! Of course, there is no time to be found, so starting today I'm just going to make the time. It'll be a good way to get me to post weekly if nothing else.

 

I'll start with the writing that is currently on the kitchen soffet. This is all done with scrapbooking papers.

 

It's probably too *cutesy* for some, but for now it works for me, and I'm sure you could think of plenty of ways to tone it down. :-) I do most of the work in  Microsoft Publisher .

First I measured the running length of the soffet and created a banner in MSPub that size (I believe this was 12 feet). For this project I'm not actually going to print out 12 feet (in the past, I have), I'm just setting it up as a visual. I type in my quote, highlight it, so I can start playing with fonts and sizes. Here's how it looks when I finally find a winning combination. (click to enlarge)

 

Based on what I came up with in the banner sample, I now know that my letters in the font Missed Your Exit need to be sized at 250. So now I will close this banner document and create a new page.

 

On the newly opened blank page I created a text box, and within that I typed my first letter, set to Missed Your Exit, at size 250. I also set the Fill Color to Empty, so that when I squish them so close on the page they don't block each other out. (If you use MSPub that should make sense. Otherwise, I don't think I can explain it any better). Now I can right-click and copy that one letter, then keep hitting 'paste' over and over to drop the correctly formatted letter box on the page as many times as necessary and just keep changing the letter. See how much I was able to cram onto one 8.5x11 page by doing it this way? Big paper saving approach. You can print the page now and then start fresh on your next batch of letters in the quote, or just keep adding pages to this document until you have printed all required letters and then print all at once.

Everyone knows that 99% of the cool scrapbook papers available come in a 12x12 sheet. I never understood why, tho. All my scrapbooks were done in the 8.5x11, but oh well!  Just trim your sheets down to 8.5x11 to fit your printer. Set the print parameters to PRINT IN MIRROR IMAGE in a DRAFT quality. Then PRINT IT ON THE BACK SIDE OF THE DECORATIVE PAPER.

 

This is how it will come out. Remember, you see a plain white sheet because it is the BACK SIDE of your decorative paper. Now you just use scissors or an exacto knife to cut each letter out. Print out a miniature version of the banner sample you first created to take with you (or take your laptop into the room you're creating in) as a visual aid for placement of the letters.

I drew a very light pencil line on the receiving wall as a guide to set the letters in a straight line, then erased/sponged off when the project was done.

Then I lay the letters face down on waxed paper and use a small paintbrush and whatever craft glue or Mod Podge (doesn't really matter) you have available.

 

As I recall (I did this a couple years ago) I added the words 'very much' because I needed to stretch the quote out for the length I was working with without making the letters bigger.

The way I made the scallop borders was to cut (I used a Sizzix die, like always!) a whole bunch of circles, slice them in half, glue them up there, then glue strips of 1" black dotted paper along the edges.

I hope I wasn't too sketchy in my descriptions, but it really is quite easy. Let me know how I did with this first week. I'm glad I finally got started, and I look forward to bringing you a new idea next week. :-)

Quilty catch up

Five weeks ago I took a class to learn longarm machine quilting. I'd had a couple of disappointments with other people's work in the past so I figured I'd just learn how to do it  myself. Right? Uh...hellLOOO learning curve! It was not something I was good at right away. But rather than give up right away (like I did golf ) I've vowed to go back every week and keep working at it. Angie is the extremely talented quilter who opens her studio up to this opportunity. She has two machines and after I use the one she rents out it is a pleasure to just peek over her shoulder as she works (all free motion...no pantographs) and dream that maybe someday I could get remotely that good at it (?) The first top I took was for the Community Quilts bank our Guild maintains. Otherwise known as charity quilts. I'd had the top in my posession for nearly a year so by this time I couldn't in good conscious turn it back in til it was not only pieced but also quilted and bound! Leave it to me; first time out the gate I used bright orange thread and attempted two border designs in addition to the allover stitching in the body.

 

ahem. Moving on...  Happily, Angie informed me that she doesn't charge (an hourly rate) for charity quilts, so I decided I'd bring charity quilts for a while! No sense paying to learn if I don't have to, right? So the next week I took a crib top I'd made a couple years ago. Wasn't thrilled with it so had just tossed it in the closet. 

 This small size could just as easily have been done on a regular sewing machine but it was the quickest available top I had that I didn't mind giving away.

Last year during my first visit to an IKEA I went kinda crazy with their fabrics (imagine that) and bought some duvet covers just because it was groovy and inexpensive yardage. Figured I'd use it for backings. For my third quilting attempt I cut a duvet cover into a front and back and turned it into a whole cloth quilt.

 

My unbound quilts were starting to pile up when I came across this post from the very talented Nanette, which in my mind gave me full *permission* to machine quilt those darned bindings. OH my...that alone has changed my life! It takes me upwards of six hours to handstitch the bindings down on a quilt...I just DON'T wanna be doing that if I don't have to! This IKEA quilt, as you can see, took maybe 45 minutes to quilt. Just big loopy stitches to git'rdone. I was starting to feel guilty about using the machine every week and not having to pay for it. 

OH! I'll show you here, this bag I found for $9.99 yesterday. Not only do I love the fabric, but all three quilts fit in there to go to next week's Guild meeting. Looks like it'd hold even a couple more in a pinch.

 

Found at a Ross store, with the summer towels and bags and flipflops.

So this week I wanted to pay Angie for something and  I took one that I plan to gift for Christmas this year. This thing was hanging on my design wall when I still had my job, which I lost 11 years ago! It hung there for probably another two years before I finally put it in a brown paper bag and forgot about it.  I came across it when I was sorting through the piles recently, and was very close to throwing it out. It was unfinished---it was  the full width across, but I'd been working my way down so as it stood it was just a big ol' square. I just couldn't bring myself to work with all those now-blah-to-me fabrics and finish it. I was explaining this to my friend Karen, who got up, went to her closet, and pulled out her favorite snuggly (somewhat ratty) blanket  to show me that it was a square! So, guess who's getting a new square comforter this year? ;-)

 

On this I tried using a pantograph pattern, in which you guide a red laser light along a patterned paper to stitch the design. Let me tell you--free hand is a lot easier!

I don't know what I'll take next week but I know I'll be plugging away at this for a while. :-)

Here's a quilt top that went together super fast this week. A couple years ago I bought my first jelly roll, and finally used it last year to make three quilts. I really loved that Celebrate Spring line by Sandy Gervais.  When recently going through the piles, I came across the sweet panel that went with that line. Then I made the Happy Birthday banner with her new Objects of Desire line, and noticed how well the colors worked with the old panel..even tho they were a couple years apart in runs. I decided I wanted to make a quilt for Madison's future big girl bed using a combination of the two lines, and a fairly brief internet search led me to a mom and pop craft shop that still had yardage AND a charm pack from Celebrate Spring. YAY!

 

Sorry about the quickie snap. I'll take a better one when I get it all put together and finished. I just wanted to show how nicely some lines can combine with each other. Also, a tip; if you measure wrong like I did with the center borders, you can always add another border. The second outermost pink strip wasn't in the original plan but it sure evened things out for me when the panel came up short.

I brought in a tall set of plastic bin drawers and divied out various projects into each drawer. I'm hoping that organization will drive me to finish many UFO's this year. I was pleased to find I had a LOT of American Jane fabrics purchased during the past couple three years.

 

Panels, jelly rolls, charm packs, yardage. I really must like that fabric! I think several of the ABC sets I have in the shop (which for some reason aren't selling) go really well with these so I'm making some toddler size ABC quilts.

For now. :-)

Lord knows what direction I may take tomorrow....but I've a hunch it'll be quilty!