Thursday, February 26, 2009

Oops!

You must have noticed I did not tell you from whom I received the wonderful prize. I just got carried away thinking about that silly camera I won way back when. The gift came from Hazelruthe and I have added her blog to my list.

I am sure you will be delighted when you see what is on her blog and best of all she is a fellow Idaho blogger. All you Californians have plenty of instate bloggers but for us Idahoans, that is not so common.

So a big thank you, and please forgive me for omitting your name last post, Hazelruthe.

Monday, February 23, 2009

I won, I won!!!

So I have been looking at all of the blogs that use selvedges for different things. Some are just so cute. I have saved selvedges in the past when I thought the colour dots looked really cool but I never saved enough fabric with them to do anything with them. I have learned from the blogs to cut them with an inch to an inch and a half of fabric attached to them. Duh!. So a new basket has been assigned for this purpose. Like I need another basket of something!

I am so excited that I won a bloggy giveaway. During my year or so of lurking I entered many giveaways but never won anything. Actually I have only won one thing in my lifetime and I had just thrown the raffle ticket away. I dug it out of the trash to claim my prize -- a disc camera. Do you even remember those? They did not even last as long as 8 track tapes! Anyway, look at the cute Mary card that came with a CD of really cool stuff and another little goodie.

Just look at what was inside that tissue paper. I absolutely adore it. Look at that button. It made me want to rearrange the basket next to my chair where I keep clippings and cross stitch and other hand sewing. Now I can keep scissors and little things together.

Here is the before picture. I have this habit of ripping magazines up when I read them. I don't like to have to handle things multiple times so I read and rip. Then they are rough sorted into crafty stuff or recipes. Periodically I go through and sort them into hanging files that I have set up in a couple of plastic milk crates. That way I can always find what I am looking for. Oh, yeah, you believe that, don't you? I tend to put a lot of things in the folders labeled "recent" and "favourites" and as you can imagine those files get a little out of control.

Here is the after. The basket is alot smaller which is a good thing. That way I can add a cup to hold pens for the crossword puzzles, a better diet coke with splenda coaster and a couple of other things to the top of the table. And look how neat. You can see a baby announcement for my grandson that just needs name and date on it. (He will turn 6 next month.) That piece of orange aida is a scarecrow pattern from Lizzie Kate. One of these days I will finish both so they can go on the finished WISP list.




Thursday, February 19, 2009

Scrap - a - rama

So the thrifted wooden tray that I showed you a while back that was too big for my ottoman now sits on my dining room table. The end result is just too much wood on wood so I decided I need a table topper under it and inside it. This is a perfect project for scraps so out comes the BIG plastic bin.

My technique for dealing with the scrap bin is to dump it out. I am surprised by the variety of colour hiding in the bin this time around. More pastels than I usually collect. That's what comes of making baby quilts I suppose.

I guess I am a binge quilter. I go on basting binges, and cutting binges, and organizing scrap binges. Since I like to keep lots of strips and squares on hand periodically I go through the scrap bin and cut the scraps into useful pieces.

So that's how I spent my Saturday. Out of this cutting binge will come the little table toppers. Or not. We'll just have to see.

On Sunday I decided it was time to produce something, so I pulled the wallhanging with the rest of the fall panels out of the basted pile and got it quilted and bound. I just love these colours. I think this little piece came out really well. It's sized perfectly to go over the pantry doors in my kitchen. But now I have to wait 6 months to hang it!


Saturday, February 14, 2009

Yeah, I know it's Valentine's Day, not Halloween, but

it just so happens that amongst the pinned quilts were a few little Halloween items that I started just before last Halloween and, of course, did not finish in time. This is one that consists mostly of really really OLD Halloween fabrics. They are stiff, coarsely woven, and bought before I became the fabric snob I am now. Since I wanted them to be gone I used them for the back, too. And I actually THREW AWAY the bits that were left!!! I must admit, however, that the quilt is kind of cute, and the fabrics are much softer after having been washed and dried to crispy critterdom half a dozen times.

Once again I forgot to either turn the camera or rotate the picture. Believe it or not my picture taking has really improved. Usually I manage to miss entirely whatever I was going to take a picture of. Anyway I saw a quilt on this blog, nancynoblogblogs, using bits of this panel. Which I had owned for quite some time. I actually used most of the motifs to make a wall hanging for a spot in my kitchen based on what I saw on that blog. That quilt is pinned but not quilted yet. These 3 pieces were leftover so I made this little tiny wall hanging. I like it alot. Next Halloween I will have plenty of new things to hang.



Sunday, February 8, 2009

More Finishes for 2009

This is actually a finish from 2008 although I finished it after Halloween of course! I don't usually buy novelty fat quarters but once in a while they really attract me. But then deciding what to do with them is always an issue. I thought that this simple block worked well for a table mat or a small wall hanging.
So I made one with this airplane fabric. I actuallly like this one better I think because there really wasn't anything that could be fussy cut for the center square on the Halloween fat quarter like the plane in this one. And it is a 2009 finish!
I also finished a couple of small items I had pinned on my last basting binge. The office complex where I work has a Christmas crafts bazaar every November. One of the things I have learned over the years is that unless you are selling quilts to quilters you can't sell them for very much. Non quilters just have no concept of the cost of the ingredients let alone the time it takes to make a quilt. So in recent years I have added quite a few small items that I make from scraps -- even scrap batting. They are fun and quick and they can be sold for very little. They sell quite well. So here is the first 2009 addition to this stock.

And here is the second. This one has musical instrument fabric as the theme fabric. This fabric was given to me and is a little heavy for quilting. It is what I used to call kettle cloth when I sewed clothes in high school. That's another thing non quilters don't understand -- people at work frequently give me scraps that they inherit or something thinking that any fabric would be great for quilting. Polyester gets donated right away but if there is any possiblity of doing something like this I hold on to it. This one has kind of a masculine look I think.
And last, but not least, here is a picture of the penny mat that I use on my dining room table as a runner. Linda, in comments, (yay, I got a comment) asked to see more of it and here it is. I think I mentioned that I travel quite often on business and this came from a small shop in Ft Lauderdale when I was there on business a few years ago. And don't get excited, I was there in the summer. I never seem to be able to go anywhere in the right season. Anyway, I have seen this same penny mat in magazines and on other blogs so it must have had wide distribution at some point. There was a little quilt shop on one side of the street and a country type gift store on the other. I visited both several times during several trips but of course cannot remember the name of either. I usually throw the yellow pages in my rental car and go hunting when I am on the road. Sometimes I get totally lost and find nothing and other times I find wonderful places. You just never know!



Tuesday, February 3, 2009

You'll just have to turn your head sideways

because I forgot to rotate the picture when I imported it. And tonight I just don't feel like doing it again. Not much quilting went on this weekend. It was a great thrifting weekend though. Here is my favourite find. She is a gardening bunny dressed totally in Debbie Mumm fabric from some time ago. She is complete with her own birdhouse and watering can. And she was only $5.oo! Since I don'thave much in the way of spring stuff she is a welcome addition.
Now here we have kind of a combination of new and old thrifting. The box/tray is the new item. We have a big round footstool and everywhere I see trays put on top of them to make them into coffee tables. I thought this would be perfect but it is too big. I have another idea for it but right now it has become part of my dining room centerpiece. The red sleigh is from thrifting a few months ago that Mr THQ recently painted dark red for me. The lazy susan and basket are really, really old thrift finds. I can't even remember what state we lived in when I found them. This thrifting habit started many, many years ago.
Here is a new little Valentine's decoration. I thought it was cute.
You might have noticed the back of this in the tray picture. A cute little birdhouse shelf. It is perfect colours for my flag room and it will find a home there shortly.
And here is a kind of bad picture of the rest of the haul. You can see the end of a cradle that is so heavy I could hardly pick it up. Found in the crafts gone bad aisle, of course. I have a plan for it too. The real point of this picture though is the cherry canister. I just love it. I have to do some rearranging but I have the perfect spot for it. You'll just have to wait and see.
Like I said, a great thrifting weekend!