Treats

My list of things to do was 96 miles long today!

No, really!

I had to drive up north to pay a bill (ok, could have mailed a check, but had to go within a mile of the place so I saved a stamp), and get all my jewelry checked to keep the warranty up to date, and get dog food with a $10 certificate I had earned from the pet store last time I was there, and best of all, SPEND A $10 GIFT CARD ON MYSELF at a quilt shop!!!! 

My spoils, meager as they may be, kept me smiling all day. A charm pack of Buttercup (total TREAT since I know the math works out wicked expensive) which took care of the entire GC, but then I also picked out one pretty fat quarter for a spring project to be determined, and then got a spool of Mettler thread on the recommendation of a very nice lady who was delighted to find such a "fresh faced hand piecer!"

I was looking for a thimble... I'm almost glad they didn't have one that fit my needs, since I was able to find such fun delights. It feels like my birthday! Well, technically, 27 years ago I was *made* around this time... :D

I also had a great visit with my Mom. Lunch at Olive Garden, then a bag of marshmallow hens and chicks Easter candy.... YUM. 

It's been a pretty darn good day... now, off to a new form of evening entertainment... it involves a hostess gift for my upcoming vacation... and sewing, of course.... 

:)

Thanks, but no thanks

It seems everyone who has seen my hand-pieced Kindle cover loves it. 

As do I. 

I've also had several people suggest I sell them.

I'm in the process of making a couple by machine to take to my mom since she has some students interested in a strippy one like hers.

But in regards to a hexagon one...

NO.

After all, who would pay $122 for a small Kindle cover? 

That's what it would cost if I paid myself minimum wage for the labor.

And, frankly, if I were piecing by hand for someone else, my rates would go up. 

Hand work like this is not meant to be profitable- I've spent so many hours on it that I could never bear to part with it!!!

For me, hexagons are pieces of my happiness. 

I can't sell that.

(But, if you want a machine pieced kindle cover, talk to me or find my Mom. She'll have some inventory  soon.)

Time to relax

It's the weekend. 

Time to rest.

Relax.

Kind of like this.

She's still tired from her birthday on Thursday.

If it ain't Dutch... :)

Blame it on my heritage, but I adore tulips. I can't wait until I get to plant some here at our house. They give you something to look forward to all winter, and then when the little leaves start poking up, often through snow, it's just the boost I need to get through the rest of the cold weather.

Hand applique called for hand quilting. 

It needs to be pressed again to get it to hang straight, but I was just too darn excited and hung it up right away. 

LOVE IT!

I Need Spring!

I love tulips. 

 I wanted to try my hand at applique again. 

So I did. 

Now, to figure out borders so we'll have a new wallhanging to replace the penguin and put winter away for this year!!!

Motivation!

(I had to edit this to add something cool... have you heard of Quilt Story? They do this fun feature called Fabric Tuesday... go check it out!)

An email, a small spurt of cleaning, and an improvisational sewing space on a tv tray all add up to another finish:

12 squares cut with my Go, some sashing, and finally some straight-line quilting tonight.

I've had that green lady bug print for a while... got the yellow lady bug print last summer.  It's nice to see them being used! Another all-stash project. :D

Winter, still here.

It's raining, it's snowing, it's icy nasty blowing!!! 

I'm smiling because I just tromped around outside in my pink polka dot rain boots (even though it was probably less than 5 minutes, still fun to wear pink polka dot rain boots!)And I look like a little babushka!!!! 

A Finish!

Inspiration.

 From floor

to pillow. 

Hand pieced, hand quilted. The borders were put on by machine.

Still waiting for the tax return so we can go back and get our new couch and kitchen table (with matching chairs! More than 2 of them! What a novel idea).

Saturday!

My husband started following my blog (Hi, Honey!). Now he's going to know what I do all day while he's at work. :D He knows most of it anyway thanks to texting and picture messages.

I got one goal accomplished yesterday- my warmer weather slippers!

The wonky houses are still waiting... they actually got moved further down the list. I just don't feel like working on them right now. Instead, I plan on finishing this pillow:

I machine stitched in the ditch just inside the border. I was lazy impatient and rather than baste, just went ahead with the quilting, so now I can hand quilt the design over the hexagon part.

And, since I got it this far, I can spend most of the night wrapped up in a pile of blankets again! Hmm, what to watch/listen to on Netflix while I stitch away my Saturday?

PEEPS!!!!!!

Look at them.

See the fear in their sugary eyes?

One of their friends has already been snatched and devoured by a wild animal.

They know their hours are numbered.

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Today's goal is to get a pair of lightweight slippers made- you know, those little ballerina-type slippers. I found a pattern for them, and have been waiting for it to get warmer enough to wear them. Spring is coming faster than I'm used to, so I better get sewing!

The secondary goal of the day is to work on hand quilting the wonky house quilt I made last fall. It got boxed away in the move, but I pulled it out the other day, stared at it, and have been pondering how to quilt.... last night's insomnia provided an answer. Now I just need to find my quilting hoop...

Almost forgot!

Oh, no... I almost forgot my best friend's birthday is fast approaching! The month is going by so quickly, making the 24th fast approaching!!! Oddly enough, Jen, my bff, shares a birthday with our dog baby, Prudence.

Prudence is getting a new set of tugging rings. That's been decided for a while. But what to do for Jen????

She loves basically anything I make for her, so I was trying to come up with some fun beach accessories (that's how we became besties- driving 1.5 hours to go to the beach BETWEEN CLASSES during summer session in college... we would drive that long, be able to stay about 2 hours, then drive back for our night classes).

So far, I have one idea- a can coozie. I've made one before, and I think I remember where I put the pattern. But what else could I put with it? Hmmm....

Suggestions welcome!!!!

I'm home alone today while Tim meets with some well-known gun guys to customize a rifle and get one of his other guns built. If I get an idea, I have no excuse not to get Jen's present done!

New ideas, new uses, same old hexagon obsession.

I've been doodling some ideas... mostly for hints of embroidery to work into quilt projects (remember I said I wanted more handwork? My brain is obliging!).

 This is one of the doodles. I'm one of the oddballs who like dandelions, mostly because they're so darn persistent! You can see I had to alter my drawing- I loved it, but the flower was too low for what I wanted, so snip, snip, tape, voila! Remember that book I want to make? This could end up as part of it... I have an idea forming, growing, percolating...

I bent the stem more once I started stitching.

 I traced it very  lightly with pencil onto white muslin and started stitching. I had to do something for about an hour while I waited for my Kindle to charge. It came today!!!

 And look at that fit! Thank you to my wonderful husband for indulging me this Valentine's Day with such an awesome present. I love it!

 I figured out what to do with the first attempt at a case for it, too- it will control power cords for my most used devices, making them much more portable. My phone charger, Kindle cord, and laptop cord all fit nicely in there.

And, finally, for anyone wondering what on earth I intend to do with all my hexagons, here's some hexie play for the day. I want to make a quilt out of them, something along the lines of a giant medallion. The focus will be more on value- light, medium, dark- rather than color. This is not a permanent formation since there's not enough contrast for my liking, but I'm working on it. I like knowing that this particular project has no deadline. Other than maybe our ten year anniversary, which gives me 8 years!!!

And as far as personal sickness, I refuse to get worse- another gallon of tea today, and the cough is waning. Let's hear it for hot tea! One more gallon tomorrow and I should be human again. I've got plenty of reading, so I think I can rest enough to satisfy even my mom's orders.

Happy Tuesday, everyone! Let's keep this week rolling!

200

So, for my 200th post, I have this to show you:

My shiner. That's right. I got a black eye. It's more of a mauve tone, if you ask me. Saturday night, I was putting Prudence's collar back on when Matt Lauer jumped between us in his 95 lbs of wiggling idiocy, and whacked my face with his skull.

Don't mind the weird expression. Cough syrup messes with my head.

I made Tim and I some bison burgers for Valentine's Day.

Yeah, I forgot to get buns... bread is bread is bread though. And they tasted AWESOME!

After lunch I drove up to see my momma, and took her a Kindle cover (that I just now realized I didn't take a picture of!!!). She absolutely loved it. So much so she took me to dinner AND bought me a bag of Riesen's (that were Gone by the time I got home!).

She's convinced I have pneumonia, though. That both Tim and I have pneumonia, to be honest. This "diagnosis" was made listening to him cough in the background for the last week, and spending three hours with me today. But, she is my mother, and I do have a propensity to get pneumonia (6 times? 7? Can't remember the official count). So if anyone would know just by listening to me breath and cough, it would be my mother. I promised her I'd get it checked out if the cough persists. I promise you, too, since there's at least 36 of you who find me amusing and might miss the adventures of Prudence and Matt.

So, there you have it. Post 200: I have a black eye and potential pneumonia. :)
Figures.

Back to my hexagons!

Explaining addiction

Almost all of these were made from scraps a quilting friend gave me last fall.

I have a very hard time keeping warm in winter. I usually have three layers on at least, but still find it difficult to stay warm, which means I require a blanket. I love blankets! But, they're kind of a pain when it comes to sewing at my machine, and all the moving around it takes in my sewing room.

That, my friends, is my excuse reason for being addicted to hexagons right now. I can sit in the living room (which is the warmest room of our house) and baste hexagons while sitting under a blanket. The added bonus is I can watch tv while stitching them.

And it's even better on a day like today when I am wearing my hoodie that has the hand warmer sleeves!!!

I've been playing around with needlework/embroidery during this cold spell, too. The Henrietta Whiskers BOM kept me busy during the ice storm, and after initial machine piecing I was able to get warm again under my trusty blanket.

This has me thinking perhaps I need to do more embellishment. Maybe take some ideas floating in my head, piece them, and then do some sort of fun embroidery on them. That way the hands will stay busy which keeps the mind quieter.

I have a bunch of Other things I need to do, though! I have too many UFO's and need to start finishing rather than procrastinating. Or at least it feels like procrastinating, even though I have a goal for these hexies...

But take today: I had wanted to clean/organize my sewing room, all because my brother will be passing through on Sunday to see our house for the first time. Right now, he'd look in there and shake his head that his messy little sister still can't keep "her room" clean. So I wanted to clean, but after 5 minutes in there, I was shivering uncontrollably, and so I grabbed the rest of Sally's scrap bag and headed back to the living room...

 After basting somewhere between 300 and 400 and storing them safely away from a swinging dog tail, I am cutting up more scraps for more hexagons piece and quiet.

This is the last of what was a medium-sized plastic bag filled with her scraps (and oh what lovely scraps they are!). We're talking larger than a normal grocery bag, but not quite the huge kind from Joann's. Still, that's a lot of fabric! My rough estimate is that I will end up with at least 1000 hexagons from Sally's scraps. Sally, thank you for your generosity!

I will probably still be sewing these to and from Florida next month. I guess I should look up TSA regulations and find some scissors that won't get me a full body search! It's going to be odd enough explaining the black box Mom and I will have with us....

"Excuse me, ladies, what's in the box?
"Oh, that's my dad. We're spreading him in the gulf."

I'm laughing already thinking about it!!

A lesson in patience

Kindle Cover 2.0

I think this was worth messing up the first one.

I quilted the circles without tracing any templates. Call me a rebel. I didn't want to worry about washing out chalk. 

 18 hours. That's how long it took to hand-piece and hand-quilt this. I stitched the binding on with my machine to help keep the hexies from fraying or separating, but then stitched it down on the other side by hand. 

 It's it gorgeous?

Those 18 hours even include a minor detour to make a strawbeeroo (that's how I said strawberry when I was little) pincushion. Christie (of Describe Happy) had a link to a tutorial that i had bookmarked a while ago... kind of felt like a sign that it was time to make one. And it cam in handy while hand-piecing. Plus it's just so cute I could eat it. :D

*#$%^*!!!

How about this super bowl?

My plan was to work on a different project while waiting for commercials, BUT I made a huge mistake with my previous hexagon piece for my Kindle cover. And I mean MAJOR. I got the whole thing finished, and then found I had failed to account for the extra thickness of the fleece lining (which is strange, since I did last night with Tim's laptop sleeve), which means my Kindle case ended up half an inch too small!!!!!!!!!!! Oh, cheese. I feel stupid. I hate to think how many hours of work I messed up. I can't even bear to post a picture. I just can't, not until I figure out how to repurpose it.

So, here I sit, basting more hexies for Kindle cover 2.0 (currently taking a mini break, though, to keep my fingers from getting too uncomfortable).

I'm kind of disappointed in the commercials so far. Only the Volkwagon one was really good- but I had already seen the leaked version (why do they do that?). Still cute and funny!!!

Sigh.... back to hexies...

Floored

The floor from the furniture store in town is so cool

and is why I had to make my hexagon pillow:

 I just need to decide on a border and sew that on, and then I can quilt it. Probably by hand, since at this point I have lost track of the hours in it, so why not make it a labor of love? I finished this yesterday, since I feel MUCH better. Not perfect, cough is lingering, but I'm one of those people who can be perfectly well but sound like death because of a cough that has camped out. In case you're wondering, over a gallon of hot tea over 12 hours is apparently my "cure". Final count: 2 green tea, 1 raspberry, 5 mint, and 1 honey chamomile.

 These are the "flowers" for my Kindle cover (since I know I am getting one!). I love traditional grandmother's flower gardens, but if you've learned anything about me it's that I don't make traditional. So, I chose colors that would be unexpected for flowers, and omitted the borders between them, and here ya go. The Hubs LOVES it. I guess that means it's possible to make a manly flower garden!!!

 Speaking of love, I made his laptop sleeve. A nice, manly green. It's lined with navy fleece and has batting, so it should hold up well. The buttons came from an old tim I've had since I was probably 9 or 10. One of my grandmothers gave them to me, and so far they've come in handy3 times in the last 3 months.

 We got a bunch more snow yesterday- 6" of it! That's more than we got during the "blizzard" since it came down mostly as ice last week. It created the urge to bake, though, hence the cupcakes. All from scratch yellow cake with chocolate buttercream frosting. YUM!

This is what we saw driving yesterday. mind you, this is semi #2 of 3 that we saw in a ditch in a 2-mile span. I'm so glad we have a good truck with 4 wheel drive!

I only have one dilemma today: I need a new hand-stitching project!

Ack!

When we bought our espresso machine a few weeks ago, and decided to get Netflix, Tim and I agreed that those two things would be our joint Valentine's present, thus eliminating any further gift-giving or worry about that silly holiday.

I was rather surprised last night when Tim announced that he knew what he was getting me for Valentine's Day!!!

Dang him, now I have to figure out a gift for him!!! Well, not really figure out, since I have an idea. He wants a laptop sleeve, and I just happen to have created a few in the past... so he's going to get a custom sleeve with fleece lining for an extra layer of protection (You all know how men handle fragile objects).

The only problem right now is my current case of what is hopefully just bronchitis. I had a sheet-changing fever last night, so I'm not sewing ANYTHING today for fear of stitching the germs right in. Nobody wants to be gifted germs!

Last night, I couldn't stay warm enough... but luckily we had two very willing volunteers for blanket duty. They stayed there through the whole of the movie The Ghost and the Darkness. We also watched Romancing the Stone. Which meant today we watched the sequel, The Jewel of The Nile. Tim offered to go get me anything I wanted from the grocery, too, but we already had my "sick" food- Lipton noodle soup. Plus, I've been drinking more tea than I usually have in a week (5 cups at this point- 1 green tea, the others all peppermint).

Soup's done, tea's waiting. Back to the couch I go. If hot liquids can cure me, I'll be well by morning.

SLEETED in

It turned into sleet! Yuck!

"Blizzard warning waffles"

But the waffles we made for breakfast sure were good!

We had some pretty, fluffy, heavy snow earlier yesterday- I liked it. It really does look so pretty from inside! But then it turned into sleet, which iced over everything. I was very glad to hear our garage open last night and know Tim made it up the hill- he said even his truck had a hard time on the ice.

 I did get my Henrietta Whiskers block done- there are three square in a square blocks to attach to the left side, but they're done. I guess technically it's not "done" since I need black embroidery floss to do the eye, but seeing as I can't go anywhere in this icy mess, it's done for now.

I only made small progress on the hexagons. I got into the Biggest Loser last night, and did some ballet-type exercises during the show rather than just sitting on my butt the whole time. I had a hypothesis, and it seems to be true, that by strengthening my feet like when I was in ballet, I could get rid of the need for an arch support. So far, so good! Which means plies and releves will remain a habit from now on to keep my feet healthy and happy.

Happy groundhog day! No shadow here!
:)