Lemon Tree Tales

FLiPS: Turtle Pincushion

In between rounds of the FLiQS the hosts have decided to have a quick pincushion swap, FLiPS. I really was at a lost on what to make, couldn't make a decision until this past week. I kept seeing Heather Bailey's little turtle pincushion pattern and wanted to make one. At first I was going to use some red Kaffe Fassett fabrics accented with some golds but then my partner made a comment that they liked purple and green together. Ah ha! I have plenty of those in the stash. Out came three pretty batiks and a bright green fairy frost for a bit of an accent.

She looked a bit lonely all by her lonesome so I also made a coordinating thread-catcher so that together they'd be the perfect sewing set. I found the thread-catcher tutorial here.

 

After adding a couple sewing goodies I boxed her up and sent her on her way in the good hands of the postal service. Well, I'm hoping that it makes it okay.

 

It was a fun package to put together and a nice quick project to work on in between some bigger items on my to-do list. Now it's time to attack the house chores - gotta get the laundry done soon.

Colonial Days dresses

The other week my friend needed my help sewing some Colonial Days dresses for her daughter, Miss L, herself and the neighbor girl. Fortunately I had some free time because it turned out that we had only a week to make three dresses. Yikes! I loaned out my old Bernina sewing machine (the Nova since it's a trusty workhorse) and brought over pins, scissors and a pincushion. We were in business. I directed my friend in cutting, pinning and pressing while I sewed. The first try at a bodice just didn't fit Miss L, who's blessed with a long torso and soon to be tall girl. I figured it'd be much easier to just drape and make a new pattern directly on Miss L using some muslin. After much fidgeting it was done. I'm so glad that I remembered how to do this from college days.

After that dress was sewn we realized that it'd work for the neighbor girl as long as we kept it shorter. Yay! That definitely made things easier. Finally with just two days remaining until Colonial Days I showed my friend how to use the sewing machine and how to sew a straight seam. With just one day to go I was exhausted so I left the three dress hems and the rest of the skirt to sew on the final dress. (I figured that a zipper would be a pain for a newbie sewist so I did that and the back skirt sections of the third dress.) I calculated that I had put in about 32 hours into the project not to count the time that my friend put in that last night.

This is what the table looked like when I went home. (My in-laws were coming in and I needed to do some last minute cleaning and shopping.)

 

And this is what the girls looked like before they ran off to school. By the time they arrived at school, both girls had fichus, mop caps, and a flower pin holding together the fichu. My friend ran a booth demonstrating how to use quill pens and sealing wax for letters. According to her everyone was quite happy. (I've changed their faces to hand drawn ones. I'm thinking that they'll have a big giggle when they see it.)

 

Now my friend has the sewing bug and wants to learn how to make clothes for her girls, Miss L and Miss J. Always nice to get new people interested in sewing. See, it's addictive isn't it? Well I have a few projects that I have to get back to .. some quilting on the round robin quilt and a pincushion for the Fab Little Pincushion Swap on flickr. Pictures to come after this weekend.

Arley's Mermaid

A month ago I took a doll class taught by Arley Berryhill. Last evening I put the finishing touches on her and she's ready to be hung on a wall. I just can't decide which part of the the house she should reside.

Here's how she first looked when I brought her home from the class. Her hair, arms and lace were just pinned in place.

 

After a couple days with some beads, sequins and glitter glue she's now ready to grace the walls of our home. (She's consented to living out of water. As she's explained to me, just because she's a mermaid doesn't mean that she has to be pigeon-holed to a watery existence. I guess she's a bit of a rebel, who knew?)

 

I can't decide whether she should be against one of our many cream walls, or the warm yellow walls of the family room where she'll contrast nicely. Hmm. We'll have to think about that a bit.

More Rippling

It's slow progress, but I'm probably about a third of the way finished with the Neat Ripple Afghan that I'm crocheting for Steve. I keep getting distracted by other projects and things to do, books to read, you know, the usual suspects. It's now on the side table so that I'll be reminded to pick it up in the evenings and get more stripes added to it. So far here it is. I'm using Attic 24's Neat Ripple pattern:

In the midst of working on it I decided that the avocado green, although a great color, would do better if it were only one row thick. So all future rows of it are singled and when I get to the very last one I'll double it to mirror the beginning one. It's getting there, just needs more attention directed its way.

Fearghus gets stripped

We waited just a month too long to get Fearghus hand-stripped. His hair was looking so nice and thick on his jacket that we were enjoying the look. When the hair on his head got so long that we couldn't see his eyes anymore we realized that it was that time again.

Fearghus with the long and shaggy dog look:

 

Many, many hours later here he is sporting his new sleek do, ready for it to warm up look:

 

I'm not crazy about the cat look when he first gets stripped but in a few weeks his hair will start to grow out just enough again that he'll look great. One of the park regulars calls it his "jammies" look. Last night he was so active and wanted to play fetch for more than an hour, which is very unusual for him. I'm guessing that with all that hair gone he was feeling a bit light and full of energy.

In other news we found out that the puppy we wanted to get was not destined to be a companion dog. So we'll have to wait a few more months before Fearghus will get a new sister. For now he'll get to be spoiled as the only dog in the house for a little while longer.

Arley Berryhill Mermaid Class

Arley Berryhill taught a mermaid class this past weekend. It was hosted by the San Jose Gals and Dolls club and held at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. Wow, what a fun time! I'm not finished yet (of course not) but I do have the doll pinned together so that you can take a look see.

First, we arrived at the museum on Saturday with a bit of homework .. a sewn and stuffed head, torso and arms:

Then we promptly got out the Dye-na-Flow inks and went to town on painting this lovely and a bit of lace:

Next we moved on to sewing a tail, fins and some funky hair pieces:

A little bit of sewing to attach the tail and then I just had to pin her hair and arms on. The class was over very quickly and I expect that it'll take a few weeks just to get all the beads and trim sewn on this fun mermaid.

Her poor nose split when I was doing the face painting so I had to do a quick repair. I'll have to add something to it during the embellishment phase, perhaps rhinestones and/or glitter. When she's all done, hopefully she'll be as fabulous as Arley's demonstration doll:

 

Arley is a fantastic teacher and quite a bit of fun to be around. My thanks to him for flying out to California to teach a wonderful class. And thanks to the Gals and Dolls for finding such a beautiful location for the class. At lunch time I had to walk around the quilt exhibit. It's simply divine .. lots of modern quilts that I've only seen online. Pictures just don't do these artworks justice. It was also fun running into a quilt blogger that I've met a few times before, Julie of Floribunda. I hope you enjoyed the exhibit too.

FLiQS: Completed and mailed

I wanted to wait until my partner had received my Fab Little Quilt Swap (FLiQS) quilt that I mailed out this past Monday before posting it here. This morning it finally arrived at Carol's (mamacjt) house. Whew! I'm glad that it made it okay.

Remember my original inspiration for it? It was Carol Taylor's Moonshadow quilt (you just have to go over there and look at it ... it's gorgeous!) Since my partner, Carol, loves bright colors and solids I thought that they'd look great against a backdrop of solid black and white. I'm not too big into plain solids so I added what I like to call solid textures. If I had hand-dyes I would have used them too. I didn't add all the churn dash blocks in the black section as originally planned. It just didn't look right. Of course this is as close as I can come to improvisational piecing. There was a detailed to scale plan and the only thing I played with were the choices of colors and fabrics. Here's the sketch and the stack of fabrics:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After lots of piecing came the quilting. Of course I then decided to do lots of dense straight line quilting. It looks great but the amount of time it took to tie knots and bury all the loose ends about drove me crazy. Here's a picture of the last bit that I was working on Monday before I added the solid black binding:

I also needed to make a label but wasn't sure if I had time to make a fancy one. Instead I photoshopped one and printed it on ink jet cotton fabric and just fused it to the back of the quilt.

Here's the completed quilt:

The back:

And a bit of detail:

I opted to use one of Superior Threads Rainbows multi colored thread for the bright pieced center area. That way all of that section is more unified. The black and white are quilted with black and white threads. In the end I decided that it didn't need any beads or other embellishments and now I very desperately want to make another one to hang with all of my little wall quilts.

One last look:

FLiQS: Received my quilt

Oh my goodness, I received the most darling quilt from Shirley of Friedasew as part of the Fab Little Quilt Swap (FLiQS) hosted on Flickr. I've neglected showing it to you because I wanted to ooh and aah over it all by myself. ;-) Today I decided to snap some pictures of it to share Shirley's talent with you. I can't remember what I told her that I liked, but I did make this inspiration mosaic for her on Flickr. I've included the links to all those fabulous creations so that you can see it bigger. Please do so because these are some talented people. That's okay, I'll wait.

1. Autumn Twilight, 2. An in the water view of a green backlit wave at Pipeline, on the north shore of Oahu, Hawaii, 3. Butterfly Macro 3, 4. needle felt quilt 30 x 30, 5. YIP 365.338 :: Big Circles pillows, 6.'Weaving the strands' quilt finished (3), 7. Purplegator, 8. Sur la rou(lot)te des vacances, 9. Hand Dyed Thread, 10. Retreat 2008 080, 11. www.flickr.com/photos/aviva_hadas/3602177488/in/faves-lem..., 12.DQS10 quilting finished!, 13. www.flickr.com/photos/29662060@N05/5501780804/in/faves-le..., 14.Kathy Doughty talk 2.4, 15. A Summer Day, 16. Bon Bon #4, 17. sun quilt, 18. Impressionable Colors, 19. Rose, 20. "In a Quilter's Garden II" by Karen Krueger, 21. Dahlia in bloom, 22. Orchid 16, 23.Sheena, 24. Dahlia 'Night Queen', 25. DSC_2846, 26. Zen Garden Quilt, 27. Fairy Door with Bricks, 28.Detail 2, 29. DQS11, the last post, 30. Fearghus not happy about wearing another hat, 31. Karen - triangle quilt with fish, 32. Art Nouveau Chemist, 33. spring fling RR2, 34. DQS10 - All Finished, 35. A Dash of Fancy mini - full frontal, 36. 4 seasons summer quilt

Created with fd's Flickr Toys

 

All done? Okay, let me show you Shirley's creation. Here's the front of it in all its modern Amish glory:

 

Wait, the back is just as pretty:

 

And a bit of detail, I love all those mini buttons and the multi thread quilting is oh so pretty:

 

Shirley also sent me some gorgeous Kaffe Fassett fabrics and perle cotton threads in my favorite colors. I can't wait to figure out a nice project to use them in:

 

Of course I had to take this lovely outside for some action shots:

 

One of these days I'll have to plant some pretty new flowers so that I can have a variety of backdrops for all the quilts, but for right now the lantana bush will do nicely. I'm so happy with this quilt. Thank you Shirley!!!

Cotton Robin: 1st border completed

Way back in December I signed up for The Cotton Robin, a quilt round robin organized by Julie of Floribunda. We had to mail in our center blocks mid January. I'd love to show you mine but it's still a secret until reveal day. In the meantime I received a center block that I had to sew a first border on. I can show you that picture because I'd hidden the center block and have color tweaked the border. When I first received the block I wasn't sure how I'd go with it but then finally decided that a checkerboard would do the trick.

 

Of course it's only after I mailed it off that I realized that I should have sewn the light dimple fabric rather than the mini polka dots in the outside corners. Oops! At least it's consistently done for all four corners. I can't tell you how many times I ripped out and then resewed those blocks. I opted to strip piece them but I was a bit off on my math so that's why I added the skinny strip in the middle. In the end I like how it gives a wrapped present effect to the piece. I can't wait to see what the next person does for the final border.

Now I'm just waiting to receive my next piece to work on. I wonder what it'll look like.

Fab Little Quilt Swap: Beginning the quilting

The top for the Fab Little Quilt Swap has been completed for some time but I needed to ponder how I'd go about the quilting. The top has been spray basted to a great gradated fabric that I thought was perfect for it. Now I've begun channel quilting the black section. I've paused for a bit so that I can knot and bury all the threads. Yes, I'm starting and stopping around those confetti elements rather than quilt through them. And it's taking much longer than I planned. Luckily I have until March 19th to mail it out. I may need most of that time to get it completed the way I've envisioned.

No, it's not distorted, just a bad photograph. It's all been squared prior to the spray basting. I will have to trim the top slightly due to a an over anxious session with the trimming scissors. Oops!

I still have quite a bit to quilt after these threads are buried and snipped. The wider channels will have a line of black metallic thread quilting and the white sections will have white thread quilting - perhaps not so close together as in the black. I'm still on the hunt for the right thread to quilt horizontal lines in the bright section. Any suggestions?