Stitching Away

I don't think I'm going to get a whole lot more done on these wonderful ornaments of Alicia's once I get started on this huge quilt but at least I've finished two (of six -- I think I was feeling quite ambitious) before getting distracted. And had a ton of fun doing them both!


Isn't this one cute, even with its waste canvas in? (Waste canvas is, by the way, magical! I'd never used it before and now I'm seeing cross-stitches all over everything in my house!)


After my cats' complete and utter (and undeterable) obsession with my polar bear, I decided that it was a bad idea (for me -- I don't think there is a single thing wrong with the patterns) to leave the bottom open, as instructed, and so I cut a little ellipse out of some leftover felt and made a faux-ribbed cuff to close the opening, while still leaving the bottom of the mitten "open" (the extra piece of felt made the bottom 3D, rather than just blanket stitching it all closed). Maybe this will keep it all in one piece after the cats find my hiding spot (on the wall) and play football with the mitten.

And, to close, a less dismally dark photo of my polar bear, complete with tiny scarf. He he!

Woo Hoo!

And we're off on the quilt. I'll see you all in a month, after I find my rotary cutter (MIA since the move last February. . .) and cut out 172 "sections". I don't think I've cut that many of a piece of fabric for any project, ever. This should be fun!

Get Rolling Cotton Boll

I'm feeling very impatient to get started on my Quiltville Mystery Quilt. I found this whole mystery quilt business through Jessica's blog and felt intrigued by the mysteriousness of it all. But then I saw the Double Delight quilt from a previous mystery and looked at the holes developing in my two current quilts (which are both commercially produced quilts and both getting to be quite old, as far as commercially produced quilts go) and couldn't resist. But now I've gathered all of my fabrics (most of which came from my stash -- I had no idea that I had so much fabric!) and put them in pretty little piles and I am itching to cut!

A lucky thing for me is that I happen to really really love the color combo for this particular mystery quilt (which is likely why I had so many of these colors in my stash -- if she'd thrown in a blue I'd probably have had more trouble). I don't, however, have 1-3/4 yards of any single fabric in my stash so I'll have to order the red she mentions. Darn. I love this one. So much that I'm having to restrain myself from buying a whole lot extra so that I can have it around for future projects.

This is going to be great fun!

Happy Friday

Just a couple of photos from the past few days. The weather has been really nice here which has led to a few fun walks (and pinecone gathering) and some lovely light in the house. Autumn has come back after a few weeks of winter! Proof in the mixed nut bin in the grocery store (there are some nuts for that squirrel under those pinecones).

Persephone Grey

Progress has been made on the house! I'm not sure that I've had a major (positive) update like this to share since the hallway, all the way back in July. It's always tough to photograph our house, since all of the rooms are quite small, but I hope that I can do it justice. Our master bedroom, which was previously seafoam green, full of cracks and scuffs, and bedecked with frilly curtains, is now cleaned and patched and painted the color of grey of a persephone book cover (I just went to my paint guy, who is the best paint guy in the world, and asked him for a grey the same color that he'd made the primer for another room -- and it's lovely, don't you think?)

I realize now that that photo above may be a bit confusing -- that thing in the lower left corner, at the foot of the bed, is my cedar trunk -- it's just the exact color of the floor and so kind of makes it look like the floor overlaps the door somehow. The door up there on the right goes into the study and the other out into the second floor hallway.

Now for some before and after:

This is the "before" photo of the same corner as the photo of the chair at the top of the post. It was taken almost exactly a year ago, when we were just looking at the house.

This above little tiny pressed-flower artwork (which I love -- it's from my favorite antique store in my hometown) is hanging in the little space between the closet door and the wall with the windows which you can see in the "before" photo above, thus making these two photos a kind of set.

An immediate "before". The other before shot was taken just after purchase of the house back in January but this one is just from a few days ago. Those white smudges are patching of some of the cracks.

And the fourth corner (below). I don't have a good "before" photo to pair with this one so I'll just let it stand alone. This corner did have the biggest crack of all though -- it went all the way through to the hallway (the door to the hallway is just outside of the frame of the photo, to the right -- that's it reflecting in the mirror).

Power Outage

Every time there is a power outage here (which is really quite frequently -- we're up in the mountains), I am dismayed to notice, yet again, just how much of my day-to-day life requires electricity. Not even just batteries but plugged-in electricity. No cooking. No machine sewing. No knitting in front of the television. No blogging. No dish washing (the boiler is oil powered but is triggered by electricity). Really unbelievable. Surely I can think of something to do about this?

On the upside, last week these fantastic ornament kits from Alicia came and I'd not had time to get started on them, despite my huge excitement, due to all of the aforementioned "distractions".

Aren't they terribly cute, all packaged up?

I actually only stitched up the polar bear before the power came back on (they're used to the power-out drill up here, as I said) so the rest will have to wait for another day (including this guy's little blue scarf) but I had so much fun stitching him in front of our (smoky) fire, with a cat on either side. Hooray for an occasional power outage!

Great Steps in Quilting

This week I've had several quilting "breakthroughs". Which I suppose is really the fun in learning something new -- when I learn something new. When it's challenging. It's certainly tough sometimes though.

Everything's still a bit wonky but that's "handmade", right? At least that's what I like to tell myself.

To make those 3 little objects up there (the top one is a Dresden Plate doll quilt I made just because I wanted to try to make a Dresden Plate, and the bottom photo is of 2 potholders for PP5), I purchased and learned how to use a walking foot (how did I ever sew anything without one of these? It's the coolest thing ever!), really learned how to machine quilt in general (using this hugely helpful post), finally managed to make my square corners more pointy (reread Denyse Schmidt Quilts for info on that), and actually finished one of my own quilting projects (I'd finished quilting projects for swaps but not a single one of the projects I'd started for my house). Of course I still have tons of room for improvement but every little bit helps!