Well Along aka A Good Start

Spent the better part of Monday with my stitching group.  Good fellowship, good friends, and lots of hints and tricks and new techniques to explore.  I took along my second commissioned bag to work on as it is mostly paid for, and long overdue.  Our group disciplinarian has admonished me sternly about finishing this bag.

I am really getting ahead with it though.  It is to be more outrageous than the last one and to be two sided.
The first side is a crazy quilt block.....that is Crazy Quilt To The Tenth Power!

The background is all ties and the predominant colour is purple, ties again.  I am amazed that I can think up so many things to do with purple.

I love my stash of buttons, they can be tarted up quite nicely, especially when you have a stash of flower shaped sequins which stand up beautifully on little stalks of seed beads.

SIDEBAR:   We had a group of young college people

over on Saturday.  One of the young ladies who

  had never been here before looked around in    

total jaw dropped amazement and said "I've      

never met anyone who canned buttons before!" 

I am still laughing!                                             

And last but not least the ubiquitous spider.  He is made with beautiful big faceted Amethyst beads. I am using a lot of Amethyst and Ruby beads on this piece as well as Swarovsky crystal bicones and flower shapes, and will be using some Sterling silver as well.

The yellow centre was TOO YELLOW and fairly screamed.  I toned it down a bit with some free motion machine stitching.

I am trying to be a bit smaller and flatter as I get out to the edges of this block, I am thinking of wear and good mechanics here.  But it is so hard for me to be conservative.

I got home about six o'clock and watched 'our' Grackle steal two more worms which he ate, and then came back and very daintily removed the grass clipping mulch and picked out a morsel that had been previously buried (I watched him bury something else the other day.) There must be a pair, and they must be feeding babies, although it seems a bit early.  He must be the gobbler and she must be the stasher.  We stitcher women are good at that.

The pair of house sparrows were back again.  She lit on the fence and chirped at him, but he must not have been in the mood for love and just flew away.  They put on quite a show the other day, but he is a rude fellow and kept pecking her on the head.  I certainly would have told him where to get off!   Oooohhhh, bad pun!

I weeded part of one perennial bed for two hours, and picked some rhubarb and baked a pie.  I was righteously exhausted when bedtime came, but what a wonderful day.

Back to the Blog

Oh my goodness, it has been a while!

I have been busy though, I even did a lot of housecleaning in the studio.  I got sweeping into all, I mean ALL the nooks and crannies.  I think I got enough hair to make another kitten!  Maybe I should do this more often? Ya think??

Since I left off I have made a couple of simple purses for quick sale. Sale was so quick I do not have pictures....eeek!  They were very simple, trust me, you didn't want to see them.

I have inherited the rest of my Mother's stash from a sister-in-law, plus a large chunk of her stash.  Not necessarily the happiest way to get stash.  I have just gone through all the leather to see what is there.  Organizing is great, it has shrunk the pile by half just by flattening it all out!  I think I have seriously damaged my ironing arm.....yes you can iron leather, the thin stuff and the suedene.  The thicker stuff is still in the leather press.  Thank you to you ladies who told me how to do this.  Although I think I have done damage to my ironing muscle!  It doesn't usually get much use.

This is my leather press, I am still not sure how it is working as I think it needs a few days to do its work.

There is a whole bag of schnibbles that I just hate to throw away.....after all I am a Stashaholic.              

The pile on the TV table is all fine and kid leather and is over an inch deep in the browns!  I need to sort and bag this yet.  The rest up on my ironing table is all suedene cut into strips strangely enough.                         

I am working on another commissioned tote sized bag all in purple ties although you might not be able to see them when I am through!   I am doing a Crazy Quilt block to the tenth power.  (She never said she wanted   to be able to lift this thing...hehe)  This is the centre and right side, there is more rolled under on the left.       

Here is a detail at the top, the embroidery is not finished yet, I think I will add beads too.                                                         

This bit is at the bottom and I think it is finished...you never know!                                                               

And then just to blow a bit of the purple lint out of my system I did this wall hanging.  The Ladies are Stacked.  DH came up with the title.  They are actually a tie.                                                            

I loved the tie and I paired it with the fabric from my Great Grandmother's stash shown in the last Blog post.

 

A bit of copper accent and some purplish (just can't get away from it!) beads completes it.  I wanted to 

find a way to feature that gorgeous fabric.  The pictures do not do it justice.  This piece will be for sale.                                           

 Now to get my nose back to the grindstone and finish the purple tote as the lady has commissioned me to  do two more smaller bags.                                                                                                                     

                                                                                                            

I hope I won't be quite so long in posting again.   Happy stitching.