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.

All Tied Up

Or should that be all the ties are up??  I have finally finished sorting and hanging up my tie collection....sort of....some of the hangars are a tad varied still.  I need more hangars.....I need more racks!  The bottom row is actually a double row with the darker ties in the back, sort of.  I pulled most of the striped ties and all the plain ones, but will save them for bindings.  Some where in that closet among the 23 bins that I have to go through yet is another big bin of striped ties.....I am tie-erd of ties.   Here is the picture I promised:

< 2nd bin of striped ties

This is my stash of upholstery samples, yarns and buttons:

I had all the buttons sorted to size and colour (washed too!) and was at the Self Help store the next day and a huge jar of mixed buttons jumped right into my hands...it now reigns right in the middle of the first button shelf.  All this orderliness keeps me from being called a hoarder. If you look real close, I mean really close you can see my studio helper, Buddy.

This is my "Happy Place"  between my sewing machine and the three patio doors (north east light) is a 2' by 4' ironing table that doubles as a chair and a mini step ladder should I wish to unfold the thing.  All I have to do is just turn around to press something and look out at the tomatoes on our deck. Much nicer than gazing at the studio and realizing that I really do work in a midden!

I made a thread rack with four layers of foam core stuck together with thin double sided tape.  I finished the edges with masking tape, poked holes with an awl and used sandwich picks to hang the spools on.  The spacing could have been a bit further apart, but I'm and artist, not an engineer....what can I say?

 I my studio has come a long way from what I started with:

This picture is amusing now but at the time it was pretty scary, it was like one of those puzzles where you have to move the letters around and there is only one empty space!

I am getting some where here.  I have fallen heir to more space as DH is taking over the spare bedroom for his egg studio...he is an egg carver.  120 square feet plus 60 square feet in a closet. Big grin :).  Hence my present cleaning and sorting spree.  What I am actually doing is my usual procrastinating before starting a new piece.  I need a kick in the butt!

Please take a moment to think of the sacrifices some of our loved ones have made in the various wars our countries have been involved in.  Because of them we are free to work in our studios.