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.                                                                                                                       



More of the same but different.

And I have been snow dyeing again.  In an attempt to get purple I used Scarlet and Royal Blue Rit dye and some Dylon Yellow for accent.  NOT the right method!!  I got blue and red fabric with a few small purple areas, and the yellow did not take at all!  Sigh.  It is all very permanent though as I heat set in the microwave before I rinsed it.

This was a light blue satiny fabric.

More of Great Grandmother's fabric.

Wonderfully shiny but still blue and red.

I am going to over dye with some purple and see what happens.  I will use Low Water Immersion and Rit once again.

The second eyeglass case is done. again oversized with a hard insert.

I used hand dyed purple shaded ribbon but the Mauve tie sucked all the purple out of it.....amazing!  The underside of the ribbon work and the bead work is all securely glued, as well as all the bead work around the edge.The cloisonne butterflies are both sewn and glued on.  

This is done for durability as idle hands like to pick.

This is a very subtle treatment but it was a huge amount of work.

I got a new do too:

We were trying for purple here too, but the purple dyd would not take, and a mixture of red and blue came out too blue.  Apparently purple is as hard to make as it is to wear.  I will change my Blog picture as soon as I get a better picture that is not a short-armed-self-portrait....lol

I am going to make a couple of dolls next as they are preying on my mind.  They want out and are getting impatient and I want a change from purple.

(If I was in my mind I would probably want out too!)

Surprises and Success

I finished up the snow dyed fabric today. It was full of surprises and a wonderful, if half expected success.

Technical Info:  five dye vats, four drained, one allowed to sit in the melted dye.
                        hot water dye, Rit wine, Tintex navy blue, forest green, yellow and brown
                        one vat had no yellow, and one vat had no navy blue, all others were all colours
                        snow very melty, lots of ice granules
                        thoroughly chilled the fabric to slightly frozen (too impatient to get started!)                       
                        fabric:  cotton, cotton poly, wool like upholstery, silk upholstery, cotton damask and lots of
                        mystery fabric (I have a lot of that in my stash.)

A sampler of Dupioni Silk, the first is no blue, and the last is no yellow, and some mystery stuff that started out already pink.....very dye resistant!

Cotton Muslin

Cotton

Cotton Poly

Cotton Poly, I like this stuff as the weave shows.

Damask type stuff.  Shiny side was inside in this garment.  Halderman communities use shiny only for bridal parties.

Cotton

Cotton

Cotton

Woolly feeling upholstery fabric sample with a pattern in the weave...could be a synthetic, but it took the dye well so is probably wool.

Cotton, a failed gel print!  It only had splatters of blue and yellow to start and was in the vat with the above piece of cotton.  Now how does that happen?

And now for the best part...........TA DA!

These are silk upholstery remnants from my Great Grandmother's stash.  I was hoping they would dye well as they take Setacolor fabric paint wonderfully.  The blue is just as shiny as the yellow, but is hard to photograph.  The yellow did not take well on any of the fabrics except the Dupioni silk.

And last but not least:

This is a piece of the Damask Cotton (the same pale pink as the background fabric.  I accidentally left it folded when crumpling it into the vat and came up with the Abominable Snowman! 

Quite appropriate don't you think?

I apologise for the choppy posting, but getting pictures in the right order makes me crazy!

Some completion and some whimsy.

I have had a phrase come running through my head over and over...."Well I can't use spit and my shirt tail, its for company!"  Let me explain.  A week or so ago I was in the kitchen preparing a meal for some friends who were coming over for dinner and an evening of cards.  My DH was setting the table...he asked me to bring him a damp tea towel.  I asked what he was doing as I had already wiped the table and he said:......."...!"

Egad!!  We had been going round and round lately about his not washing the cutlery very well (I cook, he cleans up).  Well this had us helpless with laughter for a good five minutes.   We do this to each other all the time.  I claim it makes for a long lasting marriage.

If so, then why does this phrase keep coming back to haunt me???   He didn't mean it, did he"  He wasn't serious, was he?  Will I ever know......do I ever want to know???

The first eyeglass case is done.....she is quite fetching, I think.  These two cases I am doing are for over sized sunglasses and there is a hard case that fits inside the bag.

I have one more of these cases to do.

I am doing some more snow dyeing and am in a rush as our snow seems to be disappearing very quickly.  Last year I am told people were on the golf course by the first of March.  Times are achangin'...I vividly remember a snow storm on March 4. 1067 that deposited a drift 25' deep and 45' across between the house and the barn.  My dad would not let me go out to feed the horses that night ..he said that's how people get lost and die in these things....and sure enough someone in North Dakota did just that!

 At least I did not have to go very far to find some nice clean snow.   We have not been using the barbecue much.  Now I just have to wait for the snow to melt......marginally more fun than watching paint dry.

DH has been unpacking boxes of photo albums and found a bit of nostalgia...1978.  A really nice Rhodesian Ridgeback I boarded for a while just before I got married...I wonder did he fall in love with me or my dog?
DH is still with me and the dog isn't so that ought to mean something!

Going back to the studio now, with my lovely wine and navy blue fingers.

I'm sitting on horses again...Wheeee!

The chairs have been done, it has been 18 months but very well worth waiting for and the price was right...free.  A friend of ours is a professional upholsterer (the fellow who gives me all his old samples) offered to do them for free.  I bought the fabric a long time ago, a friend and I were out browsing at a roll-end outlet and while we found a couple of ho-hum pieces that would match my dining room, nothing special popped out.  Until Pat shrieked and I came running....she had found this positively fabulous fabric.  I bought a lot of it!  (Ulterior Motive:  more stash!) This stuff is so beautiful I would have repainted the dining room!

I don't think I could live with a whole sofa of it (it would be appropriate for the lounge in a bordello!)  but for the dining room chairs it is great.
It was hard getting the lighting right, it is actually a bit more olive and taupe.

Now to go make a bag using it.

She's done! She's outstanding!

Well actually she's running.  She has just done some mischievous magic with that wand of hers and is avoiding the consequences.  She's a lot like me and doesn't like anyone thanking her or making a big fuss over her......big snicker!!

It is late and I won't show you the carnage in my studio.  I will clean that up tomorrow, hopefully before her new owner comes to get her in the afternoon.  The last stitch was on my Tie Di Bags label on the inside just above the zipper.

When asked to use a possibly inappropriate vintage piece, do it like you meant it.  (At least it attracts butterflies.)

A Faery's wand just has to have lots of powerful Faery Dust to spread around.  Ever so much more fun than having to wield a feather duster.  Right?  There are sparkly highlights on the folds of her 'skirt', very subtle....yes I can do subtle...which do not show up in the photograph, that's how subtle they are.

She has lovely jewel strewn ground to run on....great for traction and fast get aways.

Over the weeks I have gotten to know this bright sprite quite well, and she really is a fun little soul and I have greatly enjoyed our time together.

My next project is a little cover for a Book of Psalms that a friend of mine is planning to carry with her to Israel.  She tells me that Bible or other Christian book carried out in the open around the Temple Of The Rock can get you stoned.  Sheesh, what a world we live in.

It will be blue with appliqued butterflies.  A nice change up from purple.

My little yellow weasel (Buddy the cat) is demanding that I take him to bed.....like he can't find the way by himself?!?  Actually I think DH sent him...it really is very late.