Tiny Worlds and smelly dogs

OH MY! I have no idea what the dogs got into today. I think they must have rolled in it as well as eaten it. The smell was so strong when I let them back inside it almost made my eyes water! Barn? Fertilizer? Death? I've searched the yard and can't find anything. Whatever it is, it smells GROSS!

But! I persevered in the sewing room despite the stench and made my first "Tiny World" pin cushion. I've been collecting tea cups from the thrift stores, along with wool sweaters for the stuffing, and bought wool felt for the house and grounds. FUN! ...and cute. I can't wait to do another. The pattern is by Mimi Kirchner.

Tales From Under the Sewing Table

Hi there! My name is Maisy.


I've been living in The Sandbox since April and I'm a big girl now. I weigh 30 lbs even though I was supposed to be a lap dog. The Tramp mentions it often. :-p


In fact, Miss Katie calls me Piggy. She says I look like a piglet rooting for truffles. I don't think so, do you? My tail isn't nearly curly enough!


And I don't dig holes like Ivy does. I'd much rather sneak through the fences and prune the wisteria and garden plants. Miss Katie says she can't figure out why I don't yank the evil Bermuda grass out of the flower beds while I'm at it. Heh.


I'm in deep doo-doo today....sigh. I always am. Miss Katie is pretty peeved about her fave wool pincushion.


Pins are great to chew on!

Poop. I also don't know why everyone was so upset when I chewed through the wire of one of the sewing machine foot pedals. I mean, aren't there enough other sewing machines around here? I was just keeping quiet and busy. Ok...sigh. I didn't know it was the new sewing machine. Oh.... Well.... I guess I chewed up a couple of lamp cords and speaker wires too.

But I'm cute! Really!

Psst.... Don't tell them about the teeth marks on the vacuum cleaner cords.

Miss Katie says her blogging mojo may have come back......whatever mojo is. Groan! I guess I'll have to learn to pose as nicely as Ivy and Ngaire so there aren't any more Piggy pictures! Miss Katie also says if I don't destroy any more of her sewing equipment there may be some quilt pictures coming soon too. :-p


Have a happy, muddy day!

Weekend to remember

Mom and I are staying home today and recovering from our weekend at the North Carolina Quilt Symposium at Peace College in Raleigh. Quilty inspiration was everywhere. There were over 200 quilts in the show, wonderful vendors, and 600 full and part-time attendees! Mom and I enjoyed our classes and lectures with Barb Gardner, John Flynn, Harriet Hargrave, Rachel Clark, Charlotte Warr Anderson, Yvonne Porcella, and Elly Sienkiewicz--and wished we could have experienced all the other fantastic teachers too!

But I think the real high point for both of us was the quilt show. We both won ribbons! I knew Mom would win something, she always does! But no one was more amazed than I to see ribbons on my quilts. :-D

This is our "duet" entry. Mom did all the applique (those border stars were a bear!) and I pieced and quilted. We won a second place ribbon. The quilt is one of many being donated to the guild's Heritage Day Auction. The guild's charity partner for the auction is Military Missions In Action. I hope it helps us make lots of money!

This quilt is going to be the raffle quilt for the guild's Heritage Day Auction in October. I put together the fence row. It won a third place ribbon.

We both also worked with our bee on this centennial quilt for the town of Fuquay-Varina. Mom did the schoolhouse block and I did the center and corner blocks and the lettering in the border. We were sorry it didn't win a ribbon but the town is thrilled with it. The bee will be presenting it to the town this Friday and it will hang in the history museum.
Mom won a first place ribbon for this one. It is all hand appliqued and hand quilted.

She also won an honorary mention for her chickens! Also all done by hand.

My Old Tobacco Road (Bonnie Hunter mystery) won an honorable mention.

And I won the first place ribbon in the Jane Hall Challenge. No one is more surprised than I am! I took a lot of care with it but I know everyone else did the same with their entries. Thank you Jane for your instruction and inspiration!

New UFO

Lucky me got to go to a Bonnie Hunter workshop on Saturday! We worked on My Blue Heaven.

This is Bonnie's...


This will be mine!


It was also a Fun With Grandsons weekend. DIL, Middle Daughter and her SO were here too. Lovely....sigh. :-)

Hiding!

I've been in hiding. Not much time at the computer though I do try to catch up on my blog reading occasionally. I've been sewing sewing sewing my entries for the North Carolina Quilt Symposium....and it's finally next weekend!

We also got a new puppy and you know what that means! Short nights and long days trying to get her housebroken. We have good days and bad days but for the most part she's a good dog and just acting age appropriately.

Meet Maisy. I'd love to get her DNA tested. She looks like she was put together by a committee! LOL


I have the most fun taking photos of her sleeping. She sleeps around, over, beside, under and everywhere but in her beds. :-)

Two and a half minutes of a spring day

I haven't tried to post a movie yet. So here goes.

Done....but will I ever wear it???

Done. Finally I can say it's done. Well except for the label. I bought this kit back in the early 90s. That's long enough for a UFO don't you think? :-) I finally got it out last year and started putting it together. Never again. I was shorted on fabric, the pattern tissue was incomplete, and the instructions were impossible.



I wish I could say more positive things about it but I can't. I suppose back when I bought the kit I would have worn it happily, but now I'm not so sure. It's pretty dreadful. I'll enter it in the NC Quilt Symposium next month but I hope no one looks at it too closely!


Being short on fabrics I had to fudge a lot of the construction. See the bottom right corner of the back of the coat? Those short strips are added to fill a gap. The long strips that go from shoulder to hem are the full width of the fabric (about 42"). There is just no way to make them reach from shoulder to hem! I could have added matching fabric to make them longer but by then all the strips were cut (per the instructions) and there were no bits left wide enough. SIGH. There's no mention of it in the pattern and the coat in the pattern photo has strips that reach the hem. All I can figure is that either they pieced them or cut them lengthwise from yardage they don't provide in their kits. *grumble* I couldn't bind the seams per the instructions either. There just wasn't enough fabric to do it their way. I kept going back to the paperwork and yes, the kit was supposed to have the complete materials to make a coat in my size. Yeeesh!

And it went on and on like that! I've also been searching and searching for fabric for the final binding of the front, hem and sleeves. There was no way I could finish it with what they provided. Let me tell you, that's a hard job when you let your kit sit around for so many years! Fabric styles change so much. After a few false starts (thank goodness I don't mind adding to my stash!), last week while shopping for something else in JoAnn's, the right fabric jumped right off the rack and into my arms. *happy dance*

It still remains to be seen if I have the nerve to model it at Symposium. ;-)

Bunny progress

Here are two of my Bunny Hill Designs BOMs. March and February. January is waiting for a bit of wool fabric and I've just begun working on April. Purty cute! :-)

Catching up...again

We've had some wild and wooly weather around here lately. I took this photo the other day from the back yard looking over the roof of the house. A very clear demarcation between the wild weather to the east and blue skies to the west. We had more of the same today.


I've fallen behind again. I've been reading blogs but haven't felt much like posting. But now and then people nicely let me know they actually read what I write so it gets me going again. :-)

Lets see.... I went back through my photos to see what I've been doing!

This little fella surprised me with a visit the other evening. He (she?) kept me company while I was blog reading.



Despite what the calendar says my Christmas cactus has decided to bloom. I think it likes it's new home in the corner of the living room on top of the dog crate. :-)


The pointsettia is still going strong too.


But it is indeed spring outside. We have wisteria... (and weeds...pretend you don't see them)

camellia...


iris...lots of violets...
spirea...

and tulips. :-)


This weekend we did some major shed cleaning and sorting and also decided that this should be the location of the vegetable garden. The Tramp worked steadily all winter splitting wood but I'm wondering how in the world we are going to move some of these big logs!


My "half" trees are showing their summer colors too. Both were damaged by the large pecan trees that were taken down last year. I'm hoping one day they won't look so lopsided.


In the sewing room I have a few projects that have reached the quilting stage. Several items are up on my design wall waiting. This is when I get nervous and worried that I'm going to ruin something by quilting it!

This will be a pentecostal parament for my church back in New Jersey.


And this is my "Jane Hall Challenge" that needs to be finished up and entered into the North Carolina Quilt Symposium. The Tramp was helping me figure out what kind of borders to put on it.
My excuse for not getting on with my quilting....I was kind of waiting for this to arrive. :-D My new Juki TL98Q. I had that charity quilt top waiting to go so I used it as my tester. The machine works like a dream...right out of the box! I'm so pleased with it.

So I guess I should get back into the sewing room and get busy!

Thou Shalt Not Covet....

I don't covet my neighbor's husband...or wife either for that matter, but I sure do covet my neighbor's sewing machine! Last Friday and Saturday I had the pleasure of attending two of Patsy Thompson's machine quilting workshops. If you ever get a chance to take a class with Patsy, go for it! She's a wonderful teacher and her quilting is exquisite. Check out her work on her website and here are a few photos of her samples I took with my cell phone. The last one is the teaching sample you can see her creating on her sewing machine. Wow.


As for coveting.... The workshop was an unique opportunity to see what other machines people use for machine quilting. The one that impressed me by far was the Juki TL98Q. SIGH.....


I'll have to wait for that. I did treat myself to a Bendable Bright Light though. *happy dance*


One of the jobs the Juki would be fantastic for is foundation piecing...because of the thread cutter feature. I know this because I've been foundation piecing this week...with no thread cutter.


Last year I had the pleasure of taking a Pineapples Plus workshop with Jane Hall. Another wonderful teacher and lucky for us, a member of our guild. I made one block and then of course it became another UFO. Bless the organizers of this year's North Carolina Quilt Symposium, they've included The Jane Hall Challenge as an entry category so now I have to finish it. :-) I've been slaving away at my Bernina this week finishing eight more blocks to go with UFO block number one.


"Challenge" is the right word! I have such a crick in my shoulder, despite regular stretching breaks. And I have made so many stupid mistakes! Aaarrrrggghhh. To say nothing of changing the design of the first four blocks twice! Ripping out the small stitching on foundation papers is not fun. But success comes to those who perservere (ha...listen to me preach). I have now have nine blocks pinned up on my design wall....


and a mess (this is just today's mess!). Just wait until I get to ripping out the paper backing. Oh my!

The dogs are unimpressed as usual. :-)

I was hanging the fabric strips on a quilt rack. Handy...except the rails are slippery and Ivy kept helping herself to the strips that slid off onto the floor. So I spent a bit of time glueing flannel to the rails. Works like a charm! :-)


While I was working away and humming along with iTunes my mind was wandering and I had fun thinking up names for this little wall hanging. Some weren't so nice. :-) In the end I decided I should call it Don't Tell Jane. I'd rather she didn't know how much I've struggled with nine blocks when she's made many award-winning quilts with the same method. My hat's off to you Jane!

And this just in from my DIL, the Navy Wife. The Sailor Son has been sending videos from the ship for his son, of himself reading story books.

DIL also made him a "Me and my Daddy" poster.


Now doesn't that just pull your heartstrings?