What We Did on Our Spring Break

I helped my daughter make a dress.

Actually, it's two dresses.  A white one.

And some color to wear over the white one.

It was her idea to make two dresses -- she also had the idea to make the second one a wee bit shorter, so the first dress would peep out underneath.  The red socks were her idea too.

Here is a close up of the buttons that decorate the front placket.  She found these in my stash.

And we used this pattern.

The Mail Has Been Very Very Good to Me

Last week, my mailbox goodness reached epic proportions.  It started with this:

 As they say, "You had me at hello."  Who doesn't like chocolate?  But wait!  Even better -- I know, what could be better than chocolate? -- there was a whole bunch of stuff inside.  Stuff that doesn't mess with my diet.

Handmade tags, note cards, ATCs, envelopes, a little round box filled with beads, and some pens and buttons!  Who is responsible for this bounty?  My friend Jan, who blogs here, and her friends who have a group blog here.  They are mixed media artists who do lots of intricate, fun stuff.  I highly recommend checking them out.  I won this in a giveaway on http://foxontherunarts.blogspot.com/ .  So cool.

And wait!  There's more!  I swap blocks with my Sparkly Chicken friends (not all of them have blogs, but those who do are listed on the side under "Sparkly Chickens Blogs").  Anne Marie, who blogs here, sent me this colorful moose.


Just look at the wonderful embroidery (French knots are my favorite embroidery stitch).

And she included these goodies.  Cards with more stuff on them and some very sparkly yarn.



But wait!  That's not all!



In advance of my birthday, the mail got this package to me in record time!  It wasn't supposed to arrive until next month, but it's here!


Beth blogs here about her adventures in Africa.  She sent me these little bottles and the charms -- an elephant for Africa and a shoe because, well, I'm kind of a shoe lover.  The tall bottle is a vanilla sugar grinder from South Africa -- it's full of big crystals of sugar and chunks of real vanilla pods.  It's delicious ground onto ricotta cheese and over coffee.  This weekend, I'm going to try it on French toast, fruit and maybe some pancakes or waffles.There was some floral fabric.




And these wonderful batiks from Africa.  I love these giraffes -- maybe I should make a bag out of this?













 I love this one -- I can see this fussy cut up into a kaleidoscopic design.  I've included a pic of the selvage.

And these chickens are the best!  They're quite large and I love they way they're walking all over the fabric!

Thank you all for making this such a fun week for me!

Faerie Fun

My design wall looks much the same today as it did last Monday.  With my kids on spring break last week, I had very little time to do my stuff.  I did do stuff with them and the mail was very, very good to me.  So I will have posts later this week with that stuff.  But for now, the only new thing is this little faerie.

I'm not sure I'm finished dressing her, so I didn't fuse her all together yet.  But here's a preview.

To see other design walls, check out Judy's blog here.

Progress for Monday!

My design wall shows progress today.  I took down one of the forest dyes because I ran out of room -- it's still under consideration, though.

I finished the star/snowflake tablerunner top that I was working on.  Now I just have to find the time to quilt it.

 And I mostly finished the little stone cottage.  It needs some window boxes for flowers, I think.  On to the faerie and the tree. -Tee hee.

To check out other people's design walls, click here to go to Judy's blog.

More Goofing Off With Spinning Stars

 In the previous post I shared a small star quilt created in EQ7 that had some mistakes in the block, so the patches had color where I didn't intend color.  I have fixed that block and made a couple more virtual quilts.

I love the way that they seem to glow with the lightest colors in the centers.  Well, that's enough fun.  Back to work.

Goofing Off with Spinning Stars

Yesterday, I saw a beautiful "Spinning Stars" quilt at "Musings from the Deep South" which is here.

So I just had to figure it out in EQ7.  It took less time than I thought it would.  But I had help from here and here.

It was trickier than I thought it would be and I made a couple of mistakes coloring it because I didn't close off my patches properly.  I might go back and do that when I have more time.  Turns out -- when you set the blocks in the quilt, you have to rotate every other row to get it to come out right.  So here is a small sample.

And it took way less time to do it in EQ than it would have for real.  

A Whole Lotta Stuff

Last week was incredibly busy.  In addition to all the usual stuff I had to do, I helped take down two quilt shows, helped tie the community quilt, attended  the piecing group thing on Thursday (2011 BOM), and drove to Monroe on Friday to be part of a quilt workshop.  Phew...and that was just the quilty stuff.  Consequently, my design wall looks the same today as it did last week except for the addition of the star I didn't finish on Friday.

These are some more of the Lemoyne-based blocks from my February presentation for the 2011 BOM group.

These are the blocks for this month.  Mine is the one with the navy background.  This block is called "Enigma Star."

This is the fabric we used for the sashing and the perle cotton we used to tie the community quilt (you can read more about that here)

Here we are working on the quilt.  That's me behind the camera. :~D

We finished tying the quilt and Susan Young is going to do the binding.  She promised to let me photograph it when it's finished.

And this weekend, spring seems to have sprung (finally) here in Wisconsin.  These are some tulips that came with the house when we bought it.  They're always the first thing to bloom.




And there's a bud in the only hyacinth I could find in the garden.  I did find a lot of dandelions, though.

To see more design walls, click here to go to Judy's blog.

Coleus Palette Challenge Stuff

"Savannah Tiger"

10½" by 11½"

Cotton fabrics and threads, fused appliqué

This month's Color Palette Challenge from Three Creative Studios  is coleus colors.  You can check it out here.  I used two green strips from my hand-dye stash -- the rest of the greens were from the box o' blue/green scraps.  The dark reddish colored fabric is another hand-dye.

I had a lot of fun playing with the quilting around the tiger.

I used a new (for me) technique to finish the edge.  Judy Coates Perez had a tutorial on this here.  Easy-peasy -- and it looks great!  Yes, I know it's just pinned; I'll sew it down later.

Also for this month, I dyed a couple of scarves in the challenge colors.  This one is silk.

And this one is a silk rayon blend.  I'm a little camera-shy, so Rosie graciously offered to model for me.

Quick Monday Design Wall

This is my design wall for today.  I have added a couple of pieces of "forest dyes" to audition for the mystery piece.

I finally got started on my little stone cottage.  That's the roof floating above -- but I didn't like it, so I took it off and I'm going to redo it.

To see what other people have on their design walls today, click here to go to Judy's blog.

And this morning we took down our show at the Overture Center, "Turning Point."  It sure came down a lot quicker than it went up!