Quilt Plans

I don't really need any more hobbies, but ever since I started sewing, I always held onto my fabric scraps. I just could not see throwing away what seemed to be good fabric that I could someday find something to use it on. I have always admired quilts, especially Amish style quilts, and I thought perhaps someday I would start quilting as well. I even bought my first quilt, a hand pieced and hand sewn Amish made quilt, at a quilt auction in the Amish area of central Illinois. I love it and admired the careful handwork and designs sewn all over the simple patches, but I am constantly worried about over using it. We need another one to help rotate it out of service now and then.

Now, I finally think the scraps are out of control enough to have to put them to a purpose. I am working on designing my first quilt. I am looking at using these fabrics from some of my first sewing projects and some more recent acquisitions in a broken Lone Star style design. I need to decide on some other fabrics that I would have to buy for the framing pieces of the Lone Star. I am not sure which of the colors I would match up, but I am thinking about the yellow and blue as being the ones I highlight. I have used an on line coloring program to work out different ways to place the colors of fabric. I just cannot decide. I know I want the yellow in the middle, and then I think the blue, then black, the red, and finally yellow tips. The other configuration that I am thinking is yellow middle, black, blue, red, and yellow tips. I guess I will just have to cut out some pieces and play with it before deciding. Any thoughts on what you think would look better? I will post pictures of any progress that I make.

Today, the goal is to finish up the hand embroidery of the belt. I ran out of the thread that I needed for the double feather stitch, so a store run this weekend was necessary. Now that the threads are back in stock, the sewing can commence. I also want to get my new black skirt cut out and mostly assembled today. They are lofty goals, but doable ones. I also would like to get my walk in today for the 10,000 steps, but I think the weather will prevent me from doing so. Late rain showers are in the area again today, and while I love the gloomy weather and we need the rain, I don't particularly want to walk in the rain today. Hopefully I can figure out a solution for the exercise. Well so much to do and so much inspiration. I am off for sewing goodness.

Belt Progress

The belt has been making some progress. I sat down yesterday and started on the final group of hand stitched embroidery. I am doing a double feather stitch in the gold color of the elephants and other designs on the belt. It is turning out quite well, and I am very pleased with myself and how even the stitches are turning out. I guess all the practice with hand sewing over the years is finally paying off.

I hope to finish up the feather stitch today. Then I need to trim the tassels and sew the belt all together. It is turning out so well, and I am loving it. Will I make one for myself? Doubtful. I think this is destined to be a one of a kind belt due to the many hours of thought, labor, and love that went into its making. Throw in the fact that I cannot get the yarn that I made the tassels out of anymore, and you have a one of a kind piece. While I could replicate the embroideries again, I could never make the same kind of tassels for this. A big part of the design for this belt was inspired by those yarns. I cannot wait for it to all finally go together and be the show stopping belt that it is meant to be!

Finally Focused

Yesterday was truly focused. I got a lot accomplished in the time I was working on things for the shop. I cleaned up the kitchen, put away clothes, picked up the house in general, and then set to doing shop things. I finished up that pair of black pants that I was dragging my feet on. They look great. Here they are after the final ironing before taking pictures of them.



I hope to take pictures of them today and list them up either tomorrow or Thursday. I tried to take a close-up of the fabric for the blog, but it is a bit blurry.



I always love how this fabric looks and feels, but it is horrible to try to photograph. I am going to work out using the front garden of this building this time. I hope that the neighbors don't mind, so I will see today I suppose.

I also got those red work tins finished off.



I am working on some new photography for them this time, including a vignette style with some sewing accessories to make it more visually interesting. It may also help people envision how I use them myself. The sunlight patterns have changed since we first moved into this apartment, so it is hard to get pictures in full sunlight now. I am going to try using the lighting in this apartment and see if I can use that and editing to get good pictures for the store. I did get one really good picture of a tin before the sun dipped behind the building.



I hope to have the rest of the pictures taken today and load this onto the Etsy Store sometime this afternoon. I am also headed into the studio to work on a pair of chocolate pinstripe pants and cut out a pair of olive colored sari pants as well. Lots of inspiration now that I have my focus back! I am headed off to work!

Truly Domestic Day

Yesterday turned out to be a truly domestic day. I spent most of it in the kitchen and not at the sewing machine as hoped, but the chicken stock tutorial is really coming along. I worked on the stock for a while, it is not as time involved as it may seem, and then turned to bread making. Lately my luck with working with yeast has been lacking. My bread has been tough and dense, and the crust not much to write home about. I decided to give it another go yesterday seeing as I have lunch meat around but no bread for lunches. I was amazed at how well it came out. It was, by far, my best loaf of white bread. It rose as it should and cooked through. The crumb on it was just right, and it did not have huge air holes.



I found that part of making my bread better was throwing caution to the wind and ignoring my user's manual for the Kitchen Aid. This all came to me after watching an episode of America's Test Kitchen on PBS last weekend. It was a pizza episode, and I wanted to watch to see their crust methods. While watching them, I realized that they use their dough hook on setting 4, which, according to the user's manual, is a big no-no. I had always thought the bread was not kneading fast enough or hard enough on setting two, so this time I took it up to 4! It was a good idea for me. Hey, I am not advocating you break your Kitchen Aid; I can break mine though. The bread had perfect crumb and went through all the risings without loosing the yeast's power. It was a true success.

I then launched into a Greek feast for dinner. We had grilled lamb with homemade tzatziki and homemade flat breads. Bread making was apparently in as my flat breads also turned out. Those usually do, but after reaching successful sandwich bread again I did not know if I had used up my bread points for the day. Needless to say, we are going away from store bought bread again.

I did manage to get some more red work embroidery done, and if I can ever get the red cording into the shop, I will have some new organizational tins up.



I love mine for carrying around my embroidery tools onto the subway. They are also great to store bindi in or moo cards. I do have two up in the shop right now. One is a rectangular tin with blackwork on the top. I love that design! It is a fun one to stitch. The other is a circular one, with a removable lid. It is great for bindi or for holding all your cut ends when you don't want to go off to the garbage or when one is not near, like on the airplane or train. It holds needles perfectly and can even hold a pair of nail clippers if you want to be really mobile with your sewing and not take scissors with you.

Today is full of cleaning the kitchen, freezing up the stock, and trying to fit some sewing in before I have to leave for 826 to do tutoring. I hope to write up that stock tutorial tonight and have it up for you all tomorrow.

Pictures from May

When my parents came to visit in May, they took lots of pictures as they usually do. I appreciate when my parents are around to do the picture taking, so I don't have to worry about bringing my camera with also. I finally got my cd full of pictures from them, and I picked out a few to share with you all. I hope they get me kick started into work today, as I for some reason am having a hard time getting going.



Here is a view of the Golden Gate bridge from the Marin headlands. It is hard to get a clear shot like this at the time of day we were there. Usually the fog is rolling in, but that weekend was unusually warm and the marine layer was staying away.



This is a view of the hotel that sits on the historic site at San Juan Bautista. It is a great little museum, and for the very inexpensive entrance fee for the buildings I would highly recommend it. There were wild chickens all over the place, and they were fun to watch.



Here is the view of the bell tower of the mission. While we did not pay the entrance of the mission, we did walk around the gardens, which is free. This tower was used in the filming of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.



On the last day that my parent's were here, we drove down to Monterey and went on the 17-Mile drive. It was a neat drive, and since we hit it at the end of the day, the otters were out in force feeding in one of the bays. All of the larger black blobs that are sticking out of the water are otter heads. There were too many to count. I could have sat there for hours watching them all working on shells and playing around in the water.



The final highlight on the drive was the lone cyprus. It is the symbol of Pebble Beach and was very beautiful to look at. I guess when my parents went on the drive the first few times, you could walk all the way out to the tree. That is no longer allowed for preservation purposes, but it is still a neat thing to see in person versus all the drawings and photographs I have seen.

Well I have more plants to get into dirt today and some pants that I want to finish up working on today. I have also started a new set of blue hair falls. It is nice to have some sets of falls to work on while Dan and I watch movies. I always feel weird when I am sitting with nothing in my hands to work on. Also, I am going to be working on finishing up the elephant and peacock belt that I have shown snippets of in the past. The large embroidery work is almost done, so I can move on to attaching them to the base as well as some more free hand designs on the base of the belt. Tassels will follow soon!