Busy busy...textile chapter

When my crazed work project preparing for an FDA panel was over in March, a series of events followed that have kept me equally as stressed and busy. However, I did take a week off and kind of went crazy with my sewing machine, finishing a blanket and making a few new pillow covers for our living room.

This one is little HST scraps from the mum quilt:

This is a reverse appliqué sort of experiment with a felted sweater:

Another made with felt from recycled sweaters pieced and embroidered with dahlias:

All 3 of them included Marimekko scraps from Crate and Barrel outlet store:

They all live on our sofa now!

Here is the Star Wars patchwork blanket finished: 

Backing is a SW polar fleece.  The top was pieced improv from a rough sketch I made. Kind of goofy, but I like it...reminds me of my SW pillow case from the 70s (which I still have).

Then I ran across some napkins I'd bought with a matching tablecloth on sale. Except the tablecloth turned out to be round. We have a large rectangular table...doh! But I like the print and the napkins seemed quite large...so I covered two more pillows to go on our old ratty big chair that my family won't part with. They classier it up a bit.

Last textile project I will post was finished more recently - a knitted afghan that I worked on FOREVER!

So much I could say about this, but since it looks pretty cool all finished, I will be kind and just show the photos:

The thing covers our queen bed!

Next post will be about my crazed jewelry making since May - I'm going to try selling some of my work this weekend at the Alameda Art &Wine Street Fair.

Mums for my Mum - Blogger's Quilt Festival entry

I just finished a quilt that is for my mom and her new husband - "Mums for Mum", and I'm entering it into the Fall 2013 Blogger's Quilt Festival at Amy's Creative Side that just happens to be this week!

I have been collecting chrysanthemum print fabrics for a few years now - mostly half yard cuts - 28 different prints in this quilt! I have plans for a Bargello Mums and another patchwork mum quilt with the large amount of scraps from this project - yay! It's hard to give this one away, but I can think of a better cause than my own Mum. And I can keep the next one...

The pattern is called "Twinkle" from Sew Be It. I saw a finished one on display at Back Porch Fabrics in Pacific Grove, CA. I love Pacific Grove - we've been going a couple times a year lately to go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and go tide pooling at Asilomar State Beach and just hang out at our cheap and funky (but clean) motel adjacent to the butterfly grove. There's a great yarn store there too (Monarch Knitting). Anyway - the sample was made with all Kaffe Fassett prints, and a few of my mums are KF too, and all the prints together are a riot of color - so I knew what I'd been stockpiling mums for at that moment!

I built each block with some light/dark contrast and then pieced them so that you can see sort of large pinwheel shapes alternating across the quilt. It came out fairly subtle since there are a lot of mid-range prints among my mums. But I like movement in such a bright "printy" quilt and I think I got what I was trying to achieve.

I'm not terribly accomplished as a quilter, so this large quilt was a bit ambitious for me. I quilted it in 2 pieces and then attached them together. The quilting itself is a mix of hand quilting the center stars for each block, then using concentric organic wavy outline around the stars by freehand using my machine.  There are a lot of imperfections that I'm not very happy about - but since the overall effect is really cool I will call it a success.  

The binding was cut from a Marimekko scrap that I got at the Crate and Barrel Outlet store - they sell scraps for $0.50 each and you can pull out pretty good sized pieces if you fish through the bins.  The yardage is a great buy too, but I don't remember exact price. This piece was simple blocks of reds from light to a dark burgundy. I attached by machine and then handstitched to the back.

This quilt makes me so happy! I hope it brings joy and light and warmth to my mom and her new husband for many many years to come. (I love you, mom!)

Basel yarn bomb!

No Words Needed...this is a draft post I made something like more than a year ago - back when I used to go to Basel fairly often...One trip a friend and I were crossing one of the bridges in Basel and came across this awesome yarn bomb!

New knit FOs - a couple of scarves

Confession - these are no longer "new" FOs...but I haven't posted them yet, so this is a catch up.  I'm knitting cowls and scarves compulsively lately - so much obsessing on my mind that my hands need to keep busy. I've been squishing a lot of bits of journaling, reading, crafting, holiday stuff into the cracks of my overburdened schedule in fact.

But as of today, I'm on holiday - too bad I have a million things to take care of and still some work work to do, but I am happy that I'll have the next couple of weeks away from an office or a commute and that's a fact!

First up in the catch up is my "Seattle Summer" scarf - this was a single ball of thick and thin cotton blend that I picked up at a cute little LYS in Seattle on Teen Wonder's birthday in September. Now, in December, this scarf isn't holding up to the chill, but I really like the crisscross of the thick parts. What was the yarn called, you say? Well, if I hadn't lost the ball band I would be in a position to say. but alas, that is not the case.

Okay - next up is a frilly scarf that I knit for Mr. Wonderful's mom, aka Awesome MIL. She handed me a ball of this novelty yarn (Red Heart Sashay) and explained how you knit into the edge of the lacy ribbon - it was a bit tricky, but a pretty quick knit and fun results.










Then I went to the craft store and picked up a couple more colorways and some other novelty scarf yarns too - so I'll share those after Christmas since some of them are being gifted.

Linking to a couple of Friday linky parties -

Of course!

And also TGIFF!

HO! HO! HO!  Have a great holiday!!

some sewing: electronics cases for Teen Wonder and me

Since I haven't been posting regularly, I actually have a little backlog of little projects that I want to share. First up today? My iPad cover. I got an iPad for my birthday, and of course needed something to protect it when I carry it around - just a simple little envelope cover with this cute Japanese doll fabric and lined with flannel. 

Around the same time (well, two weeks later), Teen Wonder got a Kindle Fire for her birthday - so of course I'd already figured out how to make a nice cover for a tablet and just needed to go down in size a bit.  I also made a little zippy pouch for her to carry her charging cord. I should make one of those for my iPad too!

Below is what is on my sewing table at the moment - so far, it's a jelly roll race with mostly Kaffe Fassett strips. I have a plan for the entire quiilt as a large bed size, but this is as far as I've gotten so far:

Linking up to Sara's party...

And also to TGIFF at Quokka




And if you are reading this, maybe you'll go over to the Vintaj Design Challenge and vote for my pendant - it's #6! You can also see the details in my previous post

"Twinkling Lights" design challenge - please vote!

I entered my penant into this online competition on the Vintaj Blog - winner is determined by blog reader votes. It is entry #6 - please check it out and cast a vote!  There are several lovely designs there, but I hope you will vote for mine of course.

Adventures in jewelry making

 When you don't blog for a long time, stuff happens. hopefully.  That is, if you are extremely busy and you only have so many hours in a day, you'd probably spend your extra couple of hours each week working on something craftsy rather than blogging about how you have no time to work on anything craftsy, right?  Well, that's been my MO for the past, oh, I'd say at least 5 months - since I took on some additional work responsibilities, moved Teen Wonder to college, and started a new school year with Wild Thing.

But I have done a few things while I've been  not hanging out in blogland.I've loaded photos for a couple of posts so I can just do some blogging on the fly while I'm traveling this week.

Today's post includes some jewelry pieces I've worked on over the past few months, starting with my most recent - the "Elegant Twinkling Lights" pendant. You'll see this pendant one more time this week because I designed this for a little online contest at the Vintaj blog and I'll ask you all to go vote for my piece!

This piece is made with natural brass pieces from the Vintaj line combined with crystal facet beads in sort of a shimmery greenish topaz hue. I'm really happy with how it turned out!

Next up some "scrabble tile" pendants.

I bought these tile pendant "kits" on pickyourplum.com probably a year ago (?). I've been trying to go through my craft stash and work with the impulse buys I've made and either make them into things or give them away. These are cute, but I guess the scrabble tile thing is a bit passe. Oh well, they make cute little gifts and accent pieces to wear. I glued bales to the backs of all of these, but have only added a chain to a few. Gave one to my mom and one to Teen Wonder, and kept two for myself (below)

Fall Leaves - made with Japanese paper from the Diaso store (love that place!)

This sugar tile was cut from my biochemical pathways poster

These next two are copper enamel with my butane torch, plus some stamping. I have some additional enamel pieces that I haven't turned into jewelry yet. It's a good way to get out of my head and play for an hour or so in the garage!

The red disc in the second pendant is the same size as the purple disc in the one above - both were made with old pennies.

I hope everyone has a great week! Tomorrow I'll post a link for my twinkling pendant and ask you all to vote for my design (if you like it). I'm off to Switzerland tonight for the week.