54 yards

Oh yeah, I got a day to play in the sun last weekend. It was a very much needed play date with myself. Between lack of time, and the weather, which has not co-operated with ideal fabric dyeing conditions this year, I have been seriously deprived of my favorite habit. But alas all the stars and planets must have been in alignment last weekend, and I got a day to play. What I ended up with, after the long day, other than a sunburn, was 54 yards of wonderful fabrics to add to my stash. What might surprise you is that I only used 12 dyes to do it. From each one, I just added layers of fabrics every 5 minutes. What I ended up with was a wonderful array of shades that will all co-ordinate beautifully in future projects. The basic colors I used this time were Chartreuse, Black Cherry, Avocado, Forest Green, Eggplant, Oxblood Red (which ended up with shades of orange after the first layer????), Imperial Purple, Moss Green, Marigold (one of my new favorites), Electric Blue, Grape, and Caribbean Blue. All from Dharma Trading. Their Procion Dyes are my all time favorites.

I had a birthday this week, and came to the realization that I am, really getting older. I have to tell you, after my marathon dyeing day, I could hardly move. I guess bending over over 54 yards of fabric all day dyeing and rinsing, is a lot more exercise than I am used to. Whew! I walked like grandma Moses the next day. Is that not sad?????
:-) :-) :-)

Tonight is a pajama party at my favorite sewing store. We are all wearing our PJ's and having a pot luck along with our sewing frenzy. I found wild PJ's the other day for this event. They are lime green and covered with exotic drink's. So if you see a picture of an ole lady in lime PJ's in the news, still walking like Grandma Moses, I guess you will be able to put the pieces together. My contribution to the pot luck is the wine. Ya just can't sew worth a darn without wine! Right?? I have to drive across town in my PJ's with this wine, we are all going to hope that I don't do anything stupid and get pulled over or I will never live it down! Ya all say a little prayer for me tonight!!

Pull out your wild clothes, get some friends together and celebrate something real soon. Live is short! Have a great weekend.

Friends Swap

A fabulous surprise arrived in my mailbox this week. All the way from New Zealand. My "FRIENDS SWAP" package arrived from Shiree. It's a beautiful collection of all my favorite things. How did she know all this?????

There is the beautiful table runner, the adorable purse, the address book, the chocolate (of yeah Chocolate) yum yum!! The coffee, the wonderful specialty threads, needles, bright colored pins, stork scissors, Coffee, bath roses that smell divine! And top all that off with that great pattern "Naturally New Zealand"! Can life get any better? I can hardly wait to start on the wall hanging. While I have never been there, I will have a memory from a very special internet friend who lives there. Life is good!!!!!!!! I hope you all find some time to make a connection with someone special. It is so refreshing. :-)





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It's done

Remember that little teaser back in June? The photo with the soda cans? Well here is the finished product. My attempt at the art quilting world again. It's always scary I know, but I just can't seem to get enough of this world.

In February I was reading a sewing magazine with an article on using aluminum cans. Really in a sewing magazine, I'm thinking???? Are they nuts? It was more on the garment line of magazine, and I had horrible visions of a tin can dress. Not quite so much, I am glad to say, but still very interesting, I thought.

You cut the top and bottoms off the cans then cut them apart so they lay nice and flat. Fire up the BARBIE, (yeah I know, not that Barbie) :-) Then cook away!
Now really, who has enough time on their hands to come up with this???? Or was it done under the influence???? Beer cans work as well as soda cans do!!!! Reguardless, it is really quite interesting and just how much more "GREEN" can one get, right?



I found thru trial and error that it works the best if the printed side of the can is towards the fire, and you do need to get it right down there in the flames. A little heat will take you almost forever to get the thing to start to turn. You need a good pair of tongs to hang onto things with. My BBQ tongs with the nice long handles would have been great but they didn't hold the can well enough. The short ones were perfect but you have to deal with hot fingers from time to time.



The heat makes it turn a bronze looking shade with some neat rainbow things that appear from no where. Just a touch too much heat and your can starts to melt. It will turn a bright shiny silver color, and from there, it's over. No going back from that point. I did find though that a combination of all of it made into a quite interesting wall hanging. This piece of hand dyed fabric said solar system to me. Yeah, I know, now I am hearing my fabrics talk. But really it wasn't me that was inebriated while I was cooking my cans. They were all soda cans!!! Really they were.

Go ahead and do your part in this recycling world. Give it a try. I am seeing a woodsy theme in my head with bears and moose in the trees. I have them cut out of the cans already, and am just waiting for the inspiration to hit, to get it started.

I hope you get inspired to look at something in a very different way this week! And have fun with it!!!

Mystery Quilting

Mary Mayhem did a mystery quilt on Planet Patchwork yesterday. It was too hot to be outside, so I hunkerd down in the basement and stitched away. This was the second mystery quilt I have done and WOW WOW is all I can say. Mary did such a wonderful job. Of course the fact that the quilt ended up being one of my very favorite blocks and the fact that I used "purple" my favorite color, had nothing to do with it at all, I am sure! :-)

There were some technology issues with the live chat, so we had to use Twitter. It was new territory for me, but it worked like a charm, and we were able to get answers to some cutting instructions early on. After that it was smooth sailing and the quilt top went together with ease.

I am delighted to have a finished top and the ability to "Tweet" now. Geezh, does life get any better? :-) I have to highly recommend future Mystery quilt's with Mary. She breaks them down into easy pieces and makes them so much fun with the chatting. After looking thru some of her earlier mystery projects, I see I have missed out on quite a few good things. It's worth a trip to Planet Patchwork's website and signing up for newsletters!

It's gonna be a scorcher here today. Hope you all find a way to keep cool.

Playing with Rust

It's just not everyday that I thank my husband for all the junk that he manages to collect around here. Not that I am not a collector too. As you who quilt all know, the piles just start to grow without our knowledge. I guess the same is true for the guys, but don't let anyone hear me admit that.



In the array of junk that is laying around our place I found an old rusted out tray. I am sure there was a perfectly good reason for keeping it, but until now, I had no clue what it might have been. One of those "BING" moments hit and I knew just what to do. I'll rust some fabric. I know all of you have jumped out of bed at one time or another and thought today is the day to get rust spots on my fabric. Especially since those who have to deal with rust in water take such great precautions to keep it off the clothes we wash. Ok, so I am one of the few idiots out there!!! But just let me tell you, it is great fun, and you end up with some pretty amazing fabric when it's over.

You've heard of the pro-verbial "Bucket of Bolts". Around my part of the world it refers to a car that needs fixed more than it drives. For me personally though, it means just what it says!


Aren't ya all just so jealous!!! :-) :-)

You just might be though, when you see what I came up with in all the playing. After mixing a little salt, vinegar and water together, I put in my fabric and then layed it out on the tray, and also wrapped some of the old nuts and bolts up and let them simmer for a few days. The hardest part of the entire process is waiting to see just what you come up with when your done. I was pleasantly surprised with all the pieces, but my favorite was the fabric that layed in the tray. Lots of rust on it, and the front and back were so markedly different, that it opens a lot of doors for playing with it, in projects.






You can see that wrapping bolts up give quite a nice texture to the fabrics.

Word to the wise though, you need to be careful of leaving the fabric in the brine for too long, or you get little holes in it. If you look close at this photo, you will see what I mean. Guess this piece is going to have to have something appliqued over the top of the holes. I like to refer to that as Quilters camo, don't ya know!

Ribbett...

Finished up a baby quilt last night. Frogs, Frogs and more Frogs. Anita Goodesign has such great applique embroidery designs, that I had to come up with a way to use them. My great 50% off find, on the frog fabric sealed the deal. Bonus days when things come together! A big motivator for us quilters isn't it?

Now, if there was just a bonus of some kind, to motivate me to clean house! But nope, nothing I have been overly inspired to do. :-) :-) :-) I will just have to keep working on that one, I guess!

Let me know what your inspirations are.

Happy 4th of July

It's so hard to believe that the summer is almost half over already. With my travels and work, my sewing room has been very neglected the past couple of weeks. I hope to have a few things done very soon to share with you. For now, this is the table runner I sent to my swap partner for the 4th of July swap. These cats are just the cutest things ever. I have done them up in different themes now, and just can't get over how fun they are to put together. Again this pattern came from Angies Bits and Pieces


If you haven't stopped by to see her web site, now is the time to do so. She is starting some wonderful Christmas projects that are free for 1 week only. Just yesterday she posted a beautiful snowflake quilt. You don't want to miss these great finds. Wow, while checking the link to make sure it was correct, I find she has yet again posted a new project. She did say to check back daily so, don't let this opportunity pass. She has some of the greatest projects.

Hope you all have some wonderful family picnic's to attend over the weekend. As for my I will be at work. Guess I have to pay to play. Last week was my fun time off. :-) Too bad we all have to work for a living. Playing was so much fun!!!

Happy 4th