Pushing my envelope...well, kind of...

Yeah, I'm getting baaaad about posting. Gotta remember! But I did have a validish excuse...well, for a day...My brother Mychal turned the big 2-1! I'm just his sister but it feels like he should still be, I don't know, 10? He'll always be my little baby brother...I can hear him groaning at that from across cyberspace (zip it, Myke! :D)...even if he is almost a flippin' foot taller than me!

Anyhoo.

I finally tried hand quilting..I wanted to give it a whirl because it is SO outside my skill set. I'm a free motion quilting kind of girl. Fusible applique and I are BFFs. But you know, being a glutton for punishment I decided to try something outside my comfort zome (machines). I shouldn't say that...I DO like embroidery and cross stitch...so handwork isn't entirely outside of my comfort zone, but when it comes to quilting, it is.

And...I liked it. But I had the best teacher for this method. She's been teaching quilting for years and hand quilting/hand applique is her game. Seriously, her work is IMPECCABLE. So it was a real joy to learn from her!

This is where I started. Stitches looking a liiiiittle wonky. The longer, wonkier beige stitches are just a basting stitch.

FINALLY getting the hang of it!

Hey, it's starting to look like something! It'll have feathers around it. I think this is going to end up a pillow for my grandma :) She loves hearts, and though in this picture set you can't tell too well, the background is yellow - her favorite color.

I can't wait to see what our next pattern will be!

I'm back...I may not be all there, but at least I'm back...

So I'm up to my EYEBALLS in projects. Sunbonnet Sue. Australian Quilter's Companion Quilt. My own ideas. A couple gifts that need done. A quilt from last freakin' year. So today MOm decides I need a new project....to make a reusab;e shopping bag from a pattern she got off of AllPeopleQuilt.com.

The bag I made...also, this site is fab!

Cute bag. Cute project. Pattern leaves something to be desired. It's an open domain pattern (meaning free to the public and not under copyright in MOST cases), and while open domain patterns are awesome ...sometimes they can have a few kinks in them, moreso than published and copyrighted patterns. But I'll get to that.

This bag is not at all meant to go over the shoulder...definitely a bag you'd want to just carry. The size (~16" wide) would be absolutely perfect for a trip to a farmer's market, but it IS reversable so it can be used as a plain ol' purse too. So here's what I learned while making this bag:

1. Read, look at pictures, re-read and re-examine pictures before cutting a thing.

2. Do NOT cut your fabric down to 16"x 42". If you are even an eight of an inch innaccurate in your cutting, you'll be hard pressed to get your template to fit your fabric. Cuyt the half yard from your fabric of choice, fold as per the instructions and just cut your template from the half yard. Yes, it does create a little waste, but it's better than finding yourself short fabric in your seam allowances.

3. The pattern doesn't call for any kind of interfacing (like, Pellon, Timtex, fusible fleece, etc). If you intended to carry anything with some heft to it (like cans), you will probably want to add some kind of interfacing to it. For my first bag, I used fusible fleece and a lightweight Pellon interfacing. This will stand up to some abuse for sure, but next time I think I'll just opt for the lightweight interfacing on both pieces, since the fusible fleece made it bulky and difficult to turn right sides out. But remember, if you use interfacing on your outer piece, you'll want to use it on your lining if you choose to use this as a reusable grocery bag. The handles are a little awkward to be used as a purse, but if you wanted to use it as a purse, then using interfacing on the lining isn't 100% necessary.

4. I found that top-stitching the curved handles BEFORE assembling the rest of the bag helped them lay flatter, and it's just a nice little touch. Be sure to have your top thread complement your outer fabric, and ytour bobbin thread complement the lining, because your stitches WILL be visible even if you don't use the reverse.

So this is after step...3 I think...it was VERY difficult to turn right sides out. See that really wide side? THAT had to be pulled through that very narrow center (which will end up being the handle). Like I said, the fleece made that harder than it needed to be, but if you choose to use the fleece, hemostats (like the unholy lovechild between a pair of scissors and a pair of pliers...Google it) will help you a LOT during this step.

Dont mind my mirror picture. Trust me, you don't want to see that state of my sewing area. It's like a tornado hit...only that tornado is my own very dishevled and chaotic creative process. But I s'pose as long as I can find what I need that all that matters...now where my rotary cutter went, I haven't the foggiest. lol. I digress. This is what I chose for my outer piece. As you can see, it's a decent sized bag.

This is the lining I chose. Since it's reversable, I wanted something complementary, but something that could stand on its own should I choose to have the lining become the outer piece. Big ol' fern leaves. I LOVE that minty color.

So that's it for now. I neglected to square up the bottom, and I didn't want to tearout my stitches AGAIN (ugh) so I left it just plain bag-style. The next one I'll use the thinner interfacing on both sies, then you know, follow the pattern better. lol. C'est la Vie. This will be in the shop soon so next time you're in...you'll see it somewhere :-)

Someone stop me before I try and embellish the wool before it's even off the sheep!

First things first. THANK YOU for all of your prayer for Carol and Randy. We love them both and we're glad Randy's surgery went well. A little love, light and positivity goes a long way.

Now onto your regularly scheduled programming...

I have to admit. I haven't been feeling too creative lately. The weather has been cruddy, I've been fighting an almost cold, MOm has the week off and I've been working my butt off. So when I get home, I march into my bedroom and do a runnign bellyflop onto the bed and do. not. get. up. I do all of my best work on my bed.

Wait a second. That came out WAY wrong. Let me rephrase.

I sit on my bed quite a lot. My bed is like most people's living room sofas. I have a TV in my room and it's in front of my bed, so why leave? I got my wool, I got my crosstitch, I got my embroidery...it's all good. That's that, and it is awesome.

So I keep trying to upload a video demo but that nonsense isn't working. lol. That's probably for the better...it had to have been the single most LAME video set up ever. I'm serious. It was on my bed (where I do all of my needle felting and crosstitch etc), on a plasic drawer, on my laptop, with my phone setting on all of the that, recording. Guh-het-toe.

Back to needle felting. It is so much fun...and I think I have a new fiber to be addicted to! Hooray texture! Here's a little trip into the basics of needle felting...and no, we do not have the tools or roving at the shop, but we DO have the hand dyed wool fabric.

The tools. From the top, the bristled square thing is a needle felting "mat." It is what catches your needle as you do the felting, and helps insure that the needle doesn't snap. The white thing is a needle holder. It's foam core...like the posterboard. Fancy stuff, very technical. At the bottom we have our needle felting needle. It is extremely sharp and brittle.

Here is a close up of the needle. Granted, the pitcure quality isn't stellar, but you can kind of see the little burrs in the tip of the needle. This is what grips the roving and pulls it through the fabric. But do you see how thin the tip of that is? Yeah, that can snap if you don't felt properly. It's very thin, so it can get through the fabric, but that also makes it brittle.

Mmm, mmm, mmm. THAT is the wool roving. I have it plastic bags because I'm just plain persnickety and I didn't want the wool sticking to each other. The colors...oh this picture doesn't do them justice.

Here's a close up of that wool roving. Yum! This I bought from a gal named Heidi... Heidi's GORGEOUS wool roving... very nice lady and she's got some wonderful stuff. This magenta with the purple? Forget about it! Lovely.

It just peels right apart and you grab as much as you need for what you're doing. A little, believe it or not, goes a loooong way.

That lump in the covers? Darwin thinks he's helping by "staying out of the way." Where was he? In my way, but being adorable cuddled by that ball of blue roving.

So how do you do it? Grab your wool fabric (cotton does NOT work with this, the weave is too tight for the roving to go through), place it on your felting mat and fanagle it into the shape you want and set it on the wool fabric. In a straight up and down motion, push your felting needle thorough the roving and the fabric until your roving sticks to the fabric.

Really, you can work this into any shape you want. That thin little line is a small piece of roving that I rolled into a line and punched in to the fabric to make it thinner.

This is the reverse side of the design. See how the roving gets pulled to the back? That's all because of the barbs on the needle. It ensure that it stays put, punchthe roving back through the front. That stuff is now "fused' to the fabric.

If you don't have roving, but you have the felting needles, you can felt 2 pieces of wool together. Punch the needle through the 2 layes, and ther eyou have it. That piece right there? Not going anywhere.And look at the nifty texture? How cute would that be to add to an accent pillow, a wall hanging, or an art quilt?

Or you can make little designs...great for applique, or if you have wool sweater or purse, you can embellish them with whatever you want!

So I'm pretty excited. It's pretty therapeutic, actually, and it's an instant result. You get to see your work pay off immediately, and who doesn't like that?

Oof.

Just popping by to say "I'm sorry!" for the lack of posts lately...I'll be honest...I haven't been doing much of anything the last few days or so. It's amazing how busy and weird things get so quickly.

But I'll be back in a couple more days with something new :-)

You can't spell "scrappy" without...

There is nothing in my current quilting life that is more frustrating than trying to force myself to use scraps. I save all my scraps...but do I want to use them? No, not really. I get so enamored with the new fabrics that all I want to do is incorporate those. I found a fabric today at the shop (shopping and blogging during our Second Saturday classes? I'm a bad, bad person. lol) that would fix the issue I'm having with that dang Vietnamese fan.

I really don't want to rip that out but you know? I'm going to fuss about it and fixate on it until I do. Damn those perfectionist tendencies. lol.

The Sunbonnet Sue Saga, Part 1

I got a few blocks done tonight...they're taking me about an hour or so a pop. I know that sounds unreasonable just to fuse the 'Sue to the background (no stitching), but when you consider all the steps I'm taking, I guess it makes more sense - picking fabric, assembling on a pressing sheet, losing pieces, replaing pieces, then finding the lost pieces...

Little miss Holland took a while to assemble.THANK GOD for applique pressing sheets, otherwise this would have taken even longer and I would have had to re-trace a lot more. lol.


Of course, my dog Darwin had something to say about all the attention I was paying to the quilt and not to him...

That little nerd hound climbed up on my shoulder to give my color choices the puppy side-eye. And yes, for those of you wondering why my dog has such a non-doglike name, he is named after Charles Darwin...My dog is a pint sized evolutionary theorist...and his owner is a bigger nerd than previously thought.

And he REALLY didn't want me to work on these blocks tonight!

"Lauren," he seemed to say, with paw on my leg, "Dis iz uh interventions. More noms, less qwilts."
Yes, despite his position as the Chihuahua incarnation of the Charles Darwin himself, I still maintain that a dog his size automatically warrants LOLcat grammar(z). Hehe. But yes. He was sick of my nonsense.

So yeah, anyway. An hour a pop. This is giong to take forever...the final product better be cute as a dang button for all this work going into it, lol!

Sherlock 'Sue! This, obviously, is the England block. I was beyond psyched to have an excuse to use that quilter's tweed for the jacket.

This is my favorite thus far...Holland! She turned out too freakin' cute, I gotta admit. Those shoes... <3 The example in the book was kind of disappointing, honestly. I thought it was bland. This one certainly isn't! The colors are brighter than my camera phone and crappy lighting shows, lol.

Vietnam. I have to say, I'm not digging the way this one turned out. I'll leave it for now, but I may re-do it. I'm not wild about how the fan is looking. The dress basically looks like th example in the book though. I liked it enough that I kept that part...but that fan...eh.
Anyway...My goal is to do 3 per night. We'll see how that goes! The road to a finished Sunbonnet Sue quilt is paved with good intentions :-D

Who says a quilter can't do some hilariously, awesomely strange stuff? No one, if they know what's good for them ^.^

So my friend Marc challenged me to make him a quilt of himself just for shiggles. Thinking he was just joking (it was a statement made while we were joking around about something...don't make me try and remember what about, lol) I teased him back, giving him the stipulation that I would only make him one IF I could do it as an applique of him doing the Steve-O, as seen on Steve-O's back tattoo.

Which if you haven't seen it...here it is...

Any of y'all who know me in real life (as opposed to the virtual me here in the wild, weird world of the internet blogging community) know that I have a soft spot for tattoo art. Hell, I even have a tattoo. But this one? Fuggetaboutit! How just, bizarre and funny is this?!

And, apparently, I am making a quilt of my friend Marc doing this face, complete with thumbs up. Oh dear Lord. This will be epic. I don't think...no, I KNOW...there won't be another quilt out there quite like this. Maybe for good reason...lol.

No, this will be hilarious. Now when will I get to this? Who the heck knows. but one day, Marc will be the proud(ish) owner of his face on a quilt. lol

Check this out!

Okay, as an artist I want to help out my artist friends whenever I can, especially when it's a local girl too!

This is my friend Vanessa's blog. She's primarily a makeup and fashion artist and her work is absolutely incredible. She's just getting started with it, so there isn't much there, but there will be. Like I said, she does fabulous work.

CLICK HERE: You Can Always Cover it with Makeup

Yeah, Yeah, I know. :-P

Hi, My name is Lauren, and I am a wholly inconsistent blogger. I'll try and be better, I promise!

So that mermaid picture I promised? Let's just edit that to say "coming soon." I got it all fused, but finding a border that works with the whole composition (not just in my cluttered ol' brain) has proved to be more difficult a tast than I thought it would be. That being said, it's at the shop in the office waiting for a border to find it. Someday soon, yes, I'll have a picture up.

So on to other things...
I HATE SUNBONNET SUE. I'm not intending to show disrepect to traditional quilting, but this is definitely not my style. This block specifically I find particularly boring and just...*gag* It's too sweetsy for me...I mean, I feel like I need to take a shot of insulin to compensate for the syrupy sweetness it forces through my eyeballs.

I take great joy in seeing Sunbonnet Sues gone wrong. I've posted these on our Newsletter before (which if you aren't signed up for already, you might consider it...it's neat!) but I'll post them again here:
Sunbonnet Sue has a dark side...
These Sunbonnet Sues are just plain bad.

But when Mom was with a rep the other day, she bought a Sunbonnet Sue book that...it pains me to say this...I liked. It is so friggin' cute:

Yeah, I'm a sucker for cultural stereotypes. My inner anthropologist (hey, I gotta make use of thise degree somehow...) simultaneously rejoices and cringes: my thesis was on quilting, and I'm fascinated by how different cultures represent other cultures, but the cultural stereotypes also kind of bug me for a bevy of reasons that I'm not going to get into right now...keep it quilting, keep it kind! But here's a sample, that incidentally I took a picture of for my friend Isabelle (Oooh yes, this is definitely a shoutout to my girl Isa!), who hails from Switzerland/Germany.

This is Swiss Sue. Each little Sue holds what the author has decided is a symbol of the country. For Switzerland, she chose the Edelweiss. Personally, I would have picked chocolate (Mmm...Swiss chocolate...) or cheese (Mmm...Swiss cheese...) This diet is going to be the death of me!

Anyway...I decided I would do this. Hell, I've never done a traditional style quilt so hey, why not. Little did I know! This is a HUGE FREAKING QUILT. It's got 49 Sunbonnet Sue blocks, then sashing and borders (duh) but at it's longest is ~90". That's a big'un! Oh and by the way, it took 6.5 yards of fusible even using the tricks to best use fusible area...and how long did it take me to trace all of those? An hour? 2 hours? Yeah...try 4 evenings at ~4-5 hours a pop. Clearly I've got too much time on my hands. Shouldn't I have a social life or something? lol.

So after 4 days of tracing (UGH) I finally got started on gettibg all of these little beasties fused. I'm *trying* to use my scraps. Honestly, this is a good way to buzzsaw through your stash...you might consider something like this if you have lots of little odd-sized scraps. So, here's block 1...little Chinese Sue!

The lighting sucks (I actually have those dang tube fluourescent lights in my house..yeah, like from the 70's)  so the color is a little skewed. The pants are black and the shirt is dark blue. I'm trying to keep the colors as similar to the pattern as I can, and I'll add my own little twists to the block when I embellish, which the quilt doens't call for. You know me...I can't just follow instructions like a good little quilter. Nope.

So...1 down, 48 to go. I must be crazy. lol.



I feel like I should probably be doing something else...Oh wait...

Catching up on all of my older projects on here is a bit of a pain, I gotta admit. But I said I would do it...that and my persnickety ways want all this stuff in one place. So in one place it shall be :-)

So my friends (who don't know each other, by the way) Bethany and Christy had babies just weeks apart, and I promised them both baby quilts before they were due. Well...it wouldn't be me if a bunch of other stuff didn't get in the way (school, work...) so they got them late late late!

Christy had a little boy, but wanted unisex baby stuff. I have to admit, that's a real trick! So many kids' fabrics out there are really, REALLY gender specific. Sometimes I wish there were more gender neutral things out there. After a couple months of agonizing, I finally settled on some puppy fabric because, hey, what kid doesn't like puppies?

So that's what each block looks like. A star, variable in persuasion, I think. Anyway. They were THE DEVIL. I had to block each and every one because they were all stretched and horrible. Pieceing just isn't my forte...give me raw edge applique any day!

I was definitely happier with it once I got the blocks together. Still a little wobbly, but hey, I've done worse lol.

So here is the "finished" product. Really, it's just the quilt top. I think it turned out to be about 45" square. I love the doggies in the cars!

I did crosshatching quilting on it. Our manager at the shop, Debi, showed me an easier way to get the lines straight than what I would have done, lol. Line the painter's tape up where you want it, and put the left side of the foot along the right edge of the tape and sew. Fail-proof straight lines!

Christy and Ben were really happy with it. I got it to them just in the nick of time...a week and a half later or so they moved all the way over to Denmark.

Bethany had her little girl just after Christy had her boy. So that little cutie needed a quilt too! I ended up doing a twofer for her...she has a young son too so you can't give one something without the other! Understandable. So I made 2 quilts, one for baby sister and one for big brother.

The colors are a little skewed...they are much clearer and brighter. It's a mix of cottons and flannels. It's an open domain pattern from...some website...I can't remember...lol.

This is the Prairie Window pattern from the shop. Bethany said he likes, cars, guitars and blue....so this is what I came up with. lol. It's deceptively big. I forgot how large the lap size is! When a pattern says lap size, who knows what size it'll end up being ... it's either be like, elf sized (like Santa elf, not Lord of the Rings elf...yes, I know, I';m a nerd, haha) or Andre the Giant sized. 10 points to anyone who gets the latter reference!  

Whoever said "Laughter is the Best Medicine" obviously wasn't a quilter.

It's true. Whoever said that clearly never had the experience of coming home from shopping, after only 4 things out of 50 fit correctly, after seeing themselves in their underoos (in the aaaaalways flattering fluorescent dressing room light), and wanting to just bawl and save up for liposuction. Clearly.

That was pretty much my afternoon. I had a great time going shopping and doing lunch with Mom (girls' day out is the best!), but I left feeling like total crap about myself, my body and completely discouraged that I simply can't find anything to fit my weird shape right. Ah the joys of modern womanhood, right? Thanks a lot, media!

So I went home and "kind of cleaned" in preparation for the Direct TV installer to come today to install my shiny new TV service. Normally, if it were friends coming over, that place would be so clean it would sparkle but since it's an installation person I'll probably never see again....I really half a$$ed it. Screw it. I can't be bothered to care that much, let him judge away at my mountains of scraps and fusible and half fused/half finshed pieces...They see me stitchin', they hatin'...haha

But nothing makes my spirit feel better than to just say F@ck it and work on a project I'm happy with. I'll come back in and put pictures of of what exactly it looks like, but I'm working on a mermaid project for the shop, and it is COMPLETELY different from the pattern. The quilt is actually done by a company called "Hand to Heart" (Maybe it's "Heart to Hand?") which regardless of the order of the name, primarily does primitive style patterns. The mermaid is pretty primitive  too. That id definitely not my style..no siree... so of course I changed up the color and took a few elements out to make it more my style. I told you I'm a notorious pattern tinker-er! Those huge pink cheeks drawn on her face just weren't working for me...amd I'm sorry, but a mermaid with brown hair? No, no...it's either got to be Ariel red or bright purple!! Guess which mine is? Haha! But anyway....I got her fused together, now I just have to plop her down on her background and get the borders figured out. I. CAN. NOT. WAIT. TO. QUILT. THIS. Her tiara is going to look so awesome!!

Knowing that my creative juices were flowing and my eye is getting more and more in-tune with thinking about where in a quilt some really b!tchin' free motion would fit in and make it pop made me feel tons better about not being able to squeeze my chunky butt into the clothes I was hoping it would. :-)