Pins, Anyone?

My new friend and I are still debating clothing options, but in the meantime, my hands have not been idle!

These are pincushions I’ve made for my quilt guild’s sale next month.  They are all made from “orphan” blocks.  That is, quilt blocks that were left over from another project . . . or the ones that did not turn out right . . . or the ones where I misread the directions.  LOL!

But the cool thing about these pincushions?  They are made with used CDs.  Back before removable drives and cloud technology, etc., I backed up my computer files onto CD.  And I have a LOT of them!  (I use a needle to scratch the surface, so the data is no longer recoverable.)

So, two CDs, two circles of fabric, some plastic pellets, some fiberfil stuffing, and a collection of trims – and you’ve got a pincushion!

I have one I’ve been using for years at my worktable and I couldn’t craft without it!  The pellets (or sand, or walnuts, or whatever) give it some weight so it stays put and it’s large enough to hold a lot of needles and pins.  The weight and solid base means I can load it up with looooong doll needles without any tipping.  I LOVE that!

Wow!  I make them sound very impressive, don’t I?  Maybe I should make some more!

My New Friend

It’s been a busy four days, and my friend and I are exhausted!

She has had her hair styled and we have been discussing clothing options.  We’ve agreed on something to coordinate with her mod color streak, however we haven’t been able to agree on anything else yet.

The shoes don’t quite fit!  She won’t be doing any walking on the trip home, though, so she’ll be alright.

Me, on the other hand, will definitely be dragging by the time we get home!

What a Difference a Day Makes

She has eyes!  The mouth has been refined quite a bit after this shot was taken, and the ears are almost there.  Some things just seem to take more putzing than others.  Sigh.

Checking In

Greetings from (not so) sunny Florida!  Actually, I don't mind the fact that it has rained pretty much from Wednesday night, because I've been indoors all day anyway.  Want to see what I've been up to?

Tomorrow, she will get eyes.  I can hardly wait!

I'm taking a sculpting class from Deb Wood.  Our hostess is the lovely Adele of A for Artistic.  We are having a great time and learning lots of good stuff.  I'll try to update during the rest of the class -- and for sure when the piece is finished.  Stay tuned!

At Last!

At long last, I finally have something to show on this blog.  In fact, I have two somethings.  Isn’t that exciting?!!

OK, not exciting.  But good anyway.  So how about some pictures?

Remember my Hunter’s Star experience – er, design variation?  I posted about it here.  This is how I decided to put the blocks together.  It is the perfect size for a table topper and some nice big spaces for quilting.

I had four blocks left over, so I have the beginnings of a medallion quilt.  I’m letting some ideas bubble around in my head to see what winds up on top.  It may take awhile.

And then, there’s my hexie love:

To refresh your memory, I started with this for the center and blogged about it here.

Several borders were added, some of them taking quite a long time to complete.  Half-inch hexies are really a project in themselves!  This is how far along I was at the beginning of April (see this post).

The last border went on today:

This border is foundation paper pieced and I still have all the papers to remove, but it is essentially done. 

The corners were going to be plain blocks, but I wasn’t really pleased with that.  So after a bit of play in EQ7, I drafted up these.  I like them a lot better.

With this one completed, I can turn my attention (little as that may be!) to the hexie medallion quilt in brown.  I’ve switched up some of the borders on it so it should look completely different.

Although, now that I look at this one, maybe it needs just one more tiny border.  Kind of corral all those spikes.  What do you think?

What Have I Been Doing?

I have been busy every day for the past couple of weeks, but what have I got to show for it?  Not a whole lot!  You’d think I would have some kind of snippets to share.  I have several projects going but they all seem to be going slowly.  What to do, what to do.

Why, start a new project, of course!  I don’t know if my idea will work or not, but if so, it will include some of this:

and some of this:

See that gadget there?  It’s a circle cutter and is it slick!  Once I got a feel for how it works, I was able to cut out sixteen circles in no time at all.  I may need to make a lot of circle projects!

Now I just need to get something done so I’ll have something to blog about!

Time to Catch Up

This blog has been kind of quiet, I know.  It’s not that I haven’t been working on anything.  But what I’m working on is mostly hand work – and sometimes that takes for.ev.er!  Mix in about a week’s worth of head cold/virus/crud/whatever, and there hasn’t been much going on around here.

Today, however, I have some progress to show you.  Everybody say, “Yay!”

So, I told you here how much I love hexies and showed two pieces I was working on.  This is what they look like today.

This is the one that started it all – the Soupcon Quilt-Along from Faeries and Fibers.  There are a couple more borders yet to go on this one.

This is how the second “Soupcon” is looking.  I finished the embroidery today and will have an audition for border fabrics soon.  By the way, the photos are misleading as to size.  The top piece is 24” square, and this one is 18” square.  So, a ways to go on this one.

And since one can never sew too many hexies . . . I started a third project!  This one is from The Hexie Blog and is a block-of-the-month.  This is January, so maybe just a little bit behind! Again, fabric auditions will be held soon for February and March.  Oh yeah – and April.  Jeez, I’d better get cracking!

Of course, none of these three are what I should be working on.  My half finished dolls, the multiple quilt projects, lesson plans for doll club, art journaling – these are all at just about the same place as they were two months ago.

Me?  I am always focused and . . . look!  a squirrel! . . . not easily distracted at all!