I've Been A Lazy Blogger...

But I HAVE been sewing.

I love to take off the Friday before and the Tuesday after a Monday holiday.  It makes the weeks on both sides so much shorter-seeming!  Of course sometimes you still have to shove 40 hours worth of work into the abbreviated week, but still.

I started a circle project.  It's inspired by the bloggers who are doing the 365 circle project, but merged with a 'target' project I saw on someone's blog, maybe the Barrister's Block??  It was a while back.

Anyway, the church quilty ladies and I were working on learning various types of machine applique -- raw edge, backed with iron on interfacing, and the like.  When I taught sewing machine classes at JoAnn's I used to have the students sew a big fat paisley shape to get inside and outside curves, and an L shape to get inside and outside corners.

I made cardboard templates so I could trace around them with a marking pen.

So I started with three different sizes of circle on a square.  I made templates using a cup, a small plate and a jar lid.

 Then I cut them out of fabric.  Hint:  Starch the fabric first, it really helps.

The biggest circle is laid on a background square, centered as much as can be but don't get anal about it.  These are raw edge appliques.  I stitched around the outside edge at 1/4 inch.  Then I CAREFULLY cut away the backing from the big circle leaving about a 1/4 inch seam allowance on the inside. 

Here you can see how I sewed each successively smaller circle on, and cut away the back of THAT circle before stitching on the last smallest circle.

This is what results when you forget to trim away the last circle!  (you can leave them but it makes a thicker seam intersection to have four layers there instead of two.

Once they're all sewn together, you cut them into four quarters, right through the center of the smallest circle.  Cut even squares, don't worry if the center is not exactly in the middle.

I used a 9 inch background, so ended up with 4.5 inch quarters.

Sew two together, press seams open, then sew the two 'twosies' together. 

Make sure you mix up your quarters.  See where I have two of the same fabric coming together?  It's not a fatal error but I should have been more careful...

See how cool they are?  I can't wait to put a quilt together using these patchy circles. 

Sew on...

This is Post Number 406

So I completely zoned on how many posts I've done... I wanted to celebrate the recent milestone but I missed it.  I think it was about three weeks ago now that I posted number

Thanks for reading!

Sue

Crafty People - The Summer Projects

You know that old saying, 'it runs in the family'?  Sometimes it's a direct route, and sometimes not.

My grandmother sewed, and evidently she did a lot of makeover type sewing, creating suits for the younger boys from cast off things my grandfather wore.  My fondest memory of quilts at her house are about a crazy quilt she made from the scraps of his suits and trousers, all grays and blacks embroidered with red floss.  The border was red as was the backing.  I don't know what she used for batting but that quilt weighed a TON.  I wish I knew where it was now.  I suspect one of the cousins has it.

My mother knew how to sew but with eight children she didn't get to do a lot of it.  We didn't even have a sewing  machine until I bought my first one when I was in high school.  She did knit and she made the most amazing socks and scarves and mittens.  Later in life she crocheted lovely afghans.

Two of her three sisters were not crafters but the one that was taught me to crochet.  As a lefty, she did things backwards for me, but it worked pretty well after we decided to sit opposite each other instead of next to each other!  It was like watching it in a mirror...

And you have also read about my aunts and cousins and our Friday Night stitchers' group.  Friday Sewing  So crafting is definitely a family trait.

My daughter knows how to sew, (as does my son) but probably only enough to sew on scout badges or mend and only if I am on the other side of the world and out of reach.  However the grands who live next door are both very crafty.

Miss E has been featured on this blog, and she has her own sewing machine, the Baby Lock I won last year at Nancy's Notions Sewing Weekend.  Winner

Miss E is a project person.  She needs a locker accessory, she makes a locker accessory.  She needs PJ bottoms, she makes PJ bottoms.

Miss A, on the other hand, takes after me: i.e. she is a process person.  She wants to do it all, and sometimes she wants to do it all TODAY.  Nail Polish project

Last year we painted rocks on the patio, and we intended to do more.  I was looking for my painting supplies, and you won't believe this** but I put them away so successfully that even with the help of DH, I could not find them!  (**My craft room is so neat, you know...)

Friday on the way home I stopped in at a Michaels store.  They just happened to have acrylic paint on sale for 50 cents a bottle.  Now you know what happens when you lose something, right?  You will not find it until the day after you replace it.  So I bought six bottles to test the theory.  A small price to pay.

(**Note to self, keep looking for that box of paint supplies because they haven't magically appeared yet.)

DH has been picking up pine cones in the yard all spring so as not to run them over with the mower.  He had a big garbage can full of them just begging to be played with.  Miss A pulled out a small bucket of them just for fun.  Somewhere I'd seen painted pinecones standing in for flowers in a dried arrangement.

Thus was born our latest project.  You need the shorter pinecones for this project, those long ones don't stand up very well.


The little fat ones are the best for this project.

These are about two inches tall and about the same across the bottom.

Here's what we have done so far.

The Artist At Work.

 Cover any surfaces with paper or plastic if you're letting kids do this.  It's messy!  But the paint cleans up with soap and water off most things.

Make the centers yellow or paint the whole thing one color.

Miss A likes to make them look like asters, while I prefer the chrysanthemum look.  I think that's because she has trouble with the word chrysanthemum.

Aren't they pretty?   And guess what they can be used for?  You put them in a basket painted side up, and give them to a friend with a fireplace or a fire pit to use as kindling!  That is, after you get tired of seeing the pretty colors and let them get dried out.  So if you harvest in the spring they'll be ready to use in the fall.

I'm not sure if the paint will smell when you burn them.  And it takes two or three coats of paint because pinecones are seeds and they are porous, so the paint does soak in.  But it's so much fun to do and there is no shortage of materials free for the picking up.  (Ask your neighbors if they mind before you go into yards other than your own, but I bet they won't care.  And you can always give them some of the product when you're done.)

Craft on...

The BIG CITY!

So here I am in Chicago for a Water Conference for work, with a half day meeting ahead of me and nothing definite planned until I get on tomorrow's train.

Unless I get a lunch or dinner invitation, what am I going to do with myself?

I thought about going to the Field Museum or the Shedd Aquarium, but the ticket prices are pretty high if you're only going for half a day.  The Museum of Science and Industry is a bit less expensive and I LOVE that place! 

Or I could try to find some fabric stores...  not that I need anything to drag home with me on the train...  maybe I can find a library.

What to do, what to do??

Sew on...

Quilt Guild Wonderful-ness!

My local quilt guild is a pretty nice group of ladies.  We meet monthly at a local library and generally have a pretty good time with some topic or other, fellowship, show and tell, the works.

We also have a monthly raffle.  Each chance is 50 cents and the prizes depend upon how much shopping the person who runs the raffle has done, and the quality of said shopping.

Not everyone enters every month, and not everyone takes more than one chance at the drawing. 

When I joined the guild, there was only one winner each month.  If there were 50 people in the room, there would be one very happy person, and 49 very sad people who hadn't won.  I always bought two chances because I usually kicked in a dollar, and I NEVER WON.

So last year when the raffle position came up, I raised up my little hand and said "I will do that".

I'm not sure what the person before me spent, or how much was realized from the kitty while she was doing it.  We usually had some kind of kit or fabric assortment for a prize.  Again, I'm not sure whether she used coupons or shopped sales, sometimes you can guess what an item might have cost by what local shops are charging -- a jelly roll is pretty much the same price no matter where you go.

I'm averaging a pretty nice pot of money and I decided that it's more fun when more people win.  Our president said "run it however you'd like to do it", so the first month I went out and got several notions and a pattern book.  The response was pretty good, a couple of the members even emailed me after and said how nice it was that there was more than one winner.

In my travels to various retail venues, I've spotted new notions, and things that seemed like they'd make live so much easier for a quilter.  Sometimes they're on sale, and I've used coupons to get the most value I can.  I've even gotten a few donations from a few people so that stretches the money even further.

Anything from Nancy is an instant favorite.



These silicone fingertips were such a hit I gave some away on two different occasions.

Since the fingertips worked, we tried an iron rest.

Of course who doesn't love books about quilting??

So the success of the monthly drawing is confirmed, everyone likes the new format, and the more they enter, the more prizes we can purchase.  Win-Win!

 

Of course I'm still dealing with those one-chance purchasers, and my pocket book is always on the heavy side until I shop...

Incentive?  LOL!!

Sew on...

Big Events and Small...

The 'promotion' ceremony for my oldest Grand, Miss E was last night at the local high school auditorium.  One entire section of seats was reserved for the class.  I don't know how many that was but I'm guessing a couple hundred... rows of maybe ten seats and many rows.  I have a program somewhere, I guess I could check.

Her last name is at the end of the alphabet, so we were pretty long waiting to see her walk across the stage, complete with wedge heels and swishy dress and MAKEUP!!  She is a lovely girl anyway but with some mascara and some lip gloss I thought she looked amazing.  Look out, freshman boys!  Prepare to get your hearts broken...

Her dress was beautiful.  She had picked one out at a local department store, and Mom bought it.  It needed a tuck here and there to fit perfectly, and I did that.  But when she came home from school the following Monday, she had discovered that several other girls had purchased the same dress.

Dialog:

A: Gramma, how much trouble is it to make a dress?
G: Depends on the dress... why?
A: I need a different dress.
G: How different?  What kind of dress?
A: Like the dress I bought, just like that but different.
G: OK... why?
A: Two other girls have the same dress.
G:  Ohhhhh, noooo.
A:  Yes, can you make one just like it but with different fabric?
G:  Sure, let's go shopping...

So we picked up some black crochet-type lace for the top, and the base fabric is satin in the preferred mint green color.  I found some chiffon in a matching green and we were off to the races.

 

I am lucky that she happens to be a perfect pattern size, requiring no alterations except for the length.  This is the dress hanging on my sewing room wall waiting for a try-on.  I had added a ribbon belt attached where the pink pin is showing.

 

She looked amazing, and her dress fit her personality to a tee.   I could tell she liked it. 

Here's the proud promote -- holding her certificate!  On Tuesday she officially starts her freshman year taking health and phys ed in summer school.  That's because she has a schedule so full of college prep electives that it was the only way to do it.

Looks AND brains and I am not bragging since it's the truth.

And amazing wedge heels that made her SOOO much taller than me.

...although they tell me that's not hard to do.

I'm so proud of her for her accomplishments.

Rock on!

Six Degrees of Separation Midwest Style

Remember that old film, Six Degrees of Separation?  Remember the game everyone played, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon??  Maybe not... we did it.  We could prove that anyone was connected to Kevin Bacon in six easy steps.  Some of them were pretty ridiculous! 

I had a Six Degrees connective experience that played out over the past year.  It went like this...

I have been going to Nancy's Notions Sewing Weekend for more years than I can count but I'm in double digits beginning with 2.

 Nancy's most frequent guest on Sewing with Nancy is Mary Mulari.  I first met Mary back when I was the president of the local American Sewing Guild.  We'd just gotten some cash built up in our treasury, and she was our first outside speaker.  I picked her up at the airport and got to know her a little.

I love Rita Farro's humor, have ever since I saw her at a Nancy Zieman Sewing Weekend years ago when she presented a seminar based on a book she wrote called "Life Is Not A Dress Size"... subtitled how to dress like a million bucks when you feel like Cher but look like Rosanne or something like that.  So when she started writing a blog, I started reading it daily... I NEED MY RITA FIX!! 

Go here and read it:  http://ritassewfun.blogspot.com/ -- sometimes funny, sometimes serious, always Rita... I have so often felt that she and I are kindred spirits.  When I respond to her sometimes I would say "this is Sue in the basement in Milwaukee" because at the time I started reading her blog, I was working in a suite of offices in a basement in Milwaukee.  (We've since moved to a second floor suite in Milwaukee, lucky me!)

Rita is friends with Mary Mulari.  They call their partnership the Midwest Ya-Ya Sisters (Have you seen the movie Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood??  If not go rent it!)

I try to see MWYYS shows whenever I can get to them, although I'm not one of their official stalkers.  Yes, they have those!

Rita often blogs about her granddaughter Lilly, and I have granddaughters, one just a bit older than Lilly.  Rita and I both have a thing about princesses -- it's a culture that needs updating.  The best princesses don't sit around and wait for the handsome prince, they rescue themselves using their own brains and initiative.  Think "Brave" or "Ever After".

Last year I won a Babylock Sewing Machine at MWYYS evening performance at Sewing Weekend!  My name was drawn by none other than Rita Farro's granddaughter Lilly.  When Rita read my name off she said "Hey, is that Sue from Milwaukee??"  Yikes!!  Yes it is!!  We had a lovely chat, Rita and Mary both signed my programs and the pattern I purchased and I felt like the luckiest person in the world that night.

One year I signed up to see Fons and Porter at Nancy's and sat in the front row.  Liz admired my vest, and so did Marianne.  Some conversation lead to a commission for me to sew a similar vest for each of them, and they went back and forth in the mail from Wisconsin to Iowa.

Liz retired and Marianne's daughter Mary joined her on their PBS show Love of Quilting, eventually taking it over.  This year, Mary Fons came to Sewing Weekend and I signed up to attend her seminar on Contrast.  It was AWESOME!!  I so enjoyed it.  Her sense of humor is amazing, she knows her stuff, and is highly entertaining. 

 

Mary blogs too.  Her blog is called Paper Girl.  She's a writer from way back, and I've been reading that daily too. 

 

http://blog.maryfons.com/  Read!  Be enlightened and entertained!

Are you with me so far??

I'm about to connect the dots.

So I'm reading Rita's blog about how she's taking her granddaughter on a trip to Chicago, and she emailed a friend who lives in Chicago for some suggestions on places to go.  She was invited to meet said friend for breakfast or some joint activities, i.e. Tour Guide stuff, you know, my city-let me show you around kind of stuff.

A few days later I'm reading Mary's blog about how a sewing friend contacted her and she's planning a super duper surprise for that friend and her granddaughter when they get to Chicago...

Oh yeah!  When I read that at first it didn't click.  But some days later, suddenly, there on Rita's blog are photos of MARY and on Mary's blog there are photos of LILLY and POW just like that, I can see the connections.  Duh, it should have clicked sooner but I have lots of sewing friends, so why would these ladies not have the same??

I guess my brain was slowing down or something.

So we're all connected I guess, in some way, shape or form.

Oh, and I completely forgot to tell Mary that I have a single son who is very handsome, very nice, recently divorced and I could totally fix them up!

Laugh on...

So Much To Do, So Little TIme...

This weekend was a lovely three day weekend that I stretched into four by taking Friday off. 

Of course you know what happens when you do that, don't you?  You work extra hours in the four days you DO work, and that makes Friday so much more glorious!

We (daughter, granddaughters, self) did some fun stuff.  I am nearly finished with Miss E's eighth grade graduation dress.  Pictures to come soon.

On Saturday I found a completely intact Chinese Checkers/Checkers/Chess tin at the Amazing Goodwill, and we spent the afternoon on Monday teaching Miss A how to play the marble version (Chinese) and how to strategize with regular old checkers.  You have to let them win sometimes when they're learning, or there are tears.  And Miss A might cry too...

You know you have to start out all your checkers on black squares, right?  It's amazing how many things you take for granted that everyone knows and that eight year olds don't know!

I picked up a bagful of books at AG too.  I counted the books I haven't read yet on the shelf in my bedroom, and it's over 80!  Yikes!!  But who can resist a paperback for 89 cents?  NOT ME...

 

The lady next door had a baby in May.  I want to find out what gender so I can finish a baby quilt and send it over.  I did complete the sewing in of the zipper in a sweater I started in the winter, and it's a neutral color.  Maybe that will go next door too.

Today is Miss A's spring concert.  Postponed from Friday when it threatened to be raining.  Which it did not.  However, one weekend evening, and I don't remember which, we had major thunderstorms that sent the family pets into hiding and quaking mode.

On Memorial Day, DH asked me "would you like to go out for lunch?"

I looked at him and asked him "who are you, and what have you done with my husband?"

He NEVER wants to go OUT for lunch!!  But we did, and it was lovely.

Now I'm back to the salt mines, trying to cram a week's worth of work into four days.

It's like deja vu all over again!

Rock on...

When I Retire I Want To Live In Beaver Dam, Wisconsin!

O.M.G.  I love Sewing Weekend!!

I tried to figure out when I first attended Sewing Weekend at Nancy's Notions in Beaver Dam, WI.  I have souvenir pins going back to 1996 but I might have gone a year or two before that.  I don't know when they started giving the pins, but I have a big pile... this year's pin was an adorable little red 'beetle' car that looks kind of like a VW. See it in the little announcement for 2017?

This year I agonized over what emphasis to take, quilting or sewing or embroidery or warehouse shows or a mix... what to do, what to do? 

I scheduled myself for some sewing, some quilting, and of course, Nancy's class.  Hers had some of everything.  It was a great time. 

Sewing:  This was probably Sandra Betzina's last trip to Wisconsin as she says she is retiring next year.  She says she's 75 -- but boy she still can give a class to make your head swim.  Lucky for me I have most of her books so I can hit the index and look up anything that I need.  I ordered her Power Sewing Tool Kit books 1 and 2, because they were mentioned in the seminar, and they were on sale, and looked like a good value.

I will use this book as a backup resource for all the notes I took.

Nancy showed some of her new McCall's patterns.  One of the jackets was in a reversible knit fabric that she said she got at Joann's.  That was a surprise.  (She said you have to support everyone... she's too nice!)  It was a stripe with a dot, and I really liked it, so I went on line and ordered some.  It was a three yard minimum, but I'm sure I can use it.

Reversible knit fabric

The display for Nancy's class, here we are waiting for the star to appear!

Quilting -- I got to meet Mary Fons!!  She is adorable, perky, funny, and she did a great presentation on contrast in quilting.  Boy just when you think you know everything along comes Mary to teach you new tricks.  If you get the chance to see her somewhere do not hesitate... she wrote a wonderful PowerPoint (as you'd expect, because she's first a writer, see her blog Paper Girl.) and one of the slides said "Kill the mango" or something.  It was about three colors she was using to illustrate that contrast is relative, but it broke us up laughing.  Well, we laughed all morning between revelations.

Later in the warehouse Mary was sitting in a booth sewing.  We stopped to chat and while we were talking about the Klutz Glove from Fons & Porter, a nice lady came up with a big bandage on her finger.  She started talking about how the glove would have saved her finger because she lost a huge chunk of it.  Eeeuww!

I started turning green, as did Mary, and I was literally backing away from the conversation... My friend Suzi, who's a nurse, was deep in discussion on the whole thing. Much to my chagrin.  I said to Mary "I have a book signed by your mom and Liz, it would be so great if you signed one for me too". 

She graciously agreed and we successfully ended the gory descriptions of the injury.  Thank the Lord!!   And now I have a matched set of autographs, one from Marianne Fons and Liz Porter, and one from Mary Fons.  It's a dynasty...

Embroidery - Nancy was showing a new set of tee shirt embroidery patterns that she and Eileen Roche wrote called Simple to Chic T-shirt Remakes.  They were gorgeous.  I would have picked up the DVD but I haven't done the first one they did together and I've had it for two years.  I want to get back to that though.  I really dislike crew neck tees on me.  I always prefer vee neck shirts or a semi-wide scoop neck for myself.  This embroidery software does it perfectly and makes it easy.

I shopped a bit, but not as much as in years past.  I'm happy with all my purchases and cannot wait for the next nice long weekend so I can unpack and start working on some projects!

Quilt-embroider-sew on!

Quilt Show in Jackson WI

I stumbled across another quilt show in SE Wisconsin last weekend.  I was looking for information on where you can rent time on a long arm quilting machine, which led me to a quilt shop in Elkhorn WI, which led me to the quilt show in Jackson WI!

Serendipity.  Gotta love it!

I texted my friend Suzi and we made a tentative date to go on Sunday.

With my upcoming (at the time) milestone birthday approaching, Saturday was kind of chaotic with kids and grands in and out, lunch making and card reading, and all that, so by Sunday I was ready for some quilty goodness.

The drive to Jackson is normally easy but there was a bit of drama at the first major merge we passed, because a squad car had someone pulled over and one of those "I gotta get there no matter what get out of my (*&*ing way" people went tearing by.  You know what I mean...

NOT southeast Wisconsin, and the jam wasn't nearly this bad!

The show was at the Kettle Moraine Lutheran High School, a beautiful building.  Students from the school provided lunch and refreshments.  It was just a perfect setting.

I have to say the ladies in the It's A Stitch guild did a wonderful job on the show!  It was so well organized, everything from scissors sharpening to Grannie's Attic resale was available.  And the quilts on display were amazing.  I left feeling inadequate.  Again.




Warning!! Check the ball & chain.

For the price of admission we got three free patterns and all the eye candy you could take in.  One beauty after another was displayed.  We even managed to catch one of the bed peels (there were two on Sunday), and I can't begin to tell you how inspired we both were to bring back ideas for both our guilds and our personal sewing.  I didn't learn until later that the trunk show was done by Kathy Doman of the Quilt Factory.  We came in when the show was already in progress.

We looked at all the vendor booths, picked up a thing or two at Grannie's Attic, where a bag of laces and ribbons, a couple of Christmas napkins to embroider, and a chunk of fabric with apples in the print set me back $3.


Bag of lace, 2/3 yard of fabric, and a roll of lace.  $2.

Napkins to embroider.  $1.

 

Then we managed to get Suzi to try a long arm quilting machine from

http://stores.longarmconnection.com/

which is the shop whose web site I stopped at originally that started this little junket!  The machines were wonderful and the stuff that Suzi was doodling, even though it was her first time, looked amazing!  Maybe someday, right?  And interestingly the shop owner was another Sue.  Go figure!

We saw a couple of ladies from our own guild there.  Everyone enjoyed the show very much and I'm putting it on my calendar for next year too.  Although they may also have a winter show, I'll have to do some research. 

I'm looking forward to leaving on Thursday for Sewing Weekend in Beaver Dam.  I signed up for a class with Mary Fons, and I'm anticipating that a good time will be had by all.  How can it be otherwise.

Sew on...