Thanks For the Idea

I have a quilt to make, a craft show to prepare for, a book club book to read by Friday, a Fearless Crafter's Workshop to get ready for as well as two upcoming craft workshops to prep.  Perfect time to start a totally unrelated impulse project, wouldn't you say?

 

I just got hit by a strong urge to sew some cool tone on tone stuff together for kicks.  It was the idea I found so distracting when I was working on this project.  

So, I'm going to spend just a little time in the evenings sewing on this white linen with some white thread, white buttons and a white doily. Oh, some lace would look cool, too, doncha think?  Thanks for the idea.

That's For Another Day

It  was a long day and my back is mad at me but check it out.

Full room shot with my new dismal ugly industrial shelves filled with delightful crafty fun stuff.

I set my sewing machine up so the light would be at my back instead of shining in my face and blinding me.

And the sun will still be behind me when I'm working at my table.

Yay!  Much was shipped off to the thrift shop. Honestly, I'm not really done.  The stuff is all on shelves in a somewhat organized fashion but I have to get it more specifically put together.  And then there's all the crap that still in the living room hiding behind the couch but that's for another day.  

Tonight, a glass of wine to celebrate a job well done.  

Halfway and counting down...

I'm calling this the halfway point.  I emptied the shelves and put lots of stuff into bins.  We'll be moving these shelves into the next room and then putting in some way deeper shelves.

Gotta find a sunny spot for my table.  It all looks so spare and tidy now 

But this is only some of what I have to put back in an orderly fashion.  

Actually, I'm going to cal it the thirdway point.

There's more here.  The quarterway point is starting to feel right.  I'd better get up and get moving.  

Spam-a-lot

I've been getting lots of spam from one place ever since I did that give away blog hop thing.  Which was great, don't get me wrong.  

I turned off my comment moderation because I was getting so many comments and that was completely awesome.  But, right after I switched back to moderating my comments (which was fortuitous timing) I started getting these goofy, unrelated comments with links to a bunch of different probable malware loaded links. 

Today, I got my favorite one ever so I thought I'd share it, malware link removed of course:

hi!,I like youг wгiting so much! proportion
we keep up a сοrreѕpondence mοre apρroximatelу your post on AOL?
I requirе аn exρеrt on thіs
arеa to solve my problem. Mаy be thаt's you! Taking a look ahead to peer you.

I first started moderating my comments after getting this hilarious one (also with links removed): 

BOYCOTT AMERICAN WOMEN Why American men should boycott American women ... I am an American man, and I have decided to boycott American women. In a nutshell, American women are the most likely to cheat on you, to divorce you, to get fat, to steal half of your money in the divorce courts, don’t know how to cook or clean, don’t want to have children, etc. Therefore, what intelligent man would want to get involved with American women? American women are generally immature, selfish, extremely arrogant and self-centered, mentally unstable, irresponsible, and highly unchaste. The behavior of most American women is utterly disgusting, to say the least. This blog is my attempt to explain why I feel American women are inferior to foreign women (non-American women), and why American men should boycott American women, and date/marry only foreign (non-American) women. BOYCOTT AMERICAN WOMEN! BRAND NEW: Buy the Boycott American Women book

Why, yes, I am supposed to be cleaning...how did you guess?  Ok, fine.  Back to it. 

Oops.

I bought another sewing machine.  Dang it.  

Nope, not this one.

It went down like this:  I posted the above machine on Craig's List and, since I was there anyway, looked at the sewing machines that were for sale.  

Always Never a good idea.

I brought this one home.  It ends up that it actually wasn't a very savvy buy.  I thought it was an older model but it isn't.  Guess I could have looked it up first but I fell in love at first sight.  I tend to do that with older machines.  Still playing with the tension to get it right but that's my idea of a good time.

It weighs a shit-ton but at least I can throw it in my car and take it places.  I can't even say that about some of the people I know.

Otherwise I've been cleaning and getting ready to organize my space.  Nope, no pictures.  It's always worse before it gets better.  I plan on moving everything out of the way so we can put in some deeper shelving that will accommodate my new bins.  Then I have get to put it all back again.

Totally Made My Day

We went to a Flea Market yesterday.  I had big intentions to talk a guy way down on some of those cool glass insulators things that sit on top of electrical poles.  But by the time I came back around, I was all out of money.

Check it out!!!

It's just the top but the fabric is so beautiful. Lots of vintagey scraps.  I thought I would cut it up and remake it into many different things. You know what happened though.  When I got home and opened it up, I knew I would never be able to chop it up.  

I'm just going to finish it.  

I have to pick a backing and border color.  It will have to wait, though.  I have so many other projects right now.

Also, I picked up a couple of books  (There is no book better than The Sailor Dog, just FYI).

This book is pretty cool.  I have a thing for Mr. Zip.

A buncha crocheted doilies.  Did you know there there's no such thing as machine crochet so every single crocheted item you ever see was hand made.  Just sayin'.

And so many vintage buttons.  I love it when buttons are all sewn onto cardboard.  Why did anyone do that? I mean why would you sew buttons of all colors and sizes onto a really big card?  Sales samples maybe?  I'm glad they did, but still.

Also, we went out to lunch and the waitress complimented my necklace. 

 It was this worn around my neck instead of my wrist:

It totally made my day.

Here's Something You Can Do

Here's something you can do with a strip of tee shirt.  

I like it.

Pretty bad ass.

And I have all this left to play with.  

Expect more badassery coming this way.  I will need to get more doo-dads to add because all of my beads have small - not shirt width - holes so I get to do a little shopping!  

Not Too Shabby

I finished the owls which means...time for a totally new project!  

I don't know if you remember, but lately I've been playing with remaking tee-shirts so that they fit me.  It's really fun but I had trouble figuring out sizing.  To figure that out I went and bought a bunch of giant ugly tee shirts to experiment on.  I knew it was a new way of sewing and I would need a ton of practice so I bought quite a few.  But...surprise surprise...I figured it out by tee-shirt # 3.  Not too shabby.  However, now I have a buncha giant ugly tee shirts.  

Like this one.

So I cut them buggers up.

They look like this until you stretch them out.  Then they look like this:

Thanks for another great idea, Alabama Chanin.

Now there are many things I can make with them.  I choose....jewelry.
But, until then I just want to say that this shirt:

was awesome.

Unfortunately, a really large printed area on a tee shirt doesn't stretch the way I need it to so I had to throw that part away.  However, I still really enjoyed cutting up the word cancer.

I chopped it up real good.

On an unrelated note, I also fixed Mr. Floppy.  He appreciates it, his face was loose.  Now he can go home to my daughter; she has really missed him.

We have a winner the second

The winner is...Anonymous!  That's right.  But she emailed me and I know who she really is.  

I think I'll also wait on having another give away until there's some sort of blog hop dealy that I can join in on again.  That seems to work better.  I will have more though.  I have big scary plans to clean my space.  I'm sure to find lots of stuff that needs to travel on to greener pastures.

I've cleaned it before but I'm hoping this time I'll be able to keep it tidier.  Gotta buy a buncha plastic bins.  They fix everything.

I finished the owls last night, too.  

I stuffed them with wool.  I really prefer it to cotton or poly fill because dust mites do not like wool.  I do not like dust mites so that all works out in the end.

That's How Cute

You never can tell with with critters.

Will they be cute?  They might be kinda cute.  I haven't made any critters for months...over a year!  

The thing is that you have to turn them inside out and sew around their edges which is a serious leap of faith.  Let's just say that it does not always end well, especially when one is out of practice.

But it so did this time.  How cute is that?  Seriously cute, that's how cute.

AHHH!!  That's darling.

That one worked really well, too.

Is it too weird to pinch the cheeks of a halfway made stuffed animal?  Oh, wait...yes...it is.  It's too weird so I won't do that.  

But I love my little parliament!  

All I have left to do is stuff them and then they'll be ready for the world.  

And a quick reminder:  Want to join in my purse give away?  

I know, you've been waiting for the last minute (Why, by the way, what's the point?).  Anyway, the last minute is here.  Tomorrow I'll announce the winner of my latest (And last, for a while) give away. 

Just go here and leave me a comment and let me know how to reach you if you win.  

Parliament

After that owl give away, I'm back to making critters again.  

First a parliament of owls.

They look so plain because they're still in the designing phase.

Soon they'll have button eyes

And detail stitching.  Mostly machine stitching because I'd like to sell them and I have to balance the time put into them with how much I can realistically charge for a stuffed denim owl.

But I'm not totally a practical person so a couple have hand stitching because that's just how I roll.

Hoot.

The Odds Are In Your Favor!!!

I finished and washed the latest baby quilt.  If I were a different person, I would feel guilty about how much more promptly I dealt with that particular load of laundry compared to my usual laundry response time.  

I think the corners held up well.  I'm as happy with them as I can be.

I didn't add any additional stitching to the border.  I often consider doing it but I never have.

Once the border is on, I'm done.  It's like the period at the end of the sentence.  There's no going back.

I tried to get pictures of my stitching but it was tough.  I'm really happy with it.  

These were the best pictures.  You'll just have to take my word for it:  The stitching is cool.

My second give away is still going on.  I've had one comment.  Maybe it's because I said people had to post an ego boosting comment.  I was kidding.  I'll take that part out, I guess.  Sheesh... lighten up folks!

For my first give away I joined a blog hop thing that's over now.  It really boosted the number of comments.  I guess people don't need a new purse.

Go check out that give away.  The odds are in your favor!!!

Draaammmaaa + Give Away the Second!!!!!!!

This give away is closed!  No more entries will be accepted!  

Winner is announced here.

Continuing my draaammmaaa from yesterday.  I cut the seam allowances down as close as I could without panicking.  It always makes me nervous to cut close to a seam.  Sewing the binding went pretty well and I really like the way the binding looks on the edges.

  

See.  It's a nice, narrow binding and I LOVE those colors together.  Love them.  

BUT the corners.  UGH.  Hate them.   

Truth be told, there was no chance of me ripping the binding out and starting over because the linen is very un-ravelly.  It couldn't have stood up to it.  I was afraid of damaging the orange fabric.  That would have been a tragesty.  

 

The corners, however. are tragesties.  I should have done my research.  I needed a different corner technique to go with my different binding technique.  They were all donkey eared.  So I cut and resewed them and they are messy as hell.

See the second one down?  I didn't resew that because the donkey ear was small but the other three corners were hugely awful and actually look better resewn than they did at first.  Sigh.  I'm washing it now in the hopes that, if the wash is going to cause corner problems, I can fix them before gifting it.  My husband said it just makes the quilt look more handmade.  He is a very nice man.

Onward and Upward to Give Away the Second!

Here we have a slouchy hobo bag that I made out of bark cloth!  The floral cloth pattern is perfect for a spring and summer bag.  It has two large pockets on either end (excellent for cell phones and keys) and an adjustable strap upcycled from a store bought purse.

The inside used to be a linen skirt and has a button closure pocket on one side.

To enter this give away, just write a comment and that is all.  The give away will end on Thursday March 21st at some point and the winner will be announced before that midnight.  

I will need to be able to contact you but you shouldn't have to post your email address to the world if you have the kind of account that lets me just click on your name and then be able to reach you.  If you aren't sure, you can always click on my name and send me your email.  

Thanks for stopping by and best of luck.  Hopefully the next picture I post of that baby quilt will be happy.  At least happy-ish.