Fearless Crafting

On Wednesday night, I am running another Fearless Crafters program at the library.  It's kitchen art.  It's not a craft I think I would have chosen but after my friend and partner in crime, Jennifer (that's right, yet another Jennifer) came over and we spent some time playing with wooden spoons and doodads, I'm warming up to the idea. 

We ran out of time but here are a couple of items we came up with:

This side, I painted the design on.  I'm not used to painting so it was a stretch but that's what Fearless Craters is all about.

This side is Sharpie.  Better, right?  Then I painted the whole thing red for no reason

There are only 12 people signed up but that's enough to go!

 

Jennifer's is really cool.  She ran out of time and didn't get to finish but what she did is awesome. 

Pot Lid/UFO.

There's room for more people if you're local!

Full Catastrophe

Look what I found!  

I've been in the mood to play with denim. When I went to my massive pile o' pants, these were close to the top.  And though it may seem like a non sequitur, I just want to mention that I love dolphins and am always excited to see one.

 

These are the leftovers from a baby quilt that I got overly enthused by.  

It grew and grew until the size became absurd.  I was madly in love with the way the squares mellowly get along.  

I hope it isn't tacky to use the same picture twice in the same post.

I even made seven large panels that didn't even make it into the baby quilt and it was still way too huge.  I ended up cutting the quilt in half to make it more baby quilt sized and the scale became all thrown off.  

The half of the quilt that didn't get gifted is in the middle of there with a darker boarder a round three sides.  

Remember the border?  I fell in love with that, too.

I think I feel in love with the pieces but the whole didn't win my heart.  Having found these panels again, I feel like I have a second chance to fall in love.  Do I need to commit to the full on crazy?  That is what I need to decide.  I have to urge to make this quilt so giant that no bed could contain it.  It's probably just a reaction to my hurt feelings from the last experience.

Do I need to have a future bed in mind when I start a quilt?  Does it make sense to just sew it up without a home for it?  It's not like I could sell it.  I've already put too many hours into it and it doesn't even actually exist yet.  I could never really charge enough.  

I don't know why I'm asking.  I'm already in up to my eyeballs. 

 Committed to the full catastrophe.

Some Post Cards

Here's some mail art I recently made, just for fun.
My mail art group (MAGMA) has stopped meeting on a regular basis but I still love making and sending postcards.

Also, my Super Secret Project went out in the mail today, too. Will keep you posted and maybe post pictures hopefully early next week.

Feeling Proud

I donated my Denim OCD Quilt to The Habitat for Humanity ReStore.  

They have a salvaged art auction every year to raise money.

You might remember that I donated some stuffed critters a couple of years ago.  

They just put my quilt on their website (scroll down) as a featured piece and I'm all aflutter.  I'm not sure where it will be displayed yet but I'll be attending the opening for sure.

I also recently received  an email from the WI Institutes For Discovery.  They will be displaying the drawings from the last Lynda Barry workshop during their Public Humanities Conference.  I actually think the drawings done by kids will be waaaaay more interesting than the stuff us grown ups made.  The conference looks really intriguing and the workshop was crazy fun

I'm looking forward to attending that, too.  

That's my spring social calendar filled.  

Not bad for someone who doesn't actually have a social calendar. 

Super Secret Project

Sorry I've been out of touch.  I'm working on a super secret project that I can't post pictures of.  My hope is that it will include these: 

I may post pictures when it's all done and delivered, that will be entirely up to the recipient.  

The weather outside is frightful

I'm calling this a good day to play with paper.

That's Better

I'll never finish this by the Project QUILTING deadline: Sunday at noon. I'm having too much fun. It's very meditative and I can't help but wonder if I shouldn't be doing this on a single layer of fabric instead of a thick quilt.

OMG!  Boobs!  It shouldn't look like that when I'm done.

There, that's better

Check out my caddy. I found it at the thrift shop yesterday. I was there stocking up on kitchen items to decorate during my next Fearless Crafters program.

One Good Thing

About giving up on the Project QUILTING challenge is that I get to add new colors.

I'm not going to add too many colors, I think just a couple of neutral colors will work.

I added an additional circle, too. To, ya know, play down the boob thing.

It's Better, Right?

On the quilt, the rays don't look like they did in my head.  They add a whole level of chaos that I don't really like.  I also envisioned the circles as being tighter.  

That's because I was going to machine sew them.  I still could have, I do  have other sewing machines, but they're in the cold basement. 

So I tried making tighter circles and I think I prefer it.  

It's odd but it's easier for me decide about something if I look at pictures of it.  

Even if the thing is right in front of me

 Side by side shot.  It's better, right?

Also, it was so cold yesterday that an egg froze in the coop.  It was only out there for a couple of hours.  Poor cluckers.

I Don't Know How To Sew

I totally forgot how.

OK.  That's not really true but that was my first thought when trying to sew a bunch of circles on my machine. It didn't work at all.  The bobbin fell out twice.  After a night's sleep, I now think it was the sewing machine.  It's a fabulous straight stitching machine but doesn't like sewing in circles.  Does that sound reasonable?  I haven't fully abandoned my first theory.

On to hand stitching.  I rounded up all my blues and whites and pulled out my new pin cushion.

Isn't that hilarious?  My friend gave it to me.  She called it a hillbilly wine glass.  I added the pin cushion lid.  The only plus about actually drinking wine from it is that I could drink a whole bottle but claim to only having two glasses.  Maybe that's not a plus.  Anyway, it's a perfect place for all of my safety pins.

I had lots of fun making my circles. They don't exactly match what I envisioned but I like them anyway.

Here's the back after I added another circle.  I really like this side.  I used some old blue linen left over from another project. 

What Could Go Wrong?

It's another Project QUILTING quilt!

I didn't think they would have another challenge that would tempt me but...

Here I go again.  I got a strong image of what I wanted to do as soon as I read the challenge rules.  I'll only do them when that happens.

So the theme is favorite color and the idea is that you pick only one color plus white and that includes thread color.  As you can imagine, I'm picking blue...denim.  Surprise!  So I pulled out my denim pile plus some pants and started putting them together; very much inspired by all the string quilts I looked at on Pinterest today.

I'm thrilled to have my Grandma's sewing machine working again!

I intend to use white only in my thread choice.  I plan to quilt big circles with rays coming out from the middle of the circles with both the machine and by hand using different whites and blues.  Cool, huh? 

And I got this far before deciding what it would all end up as:  A project bag!  So now, with one hour before I have to go pick up a kid, I'm ironing and blogging at the same time.  What could go wrong?

Thanks To The Hand Holders Of The World!

Smack in the middle of making the Project QUILTING quilt, I was lucky enough to have a yearly mom's retreat happen.  Woohoo!  If you don't have a bunch of friends who like to get together for a weekend to eat, drink and be treat each other well, I highly recommend you find one.  

It meant that I would need to bring a sewing machine with me if I was going to finish the quilt in time. The only portable machine I have right now is my Grandmother's Featherweight which, as you may remember, is haunted and therefore was in need of repair.  

I don't know about you, but I fear electricity.  It can mess you up. So I needed a fair amount of hand holding for this project.  On the other hand, no way was I going to pay to have someone fix it.  I mean, it was obviously a simple fix, you just had to know what to do.  

First I googled around and found this very inspiring blog: Mysewingmachineobsession.blogspot.com.  I emailed the woman whose blog it is and asked pointless questions that basically added up to "Tell me I can do this please!"  She got back to me very promptly and told me I could do it. I stopped at the local hardware store and bought an plug thingy and was ready-ish to rumble.

I also cornered a friend at the retreat who fixes up vintage machines and she was a huge help.  Go buy things from her etsy shop here.  :)

Hand-holding powers engaged, I started.  The hardest part was prying the inside of the plug out of the cover.

It fought me all the way.

Then I stuck the wires through.

We cut off the insulation with scissors (By the way, don't try this at home.  Surely there's a safer, better way but we were at a retreat center and had slim pickin's for tools.  We twisted each of those two little sets of wires clockwise.  This is so that when we screwed them in, they stayed bundled together.   Then, we just wrapped them around the screws and screwed them in snugly.  I wish I'd taken a picture at that point.  Sorry, I was too into it, I guess.

It went back on way easier than it came off.  I picked this huge plug because it's easy to grab and I won't be tempted to pull it out of the outlet by just the wire again.

Check it!  Light is on.  Motor is running and the quilt got finished. All I needed was hand holding and people telling me I could handle it.  

Thanks to the hand holders of the world!