Orca Bay Mystery Quilt Part 2

 

Today I have started on part 2 of the mystery quilt. 

 

This is my first time using strings and it is fun!!

I took Bonnie’s advice and am using phone book paper for my foundations.  It is great! It tears off very easily!

 

Here are the first four 3 1/2 inch squares!

 

My string squares and my pile of strings!

 

Check out the website! http://quiltville.blogspot.com/p/orca-bay-mystery.html

Orca Bay Mystery Quilt Part 1

I have started Bonnie Hunter’s Orca Bay Mystery Quilt!  My colors are pink, brown, green (accent color), and neutrals.
Bonnie’s website: http://quiltville.blogspot.com/p/orca-bay-mystery.html
I first iron my 1 1/2 inch strips right sides together so that they stick together a little better.

























In order to break up the monotony of cutting, I cut in sets of 100 and then sewed them together and pressed them open.






  

























Here is a batch of finished units. I still have to finish sewing all 224!!

























You should do the mystery too!!! Go to http://quiltville.blogspot.com/p/orca-bay-mystery.html to get started!!

Quilt room clean-up

I have decided to participate in Bonnie Hunter’s Quiltville Orca Bay Mystery Quilt this year, but first I needed to clean up and reorganize my quilting room.  







This is my quilting room. I have been refolding fat quarters and yardage-sized pieces of fabric that have been laying around and piling up for about a year now.  Now I know what I have so that when it comes to picking fabrics for the mystery quilt I’m not hunting through piles going, “Oh! I forgot about that one!”


















Of course, Teddy Bear is on the floor helping me with some border pieces for another quilt I am working on.  He loves to pose for the camera.


























Here is the closet with shelves that I made myself.  Yes, I measured the distance between shelves, went to Home Depot and had the nice man cut the wood for me, marked, leveled, and drilled pilot holes, inserted plugs, screwed in the supports, put up the shelves, screwed them into the supports, installed center support brackets, and caulked and painted it all!  Whew!  A lot of work but totally worth it!
I store all my rulers, strip and square storage tubs, threads, and other quilting notions in there.









Here is my sewing table with my inspiration bulletin board.  The mini quilt pinned on there is made from the corner-cut-offs from another quilt that I made.  It still needs borders, but for now I really like it being right where it is. 
The baskets are a leftover from a wall quilt that I made (I’ll show it another time) and I’m thinking of making them into a cover for a long, skinny pillow.




















Here is the relaxie futon where Teddy usually sleeps while I sew.  Laying over the back is part of a quilt top that I am working on, and underneath are two quilts that just need the binding finished.
All of the small pieces of fabrics laying around got cut up into strips, squares, strings, or crumbs and placed into the appropriate tubs.













Teddy is of course helping out by sitting in my tub with Thimbleberries corner-cut-offs.

Now I just need to pick my colors for the mystery quilt and get started!

My knitted socks

 

 

After crocheting anything and everything for 12 years I needed a new challenge and became curious about knitting.  So, a couple of years ago I taught myself to knit, and I made a few hats for kids and helmet liners for the troops (a lady at my quilt guild was sending them overseas), but I felt that it was really difficult and I didn’t understand the anatomy of the stitches.  I put it away and thought, “Well, at least I know how to knit some.”

A few months ago I started looking at knitting magazines and websites and the knitting bug struck again, but this time I wanted to knit socks!  But I didn’t like the idea of the double pointed needles, they seemed scary to an already spooked beginning knitter, so I just kept dreaming of all the socks I wanted to make but was too afraid to tackle.  Then one day I happened upon a book that would change knitting for me forever: Knitting Circles Around Socks by Antje Gillingham!  She uses two sets of circular needles to make two socks at a time!  And I love circular needles! (No crowded stitches!) And making two socks at the same time means you don’t have to go back and count rounds and re-measure and stuff. Yeah!

  This is the first pair of socks that I made following the basic sock pattern in the book.  As you can see, in my excitement to begin knitting I forgot to make sure that the color change would coincide in each pair, so the stripes are not aligning properly.  But, hey,  it’s my first time and they fit and keep my feet warm, so I don’t mind!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is the second pair of socks I made from the same yarn.  This time I used the same basic sock pattern, but I did a rib stitch instead of stockinet stitch.  And I remembered to start the colors correctly so the stripes align!  I love my knitted socks and wear them at home when it’s cold.  I am currently making a pair for my hubby too!

Art class pictures

 

I have always loved making things and doing artsy stuff and recently I have been wondering why I didn’t get an art degree in university instead of a Spanish degree. So, to fulfill my desire for (more) art in my life, and not wanting to attend university again, I found the Creative Arts Workshop in New Haven. 

The first class I am taking is Introduction to Drawing and here are pics of what I have done so far:

This is from the first class where we had to draw a still life using charcoal.

 

In this class we used conte crayon and had to draw our hands, paying close attention to every small bump and crease in our skin.  The teacher said mine looked very Sci-fi.

 

 

For this class we had to draw metal chairs stacked upon each other, but we had to draw the negative space, the empty spaces, in order to obtain the images of the chairs.  It was so fun I did it twice!

 

For this class we were studying contrast. We first drew the still life, then we picked a middle value and everything darker than that value had to be colored in black and everything lighter was left white.  We even used the shadows on the walls.

      

 

In this class we drew a skeleton with a light shining on one side.  We used white conte crayon for the light/reflecting areas, red conte crayon for the dark/shadowed areas, and black for the darkest shadows. The paper represented the middle values.  This is my favorite one so far.

 

I have one more lesson remaining in the class.  There is a perspective drawing class that is four weeks after this and I am going to take that too!!

Super fun!!!!

Cute little Birth-day quilts

Recently I finished three birth-day wall quilts that my aunt asked me to make for the new grandbabies of her parent's friends. They are for twin girls who were born premature but made it and are doing great now.

 I designed them in EQ6 and found the perfect fabric from Connecting Threads.

I hand embroidered the names and birthdays, so first I sewed some stabilizer to the back of the fabric so it wouldn't stretch and pull out of shape when I embroidered.

I printed out the names and dates in a font that could be easily adapted to embroidery and then taped them to the window behind the fabric so I could trace the letters onto the fabric.

 I kept the three pieces together while embroidering so that they would stay in the hoop easier.

I quilted them in the ditch and they are ready to go!