Wordless Wednesday: tonight on our plateau

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Location:Murphys, CA

How-To: Petite French Memo Board

Artist's canvass
Staple gun
Glue
Fabric
Ribbon
Buttons or bows

And a little peace and quiet and this can be yours!

Such a simple craft, and now girls are even using these to clip their barrets to, or you can add hooks along the bottome to hold necklaces.  I put a lightweight batting over the canvass and stapled it in the back.  Then I sewed two pieces of fabric together and stapled that snugly to the back.  I added the ribbons on the front and a ribbon for hanging in the back before gluing a piece of fabric across the back.  You can make one in less than 30 minutes.  I bought the canvass in a pack of 7 from an art supply store.  There are many free tutorials on-line if you need to see step-by-step directions.

Hugs,

Betty & Dee

Modern Quilt: Eva by Basic Grey

I wouldn't say Mom and I are modern quilters.  We like the standard, tried and true quilt blocks and we rarely use any novelty fabrics.  We've spent a lot of time looking at fabric lines, noticing the differences between cotton quilting fabric manufacturers and the quality of pre-cuts.  At first, we bought a LOT of charm packs.  It seemed like an easy way to get started.  We made up a pattern for our first quilts, then moved on to a Bento Box pattern.  Mom was whipping up quilts in about 3 days!  Right after the holidays I decided to make a quilt out of some Eva pre-cuts by Basic Grey.  I started with this: Eva and a coordinating polka dot and an idea from an old quilting magazine:

And I ended up with this block! Totally not 'me', but I loved it:

So, I love the colors and the blocks - but it's way too busy for me.  I've sewn it all together, but - yes, GASP - I'm going to take it apart.  I think I would be happier with the blocks separated by sashing instead of just all jumbled up like this.  It's a queen sized quilt - I can't seem to make anything smaller.  I'll post pix when I take it apart and reassemble it!

p.s. I took the little pieces that were left over and sewed them together for a clutch!  It's not finished, but the two outside panels are done:

Hugs,

Betty & Dee

Quilt of Trees

A few months ago I started a quilt for my son.  I fell in love with a haunting, modern fabric with trees and bought the coordinating pieces and a silvery blue batik.  This is what I started with:

I wanted the tree to be the main piece of each block, but that only gave me 32 twelve inch blocks. So I created another coordinating block and rotated it everytime I added it across in the row:

Now I've got just the right number of blocks to make a queen sized quilt.  My son doesn't want a border, so I'm just going to sew all the blocks together and then put a narrow frame, maybe 3 inches, of the batik all the way around.  I've had to put this aside to work on a quilt that's a wedding gift, but that's being sent off to the long arm quilter this week, so I can get back to this soon.

Hugs,

Betty & Dee

Tina Givens: Purse, small clutch and fob

I am gaga over anything designed by Tina Givens.  Before I even knew anything about fabric designers or manufacturers I fell in love with Tina's 'Chloe's Imagination'.  She had me with her huge BEES.  So, when I wanted to make a cute bag set for my friend Julie over at Intrepid Threads, I turned to Tina's fabric and went with Julie's favorite color, turquoise.

I used a free purse pattern from All People Quilt and made this purse, a clutch pattern I purchased from Keyka Lou (who, by the way, is teaching at Sewing Summit in October and I'm so excited to meet her!), and followed a free on-line tutorial to make my first-ever fob:

The lining was Anna Griffin.



See the cute round bling?  That is called a 'slider'.  It's meant to be used on wedding favors.  I bought silver plated and rhinestone ones in packages of 10 from a Chinese wedding supplier on eBay.  They carry round, oval, square and heart shaped sliders (or buckles) and I bought all four shapes.  There is a center piece just like a buckle and they fit 3/8" ribbon perfectly.  You just slide the buckle on, sew the ribbon up as far as you want the buckle to be, stop, push the slider up to that point, start again below the slider and repeat on the other side of the ribbon.  For good measure, I put some glue under the ribbon where the buckle was.

If you are interested in any pattern information or the name of the eBay supplier, please email me.

Hugs,

Betty & Dee

WE ARE BACK!!!

WOW.

I really didn't mean to take such a long break from blogging - but none of us ever do 'plan' on staying away a long time, do we?  Life kind of gets in the way and then one day you realize you've been away from something you love for MONTHS.  For my mom, Betty, she got shingles and has pretty much been housebound/bedbound for 17 weeks.  After the shingles finally healed she was hit with the secondary complication of neuralgia.  She's been in constant pain and nothing but a heating pad has given her any relief.  She has read one of the Diana Galbadon series - and done a bit of cross stitching, but not much else.  She's running out of books, so hoping she has turned a corner this past weekend and will be able to go to the used book store with me soon to reload and also get back to her crafts.

Our daughter came home from  a year in Afghanistan:

And our son got an A on his Master's thesis and received his degree:

So, we've had a full house again and the blog has suffered and I'm so sorry.  I have all these great pictures and ideas and things I wanted to share with all of you!  So, let's get caught up!  I'll try to put these 'catch-up' posts in chronological order, but I can't promise anything.

First up?  A very smart bird built a nest in my clothespin bag on the back porch.  5 perfect, delicate blue eggs:

And they turned into 5 perfect babies and flew away!

(and, NO, I will never be able to use the bag or clothespins again!)

Having these little ones begin their lives in the shelter of our porch was very symbolic to me of spring, new beginnings, and fresh starts.

Hugs,

Betty & Dee