It's been a while

It's been a while since I wrote something. I started this blog for me, to motivate me and to keep me inspired. I had a good year. I started fresh a few times but I kept on working. I wish I could say I'd finished more than I did but that's probably the wish of most crafters.

I stopped writing because I was lost in Christmas crafts. I would want to write but I couldn't post pictures (and I love the pretty pictures!) I didn't want to ruin any surprises. I tried to make lots of presents this year. I want to do even more next year. With a child going to college soon I need to start pinching pennies more than usual. Sigh...

Here's a picture of my work space while I was trying to finish these great pin cushions with trash bags attached. I made the red one for my mom's red and white craft room. One other one to sell and one for me. I'm loving it.

Sadly, I started these silly things probably over a year ago. It gives me an even better sense of accomplishment to have it done. (I'm shooting for that feeling when I finally get around to finishing my business taxes.)

Here's the one I kept for myself:

I love having an open mouth trash can like this right at my cutting table. Before I would make piles and drop half of it on my way to the trashcan.

I think (I know) I have a pincushion obsession right now. I started a pincushion with a scissors pocket for my friend Beth for Christmas. Of course, I had to make one for myself too. It has a long "tail" so that I can reach it on my cutting table and drag it over to where I'm working. I loved the colors and how my points came out.

Then I had to cover up the points with another pincushion. If you look you can see that the pincushion is three dimensional. Very cute! I've had to take back Beth's because her leaves look deformed. I need to obsess on it a little. She wants to rig a trash bag to it. I'll have to mull that over while I fix the leaves. What's another project!

As a side note check out this boring looking dark space

It was the Science Bowl. Yawn. I'm sure it wouldn't be boring if I was a genius. I was just there for support (no psychic answers from me!) I'm sure I looked interesting with my craft bag next to me and a big bag of fiberfill in my lap. Yep, I was an obsessed crafter. I sat there and stuffed pin cushion after pin cushion. Good thing the next room was bright enough for me to stitch closed the stuffing hole. I got a lot accomplished that day. Have craft will travel!

Phew, that was long. I'm going to try and catch up...maybe you'll hear from me tomorrow too!

Yippee!!!

Check out my new toy. It's beautiful!

It's the brand new Cricut Expressions 2 with a touch screen. I can't wait to play with it. I ordered 3 cartridges before I even ordered the machine. I got a little carried away and needcd an ebay intervention. (I actually bought 4 cartridge, the same one twice.) I got a great discount plus some "free" money to pay for it. I dream about the things I want to do with it.

Sadly, it is still sealed in its box. Boo hoo hoo!

Here's why. At this point even the books and shelves are gone. The room is totally empty. We had some awesome rain a month ago which resulted in a lovely huge hole in the ceiling. It's now fixed but we needed to empty the room to avoid all the dry wall dust. Then we decided to empty it all the way to paint the ceiling and clean the carpet. Now that the carpet is done I think the walls need painting. We are tripping over an entire room. My poor hubby goes and lays on his cozy couch at night. It's half in the foyer, half in the dining room. It's sheltered by the huge, looming bookcases in the foyer. We can't walk down a hallway because of all the stuff. Too much stuff! We have to cut through the kitchen. I really, really want to play but I need to get creative with the room first!!

Drat...

Fall in Florida

We don't get much fall in Florida. I notice the weather change; I've lived here long enough. But the best way to pretend it's fall is to decorate for it. My Stampin' Up girl had a great class (come with me to the next one!) Here's my Halloween crow. I loved how it looked vintage.

Then we put poison labels on funny shaped bottles. I also finished the Spooky banner.

I love when the projects are finished before the season is over!

Easy?

Sometimes finishing a UFO is easy. Then I think if it is so easy why can't I get more done. I will look at it and think this would be easy to finish. Then I put it off. I wonder if I'm putting off the easy to really avoid the hard stuff. The stuff I want to do but am a little afraid I'm not good enough to do. So I just bury myself in thinking I need to take care of all these easy tasks. I'm hoping to do a few more "easy" projects, enough to clean off my craft room floor. Then I want to try some of this experimenting, some harder stuff.

I finished all of these in the last few weeks. My friend Jane started them all in a Thimbleberries club. She passed them on to me. I added borders, did some applique on a few, quilted them and bound them. They will help round off my craft table this weekend at the church's Fall Festival. Hopefully, I'll make some money!

Show and Tell

Working, working, working on those UFOs. Here was a charm pack wall hanging. It went together in no time but it sat because I wasn't sure I wanted to bind the funny angles. Then I got the idea to just sew it like a pillow and turn it right side out. Worked out fine. Plus, it is 100% finished.

Then there was my Christmas quilt. I had the brillant idea for my sewing group to do a block a month for a year and finish a quilt by the end of the year. I think they might think bad thoughts of me every time they look at their started quilts. I had a fat eighth pack of Christmas fabrics that I'd been hording and managed to use that and not need tons of other things, besides backing, background and chain fabrics. Like how it turned out!

I meander quilted the background. It made it heavy but it also make it go faster. That was a lot of quilt to machine quilt myself! Twisting it and shoving it through my machine really worked my arm and back muscles.

Here's a close up of the colors:

I've been busy. More pictures tomorrow!

How cute is this!

Isn't this adorable! That's me with the bald head. My brother is telling me he can show me how to do a better job. I've been playing a lot with old pictures and came across this one. What caught my eye, after the initial "ah, how sweet and funny" factor was the chair my brother is sitting on. That chair is now my sewing room chair, 40 years later.

My aunt (the one that taught me to quilt) helped me make this chair cover. How funny. I love old things, used things, repurposed things. I love the sense that I've saved it. I love that it has a history. Makes me feel like I'm part of history too.

Closets

Do you ever think about your closets? They can be wonderful (for hiding stuff) and scary (you hid stuff too long) and practical (where else should a vacuum live) and organized (nice even stacks of towels) and disasters (piles of clothes spilling off of shelves). I remember when I was little I had a closet with a long bar. That's what most closets were like back then. I was lucky and had a few little shelves built in on the side. You couldn't really see them because the clothes on the bar covered them. Those long shelves over the bar were to far out of my reach to be very helpful. In the olden days they had pegs for you to hook something on. Horror! No place to hide your messes. Nowadays we have closet systems. How amazing is that! We can arrange our closet to suit our every need. Take a minute to appreciate that blessing. :o)

I recently rearranged my bathroom linen closet and made it my fabric closet. I had all kinds of misc stuff in the closet. All of my fabrics---ok, not all, who could comprehend the all part---most of my quilting fabrics were in plastic tubs under my bed. It was efficient and practical. They were sorted by color and I could just slide out what I needed. Sounds good in theory but not as practical as I thought. Over time it just has not been working. I need to be able to look at several colors at once. Since I like scrap quilts that meant most colors at once. There would be no place to walk; every inch of the carpet would be covered. Cleaning it all up was even harder. Putting away fabrics I had pulled out was daunting. I decided I needed to be able to look at everything I had all at once. I dove in!

I made piles on my bed.

I made piles on the floor.

There was such a mess that I started to worry that I would never be able to reach the bottom, let alone finish. Then I worried that it wouldn't all fit. I realized I had more than I thought I did. Now it is heavenly. There's even wiggle room on the shelves.

Everything is sorted by color. I have a whole box of fabrics to "re-file". I'm trying really hard not to look at it too much. It makes me want to pick fabrics for a new project and I'm still working on completion issues.

A bonus to the whole process was that I found I had yardage that I had forgotten I even had. I'm trying to cure myself of my need to hold on to a piece of fabric and save it for the perfect project. I'm going to turn into one of those crazy hoarders (maybe I'm already there?) if I don't just USE IT! I'm going to try and sell some crafts at the church's fall festival in a few weeks. I need to take some of this yardage and make some bags or purses or something. I'm almost giddy thinking that I could empty one of the yardage tubs now under the bed. An empty tub would be a great place to organize something new...a new project..a new mess to hide...whatever I want.