Saturday, July 5, 2014

Peeking Around The Corner ...

... to see if anyone is still around to read this.  I hope so!

I need to get back into the habit of blogging, but I'm not going to stress myself out about the daily thing like I did earlier in the year.  I put so many rules on myself and I just got completely disenchanted with everything.  I wasn't blogging, I wasn't crafting, I wasn't doing much of anything except playing a game on my phone.  Now it's a good game, and I don't plan to quit playing it ... especially since I now find myself the leader of an alliance *yikes*, but I have been slowly getting back into getting some crafting done.  No rules, no deadlines (unless it's a gift).  Just crafting on what I feel like crafting on, and trying very hard to use up what I already have before buying new.

I'm not going to force myself to blog daily, just whenever I have some kind of progress to show, or some story to tell.  After all, this is supposed to be fun right?  Okay, now on to the bombardment of photos of things I've done over the past several months.

I made myself some applique chicken kitchen towels.  Don't remember if I mentioned them before and quite frankly, this morning I'm too lazy to go see if I did lol.  Hmm only have a photo of one so I probably already talked about these.  Nevertheless, here's the one on a red towel :-)


I got a wild hair one day and decided to actually do one of the projects in the painting magazines I always buy.  This was super easy and only took an afternoon. Quick gift idea ... painted on a candle set.


 I used up quite a bit of fabric scraps making these bowls.  I absolutely love them!  They are sitting on a buffet in my craft area to catch those little odds and ends that I never seem to put away when I should.  At least I won't lose them now!  These are made by wrapping strips of fabric around cotton clothesline and sewing by machine with a zig zag stitch.




I found the cutest crochet flower dishcloth pattern and went a bit crazy making them as gifts.  Friends received them, mothers received them, swap partners received them, I have some for myself.





I had so much fun making those dishcloths and bowls that I made a set for one of the friends I made playing that game on my phone.  She sent me back a picture of her 4yo son, who immediately grabbed the bowl, yelled hat, and put it on his head.  Adorable!



Now on to more recent items.  I am making an afghan along with my mom and friend, Amanda.  We're going to try to get together once a week on Skype to work on it and gab.  Our first week was fun, but there was a minor Skype issue.  My mom was able to use the audio and see our video, but when she tried to send her video it locked up on her.  Hopefully she is able to get the problem fixed to she can send video this week.  Here are the squares I've completed so far.




 
And the final photo is of a quilt that I finished yesterday ...... after 14 years!  This was supposed to be a birthday gift for my husband in September 2000.  Yeah right!  I was working full time and didn't even start the thing until summer.  There were a lot of tiny bits of fabric that needed to be sewn together on this and I didn't have a sewing room, or even an area where my sewing machine was set up all the time.  I had to dig it out of a closet and set it up, then dig out the quilt pieces and supplies each time I wanted to work on it.  It got boxed up for 3 moves and I finally pulled it out and got the top finished just before we moved to Wisconsin.  I tried to hand quilt it.  Too many seam lines that needed to be sewn through.  There are some bulky areas in this.  So I finally broke down and bought a walking foot and just did some simple straight line quilting by machine to get it done.  I spent my 4th sitting in my recliner and sewing down the binding.  It's now on the bed and even though I'm critical of my own work and there are many things I would do better if I ever made this again (yeah right!), I am quite pleased with it.