This and That

It has been a while since I have posted. I have done one more item but didn't get a picture of it but will do that in the next couple of weeks. I missed one class - the clothes pin bag but will do that over the summer. The last class was a chatelaine and very cute. The embroidery is done and now I need to sew it together. It will get done, I promise you.

Julia has given me an award for this blog and I truly appreciate it. I will chose 5 people when I have time to think about who I wish to bestow this wonderful award to.



On a happy note, our daughter's mare had a little stud colt. He was born on Sunday June 14, 2009. He was about 2 weeks over due. On a sad note, the mare died very early on Wednesday morning. Our daughter was very upset as this was the first horse she owned on her own. And she had a 2 1/2 day old colt to look after. She found a brood mare that lost her colt 11 days prior and the baby and her have bonded. Here is a picture of Luke and his blood mother when Luke was only a couple of hours old.

Countdown To Retirement

Another UFO Done!

Wallet (April)
The wallet had us do applique. First we stitched out the petal and leaf outlines on the applique fabric after wed had attached fusible webbing. Once they were cut out, we fused them to the outline on the purse outter fabric. After that, the embroidery was done. The instructions were a bit vague in spots but overall it was a fairly easy project to make.

UFO's Galore

I had two weeks off during March and I sewed for 3 to 4 hours every day for 1 week. The objective was to get all the projects done from the embroidery club I joined. I got them all done but the March project. It will be done soon even if it did give me problems.

Each of the projects we do comes with the designs and instructions on how to do the project. There is even a couple of hints in the instructions that have been helpful. I truthfully can say I have learned a lot about embroidery this winter through the embroidery club and a few timely articles that have arrived in my inbox.

Grocery Bag (October)
This was the first time I went and I only got the embroidery done as I had so much to learn about placement of embroidery on the fabric. All 4 of the vegetables were embroidered onto a long narrow strip of fabric that we marked up with air erasable pens. I learned how to use the needle placement button on my machine and life has been good ever since.






Holly Tea Towel and Trivet Set (November)
This time we refined our skills from October and to add a piece of water soluable stabilizer to the top of the tea towel so the embroidery wouldn't embed into the pile. This project was a lot of fun to do and I got three sets made up over the Christmas break.






Perpetual Calendar (January)
The December project was a marathon project. Not only did we quilt the calendar itself, we had to make 60 buttons for the days of the week, the numbers, and some seasonal pictures. Then the months of the year needed to be embroidered. After cutting out everything, the days of the week, numbers and pictures had to be put onto buttons and velcro added to the back. The months of the year had to be cut out, sewn, turned, and velcro added to the back. Each of the 35 squares were suppose to have velcro sewn onto them but I opted out to glue velcro circles on. Once done this project turned out to be a winner for our house.






Pots Galore (January)
January's project was quicker to do. The pots were embroidered in a long strip as we did the October's vegetables. I did mine on even weave to try out another fabric other than cotton. These pots were suppose to be framed in 5" square frames but I couldn't find any in a dark brown so I opted to make a wall hanging for our house. To use up left over fabric from December's project, I backed the wall hanging with the button fabric. I have enough backing fabric and all the makings to make another one in sunset colours for our daughter.





March and April's projects will be added when they are done.

A UFO Done

I finished sewing 8 barrel racing shirts and now I am working on finishing up my pile of UFO's. The first one is done and I am thrilled with it.

This grocery bag came from October's Embroidery Club. It is a Snez Babic's design. The vegetable embroidery is super neat and fun to do. It took about 4 hours to sew the bag including the word Grocery on the top. I will be showing this at Quilt Til You Wilt in April.

SWAP -First Item Done

It is super easy and has only 4 pieces but it took me a month to make. My first SWAP item is done and I am certainly proud of it but embarassed that it took me so long to make. Time is not something I have a lot of these days. My job keeps me hopping with meetings so I decided to take the two weeks of Spring Break and sew. Sew, the top was the first thing on my list to do after I had plenty of sleep under my belt.



This top will become a jacket to wear with sleeveless tops underneath it. I am thrilled with how it looks. The only thing I will do differently is watch the colour of the serger threads. It was hard to decide if I should have used white or black. I probably would have been almost as unhappy with the black thread but maybe not.

McCall's 2094

When I was doing the following picture, I noticed the colour is not true but it reminded me of gingerbread men, hence the topper for this page. I have changed my mind on which view I am going to do for my wardrobe; I am going to do the long sleeved shirt in the winter white.

Here is a peek at what it will look like but the colour is tan not winter white.



I will do the short sleeved on in a fushia stretch eyelet. That will make it mid summer cool.

When using Paint.Net, I have noticed that if there are any lines that do not connect, it can't be layered. Hence, the white parts in the collars and sleeves of the two line drawings I did.

Paint.net

I have been playing with Paint.net and it has driven me nuts. But, I wanted to master it so I could see how some of my patterns would look like with the fabric. After countless attempts using "Quality Time: Story Tute" at http://jemimabean.blogspot.com/2006/08/storyboard-tute.html I was successful. I scanned the front line drawing for Vogue 8248, made it bigger and then took a picture of my fabric. After countless tries I got it done even if the print is too big for the drawing. I really don't care as I was successful. Now to try other line drawings and fabric.

Here is my first attempt:



To get my picture uploaded to my blogger, I had to save the picture first as a jpg rather than what the program asks you to save it as. Easy when you have it figured out.