Altered Books

Two Altered Book Round Robins going on, fun fun fun!!! One RR with my AFFs and another with my friend Kathi, her daughter Melissa, and my Mom.

Here are pages from Mom's book, I'm next to work on her book.

Cover

Inside Front Cover Spread

First Page Spread

Second Page Spread

Books for this first round are scheduled to mail to the next person on September 17 - Let the FUN Continue!!!

Happy Creating!

AFF Art Journal

In February 2010 a group of Artsy Fartsy Friends started an Art Journal Round Robin. We finished our books and returned them to the owners in April at the COF Retreat.

This group is amazing, so much creativity and talent. My book traveled to New York, Massachusetts, Nebraska, and Minnesota.

Each person created their own cover and back cover, determined size, theme, and provided blank pages. My theme was inspiration/techniques - who inspired and/or taught you techniques to be creative.

My covers were made from fabric paper and my base pages are lutradur.

 

Front Cover

 Back Cover

Kathi's first page

Kathi's second page

Nicki's first page

Nicki's second page

Colleen's first page

Colleen's second page

Creating space and testing iPad blogger app

After a bit of waiting and work our house remodel was finished and I have this beautiful space. I've been working in it for a year now. It took several months while working around projects to get it set up. I took these photos in December, but blogger didn't allow photos to be posted via iPad. While yes, I still have my laptop I'm hooked on my iPad. Getting the laptop out seems like such an effort....so is technology helping us or making us lazy? From my experience, have to say a little lazy!

Here are the photos of my space, it no longer looks this tidy, work tables are full of projects and fabric is spilling out of drawers.

Desk, with TV (small mostly for background noise), laptop (wireless doesn't work in this room, use it for printing), printer.

Work station, mostly for stamping, paper projects, assemly. Love my windows!

Tool table: paper cutter, Cricut machine, light box, and small tools in storage drawers.

Sewing, cutting, ironing

STUFF! Storage of supplies, tools, etc.

STUFF! Storage of supplies, other tools, etc.

Ahhh.....the weekend

Great Friday Night PJ Party on HGTV board, Lynn taught us how to make a CC keyring case. Cute little case to carry your cc, driver's license, and a few $$s when you don't want/need to carry a full size purse. Fun and easy little project, even with the zipper. Great project to use scraps of fabric and batting.

 Starting fabrics

 

Finished CC Keyring Case

I have never made a whole quilt, until this January I had only made 4 or 5 quilt blocks.  I don't make New Year's Resolutions, but this year I made sort of a resolution. I decided to participate in the HGTV BOM Challenge and make a quilt out of the finished blocks. The group leaders choose a theme for the year then on the first of each month the challenge leaders post a block pattern. This year is "Closed Barn Door", with a different star block in the center of the "Barn Door".  I have made all four blocks so far, except I used practice fabrics for March so I need to make it again to match the rest of my blocks.

Here is March, I'll repost when I make this block again with the fabric I am using for the BOMs.

It is a "Hole in the Barn Door" with a "Folded Star" center block. Not as hard as it looked, just a lot of small pieces. 

April BOM - "Hole in the Barn Door" with "Cluster of Stars" block in the center. Much easier than March BOM. I do need to keep practicing, it isn't perfect, but I'm going to live with it.

Happy Rest of the Weekend.....

Agility Day

Unlike last weekend, not much sewing this weekend but a GREAT day of Agility with my cute furkid, Penne. Best agility day we've had, 6 runs: 2 gamblers, 2 standard agility, and 2 jumpers. We qualified in 5 of the 6!!! WAY TO GO PENNESTER!!!

This is the tired agility pup shortly after we got home. Look at all that GREEN!!! (green = qualifying)

Sewing Weekend

Lots of sewing this weekend, started Friday with the HGTV PJ party iPad bag project. Just followed along because I didn't have my homework finished to stitch along on Friday.

Saturday morning I made this cute gift bag for Jade, the little girl my daughter babysits for. Found this cute Happy Birthday fabric in the remnant bin at JoAnns. This bag is reversible so after the gift is removed it can be used as a little girl purse.

Happy Birthday gift bag

Reversed little girl purse

 Late Saturday afternoon and finished today, another "Twister". This twister was made with 2.5" blocks cut out of 4" blocks and 2" border. Need to finish the binding. A border probably would have made it look nicer, but I just wanted to see what the 2.5" blocks would look like. Made this out of "scraps". The binding is purple, looks black in this photo.

iPad bag, made this today using the instructions from Friday's HGTV PJ party. The original instructions have a strap, but I just wanted a sleeve for my iPad.

 

Now to finish my CQ one block swap block, need to mail no later than Tuesday!!!

Twister, Practice Quilting, and Binding Added

I made a small twister so I could practice quilting before attempting to quilt my twister table topper.

I quilted the outline of the twisters using orchid color thread.

 Front

Back

Binding Added

Thank you to "TheCraftyGemini" for posting this how to make and attach binding tutorial on YouTube. I have read a few binding tutorials, this one made sense to me.

Off to work on more projects with deadlines - happy creating!!

Borders added to Twister

Borders added to Twister Table Topper, now how to quilt finish it? Need to do some research on quilting.

Christmas tree skirt was a bigger piece than this one but we "tied" it, I want to machine quilt this one. Simple machine quilt of course.

Plan to use the green print for the back and the red border fabric for binding.

WOW 2 Posts in 1 Day!!!

Here is my "Twister" table topper, needs borders and finishing. Fun project!

Happy Weekend!!!!

Happy Friday - Happy Weekend....hoping for a very creative and productive weekend.

Beginning tonight with the HGTV board PJ party - Twister project. Here is my starting piece waiting for instruction tonight about cutting pieces using the "Lil Twister" template and sewing the blocks back together to make a "pinwheel" table topper.

Then working on AFF pages and One Block Swap.

Sneak Peek of the One Block Swap - Blue & White

Happy Stitching

Valentines

Fun Friday night with friends in the craft room. My "swim mom" friends came over to see and play in my craft room. We get together to assemble treat boxes for our college kids. For valentines I invited everyone over to my house to assemble the boxes and make valentines. Lots of fun stamping, cutting paper, embossing, and glitter on all!

Here are my valentines

2011 and a new project

In 2010 I finally made some "art" quilts. Are they really art? Not sure but I made them and I like them. Thanks to my HGTV friends that invited me to be part of "The Bakers Dozen". A group of 13 women with a variety of quilting and creative styles making art quilts based on themes.  This group started in May 2010 and will continue through 2011, every six weeks or so the group posts their quilt for the current theme.

First Theme "Freedom" posted in July

 Bangles Bubbles and Beads

Symbol

 Currently working on "Hardware Store" - was due in Dec. but the holidays took over now due next week.

Along with "The Bakers Dozen" I'm creating Round Robin Books with some "Artsy Farsty Friends".

2010 was an awesome year for creating, I was flattered to be invited to join the creative ladies in these two groups.

Challenge for 2011, BOM - Block of the Month. I tried last year and only made one of the 12 blocks. I've set the goal of making all 12 this year. This could be a challenge since I'm not a "quilter" and haven't made many blocks and never a whole quilt. It would be nice to make all 12 so that I could have a quilt at the end of the year.

Starting out on schedule with a practice block, but, need to unsew and fix the corners.


Opps!!!! I'll get the corners turned around this weekend!!! Got to it this evening, all fixed.

Merry Christmas

A Merry Christmas here! Fun with family and lots of good food.
Posting with my iPad! Still learning all the functions, but it is cool!

Mug Rug

Ladies on the HGTV message board have been posting "mug rugs"-small quilt for your cup of tea/coffee/hot chocolate and a couple of cookies. Had to give it a try, here is my first attempt. Used tutorial by: I'm Just A Guy Who Quilts

It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas

First snow about an inch, continuing through the day. Good day to do house work and holiday things.

Trying to be ahead of things this holiday season. I started on my holiday projects in October.

My favorite swap, HGTV Secret Santa Stocking Swap (SSSS) is in full swing. Each person received the name of her SS mid October. Each person makes and fills a stocking for their SS, the completed stocking needs to be shipped to SS so that they receive it by Dec. 18th. My stocking is finished I have most of the items to fill it. Working on a couple handmade items but will be ready to ship by Dec. 13th. This is the crazy quilted stocking I made for my SS, hope she likes it.

Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas. Enjoy time with family and friends celebrating and preparing to celebrate the holidays.

Craft Room Ready

My craft room space is ready!! Yesterday I started moving things in and organizing the space. Took all day to get the storage area set up. Lots of cleaning to do on the shelving/storage containers.

This is the view from the doorway to the left side of the room. Note, a bit of organizing to do! This will be the paper crafting area. Two tables one for tools: Cricut, paper cutter, Xron sticker machine, and embossing gun. Other table for work space.

Desk area, dog bed will be move to the side and Ott light will be moved to the other side of the room by the sewing are.

Sewing area: sewing machine and cutting table will be in this area. View out the slider into the backyard.

Storage area, still need to put the fabric and paper storage shelves/containers in here.

I'm sure things will change before I'm completely moved in but for now this is my plan.

Happy Friday!!!

Love the weekends. Last weekend was very productive, hoping this weekend will be too. Along with the clutches and needle case I posted last weekend, I also tried something new. Tried making a fabric background with bits of fabric placed between solvy. Found this technique in Fabric Art Collage -40+ Mixed Media Techniques.

Not as successful as I hoped, but not bad for a first try. I'll be trying this again this weekend, my friend Kathi gave me some good suggestions on how to do this technique.


Happy Friday, wishing everyone a WONDERFUL Weekend.

Made a few things

Sunday night already? Where did the weekend go? Stained door casings, made a couple sample clutches, finished my last "Ugly" Swap gift, and did a little crazy quilting.

I'm going to make a clutch for Emily, my daughter, to use on her wedding day. I've made a couple samples to determine what size she would like. I have a yard of Champagne Dupioni Silk on order. I made these two this weekend.

This one is about 7" wide Sarah choose the fabric for this sample.

This one is about 6" wide, made out of Ivory dupioni silk, great find in the remnant bin at JoAnn's.

I'll be trying another style next week.






I participated in an "Ugly" swap with the HGTV group. My swap partner was Dyed Grey, she made me this beautiful quilted table topper. Amazing what she did with the ugly FQ I sent to her.

I'm not a tradational quilter, I made a couple crazy quilted pieces and one quilt block zipper pouch. I need to mail this last piece, needle case.

Happy Creating, wishing everyone a Great Week.