an old pattern....

I found this pattern in a Country Threads book that is "old"....(copyright 1997)
The center blocks are 10 inches....and it is all fused applique.
The flower blocks are 5 x8 inches. There will be 10 of them. They will go along the top and the bottom.
I need to make this a very quick post. The plan is to go fishing and I am getting dirty looks. Instead of helping with that, I am cutting fabric and gushing about pretty flowers.

Heaven forbid I get caught on the computer!! I am off to help get ready....and I am not even sure what that includes. Tie a knot here or there I guess, although, tractor joe is doing a fine job without me!

lousy rockband photos

Last Christmas, FUZ played for the public at Christmas time....Crispy is a part of them.
I recently had the photos developed and some of them were dark and grainy. Bad.
In one of my magazines, was an article on doctoring bad photos....

First you get the picture wet, then sand off what you don't want. Then apply paint. I used some watercolor and acrylics.
I made Jacob's hat a little redder and his shirt more pink.
I got a little heavy with the sparkles on Jacob's too. oh well.

I cut out images from magazines to add also. I will add "the critics agreed", the when, the where, and the who to this before calling it done.
I was amazed at how much better the photo's looked like this, rather than being dark and grainy. So far, I am happy with the results...Crispy and Jacob like it too.

preschool paintings....

Everyone painted today in preschool. Our table was getting pretty messing, but it is such a colorful mess. This photo doesn't really capture it.
When we finished, one young artist decided he wasn't....he wanted to do more.....
He stapled two sheets together so it was big and got to work painting.
He said it was for his mom and dad.
Look at that paint brush in motion. A while back they drew pictures on the paper, then started painting.
The bugs were out at night is one of my favorites.

You don't have to wonder if the next one lives on a farm or not. He loves his John Deere tractors.

The next two are made by 3 year olds.

When they started painting, I asked them what they wanted the titles of their painting to be.

I got a kick out of biggest shark eating biggest muffin.

and....what a glorious giant ocean.

We are almost done with the school year. Next Thursday is our last day of school.

graduation and tossed artwork....

Friday night was graduation at our high school. Crispy was our driver. We were going to see what it was like to drive with him to high school.
Over all it is pretty uneventful......13 or so miles of county blacktops gets us there.
Except for the radio.
It was a tad bit loud and tractor joe made some adjustments.

Mean while, I was in the back seat taking pictures of some artwork.



4 years ago......
8th graders were cleaning out their lockers. I was in a classroom when one of them came in and threw this artwork away.

Horrors!! Not art projects!

"you can't throw that away, your mother will want to see it!"

He wasn't to concerned about it, and left it in the garbage.

Well me being me....a person who has a hard time throwing away things....pulled it out, rolled it up and took it home. It went into one of my cupboards of stashed treasures.....I would give it to him when he graduated.

Of course, I waited until the last minute to dig it out. I was so happy Friday night when I found it back right before we were ready to leave.

I had to shake hands and give hugs to a row of grads before finally getting to Brandon. There were about 17 of them. (small school)

"I have a gift for you"....
"what is it?"

"it is your artwork!"

When I saw him on Saturday, I asked him if he had opened his gift yet....

"ya, and I showed my mom....when did I make them??"

"8th grade, and you even got an A- on one of them!"

So it is official....not only do I collect my own junk....I collect other peoples junk. At least this time I was able to give it back to him....and his mom got to see it.

to the doctor with projects....

Yesterday, Karen came over with some finished baby quilts. I fell in love with the pinky/brown one. I tried to convince her to keep it and just hang it on one of her walls. She just about agreed to this because....
it has problems. It is a quilt as you go.
First she sewed the blocks together in rows.
Second she machine quilted each row to a strip of batting, making sure the backing was bigger on the top and bottom.
Third she sewed the rows together with the backing fabric. Then the extra fabric was folded over the row of blocks...kinda like binding going down....creating those long horizontal rows. The problem was in a few places the block edge wasn't caught. This really became apparent after she had washed and dried it....there were small, exposed and slightly frayed edges of blocks showing on two of the rows.
doctor, doctor....what do we do?????
Can it just be covered with something????
but what??????
I had one package of brown rick rack. We laid it over the quilt. It was like magic. We both loved how it looked. When she left, she was back to thinking she would give the baby quilt away. I have no idea if the operation was a success or not. I still want her to keep it.

There is a reason my postcard didn't get mailed yesterday....it too had some doctoring done to it this morning.

I got out my tool of choice...a tiny sponge brush and orange paint.
The card never protested as I taped it down with masking tape. I wanted a nice clean edge. All the imperfections of my stitching would be hidden under the paint.
You can see it still, but, you can't see it.
The card is looking better now with a new border. YES it is really done....
Unless I think of something else to do it.

that turkey quilt and postcard....

That turkey quilt is ready for some embellishment.
I am still working on what that will be exactly,
because I don't know for sure yet.
I pulled out some letter beads to make words. I could sew on some words like "love to hunt" "deep in the woods" "excellent marksmanship"....except most of the good letters have been used.
So that turkey is on hold for now.
I took the strips from trimming that turkey and sewed them together with a variety of stitches. Seemed like a good base for a postcard.
Right around my second cup of coffee, the ideas floating around in my head started to gel...I got out the paint and started painting this morning.

One of the teachers at school has breast cancer. She has gone through months of chemo to get ready for her surgery.

She will get this postcard. The post office is only open for about 45 minutes on Saturdays, and I missed that little window of opportunity to mail this...hopefully on Tuesday I will get there.

Next time I am out to the big city, I will be looking for word beads...

and...

some of that stuff that is recommended for using in fabric postcards. The ugly stitching around the edge is not by design. Some heavier duty needles would help too.

the pansy quilt

I don't know when I made this top. I only remember I had my mother in mind. She loves pansies.
But I wasn't that nuts about how it turned out....so I put it in the closet for "some day"


I guess this past Mother's Day was finally the "some day"....
After geocaching we spent the afternoon with her and a BUNCH of family....aunts, uncles, cousins, sisters....
anyway,

I tried using a different stitch for the quilting.
Ya know what???
She liked it!!


this is a rather historical moment...
It is probably the first time she didn't ask...
"why didn't you hand quilt it?"

geocaching

We did some quick geocaching yesterday.
There a ton of them in Albert Lea, Mn. We went to 10 and found 8. I could only log 7 of them though... we had been to one of them 3 years ago....geesh.
While at one of them I crawled under an evergreen tree with broken off branches. First I stabbed myself in the back, then I ended up poking myself in the head on one of the branches.
THAT HURT.
My eyes watered the pain was so great....
Tractor joe says he heard me say (bleep) (bleep) (delete)....I only remember saying "that's it, this will be a DNF (did not find)...lets get out of here"

Today is a new day...while my head is still tender, it doesn't affect my ability to think. So I have started a new little project. My turkey hunting aunt Barb is the inspiration....

I am in the middle of it now. It will be a tulle quilt, not much sewing on these kinds.
All the background fabrics are fused down to some batting,
the letters are ready to stamp some words,
and the turkey is ready too.


I don't remember the name of the pattern right now. I'll include that when I blog the finished product.
Right now I need to find out what turkey tracks look like, I may put some of those on this too.

trash to treasure

Tractor joe put up new paneling in our breezeway.

(hopefully I will get the before and after pictures blogged)

This is about a light for the little room.

I painted the old light a copper color.

I was the only one who liked it.

Everyone else disliked it.

They just weren't sure about it.

There had to be something else tucked away.

Tractor joe remembered an old base and globe up in the garage.

A dirty rusty old base.

Cornelious quickly painted it with some farm machinery paint.

...a silvery metal color.

Now it was my turn to dislike.

Hate is such a strong word.

It still needed some doctoring. There had to be a better plan.

especially with it's globe.....yuck!

It screamed 1960's institutional blahhhh.

I couldn't bear the thought of such an ugly light going up.

More thinking and talking....

We didn't have much paint to chose from.

The glossy white, the black, the clover white paint cans were empty.

There was some meadow green yet...

the color of an Oliver....

and what it

what if...........

what if we put the word "OLIVER" on the globe

and what if we did paint the base meadow green?





It would become the most incredible light in the world.

One of kind....something we all loved now.
I am just tickled pink by our results.

and it was almost free, if you don't count the price of the light bulb.

the last of the beer quilts...

I had one more set of "beer" letters that were finally put to use.

This one will go to Karen's oldest son.

He is a brew master too.

I finished it yesterday...right down to the binding.....believe it or not!

I did have to look up Ben to see if I spelled his name correctly.

Relief.

I got it right!

I know I should have looked it up before I stamped and quilted...

but it didn't look funny until I was done with it.....

Then I was looking at the heart. (can you see the American flag sort-of)

I am thinking a bunch of these hearts put together with a scrappy frames would be cute.

I made 3, when I made this one.

Seeds for another project.