Fee - Fie - Foe - Fum

I smell the blood of an Englishman....hahahah     remember that?

I made the giant last night. i love that large nose. haha

he's got some humongous shoes, too. i had the owl to do last night, too, but didn't make it. it took 3 hours for the giant and by then it was 11pm so i gave it up for the night.

But tonight i hope to finish the owl and a couple bats and some stars. those all are kind of small so hopefully i can do them all.

The weather is still cloudy and misty so all i want to do is nap. i need spring.



 

More magic

Last night i made the wizard..

and the unicorn...

I am really liking these..they are so much fun.

Tonight i am trying the giant and an owl. then i have 11 more things after that. this is gonna be a cool quilt.

Stay tuned for more adventure.

Castles, dragons and wizards

Let us wander into the enchanted woods and find a castle...and a dragon...and a wizard...and a unicorn...and a giant, some bats, an owl, and other magical things.

I found this book at a quilt show a few years ago and fell in love with it. i saw it again a few weeks ago and pulled it off my bookshelf and onto my desk...where it sat for a couple more weeks. then yesterday i finally pulled some fabric, copied pages for paper piecing and took it home.

She has this cute sampler quilt shown in the book...along with a lot of mini quilts...ones made with just the dragon and the knight.....or with a good witch and bad witch...and others.

 
Last night i made the castle and the dragon....what fun. i am going to make all the elements and put them all together in a quilt...some little boy will dream of dragons when it is done.

Tonight i am making the wizard and the unicorn. stay tuned for more fun (and magic). the purple background is commercial fabric but the the rest is my hand dyes. great way to use up smaller pieces of fabrics.

Oops!

My goodness....I've never had this happen before.

While I was winding a bobbin on my embroidery machine I heard a POP!  my plastic bobbin broke. as you can see...there was a thread explosion. LOL    i was able to wind it back off the broken bobbin and onto the spool of thread and then rewind it onto a new bobbin.

One of those experiences that you just don't want to relive.

I am embroidering carousel animals for my sister. they are so cute....a horse, elephant, tiger, polar bear, reindeer and more. i'll show you when they are all done...there are 9 of them and i am on number 6.

Who is your shipper of choice?

When you mail a package...who do you use to ship that package? normally i use the good old post office. i have been doing some eBay selling and shipping lately. i like the post office because i can get all my supplies free and online....boxes, labels, stickers...whatever i need. i can even buy postage online for my packages...AND...set it up for the mail person to pick up my packages for me....all for free. do you know that if you buy your postage for packages online that they are cheaper? Yep....you save a few cents by going online and printing out your label. of course, if you are buying online you are using a credit card so you have to pay that promptly to keep that savings from the post office.

I got a package from Amazon the other day that came by UPS. we have a very nice UPS lady...very personable...i like her. she pulled up and honked as she usually does and i went out to see what goodies we had. she couldn't open the door behind her seat to get the package. she says packages shift in the back as she is driving and occassionally drop down by the door and block it so she can't open it. well, you know, they pack the truck back to front, so her first deliveries are closer to her when she opens the door inside the truck.

So she gets out of the truck and goes to the back of the truck and opens that door. well, now my package is all the way up at the front of the truck. she steps on the bumper and says...yep, your package is stuck in the doorway...it seems like it hit the lock and locked the door. So, she proceeds to climb into the truck to retrieve my package. About 200 pounds of driver just starts climbing all over the boxes to retrieve my book. the truck is packed up so she just steps on the boxes to get to the front. one box was about 8" square. i hope there wasn't anything breakable in there.

So, be aware....UPS drivers just step all over your boxes if they have to get to the front of their truck. pack wisely......just saying.

February Stashbusting

Wellll...according to my records .... in February 73.5 yards of fabric left my studio. isn't that great? BUUUTTTT.... i can hardly tell a difference. sheesh!!  that's so not fair.

I figure about 15 yards of that was scraps that got mailed out in 10 USPS medium flat rate boxes. the boxes were stuffed with the appropriate color requested and then pieces of yardage added to round out the box. i am estimating 1.5 yards per box but there was probably more. but i can live with that figure.

Also, in the last couple weeks i have been busy emptying those plastic bins that had partially done projects in them...some of them YEARS old. a couple of them i just threw away...i had no desire to finish them and wondered what i ever saw in them to begin with. i actually didn't count the yardage that i threw away. but i did finish these AND get them quilted. yea me!!

This is from the April 2008 issue of McCall's Quitling magazine. it is called Gumballs...beats me why. but it is great to use up scraps. their finished size was 60x72 but i added the sunflower border and made mine 74x88. better couch size in my opinion. i have yet another box with this exact same pattern cut out in browns. i must have really been trying to use up those scraps in 2008. LOL  there have got to be about 75 different fabrics in this quilt.

This little beauty (50x50") is made of fabric with fish, turtles, seahorses and starfish on it. i THOUGHT it would make a good 1 block wonder quilt. i had all the little matching squares cut up in the plastic box. as i put a few blocks together i realized they didn't really work as i wanted them to. but i decided to go ahead and finish them anyway. i put 4 of the 4-patch blocks together and added sashings and a border and considered it done. a little kid will only see the fish and turtles and still like it . (i hope...LOL)

This was a top that was already pieced and lounging in the cabinet for about 6 years. it has machine embroidered roses in the middle of each block. it was made with my first embroidery machine way back when i first got it...and i was still working. and i've been retired for 5 years. but i still like the fabrics but today i would not have put the roses on it. but it is quilted and done is done...it is 62x76

This was also many scrappy pieces in a plastic bin...all cut out. i had pieced 24 blocks. and actually started to finish the other 24 blocks but decided i really didn't care for it anymore and trashed the rest of it that was not pieced. unfortunately, once i put the blocks together that i had, i realized that from across the room, it actually looked decent. but the trash man had already taken away the pieces i had thrown out. so this Streak of Lightning (from the Nickel Quilt Books) became only 64x86 instead of twice that big. oh well. this was cut out several years ago and had every available fabric that i had in my stash i believe...at least 100 different fabrics...probably more. as i was piecing it and seeing it close up i didn't really like it now but once it was on the wall, i noticed the 'lightning' white spaces more clearly. although there were many shades of light fabric.

And the last thing i have to show you today is a Round Robin quilt that was done several years ago when i was a member of the LongArm Chat online group. I really like this quilt and it, too, was marinating in the cabinet for some time. my Photowise program for some reason wouldn't process the full picture, so all i have is the middle and a pic of the corner. but i think you get the idea...hopefully. there were some awesome ladies that added borders to this quilt and i thank them once again.

So, i hope March is as productive as January and February have been. i have many more plastic bins to empty and much, much more stash to bust.

If you are interested, I will be putting quilts on eBay for sale...starting today. i also have my selvage jackets and vests out there and will be adding more things along the way in the next few weeks.     eBay seller name is  shimmymom    go take a look....might be something you just gotta have. LOL

Till next time...happy stitching.

A bit of stashbusting....thanks to my friends.

I mailed the last package today....10 boxes of fabric scraps went out to people NEEDING scraps. LOL   i advertised that i would stuff a box for the price of postage plus $5 and you could pick whatever color you liked. i had red, brown, blue, yellow, pink, black, orange, white/beige, green and purple. i have gotten the nicest notes from people loving their fabrics. and i am so happy that those boxes are empty...well, a few of them have scraps in them again already.

It takes me about a year to get the boxes stuffed full. they are 20 quart plastic bins and they hold a LOT. i keep saying i will use them all up but i never do. but i have actually used a lot of it...it is just more than i can use myself. so, i am happy to share with whoever would like to have them.

And i have been busy the last couple weeks quilting up some of my tops that were pieced years ago and finishing up piecing tops that were living in plastic tubs for years. my plan this year is to get rid of all that stuff. it's now March and i have made a noticable dent.

There are now 5 quilts in the 'to be bound' pile so perhaps tomorrow i will get to a couple of those. and will try to show you pictures of projects finished. it feels good to finish things.

How is your stashbusting going??? making any progress??  i hope so.