Glamping table topper - making decisions

Lookeee lookee! It's all pulling together with the Glamping fabric table topper.

I cut a centered medallion from my old damask table cloth to use as the background in the middle of the table topper. The dresden circles and fans are pinned in position.

Since my Glamping charm pack had a predominance of pink squares - I've balanced their appearance on each side using half square triangles in a pink-green-blue-pink pattern.

I love the secondary cross pattern that blinks in and out of obvious-ness.

Even the half square triangles in the stronger colors as they're positioned here, remind me of tents - how camping is that??

I've trimmed up all my squares to exact 4.5" - I'm almost ready to seam them together - but see a few positioning tweaks to do.

And what will I feature in the corners? White background I'm sure about - do they need another dresden fan/ or a petite yoyo/rosette centered?

Then it's on to borders, binding and backing.

OH! speaking of backing - look what's in my stash...a vintage-y border print that might just work. It's a heavier weight though. Curtains would be great in this almost barkcloth textured print.

Hmm - musn't forget about the center of the dresdens too. Cover with an applique or edge with binding?

Decisions, decisions! All fun.



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Today I miss my dog

I don't know what triggered it today - but I miss my dog.

Perhaps it was working with the dog image in my fabric and fiber postcards that started the feeling.

Even though this is not an image of her.

Regardless - yeah - today I miss my dog.

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Elephants and Neopets - Thrift Share Monday

Carved Wood Elephant Bookend

A grey sky day today. I'm having a very quiet morning about the house doing some spring cleaning.

Somehow, though, I've spent a lot of time, while (whilst?) things are soaking clean, sitting in my chair with the laptop attempting to find the bottom of the internet through my Google Reader feed.

(Sad that Google Reader is going away in a month or two. In the meantime I've been trying out Feedly and Bloglovin and the new Beta Bloglovin and keep bouncing between them.)

Washington Forge Town & Country flatware

Now that my kitchen's all clean and beautiful I don't want to muck it up prepping some great thrift finds from recent buys. These pictured items, however, needed no prep/repair work whatsoever!

I love the lonely elephant bookend holding up my growing collection of shabby green books. I'm admiring her until someone else just has to have her from my Etsy shop!

And these Washington Forge wood handled flatware pieces were found in the most non-descript metal tin. Expecting to find cookie cutters inside, instead almost 7 place settings of practically mint utensils. I'm amazed that they're dishwasher safe with the wood handles - yet that is what they're labelled!
They're up for sale in my eBay shop. Though the forks have already gone to a gentleman who purchased them as replacements for his 87 year old neighbor's set.

You get some great stories from your customers when you're a reseller!

Quite a bit of our weekend was spent on eBay with my daughter. She's learning to take her own photos and is selling off her plush mountain of Build A Bear's and Neopets. Her eyes are on all things cosplay and she's saving up for more accessories for her next costumes!

Good luck, Nat!



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Design As I Go - Glamping Quilt

The center of this table topper quilt is s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g out!

I love the dresden circle I made last week (when I was ummm...doing my taxes...heh heh).
This week I took another 7 squares of the Glamping fabric pack and cut wedges for the fans in the corners. (I found a tutorial for that here on the Bloom and Blossom blog)

Okay - I almost followed that cutting tutorial - I finger pressed rather than ironed the squares in half.
Geez - I'm such a rebel.

Does anyone else find it tricky to know where to measure on those zigzag  pinked edges?
I did put the tape on  my dresden wedge ruler to keep track of my measuring line (like the tutorials show), but I found that if I used the ruler UPSIDE DOWN with the tape on the bottom - that the points of the zigzag edges would snug up against the tape allowing me a more consistent measurement.

Here's a picture for clarity....

I'm sure there's a billion tips for quilting out there - I'm learning the slow-as-you-go way!

Yep - that's the view of my sewing area from my computing area with my patchwork covered chair. I'm training myself to keep things put away and worktables cleared off. And I must say my productivity has increased because of that.

See that black area between the sewing table and the computing table? It's evil. It sucks everything down into the awkward unreachable-behind-things-crawl-on-your-belly zone.

I must rectify that soon!!

This is where the table topper design stands. I keep forgetting to think about the 1/4" seam allowances when I'm imagining the finished size - hence I'm enlarging the center to what looks good now, but my brain is processing that all elements will end up a scoootch closer together after the seams are done.

And NO - those are not the fixed positions for the half-square triangles - I'll move them around for weeks before fixing them in place!. (Maybe I'll make my hallway walls into design walls to leave the design up full time?)

Enough thinking and musing for now - off to do more!

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This is me - doing my taxes ;-)

Ummm - yep - I'm hard at work finishing up the yearly drudge work of tax preparation.

Yesterday, I completed my first ever attempt at a Dresden plate quilt block/applique. I'm playing here with that set of Glamping 5" fabric squares I snagged earlier this year.

I'm astounded it came together in a circle and not some wonky ellipse. I've been working hard at getting my 1/4" seams to be 1/4" and not 1/4"-ish. This time I built a seam guide of 4 layers of blue painters tape at the 1/4" mark - it helped to guide the fabric without overthinking too much!

(Blue Painters tape is one of my favorite sewing tools!)

My backup plan, if the circle was too ellipse-like, was to separate the Dresden circle into quarters and use the piece as four fans. Maybe I'll make four fans to use as corner motifs on the quilt as well.

Then I had to play with block layouts - Dresden in the center - wondering how many half square triangles would fit around it.

I discovered I could go around the square twice with the available fabric.

But I'm liking a cleaner look of the light/dark HST's -  so looks like I'm making more half square triangles with my fabric. I have plenty of white - using up a seen-better-days damask tablecloth that I've backed with interfacing to stablize. (Uh oh - did I break a quilt rule using fusible interfacing? Too bad!)

I'm itching to bind this table topper in red for some reason! But first, I'll finish our taxes...


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Is it Modern? Or Retro? Or what? - Thrift Share

corkboard dimensional letters
numbers tray puzzles

I know they're from the 70's, yet in today's vintage lingo are they mod? modern? retro? hippie?

In my head they're high school days stuff.

And they're fun to play with on the table.

Making shapes and playing with geometries!


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More Drawstring Bags plus Organizing the projects!

Beads for Courage Bags

I had an afternoon of charity sewing with a friend this week. We've put together another 14 or so lined drawstring bags for the Beads for Courage (BOC) organization. (I blogged about this Arts in Medicine organization here.)

Although we have written instructions provided by BOC for the bags, we made alterations because we weren't using a serger. That plus the fact we prefer pictures rather than sentences resulted in this:

Lined Drawstring Bag Instructions DOWNLOAD

Yup! An actual FREE downloadable file. I'm in a big learning curve here - and here's how you can help:

 Click on the above link and let me know if you could 1) access the file 2) download the file, etc. Thanks!!  This is what you'll find inside...

A petite how to in two pages. If this works - I can put forth more effort to making pretty downloads. :-)

Bundle of bags ready to ship

Cute little drawstring bag for Beads of Courage

Feels good to have a bundle of bags made - and I've updated the ticker on my new "Projects Ticker" tab above. Nothing like a bit of public accountability to TRY to keep me productive!!

(I'll be paused on the bag making for a bit - I need fabric and drawstrings for the next batch!)

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Thrifting on Spring Break - Thrift Share Monday

1940's McKee school book
SylvaC fawn/deer vase or candle holder

A short trip up the state to visit family last week.

Lots of browsing in antique shops, thrift shops and flea markets. (and too much eating!)

Ignore the Lego figure - it's the sweater vases that came home with me from Anchors and Acorns vintage shop in downtown Melbourne.

Lodging with Mum for a few nights means poring through family mementos! We can't give up our 1970's Fisher Price Play Family House (nor the Castle, though it's not pictured here). Hallmark came out with a matching Christmas ornament last year - had to have it!

Photos note for next time - pose the figures the same as the ornament!!! (I was about to dash out the door for the drive home and didn't take my time)

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