I'm Still Here

 A long time out-of-town friend sent me an email asking if I was OK since I hadn't blogged about the holidays as I usually do. No reason, just lazy I guess and not a whole lot to blog about. 

Thanksgiving was lovely, as usual at my niece, Lauren's. Great food and decor. Christmas seemed to come and go too fast and now I am in the process of un-decorating, not my favorite task. 

My son was here for a few days for Christmas. He lives so far away so I cherish the time he is here. We usually will spend one day in NYC, but this year we went to the NYBotanical Garden for its annual train show. We had gone several years ago, but it is different each year. All of the  buildings are replicas of authentic NY buildings, some still here and some that have been demolished, like Penn Station.  Kurt took a lot of pictures so here are a few.

Since the gardens are in the Bronx, we went to Arthur Avenue, NY's little Italy for some fun food shopping and lunch. Delicious!

This is the conservatory and where the train show took place. All of the roofs of the real thing are glass. I don't know what plant material was used to look like glass. All of the buildings were made of plant material.

Some of NY's more recognizable buildings.

I think this was the Penn Station that was demolished in the 60's to be replaced by something ugly.

There were model trains all over, including overhead and on bridges, also authentic replicas, like the Brooklyn Bridge and others.

PanAm Terminal

So thanks, Judy, for getting me off my doff and onto blogging again. I am still working on my daily stitching and as you may have guessed, I am behind with December. But I will post a few pictures soon.

November

 I finished November, except for one small block that I will do tonight. I didn't know if I would like working with such neutral colors, but I did.

Next month will be mostly about Christmas and lots of color

October

 Leaves for October. Some I like better than others. I thought I would color them in with crayons and then iron them. I did two that way and really didn't like them and there was no way to undo them.

My sister and I and two good friends had a very nice five day trip to New Orleans in mid October. None of us had been there before and we had a great time. We had some fabulous food, listened to jazz and took a couple of tours.

Halloween is a very big deal in New Orleans and we saw some incredible decorations, but this house was our favorite. It was a huge old house with spacious front and side lawns covered with life size skeletons. Each one sported a sign with a witty name/ and or saying. These are just a few of the pictures I took. Click on the pictures to see the details. 

I'm working on my November page and it is all in neutral tones, grays, blacks, taupe and brown. I read a saying somewhere about the month......NO sun, NO snow, NOvember. It's probably my least favorite month, except for my son's birthday and Thanksgiving. 

I am linking up with Off the Wall Friday.

Finished early

 I finished September a few days ago. I don't know why these circular designs go faster, but they do. I will be taking a couple of small trips in Sept and Oct. so it's alway good to be ahead of the game.

I need to put a little flower in the Sept. block, not much room there. Maybe a small Black Eyed Susan.

I received an email yesterday that my SAQA Auction piece that I showed last week has sold. That's always good news. 

I'm linking up with Off the Wall Friday.

SAQA Benefit Auction

 It's that time of the year where you can buy some wonderful affordable art from the SAQA Benefit Auction. You can read all about it here.

My piece, All Buttoned Up, is in Section 1. Bidding is between Sept 18- 24. Please read all the bidding info in the link above.

It is 12 inches square, as are all the pieces in the auction. Mine is comprised entirely of hand sewn buttons, sewn on in an ombre effect. There are tabs on the back that allow you to hang it in any direction. 

I'm linking up with Off the Wall Friday.

Finished

 Finally finished August. All those fiddly little flowers took a long time. I'm looking forward to Sept when I am going to make circles that encompass more than one block, as I did in June. But I think I will use autumn colors. I know I am going to look at my quilt with the embroidered circles for inspiration.

Stitching

 It's been over a month since I've posted. I don't know where the time goes. How can it be the last week go August? 

I finished July, staying with my red, white and blue theme.

I am behind on August where I am doing only flowers. Pinterest has been a huge source of inspiration. There are a lot of narrow vertical blocks, and I am finding plenty to choose from

Each year my fiber group, FiberWorks, puts on a show at the library. The theme this year was Inspired by an Artist. I chose Picasso and his blue period.

I printed several of his blue period paintings onto fabric. Since they were small, I could do them myself and did not have to rely on Spoonflower, a company that will print your photos on any size fabric. My piece measures 25 x 18 and is mounted on a black 30 x 30 canvas, as are all the pieces in the show.

When I dye fabric I often do a six way gradation. I had a whole set of this blue and some curvy pieced strips that I had never used. I thought the colors were a perfect match for Picasso's blues. As I often do, I added narrow strips of bright orange to give it a little zip.

I quilted each little piece onto one layer of batting with no backing. Then they were pieced into the whole quilt. I had to do a little extra quilting on the pictures so that they would not sag. 

I took some creative license and embellished the figures with curls or flowers or wallpaper. They still all look very sad.

I've titled my piece Moody Blues.  We hang the show next week at the Cyrus Booth Library in Newtown, CT, where it will hang for two months. 

I am linking up with Off the Wall Friday. Go see what others creative folks are up to.

On the Mend

 I'm feeling a whole lot better, but behind on my daily stitching. I'll get caught up soon. Funny thing is that my stitching has suffered. My outline stitch, which was pretty good does not look as good as it was. I'll get back in the groove, I hope.

This is all I have to show for the week. Doctor visits seem to have eaten up a fair amount of time and some days I just don't feel like sewing (horrors!). I'll get there.

I'm linking up with Off the Wall Friday.

Out of Commission

I, usually the over achiever, have fallen way behind with good reason. I was very sick. I had not been feeling like myself, no interest in doing anything, no appetite and cold...I'm never cold, and fuzzy thinking.  I was also having trouble walking. I fell in the middle of the night and couldn't get up. EMT took me to the hospital and I had sepsis from pneumonia and a bad drug reaction from a new cholesterol med. Who knows where it all came from? You probably know that I live alone, which didn't make things any easier.

Three days in the hospital and lots of antibiotics and I am home and feeling so much better.

For July I am doing mostly red, white and blue and as many stars as I can think of. It  feels so good to be stitching again. When I feel a little stronger I will continue with my Picasso project.

Progress

I have finished June, way ahead of time. I think that it went faster doing all the interconnected circles. Not sure why because I was still sewing on each block. I used variegated size 8 Perle cotton on almost every block.

Next month I doing something entirely different. Come back next week to see what it is.

A half a year gone by. Wow how did that happen? 

 Almost every year I make a 12" x 12"quilt for the SAQA auction in September. This year I am using a piece that was made for another challenge for the quilt guild, of which I was a member. The theme was Yellow Brick Road. It is made entirely of hand sewn buttons and I love it. But it was just hanging around here and I thought it would be good for the auction. It was fun to work on and look at all the different buttons and hopefully someone else will love it, too. I will tell you more about the auction when it gets closer and how you bid  online.

All Buttoned Up

I like the ombre affect and I have tabs on the back so that you can hang it in any orientation that you like. Why, WHY didn't I take a picture of the back before I sent it away?

I'm working on a whole new project and I will tell more about it next week.

I'm linking up With Off the Wall Friday

Stitching and Stuff

 I think that I have used up all the circle areas and I just have a few small squares to finish June.

 As I was last week, I'm still liking working with the Perle Cotton variegated thread. I'm only working on it in the evening while watching TV. Too many other things going on during the day.

One of them is a project for the yearly exhibit in my FiberWorks group. the theme this year is Inspired by an Artist. I'm doing Picasso's blue period and I have some good ideas. Part of it relies on my doing a very narrow free motion satin stitch. I have used this technique very successfully on many projects. For some reason it is giving me a lot of trouble. I changed threads and needles and switched to a size 14 Jeans needle and heavy jeans thread. The machine didn't like that at all and jammed. As i was trying to unjam it, this happened.

Yep, sewed right thru the nail and tore the flesh off the side of the finger. It bled a lot and hurt a lot. I called my sister, who lives right down the street and with her help we got it to stop bleeding. She put on a wraparound finger bandage and a finger cot. I had a fancy affair that evening and I really wanted to go. So I did and  got thru the evening. 

The next day I had a luncheon to attend, so with bandage and finger cot I was OK. Yesterday I had an appointment with my primary doctor for a regular checkup. I showed her my finger. I had been doing everything wrong. I was two days too late for stitches and she wants me to wash it every day with soap and water, put on Bacitracin and keep it loosely covered with gauze (none of which I had been doing). The nail and skin flap will eventually fall off.

So be careful out there and don't do what I did. Actually I did it once before several years ago, but that was with a regular needle, which broke and did not injure my finger as much. The Jeans needle is much stronger and it did not break.

BTW I was able to embroider in the evening with no trouble. It was my left hand that I injured and I am right-handed.

I had a great new dress to wear to the Gals and I went in my closet hoping to find an appropriate small  bag to take. I found this one that I made several years ago and it was perfect with the dress. It is Dupioni  silk and the patch is velvet embossed by me.

Altho it was small, I was able to get a lot in it. I bought the handles and directions at the Houston quilt show. The fabric comes off and you can use the frame with other fabrics. My sister made two out of cute summer fabric.

I am linking up with Off the Wall Friday.

Daily Stitching

 I'm moving right along with June. I am using mostly DMC variegated threads for this month, especially for the circles that take up more than one block. 

I did have some old bargain brand variegated floss in my stash and there is no comparison with the quality. The Perle is so easy to use and not having to split the floss is a plus. I would say that the Perle is about equal two strands of floss.

I'm also  trying to use some of the stitches that I used in my big circle in a square project from last year. On the purple circle I used a zig-zag chain stitch and for the blue I used Wheat stitch. surprisingly easy. The yellow/orange uses my good old fallback chain stitch, but for the upcoming circles I will try to do something different. 

Peonies are in full bloom. I love my new yellow that is a cross between a tree peony and a herbaceous peony. so pretty, I wish they lasted longer.

I'm linking up with Off the Wall Friday.

Stitching

 My adorable five year old neighbor girl loves to go barefoot, even on days that most of us would deem too cold. No parental neglect here, she just likes to go shoeless. She brought to mind a book I used to read to my second grade classes way back in the 60"s.  Going Barefoot by Aileen Fisher. The book was written in 1960 and is out of print, but I was able to find an old library copy in very good shape for a decent price. Over and over she refers to June as the barefoot month.

Of course I read it all over to myself and it is just as delightful as I remembered. It all in rhyme and has wonderful illustrations.

So I had to include it on my June page, which I am doing in a different style. There will be several large circles encompassing  more than one block. I have finished one.

For my circle design inspiration I am using the quilt that I made out of 286 hand embroidered circular designs. I'm also using mostly variegated threads.

I am linking up with Off the Wall Friday.

I'm still here

 My sister reminded me of how neglectful I have been in my Facebooking and blogging. No excuses, altho I have been busy with gardening and my son was here for a few days, too. But when I went to write this entry, I saw how very behind I am.

I finished my April stitching. I liked having spaces between the blocks, but did narrower spaces for May.

So here is May,  finished except for one block which I will do tonight. My color scheme was coral, aqua and lime green, with a few variations.

The colors look different, depending on where I took the picture. This one, taken outside has a bluish tint.

On some designs I used more than one block, like this one that uses 5 blocks.

And this one that uses 2

I plan to do more of that in June and will also use brighter colors and some variegated threads. 

I also used my page to document some things going on in my life, like finding a robin's egg in my driveway. No sign of a nest, but I do love that fabulous color. I had a lot of trouble depicting this nest. I think the only thing I got right was the color of the eggs.

Or the little bunny who was in my garage for two days, don't know why and it wasn't easy getting him out. Then that night he ate every single flower on my new Dianthus plants....no leaves, no buds, just flowers. I know it was him and I have since sprayed with an animal repellent.

I'll try to blog more often. I used to be so diligent, but it's easy to slip away.

I'm linking up with Off the Wall Friday.