Productive Weekend

At the beginning of last week when  I looked ahead to the weekend, I gave a silent cheer when I saw that Saturday and Sunday were blank, as in no appointments and no social commitments.  My friends who are not involved in art find it hard to understand how I could like this, but I saw it as free time to spend in the studio.  I turned down an opportunity to go out to dinner Friday night, go the movies on Saturday night and go to a film festival and dinner on Sunday afternoon/evening.  Other than my morning walk, Church on Sunday morning followed by a brief trip to the grocery store, I stayed in all weekend and I did accomplish a lot.

I made this pretty little evening bag out of silk dupioni, one more entry for the Woman's Club Arts and Crafts competition. It measures about ten inches long, including the leaves on the bottom, by eight inches wide.

It was rather simple construction, being just one quilted piece thats wraps over onto itself.  The pokey parts were making all those little leaves (double sided, seamed and turned) and sewing the bottom together by hand through all those layers. And it took me three tries to get the handle right.  It's a good thing that I had a lot of that blue.  Isn't this magenta a pretty color? I considered having that on the outside, but went with my original plan of having the periwinkle blue be the focus. 

I dyed the fabric for the binding for my big Itajime shibori quilt and got that sewed on. I should tell you that after I had dyed the fabric, I didn't think it was a good match, even though it was the same black that had been used in the shibori, so I dyed two more pieces using two different blacks.  I ended up using the first one anyway. I started the hand sewing last night while watching TV and it's about half done.

I also finally wrote my letters asking for better gun control to my Senators and Congresswoman, paid my estimated taxes and did some other paper work.  I even found time to do some reading and made some headway on The Round House by Louise Erdrich.  I have a lot going on this week, but I also have more things on my list to check off.