New things for the NEW YEAR.....

Okay, the new year is almost three months old; so is my motivation, lol!

I haven't been sewing but I have been attempting (mind you I said "attempting) my hand at jewelry making. Now having a DD who is really good at this is a bit intimidating to start with, having to buy supplies (yes I'm prone to excesses) secondly and thirdly being old enough to need 2.00 reading glasses (at least I find them at the dollar store.... that leaves more money for buying beads, crystals and something they call "findings") this means nothing more than I have three strikes against me before I even begin, right? Ahhhh but I have never been deterred by a small amount of adversity so HEREeeeeeeeeeeeee I go anyway.

Tried my hand at a necklace with matching earrings and then made another (after staring and smiling at first one). Then decided second one was a bit better, first one needed help.....in this case "help" means you cut the wire, remove all the beads and DO IT OVER ! YEP, me the "I don't like to redo it girl" did just that. See the flower center focal piece just kind of lopped out at you, like a little rabbit who was too sick to stand on its own...oh well, lousy comparison but I discovered during the making of the second one that if you criss cross the wires THROUGH the focal flower or bead, the two strands like each other better and they come together for the common good of all, lol.

SO I "fixed" number one and now I'm off to some new challenge, trying to make a flower petal out of some round mother-of-pearl chips with beads....can't find a pattern and can't figure out how to make it lay right.... sigh *****.... pursue, pursue, pursue.... On the left we have the first attempt (BEFORE the FIX !) and on the right we have the second set....

Fear not! I SHALL RETURN !!! (uhhhh, whenever....)

HAPPY NEW YEAR !

Happy New Year to everyone and I sincerely hope everyone has a great year in 2011.

Our Christmas Holiday was very unusual this year as we lost my Dad on December 22, 2010. We will miss him but we "REJOICE" at his new address.... HEAVEN is now his home!
He spent the last nine years of his life in a nursing home and I know he is much happier now. My Mom is 91 and they missed their 73rd Anniversary by a mere 6 hours. We told Mom that we are "giving" her that one. She is still staying with me due to some Blood Pressure issues but is doing as well as can be for the time being.

That aside, I haven't had much time to do any sewing or playing but alas and beware, I am MOO-ving in that direction !! AHAaaaaa... all those little ideas are beginning to spin around inside my head... think I'm going to pick up the BIG bunch of squares I cut out last year for a Valentine throw and perhaps "throw" that together in time for Valentines Day 2011! Sounds like a good place to start if you ask me, right? RIGHT!

I'll be back..... sooner than you think... LOL !! Now HAPPY SEWING TO ALL and to ALL A GOOD NIGHT !!

Here I am again! Not gone as long this time.....

Ok. I went to JoAnn's craft and fabric store for a stroll through the fabric and saw this darling pumpkin stack that was priced somewhere around $30. I thought (don't we all!) "gee, I can make that" (LOL) and so home I went, dove into the stash like the cat lookin' for a mouse in the hayfield and came up with a few small pieces of Halloween colored prints and WALLA! I was off to the races....hmmmm,let me see now, how did that look? Ok, senior moment, forgot exactly...go online, look at JoAnn's website, AHAaaaa, there it is; print picture, pin it to the wall above the cutting table and away I go. You've figured out by now that I have no pattern, RIGHT? Right.

He (she?) turned out pretty much BIGGER than the one at the store, my Spider was a really fun, used yarn (fun fur type) and made loopies for her legs, oh, and did you see those little "beady" eyes? HA! A couple of colored seed beads did the trick. I used multicolored thread for the stitching around the pumpkin's eyes, mouth and nose (noses?-well there are three of them!)

Ok, serged around the edges, put 'em all together and Uh-Oh...what about that hat? And the brim is supposed to "stand out"? Oh dear. Got out some really heavy interfacing, drew on it, cut it out, used it for pattern to cut the fabric, ok, yes, its REAL stiff, now for the hat part...oh yeah, and the band. Say WHAT? Ok, hat part should be able to cut it using template from FAT CAT quilt ( it worked) and a wide strip of fabric for the band, now "ease" all together. But wait, I need to embroider something on the band. Chose a little ghost/halloween design; once accomplished, put it all together and here she is! Whew!!

New purses to carry....oh where to go??

Well at last I have actually been busy enough to post a couple of new purses here (yes, it seems that I'm either "in a rut" or "on a roll" but I'll worry about that later. Right now... fun fun fun, sew sew sew, and then where oh where shall I go to carry my new bags? I will need to go somewhere everyday if I keep this up, three new purses in the last 4 days, WOW ! Whew!!

A friend call yesterday and said "what ya doin"? (Texans never pronounce all of the word ya see) and I said "making a purse". "WHAT she replies, like you NEED another purse" (color me grinning) as I said "Its not about NEED"! Nope, if I want another one I'll make another one...now I'm going to have a garage sale in a few weeks (waiting for a cooler temperature; been 100 here and thats TOO hot) so I really need to weed out the closet and make a decision which handbags to part with...hmmmm,....or CAN I? Oh well, I'll worry about that later too.

Here are some pictures of the latest two purses. The "autumn" bag is foundation pieced using a modified dresden plate template and then quilted on my Janome 6600 (using mode 3 stitch 45) with a variaged thread in the needle. I made a wide binding for the top edge and the candy corn looks good enough to take a bite, lol!

The second bag I call the PinkBag is a cotton patchwork printed fabric of lime green, white, pink and a bit of turquoise. I quilted around the patchwork design(s) of the fabric with hot pink thread (using mode 2 stitch 47) and then decided to have a go at doing some embellishing on the pattern using seed beads. Hopefully that shows well enough in the photos to be seen.

Now I guess I'll have to go to Wally World to carry the purses; how many trips to WW can I make?

Just thought I'd elaborate a tiny bit more. The two white drawer units (under the leaf of the Arrow cabinets) are from Ikea.

On top of the plastic storage units (7th pic from the top, I think) there are 4 divided plastic boxes with handles that hold reg thread spools. These open on both sides, lid snaps down tight and they are actually "garages" for the MatchBox cars found them in the toy department at WalMart for $6 and each one holds 48 spools of thread (won't hold mini cones though).

The most difficult thing about setting up this entire room was hauling it all upstairs!! As you can perhaps tell from the window view, this is an upstairs bedroom in my home. The Idea drawer units and the Office Depot bookshelf units were not too bad to assemble but better have some muscle behind that screwdriver (or have a hubby to do it for you), NOT in my case, lol.

Anyway, I'm so happppppppy its DONE!

Now, back to the UFO's....heehee

Call it FINISHED....my sewing room!!

Having bought my home (July '09) and being faced with a 12 X 14 bedroom for a sewing room I had my work cut out for me.....after all, how can you POSSIBLY fit 6 machines (all need to be usable, right?) into such a small space. Not to even mention the stash of an OCD...no, not just fabric. Theres fabric yes, of course but, but, but, (trying to think of some spiffy sounding excuse...failing) theres also the yarn, thread, buttons, beads, tools, oh and did I mention fabric? OM Gosh, tons of it, I mean all of it, oh gee, Im really not defending myself very well AM I?

Now also, being the "Queen of Craigslist" or uh.... Ms. Frugal Google (heehee) AND being a single retired lady living on a VERY "fixed" income... **VBG** I KNEW I had to find the least expensive (uh, CHEAP!) way to do this room.

So I haunted Craigslist, and WALLA! I found the two Arrow Airlift cabinets (I removed the doors; my choice) for one hundred dollars each (grinning again) and then theres the wonderful custom made (desk for 2-I called it) which was also one hundred dollars! The cutting table consists of 4 medium height bookcase units from Office Depot (costing $59.95 per unit) and it had cubicles...hmmm said I....wonderful! Now off to try to find the EXACT size baskets to use in those cubicles for storage (ahemmm...as you can see, they are full of yarns (I thought you'd notice so I am admitting to a stash that big). I found the first 2 baskets at my local discount Ross store and then haunted another dozen or so Ross stores for the rest. I found 1 here and 2 there and several stores had NONE (how DARE them....and me driving all over Houston just to patronize their store(S)!!!
Okay, after about a hundred miles and 4 days of looking, I managed to find all 16 to match (WHEW!) and thats the basket story.
I already had most all of the plastic bins you see, it was a matter of organizing...now my daughter calls me the "Queen of Organization".... some have said that I can get more "stuff" in the smallest space...oh well, so much for them, they don't sew...or felt....or knit...or crochet....or else they're just not OCD!

In the midst of all this, I actually managed to SEW SOMETHING!! Can you BELIEVE IT?
The jacket on Matilda (my dress form, she's a person too you know) is a sweatshirt jacet I played with and finally finished (actually I decorated several sweatshirts but this was the only "jacket" one.

Hope all of you are having fun out there, let me know what you are up to....I have unfortunately been conned into games on Facebook and I can tell you that my crops grow WAY to fast on FarmVille, my apartment is not very well furnished on YoVille and Mafia Wars is killing me (pun intended)... if you play, join me there for some non sewing fun.

Judy

Applique sweatshirt and pants set.....

I just finished playing with a sweat/set by cutting out leaves and using the 6600 blanket stitch (mode 2 # 72, I think it was) to applique the leaves in a falling
pattern ....I also put them on one leg of the pants (not photographed). Then I used stitch mode 2 # 8 to "lettuce" the sleeve edges and the neckline. It was fun.

Happy stitching!

The new sewing room and 2 new Janome babies

I thought I would update the photos and post a word or two now that I have finally gotten settled in to my new (to me) home. WHEW! I thought this unpacking, setting up and organizing the sewing room would NEVER be DONE but alas it is as "done" as its going to get!

Still working (S-L-O-W-L-Y) on the sweatshirt remake jacket... this has got to be the longest remake in history as I have been playing with it for 2 years now, LOL.
I have WAY too many UFO's and this is just one of them.

I WILL CONQUER; I will, I will, I WILL!

More later..... this is my best effort for tonight as I'm just getting over the effects of what I'll call the "creeping crud" otherwise known as a bad cold. Now I have to confess that I've never heard anyone say they had a "good cold" (something to ponder in one's spare time).

More to come......later..... chow for now.

Not dead yet.....

Well, I'm not dead yet even though it seems like I surely must have died as its been so long since I posted anything to my blog!! Never fear, I'm still here!!!

Hopefully life will slow down a bit, get easier (a bit) and allow me to do some of my fun things now that I've retired (YA-HOO) from full time employment (just going to be a part time realtor now, LOL) and bought a home. We are just about to get really really settled in (only 7 ceiling fans left to be installed!) and trying to get down to some sort of normalcy (hey, what is normal anyway?).

I have begun to machine quilt on the sweatshirt remake (yep, same gold/ivory jacket posted here two years ago)....started with the scraps applied with the felting machine and now I'm machine quilting the whole jacket. Worked on it about 3 hours yesterday (the MOST time I've had to play in a year or more) and I'm looking forward to completing it soon.

I just bought a couple of new toys, the Janome PR 6600 and the new (hot off the press) CoverPro 1000 X...won't be shipped to the dealers until November 15th but mine is reserved and they will call me the minute it comes in...Whoopee! As you can see, I plan on having a LOT OF FUN now that I'm retired (ok, semi-retired).

You will be seeing more posts as I move along and into some new areas of adventure.
Yes, adventures of my sewing room...hmmm....provative thought....let me see now... Janome 350E; PR 6600, X-Pressions, QC 4800, CoverPro 1000 X and Compulock....boy, what more could a retired lady want and how much more trouble could I possibly get into than this? LOL!!

See ya soon,

Judy

Tiny bit 'o embellishment on Khaki Capri Pants

The "New purse on the block" called for a tiny bit of flare added to the existing Khaki colored Capri Pants...just a hint of something, you know how it is, right?

I used three different strands of yarn by braiding them together then repeated that twice more. Now having three braided strands (of 3 yarns each) I braided THOSE three together. Then zigzag stitched them together on the machine before straight stitching the whole "cord" onto the hemline of the capri's leaving a little tassle at the end where I knotted the cords during the process.

Here is the result of THAT brain thought ( or WAS it one?)!

New Purse on the block!

I have a gigantic stash (like most of us do!) consisting of many things. Buttons, yarn, beads, lace, threads, FABRICS and more fabrics! I own a very large collection of sample fabrics (you know, squares and rectangles) which I acquired some time ago from a fabric rep and this purse was made from two of those pieces of "samples".

If you look really close you can see the free-motion embellishment around the "flower" looking (dark) design as I embellished those images with gold metallic thread (my FIRST attempt at this treatment).

I also added pockets to both sides of the lining (3 each side) so I have 6 pockets.... I LOVE inside pockets; one for sunglasses so they don't get scratched; one for cell phone (same reason) and one big one for monster keyring so IT doesn't scratch all the above! You get the picture...more pockets are "good", lol.

The beads and handles as well as the eyelash trim came from my stash as did the lining fabric.

Quilted Placemat Purse. Made this one in July for DD Tami's birthday (I'm not telling her age tho'; don't want to get hit....heehee!). Anyway, two toile looking quilted placemats from the linen sale at the department store, made the flowers from cotton quilting fabrics and starched them after construction; used buttons for centers and webbing for the shoulder straps. Well, SHE liked it and thats what counts! (of course I stuffed it with a few little goodies too LOL).
Mostly I had fun making it.