goodness... it's been a while blog...

i'm still here, just been absent for a little while. not sure why really. burnt out maybe? probably. and now that i'm trying to do a post, blogger seems to be having all sorts of issues with photos and such. sigh.

there has been sewing and quilting going on still. i slowed down so much this fall after picking up after shoulder surgery. i want to draw. i miss it terribly, but i know i have a few obligations to finish before i should pick up the pencils. such as finishing the binding on a QOV and making two presentation cases so i can ship them off to D.C. this coming week. getting them cleared out would ease the weight on my shoulders drastically.

my challenge QOV is with tia to be longarm quilted. she's the other half to my team and what she does to it will be magnificent i'm sure. hopefully she'll work on it this week and then i can finish it while i'm home with snappy for surgery in 2 weeks. it has to be in salt lake city soon after, so i need to get that going as well.

yesterday, this adorable campfire cake was baked.

by this adorable redhead. and he (we) took first place at the blue and gold banquet for the "cubbiest" themed dessert.

and then snappy finished up his woodbadge requirements last month and was "beaded" last night during the banquet. we're all proud of both of my guys!!

so you see that scouts and family have been some of the main focuses of my days lately. all good reasons. we've all been a little sick (i have another cold coming), and replacing front doors and trim, working waaaaay too much and trying to relax a little.

i'll do a post soon of some of the quilting and other things i've done soon. i won't go so long next time.

2012 is here and so am i!!

hi everyone... the new year has arrived (i know i'm a little late in that posting...) and i'm back in my studio. there's a slight struggle with finding the energy and motivation to do work other than knitting, but no doubt it will return soon. at least, there's hope for that...

yesterday, i put together a mosaic of my quilty items done last year despite the shoulder surgery and months of physical therapy. even though the pictures show 3 quilt tops in the mix, there's actually only one of these that did not become a fully quilted quilt: the red cross quilt. everything else has gone to it's rightful owner or put into use in the house.

in addition to these 10 quilts, i made 3 QOVs for the navy during 2011 and i made a skirt for myself. not too bad considering all that went on during the year.

but... i'm back to sewing and finishing things! i vow to have a more productive year, yet still take time for myself. my illustrations, printmaking and jewelry have all taken quite a backseat to quilting the last few years and it's more than past time to start working on those again. my shoulder was deemed "beautiful" last week by my surgeon at my 1 year check-up and it doesn't give me as much trouble as it was. time to get my pencils out and finish up some long awaited drawings.

i joined the "Bee FF 2012" quilting bee on flickr this month. there are some truly talented women in this group and i'm honored to have been asked to join this round. secretly, i've been wishing for a spot with them and i got it without trying! for january, we're all making liberated baskets in the style of gwen marston from her book "collaborative quilting." this is going to be a fun quilt!!

also finished up last night - a QOV!

earlier in the week, i finished binding a replacement QOV for the one with the red dye bleed. the regional coordinator was gracious enough to send me one that was nearly finished and just beautiful, but they didn't have any requests for navy-themed quilts. when she found out i had a direct contact and a need for a new one... it came right to me. the above HST QOV is the last one for the previous request of 12 quilts that the navy gave me in 2010. i had so hoped to have finished out that request much earlier and feel bad that some of these guys have waited so long. but this one will go to a longarm quilter soon enough and then shipped to D.C. hopefully next month.

during the holidays, i started knitting quite a bit. i made 2 scarves for gifts, a baby blanket for a dear friend's baby born just after christmas, worked a little on a WIP shawl from a few years ago and am 3/4 done on my first knit-in-the-round cowl scarf. on our christmas visit to kansas, my MIL, her friend and i went to a local yarn shop and i picked up some beautiful alpaca, cotton/linen blend and lace weight yarns. i'm looking forward to working with them later.

got to run! my 8-5 job beckons me to concentrate solely on it for a little while...

the holidays have begun

and i'm not getting the handmade items i wanted to make done... in fact, i don't think i have a single handmade gift for this year (at least one i've made), with the exception of a baby shower present for this coming weekend. had the year been an odd one for you? it definitely has for me....

i hope your thanksgiving holidays were enjoyable and you spent lots of time with family and friends. snappy and i had several friends in town and we visited with them all. we had a little turkey, a little pie, some henna mehendi, glow-in-the-dark putt putt golf, a stroll around bayou bend's gardens all lit up with lights and lots of catching up on our DVR'd shows.

also happening this weekend was this:

it's the fabric for the QOV challenge with HMQS. their show in the spring has several challenges available and of course i'm going for the QOV one. they sent these 8 fat quarters, bamboo/cotton blend batting and a special label to use. tia, of campfollowerbags, is my partner for the challenge and she is going to longarm quilt it after i piece it together. we're allowed to add 3 additional fabrics as long as i submit a sample of the fabrics and i can add more of any of the challege collection. the paisleys are pretty awesome.

i want to showcase the challenge fabrics - which is what you're supposed to do in a challenge, right? i'm thinking of using kona solids and keep debating on purchasing some more of one or two of the collection pieces. the block pattern i think is picked out now, but i'm still playing around with that. maybe i should get on EQ7 and have a go with it.

do you remember the pretty massachuetts star QOV put together with blocks made by the FB swap group? well... there were some issues with one of the red fabrics used in two blocks.

my regional coordinator for QOVF got with me early last week and informed me that i can't send it to the intended recipient. drats!! the quilt as a whole was very well done; the blocks were pieced well, the top was pieced well and the quilting was fabulous. the dye bleed on two big blocks was the problem. my regional coordinator felt my pain and sent me a navy-themed QOV she had sitting at her house that only needs binding as a replacement so the navy doesn't have to wait a lot longer. it's a lovely quilt as well and i'm thankful to have it so soon.

ok. i need to get back to my regular job, even though it's been super annoying lately. been butting heads with one of the other managers here and we sort-of cleared the air on that touchy subject about a half hour ago. argh.

my red-headed inspector clouseau

inspector clouseau, a photo by greeneyedsilversmith on Flickr.

i'm a few days late in posting... but this is my cutie on halloween. i wore a pink panther hoodie (which most parents at the door didn't see) and he went in search of candy. i adore his red mustache and it was the only thing we bought for the costume... everything else was in the house.

october is almost over

hey everyone! remember this quilt top? you don't? it was toooooo long ago? yeah, i know it was more than 2 years ago and it's been hanging in my studio closet ever since then... at first, it was so big and i didn't machine quilt at all, so i didn't feel like hand quilting it at the time. plus, i was working on QOVs and trying to do all these swap blocks and bee blocks that i just didn't have the time either. then, i changed the backing fabric from a pale yellow solid to a plain white muslin (nice and traditional). then it just sat.

until....

tia bought her longarm. you may remember that i've gotten a few of her campfollower bags over the last few years. i loooove them. i carry my very first bag around with me everywhere from the instant i opened the box. anyhoo... she was offering her services and i took her up on it. tia does such a lovely job quilting the bags and pouches, that i knew i wanted her to quilt my bed quilt. plus, it saved me from quilting it and sped up the process of getting it on my bed.

i finished up the binding two nights ago and took it out of the dryer last night:

i LOVE the quilt on my bed. so does the cat.

it was late when i got home from the library so i couldn't take it outside for good photos. there's a "warm" glow that alters the colors from my fluorescent lightbulbs (good for energy savings...bad for color photography...). but you can see bits and pieces of the vines and feathers that tia quilted into the coins themselves and the organic lines that i wanted to do if i quilted it.

so far, this is my only finish for the month. i've been busy - stitching hexagons together during lunch breaks and scout meetings, slowly piecing together the dr. seuss quilt for boo, piecing together string blocks for a bastrop wildfire victim quilt and just going crazy i guess. at least i have one thing done and off my ever-growing list of things to work on. and i got to snuggle under it last night while i slept.

60 years and counting

today, i am wishing my grandparents a very happy 60th wedding anniversary!!




isn't her dress amazing?! the train was so long, the photographer couldn't capture the entire thing. if it was fully shown, there would be about 2-3 more feet of train below what is in the photo. 47 1/2 years after their wedding, i cut into that glorious heavy silk satin (the real deal, no synthetics) and made my own wedding gown for my 1st wedding. i used HALF of the train and my dress included a little chapel length train itself. i also took some of the satin covered buttons and a few of the new-fangled plastic orange blossoms and used them on my jacket and train. we had to clear the living room furniture out and spread just the train diagonally across the living room just so i could pin and cut my dress pattern.


51 years later, some more remanents of the train, along with more buttons (this thing had something like 50 buttons) and made a very traditional christening gown for my son to wear, plus any future children in the family.

i embroidered an anchor cross on the front - symbolic for the church and because my now ex-husband was a mariner himself - and my son's initials inside the hem. there's a bonnet that matches, but my sister got me an heirloom hankie bonnet, which is what boo is wearing in the above photo. since then, both of my sister's children have worn the christening gown for their own baptisms and i have embroidered their initials inside the hem as well.

so, after 60 years of marriage, my grandparents are still holding hands and driving each other nuts. i had the joy of celebrating their 50th with them, my family and their closest friends. this year, there is no party as my grandfather is recovering from a broken back and surgery and my grandmother doesn't move around well either. but that doesn't mean that we're not celebrating with them... they've been flooded with anniversary cards - 30 -40 or so as of yesterday, my mother and i have arranged for their neighbor to deliver dinner from their favorite italian restaurant and flowers will be delivered and set up by the florist in their dining room. both of which are a surprise til this afternoon.

of course, my grandmother knows something is up... but can't get my mom or i to let out any hints.

i can only wish for another 56-ish years with my hubby. of course, a man who does this...

can stick around...

as heard around my house...

last night on the way home from the Lego store, i told my son that i had an appointment to see miss c for a long-awaited haircut. he was ok for a moment...but when i said that i might go short again, he told me that "it's against the house rules." i loved that. he kept trying to convince me that i was not allowed to cut my hair short, that snappy wouldn't like it, etc. for the record, snappy already said that he really likes this haircut and that i'd look great:


it's not so different from two years ago when i "had" to cut my hair off - just fancy styling and a prettier face... it was the first time either snappy or my son had ever seen me with hair quite that short, even though the top/front/bang area was quite a few inches longer than the first few times i'd hacked it off. but still, boo kept saying no and i finally had to call miss c so she could get a few words in. long-time friend and my stylist, she tried to tell boo that too bad, he didn't have a license, so he didn't get to decide either.

i'm still debating on whether to trim it back to my "normal" length with some funky style to let the crazy curls come out better, or to take a good 8-10 inches off. while the longer hair has been great for ponytails and pigtails and braids, that's all i want to do. my hair has it's own mind and right now, it's telling me it doesn't want to be long. if we keep it long, it needs a dramatic style change.

on to non-hairy things...

last week, i got to open this box:

tia, of tia curtis quilts and the infamous camp follower bags (of which my house owns a few), used her brand new-to-her longarm to quilt up my coin quilt. there are swirls, organic lines, leafy vines and feathers all over my bed quilt. i LOVE it. my MIL was visiting and had my studio occupied with her bags and stuff, so i didn't get to work on the binding until this weekend. the binding is a pale solid yellow and last night i started the handstitching part of it. one short side down... three more to go.

we adore the duvet cover my other in-laws bought us for a wedding present, but we both felt we needed something else. something that i made. especially since most of my quilts are given to other people. i know i'd like to snuggle under a handmade quilt each night! when we opened it up after taking it out of the box, the quilt instantly brightened up the room. the quilt is step one of redoing our bedroom, although we have a long way to go before we actually redo anything else in there. like bathtub replacement, kitchen revamp, new floors around house...

houston is finally seeing a break from the ridiculous heat. it was about 82 degrees for our high yesterday and it's in the low 60's in the morning. how glorious! now...if only we could have a usual october and get some stinkin' rain!! at least with the better temps, i can start doing painting and stripping of paint and all around the house. slowly...the shoulder is still aching from my dining room paint weekend 2 weeks ago.

and - a couple more weeks til the texas clay festival, then a couple more and international quilt fest!!