April Stash Busting Challenge! "Brights"

Brights!  Uh Oh. I'm in trouble!  Or so I thought.  I am usually very reserved with colour choices and not entirely free with my creativity.  I think a little "OCD" comes to play with me there. Many of my quilting friends do Art Quilts and I am so structured I have a very hard time just letting go and cutting fabric.  So when I was given the chance to take a class with Kim Caskey, I jumped at the chance.
Then I panicked!  What will I bring?  Well, in the end, I rummaged my stash for fabric that I really wanted to have in a project and had no clue how to use, committed my favourite saying to memory and bolted to the class.
Over the course of the day we talked about all sorts of ideas that were foreign to me, like cutting lines with no rulers and slashing random cuts in fabric. YIKES! But as the day went on and I let myself cut and sew with no real rules, it became.... fun. Yes, fun! So here is what I ended up with so far:

It is BRIGHT!  It is happy. There is so much movement and detail. You need to see some of it up close. Click on the pics if you want to see better.

Dancing squares technique (on Left)

My favorite quote stamped on it!

Flowers, water, grass (yarn too!)

A good look at the "no straight lines" that I struggled with.

The SUN!!

I love the sun!  It was done with a tracing of a cake plate using Shiva paint sticks.  (Another "New to Me" technique) Then I overlaid it with two layers of this weird crinkly sheer fabric, quilted in the lines and then cut the top layer so that it will fray some and have more depth.

The water is done with the same sheer fabric only in blue.  I used a piece that was too big then quilted in waves so that there would be wrinkles and bulges.  I love the end result, it looks like water rippling on the picture!

The flowers are all different and have a lot of texture and depth too.  All of this is VERY new to me!  Ideas kept popping into my head and it was hard to focus on one at a time and get anything finished.  So as you can see, it is not quite done, but I am so close.  A little more quilting and a back and that baby will have earned a place on my wall.  My very first Art Quilt!  I love it!
Thanks for coming by!
Wonder what creative doors will open next month?

March Stash Busters Report

Well, March was a little crazy here but it is over and that is good.
As for the March Stash Busters report, I didn't get as much sewn as I would have liked. The intent was to sew something for the impending season, which is supposed to be Spring but.....

...we are up to our waist in snow and it is -15 degrees outside. So I was not feeling the Spring fever thing. So I sewed a pair of wool mitts (from my stash) for my Niece that I sent home with her before I got a picture of them and a scarf  from this scrap of super soft, rose bud fleece and satin that I had left over for two years.

I also helped my sone make a new Pokemon hat.  He designed it and cut it all out and sewed some of it, then I helped with the fussy parts. The character is Umbreon:

Since the snow won't go away, we thought that we would take advantage of it and snow dye some boring cream sheets that I have had in my stash for years.  We hope their new look will inspire us to make a fun quilt.

Then we used the left over dye to paint the snow and play tic tac toe! Snow boredom!

Hopefully next month will bring Spring and some inspiration!
Happy Sewing.
Penny

February Stash Busting "for someone you love" Report

Well, I am just getting in under the wire, but I did sew a lot all this month. All of it was for someone/something I love!! It has just been very hard getting to the computer to write a post.  Of course I have had a lot of time at the computer looking around blog land at every one else's great creations and ideas! That kind of browsing makes it hard to get anything done around here!
I did however get a few projects off my sewing table so here is what I have been up to:

These are the new sheets for work that I talked about last time.  All out of my stash flannel, eight sheets at 2.5 yards each. That is 20 yards done and OUT! These count for me as "love sews" because they are not only for me and my job (which I love!) but, for the comfort of my patients, who I also love. (Just not the "Valentine's Day" kind of Love!
Awkward...and moving on!

This little journal cover is for my sister, Barbara, who I love a great deal.  I was asked by my sister, Linda, (who I also love a great deal!) to make this for the journal that she bought for Barbara. Barbara's husband is also very sick, he has ALS, and they were given a cruise to Greece from their church as a "bucket list" kind of thing.  So, since she draws and writes beautifully, Linda thought she needed a special book for this memory making trip, but she wanted it to have a pretty cover (like the one I made her) because Barbara is a "pretty things" kind of girl! Since I was in the middle of making a tote bag for Barbara, I used the left over material to make the cover.  The tote bag is not done yet.... but when it is, it will match! This used about a yard of fabric from my stash left overs pile.

These are pocket chair covers.  There are 27 of them and they are for our very favourite teacher.  Both my children had her and we all love her.  She sang at our wedding and I attended the birth of her twins.  They have been in my to do pile for months but with hubby sick I just couldn't get to them!  So I am thrilled that they are finally done and she LOVES them!  They used up another 15 yards out of my stash!

These are bibs for Craft Hope's project 20, bib's for China. This is a group I love being a part of.  Sewing for others is a great way to give back and make good use of lots of fabrics left over from other projects too! I used about 2.5 yards of fabric for these. They are three layers thick.

Here you can see the bibs in front and the chair covers in behind my 301.  I am so excited that I finally figured out the tension adjustment for this machine and I got to use it for a couple projects!  I had to adjust the bobbin tension, I almost never have to do that! However, it sews like a dream now.  I also set it up and tried it out for free motion quilting....beautiful!  I cannot wait to put a quilt through it!

Maybe this one, that I made this month as well. We are donating it "with love", too the hospice in memory of my daughter's music teacher's mother, who passed away from cancer just over two weeks ago. A beautiful woman who left as her contribution to the world, an extremely talented and beautiful daughter who we are privileged to know and learn from.

 Well, my sewing room is a mess, there are scraps and fabrics everywhere, but I got a lot of sewing "for love" done and used up some of the stash! 38.5 yards used but...I added some too (Yikes)! We won't talk about that right now though!
Have a great Sunday!
I am linking up over at Cation Designs - February Stash Busting Challenge!

January Stash Busting "Itty Bits" report

So, January is over and it is time to repot in on my progress after my epic fail at the fabric store the other day.
The theme for January was Itty Bits for stash busting and so in the few days I had left after I signed up (late!) I pulled together a couple small projects.  I still have one on the go (journal cover) but not done so I will report that later.  For now, I have made two tag blankets for my friends twins using left overs from the owl tag blankets I made them, a couple fat quarters from my stash and a bunch of ribbon bits.

 I also had a whole mass of scraps from straightening edges, clipping corners, odd angles from patterns, the thread bin, and small fabric bits that had "issues" (like the first cut off the bolt that has the ink stamp on it and the store clerk and I didn't notice it)! So with those and some other fabrics from my stash I made dog beds for the animal shelter here in town.

In total I made four dog beds and one cat bed. The dog beds are fairly big. Three are 30x24 and the 4th is 24x18 ish, that one is made from all the corners we cut out making fleece tie blankets at Christmas so more scraps gone there! The cat bed fits the bottom of a small travel kennel. That was a LOT of itty bits out of my sewing area.

I also sewed up several of the flannel sheets out of the project pull pile that were intended for my office so that is about 20 yards of fabric ready to move out too.  Not a bad start to the stash busting project.
I can't wait to go see how everyone else is doing, this is very motivating!
Have a great day!

Confessions and Commitments

Yes, I have some confessions regarding a brand new commitment I made.  I also have some confessions about my fabric hoard stash. I will warn you that this post is picture heavy!

Just a few days ago, I made a commitment over at Cation Designs (see link on side bar) that I would use up fabric already in my stash this year and that I would do my best to limit any new acquisitions to just what is needed to complete the project that I am making from my stash. I cheated!  We were out of town to see a Doctor for my husband and I went to the fabric store and purchased three fabrics.  Two tiny pieces that will go into an art quilt that is rattling around in my brain and then 10 meters of fabric for chair covers for my daughters school. So guilty!

So, to make myself more accountable, I took pictures of my stash to post in hopes that it would help me follow up with my commitments on the stash busting sew a long. If it is all here in colour, maybe I'll remember to use it!  I am also posting the fabrics that I pulled to make projects with in the near future.

So here goes:
In the cutting room,

A change table full of interfacing and a few bolts

The batiks underneath

Two drawers of Fat Quarters and such

Shelf ONE

Shelves TWO and THREE!

Bins of Fabric Under the Cutting Table

In one Spare room:

In the Laundry Room! 

In the Other Spare room!

 
Every spare surface is covered!  And, I'm not done!!

There is more in the room where I actually sew, which is also the kids play room.

It is bad, really bad!  And I didn't pretty it up for this confession!

So here is my stack of very soon to be sewn, fabrics from my stash.

Some of it is already cut up into the projects they are going to become, so I am on my way to wrangle this stash into something reasonable!  Also, if you look back at the stack of flannels on the Featherweight table, it is going to become sheets for my treatment table soon too, so that will be gone as well. In total it is about 62 meters of fabric. It is a good start, but I better not get all happy about it, I have a serious de-stash ahead!
If you need to get in control of yours too, go click the button and check out the program, I'd be happy to have more company!

Have a great day!
Penny