Redwork Ornaments #9 and #10

Redwork Ornament #9
Originally uploaded by lasassone

Tonight I finished the 10th ornament design in this Redwork set I'm doing. And I started on #11 while I watched that new quiz show called The Power of 10. Scroll down to see #10. I haven't figured out how to put two pictures into a blog post yet! I think my problem may be that I only know howo to blog from my flickr.com site.

I've not accomplished much except these 2 designs in the past few days. Too busy with laundry, ironing and fighting a war with a major ant invasion in the kitchen. I hope I've won, but tomorrow morning could bring a whole new battlefront!

Our realtor's open house here went well (her words) this past Sunday. Three families who have just started the search for a new home visited and seemed to love our home. All three, however, wish it had more square footage. There's not much we can do about that. It is what it is!

I'm sure somewhere in this town they could get more square footage for the same price, but they perhaps wouldn't get our quiet court location, superior elementary school, our large yard, the pool or many of the upgrades we've done to the house like the gourmet kitchen.

There IS someone out there for whom this house will be perfect. We just have to be patient. After the months of preparation, it's a bit strange to just sit here waiting. I'm trying to stay busy. I have actually gone back to regular practice on my piano every day and am doing a lot of reading. Just finished "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini who lives here in No. California now but was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. His first novel was "The Kite Runner".

I have to admit that I'm a bit fearful of the time when the house actually sells because then the angst will begin over where we are going! I'm not so good at decisions these days. I used to be able to move at the drop of a hat, but I am not sure I have the energy it's going to take to make a big move!

Today my order of "back up" cq supplies arrived so now I can continue work on the purple and gold pillow cover. However, one of my silk ribbon colors was out of stock, so that has thrown a monkey wrench into my plans. I am anxious to get going on the embellishment but have a few more stitches to go before that boot pincushion motif is done. I'm finding it hard to work on the fine lines of embroidery in the evenings. Perhaps I need to work on it more during the day. It's not like I don't have time! So I will just.....

Stitch On!

Redwork Ornament #10

Redwork Ornament #10
Originally uploaded by lasassone

Redwork Ornament #8

Redwork Ornament #8
Originally uploaded by lasassone

Well, I've been busy, for the last couple days, but when the light got dim again I had to stop working on that boot pincushion motif on the crazy quilt pillow. So I finished up the 8th redwork Christmas ornament design. I say "finish" but just now I noticed I forgot to put the cluster of colonial knots in the center of this design. Duh.....

Besides working on the crazy quilted pillow, yesterday I decided to try to hide some of the clutter in my office and studio. I used muslin to make curtains for the front of my office supply cabinet and to hide the space under my cutting/work table in the studio. Fortunately I kept a bolt of muslin out of storage and sequestered in my studio closet.

I bought the velcro that has the stiff side made with a sticky back and adhered it to both pieces of furniture. I wonder if it will come off when or if I want to remove it! Yikes!

I made the curtains, which are split in the middle for easy access, with 1" headers and sewed the 1" wide soft side of the velcro to the back of the header.

I've added the pictures of what I did below. Although the pillow doesn't look like it's going to be ready for the open house this Sunday, at least my clutter will be hidden from view.

With the real estate market in such a sad state we aren't expecting miracles, but it just takes one person and we're hoping that person comes by this Sunday. Currently in our town there are 1319 homes for sale and not very many buyers out there. About 15-20 homes seem to be selling every week, so guess we just have to wait our turn.

I can't wait for our new life to start, but until then I'll just keep my fingers busy ....

Stitch On!

Studio Work & Cutting Table

Studio Work & Cutting Table
Originally uploaded by lasassone

Office Supply Cabinet

Office Supply Cabinet
Originally uploaded by lasassone

Redwork Ornament #7

Redwork Ornament #7
Originally uploaded by lasassone

Last night I finished #7 in the series of 12 Redwork Ornament designs I have been doing. Isn't #7 a great design? I've been loading pictures of each one of these into Flickr as I finish, but I haven't blogged any since #4. Scroll down and you can see #5 and #6!

This kind of embroidery is very calming for me and quite easy to do as I watch tv in the evenings when the light isn't so good. I have my floor Ott light AND my portable Ott light in there to use and I need them both at night. Last night I was watching Heartland, The Closer and Saving Grace all summer program series being run on TNT. I like all 3 of them.

I can't seem to work on the cq pillow in the evenings when the light is not so good in my temporary studio. Not much stitching progress has been made on the pillow project, but today after my regular dental appointment I stopped with my coupon for Michael's Crafts. I discovered that they had their Bead Heaven beads on sale and I got two packages of assorted beads - one gold and the other what they call amethyst. That should give me enough variety to add to the very basic box of small seed beads that I kept out of storage.

Also there are a few nice chunky beads in each that will enable me to make nice 3-D ends for the pins in that boot pincushion outline design. I got that design traced on tissue and found my dark purple silk floss so I'll be starting that next. I like to do any patch embroidery before I get much of anything else on a block so that if I want to use a hoop I can without smooshing other seam treatments.

Last night my round-the-corner-friend and I made an order from Ribbonsmyth.com. So, depending upon how fast our order arrives, I just MAY have some silk ribbon to use on this pillow. I want to get the basics done and have it temporarily put together though so it can be displayed on our bed this Sunday when the open house is happening here.

I can't help thinking about having a new studio space eventually and have been searching for different storage options online. Storing regular sewing thread has always been a problem for me. I have always had 2 wooden thread beds that were hung on the wall that held all my sewing thread. They currently are each residing flat on the closet shelf. They certainly can't be hung up now that all the painting has been done, but they are a major pain to take down from inside the closet when I need a certain color sewing thread. Plus, thread hanging on the wall OR on a closet shelf gets SO dusty!

I'm in the process of looking at lots of online organization sites and sewing room sites on the internet and Flickr too. I'm trying to get ideas for all KINDS of things in my future space. Offhand I think I see a trip to IKEA in my future for one thing!

This afternoon I went to JoAnn Fabrics to check out some of the storage things they had on sale for 50% off and I ended up buying 2 little 3 drawer units that I am going to try out on my worktable. If they work perhaps I can add more if I need them. I originally wanted to lay the spools down so that the colors would be obvious when you pull out a drawer. I was surprised that the spools (I took some with me!) fit standing on end in these drawers. They looked more shallow in JA's online pictures. Perhaps if I put color labels on each drawer they will work.

How do YOU store your thread?

Stitch On!

Redwork Ornament #6

Redwork Ornament #6
Originally uploaded by lasassone

Redwork Ornament #5

Ornament #5
Originally uploaded by lasassone

Progress? A Rehearsal of sorts?

Progress
Originally uploaded by lasassone

Last night after having dinner out I forced G to shop with me for some embellishments for the pillow for our bed. After playing with them a bit this morning I think I can deal with just these things and a whole lot of stitching.

The shoe pincushion motif I will embroider in dark plum silk floss on the gold patch. It is an enlargment of a tiny rubber stamp I bought yesterday morning at a garage sale while we were out on our daily walk. I had to go to Michael's Crafts to get a stamp pad because all mine, of course, are in storage. The little stamp is enlarged 225%! I plan to use dimensional beads atop the pins in the pincushion.

The faux silk I had left over from when I made a bunch of copies of my Kensitas flower silks to give as a freebie to my eBay buyers months ago.

I'm not sure about the leaf; it's a "silk" one from a packet from the craft store, but I thought it might look good if I stitch tiny gold beads along the veins. Or not - we shall see.

Everything else, believe it or not, came from Wal-mart. I was delighted to find that they have gotten in some really nice things since I was last there. The butterfly was $2.88 and everything else - the pretty dragonfly - 13 of the gold mop rings - 40 of the small mop disks - was $1.88. As I look at the picture now next to the text box I am typing in, I think I need to perhaps move that butterfly up a pit to soften the edge of that sharp piecing corner above where it sits now.

I don't know what I'll do with those little mop disks, but I've got 40 of them so perhaps 3 little flowers and then some semi-detached leaves using the woven picot technique. That might just be a good "make-do" to make up for my lack of SRE supplies!

I think these embellishments with a lot of layered stitches and teenie bead additions will be just what our pillow needs!

Stitch on!

All Appliqued & Ready to Embellish

All Appliqued & Ready to Embellish
Originally uploaded by lasassone

This is my latest crazy quilt project. It's a rectangular pillow for our bed. The insert for it is a "travel pillow" from JoAnn's Fabrics. Of course I had to go buy one because the 6 I already own are in the back of the storage unit!

I Miss My STUFF! LOL!

When I bought all new bed linens for the staging of the house for sale, something was missing when I set it all up. I think this pillow will do the trick by taking a place in the center of all the pillows and shams. I'll let you know when I get it done. I just realized this minute that I don't have any fabric in the house to use to make the back of the pillow. Guess I'll have to make another fabric run! G is probably gonna wonder if I'm building a back up stash here!

Meanwhile I realized, of course, that I don't have much in the way of embellishment for this purple and gold pillow cover. I found one faux ciggy silk of gold colored poppies, so I will use that along with lots of layered seam treatments and maybe a patch embroidery on the rather large gold satin piece. At least I have all my threads here!

I didn't think I had any silk ribbon though. I thought it was all in storage, but last evening I found a bag of short pieces. Alas there is no purple in the bag, but I did find a short length of gold. And, of course, all my hand-dyed motifs are safely locked up as well.

All in all it's going to be quite a challenge to see what I can come up with for this pillow!

Meanwhile all last week I worked on and finished 4 quilt tops for our local Blankie Project for cancer patients. I have plans and fabric for a bunch more after spending all day last Saturday at the workshop pinning and prepping quilt tops for machine quilting.

I am still doing Redwork embroidery in the evenings while I watch tv and I have finished 6 of the 12 Blueberry Hill ornament designs now. They and the Blankie quilts can be seen in my flickr photostream which you can access by clicking on the photo in this entry.

Stitch On!