Final Vintage Embroidery Piece

Final Vintage Embroidery Piece
Originally uploaded by lasassone

This is the final vintage piece that I purchased in Nevada. I think this is my favorite of all 6 pieces and I believe this will be the centerpiece of anything I make from the 6 pieces.

I have to say this photo comes up looking like the velvet is blue, but it is not. It is a deep rich teal in color.

Each side measures 19 inches and from the base to the top it measures 17 inches high.

99% of the stitching is done with the old-style chenille thread. There is a little pearl cotton stitching in the center of each of the flowers. The piece is in good shape but there are 3 or 4 places where the stitches are loose. I will repair these discreetly using a strand of silk floss and tacking the errant ends down from the back.

I do not know how this was used originally, but you can see the old seam lines and, in addition, there are evenly spaced small holes inside the seam allowance. It's almost as if someone had used a pushpin to tack this piece up somewhere. I don't have a clue as to what would have made these holes.

So those are all the 6 pieces and now..........

I'm off on a week's journey to Arizona where I will visit with my brother and visit some favorite places. This is the first time in a while that I will travel without my laptop, but at my brothers home I can check my email and some favorite links.

I'm also taking my cpu into the shop where, while I'm gone, they will tweak it and maybe give it a physical and put some life back into it. It may need a transfusion for all I know. Or perhaps it's just getting old like me. At least IT didn't fall on the laundry room steps this morning!

Don't ASK!

LOL! I'm not sure how this "no computer trip" will work, but I have forwarded some things to my yahoo mailbox in hopes I can still check things at my brothers place.. Whether I'll be able to blog remains a mystery. But if I can't, I'll see you all in a week!

I'm taking a lot of stitching with me for evenings when my brother reads. He doesn't watch television!

Stitch On!

Vintage Embroidery #5

Vintage Embroidery #5
Originally uploaded by lasassone

Sorry for the delay in posting this 5th vintage piece. I loaded the picture up to Flickr some days ago as some people have discovered, but along with the last days of recuperating from the hellish virus, lots has been happening around here to keep me busier than I'd like to be.

No, the house has NOT sold, but according to our realtor there's been much more action on the listing since we lowered the price. Remains to be seen what that means.

So here we have the 5th vintage embroidery piece I bought at that shop in Carson City, Nevada. It is also 8.5 inches square and the velvet base is the darkest navy blue I think I've ever seen. The skillfully-done embroidery looks to have been done in one strand of silk. I think this is my "next to favorite" because of the subject.

California's official state flower is the California Poppy and they have always been my favorite wildflower. In our former home I used to have 100's of them in our front yard and they would re-seed every year resulting in some interesting variations popping up over the 12 yrs we lived there.

This is a lovely well-done embroidery whose colors are a bit more intense than the photo shows. Somehow I just couldn't get the orange as bright as it should be nor could I get the stems and leaves to appear as green as they do in real life.

I can't wait to work up an idea to incorporate all of these pieces. Tomorrow I will post the 5th, final and my favorite piece. I promise!

Stitch On!

Halloween Pillowcases for the Grands

Halloween Pillowcases for the Grands
Originally uploaded by lasassone

Last night I finished up 5 of these pillowcases for my youngest grands. The one on the left I made for the boys and the Witchey's Underwear ones on the right I made for the girls.

Today I got Halloween cards made for each of them (thanks to the Dover free weekly samples!), wrapped them up and took the 2 packages to the post office where the lines were long - even at the automated teller "thing". The lady in front of me had never used it before and so I and the guy behind me ended up training her! LOL.....she made a mistake twice, so by the time she was finished she'd done the whole thing 3 times and said she'd never forget how EVER!

After that we went to Circuit City and bit the bullet. We purchased a dvd/vcr recorder that is even digital and should last us a long time. We had hoped to avoid any big purchases until we moved, but when your vcr dies, what are you gonna do?

What I'm going to do is recommend that anyone reading this NEVER buy a television with a built-in vcr, okay? Trust me! Three-year-old TV is still great, vcr inside NOT so great aka virtually dead.

So, tomorrow morning, when my mind is fresh, I will try to figure out how to hook it up. The cute young salesman assured me it's simple, but you gotta know by the point he told me that, he was already thinking of how he was gonna spend his commission!

It's back to the studio/sewing room for me! Loads to do before our trip next week to Arizona!

Stitch On!

Oh My! Lookie!

New Judith Montano fabrics
Originally uploaded by lasassone

Look what I found yesterday at a fabric shop over the hills from us called Beverly's Fabrics. It's a chain of stores much like Ben Franklin crafts, but nicer, and mostly located in Northern California towns.

This is one of the 4 peacock prints in Judith Baker Montano's new line of fabric from Kaufmann called "Ornamentation". The fat quarters of solids/sateens (55% cotton/45% silk) are also by Kaufmann and thename of the line for them is called "Radiance". I have to say that the feel of the sateen is SO wonderful. I would love to make a blouse/shirt out of one of the colors - maybe the teal.

The colors of the solids are fairly true in the picture except that the one on the far right is actually a deeper true green than I think it shows in the photo. I took this photo with the peacock fabric hanging over the drying rack in the garage. It's been raining hard here all day so I had to dry it inside after pre-washing it. I didn't pre-wash the sateen. I may just rinse them lightly before I use them.

I'm envisioning some awesome crazyquilt blocks in my future using these fabrics and wondered this evening if I could find any more of the prints online. I managed to find a site called fabricshack.com that has a lot of the prints in the Ornamentation line and some (maybe 5 or 6) of the Radiance sateens.

I recently also found some peacock feather iron on appliques at Michael's that go well with this fabric. I found them in the aisle where they have the iron on rhinestone things and the printer fabric sheets. As I've done in the past, I'll sew them on and won't actually iron them on as I have an intense dislike of glue!

I've no affiliation with either of these places; I am just a happy drooler and sometimes customer!

Well, I said that about glue and now I have to confess that yesterday I also bought a BeJeweler Electric Rhinestone applicator. It's not for quilts or crazyquilt items at this point although I know a lot of quilters are using these for embellishment. I actually bought it because our youngest grand, a real girly-girl named Izzy, is absolutely crazy about sparkly & fancy stuff. I plan to glitz up a pair of jeans for her as soon as her Mum tells me the size I should buy.

Well, it's back to the sewing room/studio for me! I've been busy making Halloween pillowcases for the 5 youngest of our grands and tonight I'm trying to get them finished. They need to be mailed and I'd like them to have some time to use them before Halloween arrives. I've left out the 16 and 18 yr old girls; somehow I don't think they would care much for them.

ta ta! Stitch On!

Happy Birthday Mum!

Mum
Originally uploaded by lasassone

Lulu Mae Towne Sterling
1906 - 1991

Happy Birthday Mum!

Wish I could send you flowers like always. But if Heaven is like we all think it is and filled with our favorite things, you are surrounded by flowers every day.

I hope you know I'm still stitching as you taught me and have learned techniques of which you never dreamed. And I'm spreading the stitching love by teaching others, which I wish you had lived to see.

We Stitch On!

Napping!

Over the past few days I've been doing a lot of napping as I continue to recuperate from whatEVER this bug is that I came down with on Sunday night when we got home from G's 50th Class Reunion. My constant companion has been our 12 year old Katie who is a Siamese-Tabby mix. She LOVES naps and is a good foot warmer too!

I took this picture of her last evening when she was waiting for me to finish watching "Numbers" so she could go to bed. I don't think that's the tightest ball I've ever seen her curled up into, but she certainly has all her paws tucked up for sure. Our days and evenings have seemed much cooler this week. The sun has been shining brightly most days, but the house is staying cooler than the outside temperatures. I only know this because I've seen the neighbors outside in shorts while I have been huddling inside in jeans and a sweatshirt!

I think I must be getting better. Since I'm on antibiotics and shouldn't be contagious, I went to our local CrazyQuilt group's October meeting this morning where a good time was had by all I think. I would have hated to miss the meeting. It's always the highlight of my month.

We are really a varied group of stitchers. I took one of my Chocolage stitchery blocks to work on purely because it was the simplest thing I could take. Around the table the other stitcher's were working on 1) Laura: a lovely Fall block with some nice peacock feather pre-made appliques she said came from Jo-Ann Fabrics, (ahem....I MAY need to go shopping!) 2) Sandy: a nice cq block for a grandson that will feature his interests of baseball, football and fishing, 3) Beth: the beginnings of a small tree skirt/table topper in victorian jewel tones, 4) Andrea: a pretty new block with wonderful red satin stitching just done, 5) Pat: a "very orange" fiber art block and 6) Fran, the hostess this month, was doing the final applique work stitching down the patches of her latest totally hand pieced crazyquilt block. As usual Fran served up a lot of delights. I love going to her home for our October meeting because she decorates to the hilt for Halloween and always serves herbal teas & lots of Halloween goodies! The herbal tea felt great on my throat today. The Hershey Candy Corn Kisses weren't bad either!

This is the first post I have ever made directly from the blogger dashboard. I even put Katie's picture in and moved it once! I have always done every post from the Flickr site because it's so easy. You just click on a picture you have in your sets there and then click on "blog this". However, you can't put the pictures just anywhere - they are always at the top of your blog post. With this newly (for me) learned method I can add a picture right here of the doll quilt top I finished yesterday!

Stitch On!

Under the weather

under_the_weather
Originally uploaded by lasassone

I came home from G's 50th class reunion Sunday night and by Monday I had a raging sore throat and no voice. I think I'm on the mend, but what a week this has been. Stay tuned, okay?

I haven't had such a nasty upper respiratory bug in a few years. I'm still coughing and SO tired!

I hope to be better tomorrow and able to get back to blogging!

Stitch on!