Happy Blogiversary to Me! A Drawing!

Round Robin Pillow Block
Originally uploaded by lasassone

Today is the 3rd anniversary of this blog! Time flies when you're having fun. I cannot believe it's been 3 years! I still haven't perfected the art of blogging very often. Life just plain gets in the way sometimes.

In honor of this Blogiversary I will be having a drawing for a stash enhancement Squishie, a picture of which I will upload after this weekend is over. I'm a little under the weather at the moment, but will get the crazyquilt fabrics and other stuffs pulled and photographed at the beginning of the week. The Squishie will include fancy fabrics, trims, beads, faux silkies & such!

Soooooooooo...........Just make a comment on this post to be included in the drawing which I will do on September 27th. That's the day our local crazyquilt group meeting will be here at my home and I WAS going to have someone from the group do the draw. But I have learned how to use the random number generator site, so I'll be using that to do the "draw."

The temporary picture I have put up here on this post is of a round robin block I pieced & sent around some years back. I actually pieced two similar blocks the size of those travel pillow forms that JoAnn Fabrics carries. I did two round robins back to back, so YES, I have the finished blocks, but have yet to make them up into pillow covers. Just the tip of the iceberg of my UFO pile.

The great number of UFO's I have was brought home more than a little this past week when a friend of mine visited and I gave her the grand tour of my 2 room studio set up. She and I had gone fabric shopping recently in Reno when our husbands were playing in a golf tournament. We both bought many of the same fabrics and, unlike me, she had made something with some of hers and she ran out of one particular fabric. We traded some fabrics and both ended up happy.

She does mostly traditional quilting and has made the cutest baby quilt, a picture of which I wish I had taken! Duh....ANYway, she is really interested in learning to crazyquilt and also appreciates and does redwork-type embroidery. When I started to show her all the embroidery block sets I have made, I realized that I MUST make myself "buckle down" (as Mum used to say) and get these blocks made up into the quilts for which they were intended.

So, as soon as all this filing of Redwork/embroidery patterns is done, that is my plan! I would like to begin my 4th year of blogging by showing some actual progress on my well organized UFO pile!

Stitch On!

Delta Crazy Stitchers 2008 Round Robin

Delta Crazy Stitchers 2008 Round Robin
Originally uploaded by lasassone

Our local group decided some time ago that we'd like to do another round robin together. With the summer upon us, we could only get 5 stitchers interested though, so this will be a quick one!

I decided what I really NEED now is a cover for my sewing machine, which is just inside my new workroom AND one of the first things a visitor will see. I know, I know - I haven't posted pictures of the 2nd room in my 2 room studio-suite here. The problem is mostly that I can't seem to find a time when the room looks neat enough to take pictures. It's embarrassing, but I'm constantly working on the work table and now I"m in the midst of a total bead re-organization project that is gonna take me quite some time. I use those screw-together little towers for my beads and have used them for years, ever since made beaded skating dresses for my 2 girls and a couple others. Back then you could buy these towers in the drugstore where they were touted as pill containers.

Now, however, there appears to be at least 3 companies in China making them and, let me tell you folks, the little jars that screw together cannot be interchanged! So, as I've bought beads it's been a mess and now I have towers that are not just one color of beads nor even one type of bead. When I want yellow beads, for instance, I must go thru the whole cupboard of towers and most likely will find 6 or 7 towers with some yellow beads in them.

The idea of this project is to unscrew each little jar, store the beads in ziplock baggies and then re-store them in the towers by color. This was all brought about by my purchasing a couple expandable 3 tier things for inside my bead cupboard. Right away I found that some of my towers were too tall fpr the back shelf because I'd combined too many little jars. So....do I return the tier thingees or do I re-organize my beads. G thinks I should do the reorganization and even volunteered to help me. Hmmmm, wonder how many beads will end up on the floor instead of in ziplock bags when he does this while watching television...............

So, back to the picture of my block.....I pieced this block to join in the round robin but I did it in a way completely different than I've ever done before. I actually determined the size I needed, drew the dimensions with a ruler on artist's newsprint paper. I then started drawing a crazyquilt block using a 5 sided piece in the middle. I did this because I knew what fabric I wanted to use as the theme. The faux cq print I have used in the center and all corners is the fabric that I will use for the front, top & sides of the new machine cover.

After I had drawn (and REdrawn) the block to my satisfaction, I laid a sheet of tissue over my drawing and traced it. I then cut up the tissue into patterns to be used on the fabrics that I had pulled to coordinate with the faux cq print. When I cut the fabrics out I added some seam allowance - usually about 1/2 inch in case I needed some ease one way or the other.

For construction I pieced everything but the corners and center first, then I fussy-cut the faux cq to fit. I love some of the curves I managed to get on this block and it will be interesting to see how the other stitches handle them. I may just have to apply this method of block construction again in the future!

Stitch on!