It's been so long

I've really gotten out of the habit of posting here, mostly because I don't have a computer anymore, just an iPad, and it's a bit of a pain to use for blog posts!

Been doing lots of sewing, making a crib bumper set for my niece in Colorado, who is due any day now; dyeing and sewing some linen and rayon scarves for Christmas presents; making some pillows; doing some printing with thickened dyes, just been all over the place...

Also been making some smaller machine embroidery pieces with lots of hand stitched additions:

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas.  Here in the eastern US we've been experiencing record-breaking warm temps, but it appears that we may be getting some real winter weather this week.

Almost winter already??

Hard to believe that it is nearly Halloween...been doing some stuff, just not any blog updates for a while.  I sewed some coloring pages for my granddaughter to paint, she did a pretty nice job with some Peobeo Setacolor and Dynaflow paints on this:

She did most of the flowers, when dry I finished it off with the light blue background.  We had fun!  I tried to get her to work on some more, but she lost interest.

I free motion quilted a lap quilt that had been in my UFO pile for a long time, just have to bind it and then start using it. 

And I'm going to do some posts for the And Then We Set It On Fire blog in January, I'm taking pictures now for some upcoming projects...

Linking up with Free Motion Mavericks this week!

Art retreat on Martha's Vineyard

A self-directed Art retreat sounds better than babysitting my daughter's dog for a few days! I packed up the car with my dog Leo and lots of dyeing supplies and headed to Martha's Vineyard for a week.  Spent some time with the grandkids before they headed off to a weekend family reunion in Minnesota.

Playing with your toes is serious business

Here's a pile of fabric I washed out today

I did some ice dyeing in the 95 degree heat over the weekend--

And some sun printing using seaweed

This was my view from the deck where I was working

Very inspirational

I had a great time, now to get some sewing done!

Linking up with Off The Wall Friday  today, haven't done that in a long time!

Free motion quilting!

It's been a busy month, with foster kittens who are into everything around the house, but I've been able to get some free motion quilting done during nap time.  I tried some "Off The Edge" quilting--the first one I made I fused a print fabric down on a larger piece of fabric then quilted around the edges--

The only problem was that the fusing didn't stick at the edges all the way around, so I had to stitch.  So, I tried again, and this time I stitched the edge, adding a border, then added enough fabric to make a baby blanket for a baby shower that I have tomorrow:

I'm a lot happier with this version!

Latest foster kittens--two sweet little boys:

They look like angels, but they are little devils!

I'm linking up  Free Motion Mavericks today

Kitten chaos, no quilting!

I've been fostering four kittens for the past two weeks, and as babies, they eat every 3-4 hours.  At first they had some trouble switching from milk to solid food, but are food experts now.

These two sweeties were adopted on Thursday:

And these two are still with me for another week or so:

If you are ever considering a new pet, check out your local shelters.  These and hundreds more cats are available through the Hudson Valley SPCA.

My daughter, granddaughter, and me took a train to NYC yesterday.  I live pretty close now, so it's not a long trip (less than an hour) but involves switching trains in Seacaucus, New Jersey, so I wanted to do a trial run before attempting it on my own.  We walked around Manhattan, went to some fabric shops, and found a street fair.  

Here is Bryant Park, a beautiful oasis.  If you watched Project Runway, you've definitely heard of it!

Check out the potential quilting design on this building:

The weather is finally hot

Hot enough to do some sun printing.  Madelyn, 3 yrs old, helped me out one Sunday.  We used some Setacolor and Dynaflow paints on wetted fabric, then put leaves on the fabric, and waited about 1/2 hour.

Here is Madelyn's first piece:

We also used a big stencil and some purple and white fabric paint and stenciled some flowers on some purple fabric.  I'm free motioning it now, I hope it will become a pillow...

And finally, I did some color blocked screen printing with thickened dyes.  I'm not sure about this 

piece, I like the colors, but do I cut it up or leave it whole and quilt it?  Right now it's draped across the back of a chair where I can look at it and figure out what to do with it.

I've been taking pictures with my phone, it updated automatically yesterday, now the pictures are HUGE if you click on them.  If anyone reads this blog, I'm sorry, I don't know how to fix them.

Did some printing this week

I found some fat quarters that I had dyed various shades of yellow at some time, can't remember when, but I got them out and applied a beeswax resist, then scraped some thickened dyes on them.

The colors I used were Cobalt Blue and Tangerine.  For this one I used a carved potato to make the circle shape:

I carved the sand dollar shape for this piece into the other half of the potato:

And for this larger piece I used a potato masher dipped into the beeswax:

Funny how the same colors came out so differently on these pieces.  I have more pieces but don't enjoy trying to post with this darn iPad...

Lots of Free motion Quilting!

This poor, neglected blog... I've been doing a lot of free motion quilting over the last month, going through a pile of things one at a time.  Loving my new Babylock Tiara!

Trying out lots of designs, different threads, and quilting for hours every day.

I'm having the best luck so far with Aurifil and Isacord threads.

And grandson Ethan turned one this month, his party was on my birthday.

Hope spring is finally here, its been a long time coming!

March is almost over

Time seems to be flying by! On February 1st (super bowl Sunday) I was driving home around 3:00 in the afternoon and got hit by someone who turned right into me.  My car was 14 years old, with 195,000 miles on it, but I loved it and took really good care of it over the years.  This picture shows the damage:

Hard for me to believe, but this was considered a total loss by the insurance company, so my beloved CRV was taken away.  To counteract this heartbreaking loss, I took the insurance money and bought this:

Ok, so it does help to heal my breaking heart.  Bought it at the Quiltfest of New Jersey from Pocono Sew and Vac.  I didn't get the bobbin winder though, so I can't use it yet.  I'm going there this week for a free lesson and will pick the bobbin winder up then.  So excited to start using this!

Winter has been tough to deal with after being in the south for almost 10 years...lots of snow on my roof meant ice dams and water dripping into my living room.  

These pans and containers were catching drips for almost two weeks. What a mess! I tried to ignore it as much as I could by dyeing fabric for a workshop I took at my quilt guild.

And two of my quilts were chosen for an art show at a large regional hospital.

Summer is coming!!

Is it spring yet??

Snowy week again, and an ice/snowstorm expected today through Tuesday.  Had to run outside and take a picture before it all starts! This is a quick crib quilt I made for a new baby born two weeks early.  I used only scraps that I had on hand in a never-ending quest to use up my stash.

It's simple, with freeform flowers fused on, and then free motion quilted not too densely so its not stiff.

Hope the new mother likes it!

Linking up to:

http://quiltshopgal.com/creativegoodness-weekly-linky-party-february-6th/

Winter blues and greens

I made this quilt about 2 years ago, found it in a bin while moving.  Hard to believe I totally forgot about it!

It was made for a quilt shop challenge using one of those preprinted panels (which I chopped up into strips).

Then I used my Elisa's Backporch templates to cut the circles.

And free-motion quilted it heavily!

Lots of the fabrics used were my hand dyed fabrics.

 Wonder what else I'll turn up in my other bins?