My Most Recent Obsession
I have a new obsession, this book, Material Obsession. I can’t wait to be done with work so I can rush over to Barnes and Noble and get the copy they have on hold for me! The link above is actually the photostream from the AUTHOR of the book! She has a second book coming out in May, whoopee! I think what I like so much about this book, just from looking at the pictures of the quilts, is that it’s just what the title says, Modern Quilts with a Traditional Twist, and that is exactly what I have been searching for! You see, I am always drawn to traditional quilt block designs, such as the churn dash or the log cabin or Jacob’s ladder, but I also LOVE hip and funky fabrics such as those designed by Amy Butler or Chez Moi. Now I can blend the two and not feel guilty because I know it’s OK if it’s shown in a book! Also, we all know that the quilt designers from Australia have a reputation for being AWESOME and I think the two ladies who have written Material Obsession live up to that completely. Gee, what do I know, all I’ve seen is a few pictures from the book, but I’ve heard that the patterns are well written too. I would love to steal some of the pictures from her photostream, but I would sort of feel bad about it. So, please just click the link above to view more of the pictures from the book. Or you can visit Sarah’s blog to see lots of interesting pictures of quilts people made from her book with various fabrics. Check back to that one because she’s getting ready to launch a web store too. Hmm, have I covered everything? I hope so. OH, updates to the shop are posted on Crafty Girls Workshop blog, and I think I might even be adding to the Merrily We Sew Along blog about tutorials soon. Did you even know I had one of those? I didn’t think so, surprise! Instead of posting on there and having to repeat myself or cross promote the blogs, I think I’m just going to make it a place to store links to fabulous tutorials I find around the blogosphere. It could be fun, let’s hope it’s helpful too. Alright, really going now.
Happy Stitching to You,
Anna
New Recycling Effort
Sometimes I am amazed at what small things will make me so happy and excited. For at least the last two years, the city of San Antonio, Texas has been passing out standardized trash cans (brown) and recycle cans (same size as trash cans and blue) to houses in the city. This is in an effort to reduce the number of work related injuries the garbage men were getting because the new trucks have an arm that lifts the cans. Well, I think my neighborhood is the VERY last in the city of over 1 million people to get these trash cans. I have been so excited at the prospect because we really do try to recycle a lot and the smaller green bin we had was just NOT big enough! Well, the reason I am so happy and excited is that we got a notice on Friday that we will be getting the new cans sometime in the next 10 days! Yippee! The city even gave everyone a small trash can to put in the kitchen to put our recycling in before we transfer it to the big bin. That’s just AWESOME because I was getting tired of using paper bags, even though I’m happy to recycle the bags that way, they are sort of a pain. SO, this will help me with one of my new year’s resolutions because I really want to be more ecofriendly and create a compost pile. Once we get our new trashcans, I think I’ll be more motivated to start composting. Today I am so excited by the little things that make me happy. I hope you’ll find some little thing to be happy about too.
Happy Stitches to You,
Anna
P.S. There is new stuff in our shop and I’ve posted everyone on Etsy now. I think you’ll find it’s easier to use. If you want to keep up with the shop updates, put the Crafty Girls Workshop Blog on your bookmarks or RSS feed.
Photography Friday
Since my blog leans toward the boring side without many pictures. I’ve finally rescued some pictures from my camera and can share visual images of what I’ve been talking about lately, yeah! (Let’s just hope WordPress cooperates with me today.)
I made a new bed for Starbuck to use in my sewing room. It sort of has a pillow on the right side. I think she likes it.
The lighting is horrible, but here is an idea of the quilt I’m working on for fun right now. I’ve got the petals all basted down (with my trusty Elmer’s glue stick) and now am working on hand appliquing them!
One of eight large daisy blocks.
One of eight small daisy blocks.
Tea Time Swap and Friendsday
I am hosting a tea time swap on Quilting Friends. If you are interested in participating, you need to join the Ning social network first and then you may join the swap, it’s going to be super fun I think! So now I have seen all sorts of tea related things around. Actually this started because a week or so ago I read a blog about someone who had just recieved the package from their swap partner for the Tea Time swap they were participating in. I know, I don’t have a single original idea sometimes. But my swap involves FABRIC (of course) and can also be coffee related if you like that instead of tea. But, back to the topic, I’ve seen a lot of tea stuff around the blogosphere lately, so I thought I would post a few links to items that are tea related (although not necessarily sewing related.) Since today is Wednesday and I haven’t done a Friendsday post in awhile, I thought I would share the links to those who I consider my new bloggy friends. Here they are:
Karen from The Graphics Fairy has found an old advertisement from a tea company. You know, this would look pretty cool printed out on linen and used as a pin cushion or a coaster! Hmm, wheels are turning!
Sue, at Gossamer Creations has created a CUTE fairy in a tea cup which I think is just adorable. (I LOVE fairy things)
Ayumills at The Pink Penguin has a cute pattern for making a paper pieced teapot, you can make it into a potholder or a hotpad for putting your teapot on or a wall hanging. (She also has some other GREAT tutorials and patterns on her site.)
Of course you can always go to Google and type in “teapot + sewing patterns” and see what comes up.
OK, now for a NON-tea related link. Did you know that LollyChops is having a week long marathon of bunny patterns and projects? It’s called Big Time Bunny Week (BTBW for short) and not only does she give us some great projects, but she writes these cute stories to go along with her posts! It reminds me of that movie Ms. Potter about Beatrix Potter because she always talked to her drawings/paintings of, guess what? BUNNIES! BTW, if you haven’t seen Ms. Potter, you HAVE to see it, such an ADORABLE movie. (OK, I need to get decaf coffee next time, I am writing with WAY too many capital letters.) That’s all for now. Until next time.
Happy Stitches to You (with a cup of tea),
Anna
Link Should Work Now
Sometimes WordPress completely baffles me. The link to the shop on the sidebar should work now. I am sorry for the technical difficulties.
Happy Stitches,
Anna
Friday is Sewing Day!
I really hope I’ll be able to tear myself away from the computer and get some sewing done today. (I will right after I finish this post!) I want to work on some Stash Slashing projects and just have that nice feeling of accomplishment Iget after finishing something. I am confining myself to the house, basically because it’s cold and rainy outside, except when I have to rush out to visit the post office in a bit. But other than that, it’s sew, sew, sew time! Also, I haven’t created a Git er Done list for March and the month is almost half over! I think I’ll keep working on my WIP list and see if I can make a dent. I also want to make something for my shop, maybe take some pictures of some pillowcase kits I am planning to post. Also, didn’t I promise to give away an FQ today? I think I did, well, I had three or four lovely ladies post about my shop and I am feeling generous so I’m going to send ALL of you a FQ! Yeah! That’s it for now, perhaps I’ll post an update later on today. I am sure you’ll be waiting with baited breathe!
Happy Sewing Friday to you,
Anna
Free Stuff Friday!
Lots of people are having drawings for free stuff today. Here are a few I’ve seen so far:
Sew Mama Sew has their usual Free Fabric Friday as well as some cute stationary that they are giving away.
LollyChops is giving away something felty and so cute on her blog.
Joanna over at Product Body Blog is giving away some of her soap. In order to be entered in her drawing, you have to have someone else comment that they heard about the give away on your blog, does that make sense? So please help ME out and go say hi and tell her you heard about her give away on my blog. Ha, then post about it on your blog and pass on the giveaway goodness!
And, just for fun (hey, why not!) I think I’ll give away something too. You see, because LollyChops posted about my crafting space on her blog, my blog readership broke the last record of daily hits by A LOT! I mean, the record was 177 in one day and on Wednesday, I had 373 people read my blog! Wow! Then yesterday I had over 300 again! Wow! So, if you will visit my little online store, Crafty Girls Workshop, and then come back here and tell me what you think , I will put you in a drawing for a fat quarter, how about that? FREE FABRIC! Oh and if you tell a friend and they comment that you told them about it, or if you post about it on YOUR blog, I will put your name in AGAIN! I will give until next Friday, March 13, to comment on here. I think it would be so cool if I had 300 visitors to my store. We only opened on Monday this week.
So, have fun entering and I hope you win! Good luck!
Happy Stitches to You,
Anna
Butterfly Picture Project
I did it! I finished my awesome butterfly picture. Here it is!
What do you think? I think it’s totally awesome! I had so much fun punching out the butterflies and then figuring out how to arrange them on the background. Oh, and that picture frame? I got it at Michael’s for only $5.99! I might go back and get a couple more because it was so fun to make this picture. I anxiously went through my large box of scrapbooking paper and picked out whatever caught my eye, then happily punched out a bunch of butterflies from a strip of each page. Oh, by the way, the butterfly punch I purchased was the one with three butterflies, one large and two small. And the Martha Stewart punches were on SALE at Michael’s this week! Yippee!! I found a piece of foam board I happened to have left over from a bulletin board project and I cut it to fit inside the frame. I also removed the glass, if you can’t tell, so that my butterflies could flitter freely. I can’t wait to hang this in my dreary, windowless office tomorrow. I am thinking about doing another one with butterflies that are all from the same two sheets of paper, for a more monochromatic, or di-chromatic (is that a word?) look. And if it isn’t obvious, I was trying to go for a specific look with this picture. I was trying to make it look like the butterflies were flying off into the distance. Can you tell, now that I’ve given it away? Here are a couple of close-ups of the big and small butterflies.
Here are the small butterflies, note the one in the corner that is freeing itself from the crowd.
Here are the big butterflies. I love that I decided to have them overlap the mat on the bottom. Sort of adds to that 3D effect.
I did use the pop dots as suggested but I don’t think it is very easy to tell from the photos. Thank you so much LollyChops for the fantastic tutorial about how to make this project!
More pictures about my Stash Slashing projects tomorrow.
Happy Stitches to You,
Anna
Some Excitement Recently
Wednesday was an exciting day. My husband brought home a new addition to our family. She is a five week old puppy, who only weighs 2.2 lbs. To put this in perspective, we have two other dogs. We have a five and a half year old german shepherd/doberman (we think) mix, who weighs roughly 80 lbs, his name is Sam Wise Gamgee Luna, and a smaller, black dog (no idea what her “breed” is) who is two and a half years old, weighs about 50 lbs and is named Clara Bella Luna. So, to get a new puppy was exciting and unexpected, but the fact that she only weighs 2.2 lbs is just mind boggling. I don’t think I’ve even owned a cat that was ever that small. Here is a picture of her, sorry that it’s fuzzy, I had to use my cell phone since the batteries in my camera died (of course).
Our newest addition.
Oh, and I didn’t tell you her name yet. We named her Starbuck for two reasons. One, I LOVE Starbuck’s coffee (and so does hubby) but the second reason is rather funny. My husband is a science fiction fan and he enjoys watching this series called Battlestar Galactica (the new one, not the ’70s one.) The main character in that series has a nickname of Starbuck. So, along with the fact that this precious baby is the color of a hazlenut latte, it’s a nod to hubby’s favorite show. Amazing that we both agreed on this name right away. I have also gotten a little taste of what it must be like to be a new parent. I haven’t gotten a good night’s rest since hubby brought her home on Wednesday. This is because she is so small she wants to be close to body warmth and if I put her in her “pen,” which is our huge garden tub, she yelps until I come and pick her up. Needless to say, this makes it difficult to sleep comfortably when I have to sleep on the couch and am always worried that I’ll roll over and smother her or something. Also, the middle dog, Clara, has decided to be maternal and every time Starbuck makes a little wimper, Clara comes rushing over to see if she’s OK. That is fine, except that she has a very cold nose and usually ends up startling me awake when she nuzzles my arm where Starbuck is sleeping. Oh, and my husband is being the typical dad, he falls asleep and doesn’t wake up a single time when Starbuck yelps or cries. It could be due to his sleeping medication, but I feel very lonely in the parent department right now. In spite of our new addition and my lack of sleep, I was able to continue quilting Bailey’s Blanket yesterday, I am so close to finishing but I ran out of thread AGAIN! The worst part is that I bought the last spool that Memories by the Yard had, and it comes from Spain! The cashier said he would make a note that they needed to order more. I know for a fact they are the only quilt store in town that even carries Mettler’s silk-finish cotton varigated thread in those colors. That’s a huge bummer for me because I REALLY want to finish that quilt SOON! I might have to make a little road trip on a quest to find thread this weekend. That’s it for now.
Happy Stitches to You,
Anna
Love What You Do…
Is it really possible to do what you love and love what you do? I am still trying to figure that out. Lately, work has been a little slow, and I’ve had a little more time to catch up on reading quilty blogs. Ahh, I am so jealous. How is it that so many lucky ladies are able to spend their days surrounded by beautiful fabrics and making wonderful creations and actually make some money in the process? I suppose there are many reasons, perhaps they live very frugally and in a very small house with very few bills. Perhaps they have a “very supportive husband” who is willing to go to work every day so that they can stay home and quilt. (My hubby goes to work but unfortunately, teachers do not get paid what they should, so I have to go to work as well.) Or, perhaps they are really struggling and they just don’t show it. If, two and a half years ago someone had said to me, “You can pursue your dream of becoming a full time quilter/sew-er/crafter if you just stay in your two bedroom house” I might have said, “no thanks” in favor of having an entire room dedicated to my sewing hobby (which is what I have now). But what is the point of having that room if I very rarely get a chance to actually use it? I suppose my displeasure at the moment just comes from the fact that my current job is not especially very challenging or exciting – at the moment. It’s also not very stable, although what job really is stable anymore these days? In addition, somehow when I go home in the afternoon, time gets sucked into a vortex and one minute I am sitting on the couch going through the day’s mail and the next thing I know, I’ve been asleep for several hours and it’s already 1:00 am and I need to go to sleep in the real bed. Where does the time go? Why do I feel like I am just dreaming my days away, thinking of all the projects I could be working on or the tote bags I could be making? And why is it that when I get home and have extra time, I don’t spend it sewing? Is the grass really greener on the other side? Frankly, I haven’t felt like I’ve been on the other side in a LOONG time. What is my point here? I don’t really know, but I am taking some very small steps toward something that I think will be very exciting and hopefully lead to me being able to do more of what I love. In fact, I find that since I’ve gotten my mom hooked on quilting, or rather, collecting fabric, I am spending more time with her going to fabric stores, searching out patterns and ideas for new quilts. I’ve even helped her get her fabric cut for her next quilt. This is where my passion is, in teaching people about this artform. I want to have more time to actually sew and quilt and then write about it as much as possible. I find that I envy my sister who is so lucky to have started out with little or no financial debt and who can “afford” to stay at home and only work part time if she wants. OK, I guess I am borderline on whining now. Sorry about that. As my dad always said, “Well quit talking about it and just do something.” If you don’t try, you’ll never know, right? More details to come and I hope the few people who read this blog will be willing to support me in my endeavor. Hopefully next time the post will be about the completion of Bailey’s Blanket!
Happy Stitches to You,
Anna
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