A Commissioned Toiletries Bag

You may recall the totebag I made for my friend from my yoga classes. Well, I’ve made her a coordinating toiletries bag in a custom size.

Amongst the lavender (two years old now) and calla lilies (five or six years old now!)

When I gave the tote to her, I asked if she wanted a matching makeup bag, and she said no, she didn’t think so; they were too small for what she needed. I told her I did have a couple of bigger ones in my shop and so she said she’d take a look.

DrEAMi #58

Welcome to DrEAMi for November. What kind of squirrels have you been chasing? We've set up a few bird feeders for the winter and consequently we've been on actual squirrel patrol...to the point where MacGyver had to go online to see what kind of squirrel baffles he could create to foil these smart critters who sit and totally decimate the bird seed.

A simple piece of furnace vent ducting has done the trick, though he had to fashion a third one since they were LAUNCHING themselves from the lilacs and Jimson weed plants onto the green house-style feeder.

So, you can see that both humans in this house have been chasing squirrels, as it were...

Makeup Bags

Some of you may have seen my red/plum/brown little makeup bag on Instagram when I entered it in Hobbs Holiday Creating Challenge. Well I finally got the other two finished!

They are listed for sale in my Etsy shop, SandraJaneQuilts.

Rainbow Kitty Rows

When I saw Ruth's Rainbow Rose QAL that she was doing at Modern Quilters Ireland, I immediately loved it.  It is such a happy quilt and functional too, as a colourwheel.

Washed and crinkly in the morning sunshine

This is one of the projects on my Q3FAL List which you can find here.

The original quilt has a final 4.5" white border.  It seemed like too much white space to me (ha! really, that sounds odd, since I rather love filling white space with quilting!)  So, I only added a 2.5" border.  It has sat like that since July 5 while I contemplated how to quilt it, and dug through my stash for a suitable backing and binding...

When I found the Laurel Burch backing, a chunk of fabric I have hoarded for oh, about a decade, but did use some on my Merry Cat-mas and Dayna's stocking, more angst set in because I wanted to put some of it on the front.  To border or not to border?  As you can see, the kitties won.  They just had to leap and fly in their rows of 3 around the rainbow rose.  Doing that meant I didn't have enough to cover the entire backing, but the purple cats print by Henry Glass worked perfectly.

I did Angela Walters dot to dot designs with white Isacord polyester in the white triangles around the centre star.  In the centre star I used a Judi Madsen design, one I've also used on Dayna's grad quilt that is fun to do.  For this I used Aurifil variegated in rainbow colours.

Hot off the frame in the remaining light of the day in the front entry

I did a random wavy line through the carpenter's wheel sections of the quilt using that same Aurifil thread.

I am continually amazed at the difference in appearance from inside with natural light on a quilt, to outside in shade, to outside in fairly bright sunlight.
Below you see it in the shade before heading to the washing machine:

The Legacy polyester batting I used is to die for.  Quilts like butter, gives good definition and is light and airy.  I first used this last summer in the guild wheelchair charity quilts.  The charity quilt committee had been given a roll of it.  I loved it.  When I was in Alma Sue's Quilts in Sarasota this past winter, she had some quilt batting remnants and I scored two long and narrow pieces of it, one 17" the other 25" but by something like 84", for $2.50 for the two.  Yes!  So the batting in this quilt cost less than $2.50!  There is a join about 2/3 over from one side.  With this much quilting in the quilt I have no fear of it separating.

In the kitties border I did a Christina Cameli design that I've now used at least three times, and I just love it: waves with three "e's" every so often.  The binding I've had for quite some time. When I see a good stripe, I grab at least a half metre/yard since I love stripes as binding.

In the white background around the wheel, you can see I did three different quilted border designs.  Kathleen does this on lots of the quilts she quilts and I love the effects.  I love the idea of the quilting going behind the piecing.  So I did skinny figure 8's, ghost geese, and figure 8's again.  The white is not Kona Snow!  It's Maywood Studio's Whisper Whites from Charlotte Sewing Studio.  I've used this twice now, and it is a terrific fabric, doesn't fray as easily as the Kona either.

Ahh, love that texture. Yep it feels as good as you think it does when I pet it.  :-)

Here is the label:

Yes, I did my binding by machine again; it's just so much faster, and I am improving.  Only had to go back in on 3 spots this time!  Applying it to the front, folding it to the back, and stitching it down from the front in the ditch is my preferred method, and nicest final appearance IMHO.

Love me a good folded up quilt, but there is definitely an art to it, to get that rolled look...I opted for the folded look as you can see

Hot as Hades here as it seems to be in the east, with little to no rain in our area.  We did get a lovely quiet thunderstorm (oxymoron, but it was quiet as in not violent) with quite the downpour that went on more than 5 minutes!  The lawns are so brown, and I noticed the massive Catalpa tree down the street has many yellow leaves... Our hydrangea paniculata, aka PeeGee Hydrangea trees are glorious, so I had to get a shot of Rainbow Kitty Rows under one of them:

Quilt Stats:
Pattern:  Rainbow Rose by Ruth Bourke
Size: 38 X 38 3/8"  (like how?  must shrink more one way than the other? It was square before quilting and washing...)
Fabric: scraps from my stash; backing is Holiday Collection by Laurel Burch for Clothworks, binding is from David Textiles (other info is cut off)
Batting: Legacy polyester scraps
Quilted: on Avril the Avanté; 96, 138 stitches
Threads: pieced with Gütermann; quilted with Isacord 0015 40 wt and Aurifil variegated Marrakesh 3817 50 wt; So Fine in the bobbin

Linking up with
Modern Quilters Ireland
Crazy Mom Quilts
Confessions of a Fabric Addict
TGIFF at What a Hoot Quilts (hey! Lynette is where I first heard of the Henry Glass Desire to Inspire Challenge!)

and also with Leanne at She Can Quilt for the Q3FAL.

Bloggers' Quilt Festival Entry #2

Yesterday I posted about the first of my entries, Seaside Rose.  Today I'm showing you my second entry, Hidden In Plaid Sight.  I'm entering this quilt into the Original Design Quilts category.

My original post about this quilt is here.  This was a Moda charm pack of "Follow Your Heart" by Kathy Schmitz I'd bought in 2007.  I petted it, riffled through it several times over the years, and this winter I decided to let it grow up!  I wanted to maximize the 5" squares, so started playing with them on my design wall.  I realized I had four colourways, black, green, red and taupe, so thought perhaps I could shade from dark to light...

Bad to the Bone - scratch that: Pleasure-Seeking Sewer!

Confession: I am a fabric-o-holic.  I am. I am.  And I do not make apologies for it; it feeds my soul, makes my body hum with anticipation and excitement and possibilites.  Hence the change in my title.

I went to JoAnn's today to buy duck canvas for a spring bag I'm going to make, and, well, just to look around...a 50% off fabric for VIP customers was burning a hole in my Frenchy bag (see? I use it ALL the time, get lots of compliments on it, and well, a girl can never have too many bags).

I realized last Fall that my stash supply of grey is abysmal.  As is my stash supply of teal and aqua.  And solids.  So I've been slowly but surely rectifying that over the past few months.  Here is my loot for today:

Eeek!  Just looking at the picture makes me happy.  So, the lime and turquoise Moroccan style one in the top at the 11 o'clock position is for a Seaglass quilt that I've yet to buy the pattern for, but I intend to, as it's SO awesome.

The run of fat quarters and one 1/2 yard piece is JoAnn's contribution to my lack of greys; I think I did pretty good with the value run, as well as the value for money, ha ha.  Fat quarters were on sale for $1.39 each.  I am in love with Katie Clark Blakesley's "Spiced Chai" quilt in the book Vintage Quilt Revival, so these might end up there.  Who am I kidding?  I am in love with just about every quilt in that book!  And those two teal ones might go into the seaglass quilt, or into a Bento Box quilt for which I've been collecting stuff for a year.

Above the teal are 3 packs of jewellery stuff, 2 pairs of danglies, and a pack of 4 earring adaptors.  I've never bought anything like this before, but I was so drawn to these, both colour-wise (I'm clearly in a blue and green phase) that I had to get them.  For under $5, for all 3 packets, I was sold.  I even thought of attaching these to a zipper on one of my make-up bags as a bit of bling.

Finally, you see the cream fabric that I'd hoped to use my 50% off regular-priced fabric coupon.  At the checkout, I found out that if the fabric is on sale, as it was in this case, for 30% off, they are not allowed to charge me the full price and then input the 50% off coupon.  Bummer.   Still, it was ony $7 for the yard, decent, and I "feel" it in the charm quilt...I know, I know, I have fabric in Kingsville in mind for this quilt, but my roses (oops, spoiler alert) I want to incorporate need to be 2 or 3 layers, so I will need more than one cream.  This also might work in my Self Round Robin.

Total cost?  $31.97
Pleasure factor?  Immeasurable

I was just reading while I soaked in the tub tonight in Cyndi Lee's book May I Be Happy, about the importance Dr. Christiane Northrup (love her, have had her book, Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom for years, now I see I need to get The Wisdom of Menopause) puts on pleasure.  Cyndi writes, "She has dedicated the second part of her life to helping women learn about everything that 'can go right' in their bodies and her number-one recommendation is pleasure." p. 150

Yay!  I am on track!

I'm Still Here

I don't have anything finished yet, but I thought I drop a few pics of what I've been up to:

I'm still plugging away at the handquilting on my runner.  I'm really, really enjoying it, despite my poor up-close eyesight these days (yep, wearing two pairs of glasses at the same time, sigh), and my sore pointer from the finger underneath the quilt that gets stabbed with each stitch.

I'm also planning the last of the charm square quilts (and I had a waking dream about the design for this last charm quilt, which excites me to no end!)  Unfortunately, the ivory fabric I want to use is in Kingsville, so this will get started here, and then finished back home.  It's a challenge as there are only 32 squares, 30 in the pack, and I had two leftover from the first one I did.

My self round robin you see peeking at the bottom of that pic is no further than when Dayna was here, but I have narrowed the appliqué pattern down to two ideas.  Am I procrastinating?  Uh, a little.  It's that "I hope I make the right decision, gee, I don't know, ew, I don't want to trace all those shapes onto Steam-a-Seam, will it be wrong to machine-appliqué if the centre is so beautifully hand-appliquéd?" stage.

I also have been really enjoying machine-quilting "Hidden in Plaid Sight".

Yesterday and today I did some more lessons online in Angela Walters' "Dot to Dot Quilting" class on Craftsy and I am just LOVING this class every bit as much as her Free Motion Feathers one.  Worth every cent.  I also have her Machine Quilting Negative Space class too, and can't wait to get started on that.

I must confess that I have spent more than the usual amount of time over the past couple of days, reverse-sewing, sigh.  Unpicking machine-quilted stitches is no picnic.  Neither is getting the window fixed in my sewing room so that it opens without having to be propped open with the can of QBS (who knew that can would have a dual purpose of 'holding'? LOL), only to discover, after I happily opened it, those 4-patches of charm squares mostly blown off!!!  One of the few times I hadn't taken a picture of the arrangement...BIG sigh.  I even unpicked hand-quilted stitches in the red zinger.  I'd quilted a couple of feet about 1/8" away from the seam, but decided it looked weird, so unpicked it all (easy, just heartbreaking to think of the lost time that it took to stitch) and re-quilted in the ditch.  I like it much better, so it was worth it.

Yesterday we spent a few hours kayaking in the Robinson Preserve, along the canals and into Perico Bay.  Just heavenly, so serene and calm.

I'm also reading a new author, Jo Nesbø.  It's The Redbreast, and is very good so far, intriguing, has me thinking on it as I sew.  Hope to have some finishes shortly!