Some cook, I sew and write: creativity brings joy

You've seen me post progress of my cross stitch piece on Instagram.   I FINISHED IT! I'll get it pressed and framed to give to my husband for either his birthday or Christmas present.  That's his signature phrase.  I bought the pattern in July 2010; it only took 8 years to finish it! 🎈🎈🎈🎈🎈❤🧡💛💙💚💜😁😁😁😀😀😀😀😀

So like most of you, much has happened within the past month.  My eldest twin son saved and bought his first car:  The really odd part is actually having my car anytime I want it for at least the next week until my daughter gets home from Snow College! He also raked up the forest worth of leaves in our back yard.  That pile doesn't look very tall but you need to understand that I'm looking down at them.  Our house (and patio) stands on a hill above the level of that playset.  Both of my sons bagged those leaves which filled 8 or 9 of those big contractor-sized leaf and debris bags! Biscuits and chicken.  Definitely not a diet food but tasty! Now my latest quilting finish: I finished the quilt top and have purchased the backing and batting.  Now it sits on a chair.  Waiting. My other twin son treated me to dinner at Taqueria Tres Hermanos Thursday night.  It was a lovely night out with him! Finally st...

I made a mini-button quilt of the Nativity!   I sewed on the buttons representing the principle figures but cut the shanks off the back of the animal buttons so they could be glued.  Any suggestions of a good, long-lasting glue?  The glue stick from Missouri Star that I'm using is working for now, but I'm not sure it will last through the years.  Maybe a craft glue like Aleene's Tacky Glue?   I didn't do a whole lot of quilting on this because I used my walking foot and found I missed the flexibility of the FMQ open toe presser foot.  I might go back to add quilting in the black frame.

Here's my latest quilt, created to practice free motion quilting.  I think I used a little bit of everything I've learned so far because some of the spaces are irregular and some because I got bored with what I had already done.  I tried to do each type of element differently from each other too. Some examples (if you look really close!) The back side: Any chemistry teachers out there?  Homeschoolers?

Today I completed my tablet holder using the Little Scraps pattern from This & That, Original Quilt Pattern by Sherri K. Falls. The inside: The good: This is a cute idea.  The right side was originally designed for a tablet of paper, but I put my tablet inside and added the fastener at the top so it wouldn't drop out. The bad: There's a lot of wasted opportunity.  The pocket where I tucked the small notebook could have been modified to hold a phone, and the brown area above the pink zippered pocket is totally wasted.  I think I'll add a photo area there and maybe a key fob.  Since I used the blue pocket for holding my tablet instead of an 8 1/2" x 11 3/4" paper note pad, I should have added multiple pen holders (maybe with a piece of elastic?) across the outside of the pocket. The ugly: The instructions.  Ugh.  They were good at the beginning but the final assembly and the zipper pocket directions lost me.  Maybe it was ju...

Last year, or maybe the year before, or maybe the year before that, I picked up some Thanksgiving themed fabric at JoAnn Fabrics thinking that I would quickly make them up for that year's festivities.   So that didn't happen until now. So while Princess Eugenie got married to Jack Brooksbank, I listened to Words of Radiance,  by Brandon Sanderson, on Audible and cut, quilted, and bound these placemats. I ran out of 505 Spray Adhesive (because I'm not coordinated enough to pull out safety pins before I stitch right over the top of them) so I have only completed 3 out of 6.  Originally I bought enough fabric for 8 but tried another Star experiment that I abandoned before going forward with the original plan.  Placemats use a lot of adhesive spray!  I'm car-less at home today so there were no quick trips to the store! Actually, the third placemat is probably my favorite.  It was the easiest to quilt because I did the quilting d...

I picked up a Halloween panel at Quilting Is My Therapy fabric shop and came home, sandwiched it, and started free motion quilting it.  I finished it quickly for my daughter.  Their kitchen walls are a boring white with a desperate need for a colorful pick me up.     Cute, huh.  Not bad from someone that dislikes Halloween! If you look closely, you'll see steam swirls going up from the black pot.   The machine-stitched label.  Like the striped backing?  That's from my stash. My daughter received the quilt yesterday so I can post this now without ruining the surprise.  It turns out she didn't realize I was making this for her. On one of her walks in town, she discovered a hardware store to buy a wooden dowel to hang this.  She also befriended a seemingly stray cat.  She pet it but had to walk away from it.  Once back at her apartment, the cat stayed on her mind and she felt she should do something ...

Recently, I finished a gift wall hanging/lap quilt for a Christmas gift, at least if "finished" means bound.  I quilted most of it quite heavily but left the main characters relatively untouched.  Except I haven't been able to leave it alone.  Now almost everything is fairly heavily quilted.  I can't show the whole thing since it's a gift, but here's a piece of it: I think I'm getting better, at least some days! This morning, this blog post came across my feed from Diary of a Quilter just in time as a reminder to celebrate small victories.  So I'm celebrating and allowing that quilt to be put away to move onto my next wall hanging. This is what's currently on my machine: I don't really have a plan of how I want to quilt this.  I've used wavy lines, leafy meanders, and wood knots so far.  I'm starting to use circular quilting designs in the mid-section of green inspired by the trees.  All the red barns are trac...

I really want to master this whole free motion quilting thing so I dug out a quilt a friend started and gave to me to finish.  Her meander stitch was impeccable.  Mine, not so much, but I learned a lot.  I also tried a feather for the first time. For starters, I remembered Angela saying to make sure your presser foot isn't down too far.  My convertible FMQ foot is adjustable, and apparently it was down too low.  I felt like I had to yank the fabric through.  Too bad I didn't remember that tip until AFTER I finished the quilt.  The stitching wasn't as smooth. I also learned that choosing an almost invisible thread can be disadvantageous.  I used a light grey which melted into the paisley print.  I couldn't see where I had already stitched so I finally gave up and meandered all over.  Lots of texture though! P.S. I bought Angela Walter's book Free Motion Quilting with Angela Walters , at her shop in Liberty, Missouri, and used i...

Lately I've been watching Angela Walter's free motion quilting challenges.  My first attempts at free motion quilting were pretty pitiful.  Sometimes it still looks like I've never done it before, but sometimes I actually get in the groove and the curves and shapes work, the stitches aren't too tight or too loose, and then I lose it again.   Here's the link to Angela's quilting challenge:  https://quilting-is-my-therapy.myshopify.com/collections/free-motion-challenge-quilting-along It may not be phenomenal quilting, but as Angela says, you get a quilt when you finish!  I'm actually pretty proud of it because it is SOOO much better than when I began!  I short cut the process by using a pre-printed panel, but here's the quilt pattern or the quilt kit.

It seems appropriate to share my Around the World quilt top after showing off pictures of my trip! I really like this.  While at Missouri Star, I purchased some fabric for the back so now I just have to figure out how to quilt it and get 'er done!  As usual, I had to purchase extra fabric to get the colors to work right.  I'm a minimalist scrappy quilter.  I like some sense of color order to my so-called scrappy quilts so a layer cake worked mostly but I had to scrounge for more of certain fabrics.  Missouri Star still had this several years old fabric line from Stonehenge!  Moral:  Don't wait two years to make a quilt with the fabric you've already bought!  Tell that to my stash.

After I dropped my daughter off at school, I headed back to spend a little more time with my parents and sister and then came back to visit my daughter one more time before heading home.  On my way: Manti Temple a few miles south of Ephraim In the mountains at Salt Wash The Vietnam Vet Memorial Also at the Vietnam Vet memorial AT MISSOURI STAR after one l-o-n-g day of driving and 1 shorter: Decorations made of fabric strips.  New use for jelly rolls! Hamilton abounded in murals Some of MSQC's eleven shops and I visited ALL of them and very thankful I was for summer hours.  I didn't get there until after noon and stayed until they shooed me out at 7! Back to the Kansas City temple near my hotel.  This is a temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  My kids were able to participate in the cultural celebration right before the dedication services two days before we moved.

It was nice to spend some time in Utah with my family.  My daughter spent a few days visiting before I took her to see my husband's family (translation: I shopped for last items and she spent time with her cousins).  Then it was off to Snow. My sister and I My parents and I The original core of my family, just the four of us Repeat My sister and parents.  I'm not too good with these selfie-style photos! My mother and I My father and I The three of us My parents My mom relaxing and reading the newspaper on the porch, her favorite activity. My dad On the porch I realized we had taken off with NO family pictures.  We had rushed to get pictures taken the day before we left home so Jim sent photos to the local Walmart near my parents' home for developing.  Walmart's machine wasn't working right so he resent them to Walgreens.  Much better! We finally made it to dinner and raspberry shakes a...