Recycle Art 1

I "finished" my first quilt in the recycle series. I put finished in quotes because I am going to wait to do the binding until I have completed the series or at a least a few more in the series. I'm not sure how I want to display these, individually or as a group. If it's as a group then I'd like them to be bound the same.

The Story of the Star Bangled Banner

I went to my PEO meeting this morning. Our program theme for this year is music and today's program was about the Star Spangled Banner. The lady giving the program had us listen to the following clip she found on You Tube.



It is a little long - 11 minutes - but you won't be wasting your time. I knew the basic story from grade school but this will sure make me think about what I am singing from now on.

Recycling and Playing

I've been a bit grumpy lately and I was trying to figure out why. I think that I haven't been getting enough playtime in my sewing room. So I have embarked on a new attitude adjustment program. I am going to take some advice I have read in a magazine and try to create one piece of art a week. In reality, it will probably be one piece of art every other week. That doesn't matter to me though. I figure that if I get to work on my "art" piece at least 15 minutes every day, I have been successful in my plan.

I put art in quotation marks because I'm not trying to create a masterpiece every week. My goal is to practice my design, color and composition skills along with practicing and trying out new techniques and materials. I started yesterday and this is what I've got going on so far.


The horizontal stripes were cut from one of my husbands old shirts that he no longer wants. The gold vertical stripe is from some fabric my mom gave me recently. I have no idea what the fabric content is, but it's not cotton. It is has some gold metallic threads in it and it frays easily. I am encouraging it to fray. I used some of the decorative stitches on my machine to sew down the horizontal stripes. On the middle one I even used two threads threaded through one needle on my machine. I'll take a detail shot of that later. I have learned that it is difficult to go around corners when doing a decorative stitch. I need more practice with that. I also think I should have cut the stripes from the shirt differently, leaving out the cream lines and circles in between the colored stripes - next time. I am thinking that I will do a series of these using this shirt.

Here's a picture of the shirt.

Windy Monday

This morning I went to sew at my local quilt shop, The Gray Goose. I just meet a few friends once a month and we work on whatever and visit. My husband likened it to old men meeting at the fillin' station or barber shop. I guess it is a bit like that. I worked on my cross stitch stocking ornaments. I've got eight done, four to go. Had to buy more red thread today though. I think I've used four skeins of it so far!

It is very windy here today. I washed sheets this morning and tried to hang them on the line. I didn't even get one sheet up. The wind was blowing so hard that the line was dancing, the sheet was being blown into me. It isn't that cold, but wet sheets in the wind are very cold. It took me about 2 minutes to realize this was not going to work out. My hands were hurting. Oh well.

Parker's friend, Jamie, is coming to our house after school today. Better go meet the bus.

Scouts

Some photos of my scouts taken October 1st before their weekly den meeting. Parker is a Wolf this year, his second year in scouts. They are in the midst of the yearly popcorn sales event. Last year Parker did well, but didn't sell very much. It was his first year in scouts. By the time he got the forms the sale had been going on for about two weeks. Most folks we knew had already purchased from another scout. This year they started selling the very first day of the sale. So far he has filled up two order sheets (25 sales) and started on a third. As with most fund raisers like this, there are prizes given for sales and each level has nicer prizes. Parker set his sites on a telescope at the $1100 level. I didn't think he would even get close to that amount in sales, but he is currently at $965 with a week left to sell. He has worked very hard, selling almost every afternoon after school. I hope he makes it.

What Was I Thinking?

Yesterday I began preparations for teaching a tote bag class to my guild at this months meeting. To double check my cutting instructions I cut out pieces for two bags, one from home decorator fabric and one from regular quilting fabric. I searched my stash for some regular quilting fabric to use and look what I found.

What was I thinking!? After cutting out the bag parts, I still have almost 4 1/2 yards of this! I seem to remember purchasing 6 yards of this! Why, why why? I probably bought this 10 years ago. My tastes have changed since then. I guess I have backing fabric for my next couple charity quilts.

Mystery Quilt, Part 1

Late yesterday afternoon I had about 45 minutes before dinner and I wanted to sew something. Looking around my messy sewing room, I spied my fabric for the mystery quilt my guild is doing. I had not yet made the blocks for last month and I don't even have the directions for this months block. (I missed the last guild meeting because I was in Nashville for Liesel's wedding) I looked at the directions for last months block and decided to start them. They are on the far left in the photo. I used all fabrics that I purchased in Nashville, mainly because they were on the top of my fabric stash for this quilt. The two bags of fabric in the picture are what I'm using.

The pattern called for a focus fabric, background fabric and two dark fabrics. I prefer scrappy quilts so I am using brown as my background, blue and green as my two darks, and the focus fabric is in the center of the Ohio Star blocks. It doesn't really show very well in the picture above but I will have more posts on this and next time I'll try to take better pictures. Following the pattern, the quilt will finish at large lap quilt size. I asked our Projects chairperson if the pattern could be expanded with more blocks to make it King size. She says yes, so this will end up being our new bed quilt for our new king size bed.

I've made three types of blocks thus far. There is a fourth block, handed out last month. I will get the directions next week and maybe I'll have time to put it together before this months meeting. We will be assembling our quilt tops after the guild meeting in November. I don't know if I will put my blocks together then or not since I am going to make it larger.