Crazy Week!

Sorry it has been so long since I have posted. It has been crazy at my house this week. Our roof was finished yesterday.

Now the paint looks 10 times worse than it did, and it looked bad before. Painting will be our next project.

In addition to the roof and insulation project, which lasted 3 1/2 days, the semester began at the College on Monday so my husband and I are back to work. School began for our son on Tuesday. For some reason he didn't get off the bus at his stop on Tuesday afternoon so we lost him for about 20 minutes. A parent's worst nightmare and this is the second time we have lost our child. (He was three the first time and I still get shaky just thinking about that experience.) Anyway, he was fine, just really confused and had no idea that he was even lost.

We had to completely empty our attic storage space so that they could do the spray foam insulation so we have boxes and bins of stuff every where waiting to go back into the storage area. The insulation project was pretty messy - dusty - so I have lots of cleaning to do and no motivation to do it.

I did get to do a little stitching this afternoon.

I am almost finished with my little Joy ornament.

I am really liking this one! I think it's a little large for an ornament but I can fix that. This one was just my prototype anyway.

Roof and Insulation Work Begins Today

The old roof is coming off today. We'll hopefully get the new roof tomorrow. They also started pulling out the moldy, falling down insulation in the attic space.

What is all that black stuff? Guano! Bat poop! Words are inadequate to express the grossness of this image. We are getting spray foam insulation to replace the old fiberglass. Along with a new properly installed roof, this insulation will, they claim, seal all the cracks so that bats can't get in to the attic next year.

Playing with a Purpose

Every year I make ornaments for my nieces and nephews and other children special to our family. I have played around with several ornament ideas for this years ornament, but nothing really excited me, until today ...

I started with a square of fabric, about 4 1/2" in size, on a piece of batting. I did a quick zig-zag stitch around the edges just to baste the two layers together. Then I got out some of my variegated DMC floss.

I thought it might be nice to try stitching a word.

Now I am stitching whatever pops into my head.

When I'm done stitching, I plan to back this with a Christmas print, whipstitch around the edges, and attach a hanging loop.

Last Hurrah of Summer

Yesterday four moms from our playgroup took our six children to Walsenburg, CO to Wild Waters Water Park. It was a long day, Walsenburg is about 75 miles over La Veta Pass from Alamosa, but it was a lot of fun!

They have a zero entry pool with a platform in the middle full of water sprays that the kids can turn on and off.

They have a lazy river area.

They have two water slides. The yellow one requires a tube, which they provide. The green one is for people only - no tubes.

All the kids loved the slides. Carrying your tube up the stairs repeatedly really wears out an 8 year old.

As you can see in the above picture, they had single tubes and two person tubes.

They also have a deep pool with a diving board, a short slide for little kids in the zero entry part and ample shade with lounge chairs for the grown-ups. However all the moms in our group got in on the fun, going down the slides and relaxing in the lazy river area.

If you are ever in the Walsenburg area in the summer, this is a really fun place to spend a day. They do not allow you to bring in food but they will stamp your hand so you can take your picnic lunch to the park next door and then return. The park has ample picnic tables.

August Art Group Meeting

My art group met again yesterday. We did some more liberated, wonky piecing and make courthouse steps blocks. I came home with these three blocks and extra pieced rectangles.

This afternoon I played with them some more.

This is where I have to stop for the day. I'm planning to add a little more to the top and along the right hand side.

I am really enjoying this liberated style piecing process and using only solid fabrics!

Paintstiks, Part 3

Interweave was having a sale recently and I took the opportunity to purchase a couple more accessories for my Paintstiks. First, I bought the Grip-n-Grip mat. What a weird name, but I really like the product.

It is a smooth, firm mat that you put underneath your fabric to hold it in place while you are painting on it. This is to be used instead of taping your fabric down. What a time saver! And I think it works better than taping. When I did the pieces I showed yesterday using the rubbing plates, I had to tape down three sides of the fabric and slide my hand underneath the fourth side to move the plate around. This was not easy and I ended up distorting my fabric a little in the process. I don't think it mattered for those pieces, but using this mat would have made the project easier. (I didn't use the mat because I did those projects on Thursday and this didn't arrive until Friday afternoon.)

The second thing I got was a new book with a stencil set. The book is called Design Magic by Shelly Stokes.

In the book she shows you how to make your own stencils in this style using freezer paper. However, I think her premade, transparent plastic stencils are probably easier to use, at least for a first project with this method. If you decide to buy the book, I recommend you look for a book/stencil set like I got. It is so nice to be able to open the book, read a few pages and start on a project. Making the stencils yourself doesn't look to hard, but I bet it is time consuming. Probably well worth the trouble to make one of a kind fabric, but not for trying out the process to see if you like it. This book also contains projects in addition to information on how to use her new stencils.

This is one thing you can make with the stencils that come with the book. She also has several other sets of stencils you can purchase and I probably will at some point.

There are two stencils per set, one is the negative of the other. Her instructions are quite clear on how to prepare your fabric (just press a few registration lines) and how to line up the stencils and interchange them so that you get great designs like these.

Another thing I really like about the book is that she shows you how to clean your stencil brushes. I have never used oil paints before and had no idea how to properly clean my stencil brushes and her first book didn't say much more than be sure to clean your brushes when you are finished.

Well, that is the last of my recent Paintstik projects. I haven't done anything with these yet because they are still curing. You have to let the pieces cure/dry for 3 to 7 days and then heat set them. I will probably heat set them today.

Paintstiks, Part 2

For the next couple of projects I used rubbing plates. I used a set made by Cedar Canyon Textiles called triangles. The set contains six plates and this image from their website shows you the six plates in the set. Click here to see the other sets they have.

For this first one I use the other half of the fat quarter from the grid project. Here is the before photo.

And the after

I was trying to move the plate uniformly so I could get a nice evenly repeated image of the rubbing plate. These plates are about 6 inches square so you pretty much have to move them around to fill up an area with the design. It was impossible for me to move it uniformly so I gave up on the next two.

For this one I used the gold and copper colors from my set of iridescent Paintstiks and moved a plate around somewhat randomly, twisting and turning it.

For this one I used two of the blue colors and again moved a rubbing plate around, twisting and turning it.

One of the things I find frustrating about my set of paint sticks is that the individual sticks are not labeled. (I have the set of 15 mini iridescent sticks.) So I have no idea what colors I am using. It didn't occur to me until just now that I should number my sticks with a Sharpie and then I can at least make notes to myself about which colors I used on each project.

I have one more project to share with you tomorrow. I'll be giving a short demonstration/lecture to my guild on Saturday about Paintstiks. These will be my samples.