New Fall Decorations

It feels like I've been sharing lots of little projects lately rather than big projects.  Partly that's because I've taken a break from big stuff after pushing through my Dahlia quilt, my Eucharistic Prayer C quilt, and my Anonymous quilt in the spring/summer and it's partly because I'm holding off a little on sharing the new things I'm working on. 

In any case, last week I got out my fall decorations and decided that they didn't go well with my regular blue placemats, so I snagged a bunch of this floral fall colored home-dec fabric at JoAnns and made up some new ones.  I love the way they look with the warm wood and the copper candle holders.  Our everyday cloth napkins are a light green, so I tried to pick a fabric they would continue to match.  Unfortunately the ivory crochet doily that had been in the middle of the table was too big with the new placemats and all the other old doilies I had were stark white.  I wound grabbing one of them and just tea-dyeing it.  It took up just enough color to be a pale brown and now blends in fine with the rest of the decor.  The table would probably look better with not-white candles, but I'm not willing to spend any more money on this endeavor....

Then while I was cleaning out my sewing room desperately looking for a lost very important something which I had put someplace "very secure so I wouldn't lose it" (who knows where), I found this silk screened bird panel.  My mom made this silk screen a couple years ago, and at that time she and I both made several prints using it.  She finished hers into several small quilts (which have since all been sold), but my prints were just crammed into a drawer.   I decided to stitch one up into a little fall wall hanging which is now in my office.

One of the most fun things about this print is that I actually printed it twice, once in black on the navy fabric and then once, offset, in gold.  As a result when you look up close, there's more depth to the print and the black almost looks like a shadow.

Mom's prints were mostly black on a grey background and their ominous look led her to title the pieces Something is Coming... I liked that, so to make mine a little more interesting I drew out words and then free motion embroidered them.  On an aside, is anyone else addicted to calligraphy/lettering videos on instagram?  They're mesmerizing and have been popping up in my feed a ton lately.  Hand calligraphy/lettering is a field I've never really explored, but I tried a little here.  The whole thing isn't really quilted, I just backed it with some stabilizer to give it a little more heft for the stitching on the letters, and then bound the whole thing.

It was just a quick fun project, but I love getting cool things out of drawers/UFO piles and onto the wall!

Halloween 2014

So IQF Houston always seems to fall over Halloween and last year you may remember that my mom and I dressed up as Snow White and Grumpy at the quilt show.  We aren't dressing up at the quilt show this year but some good friends of mine dressed up as Bajorans and hosted a party called Deep Spook Nine: Keeping up with the Cardassians.  With a clever title like that, I couldn't be anything but a Starfleet officer.  My favorite iteration has always been The Next Generation (swoon Patrick Stewart).  Given how terrible I look in a jumpsuit, I elected to make a version of Troi's skant uniform.  Given it's shortness I'm opting for the look with leggings.

Not perfect, but I think it definitely reads as "Starfleet" and it's certainly a pretty comfy costume!

I blend pretty well apart from the silly grin.

And here are a few of us at the party, loosely representing TNG, DS9, and TOS.  Too bad I look ridiculous with my eyes closed.

Happy Halloween everybody!  I hope you have a great time!

Halloween 2013

Before it gets much later I wanted to share these pictures of my Halloween costume from this year.  I think I mentioned in a previous post that back in the mid '80s my mom made a Snow White costume for me and my sister, and a Grumpy Dwarf costume for herself.  We were going together to a costume party at IQF Houston, so she thought I should make a new Snow White costume to go with her existing Grumpy.

It was quite a bit more Halloween sewing than I've done for the last few years; the outfit consisted of a dress (with hand-drafted sleeves since the ones in the pattern didn't match the old dress) cape, detachable collar and hair bow.

Here I am trying it on at home during construction.

And here we are (me and my mom) at IQF.  I knew I wanted to wear my costume all day at the Quilt Show after putting all that effort into it, but I wasn't thrilled about wearing a black wig all day.  I decided to just dye my hair really dark brown instead.  I've never dyed my hair before (excepting one botched kool-aid experiment in high school), but it went ok.  It didn't turn out nearly as dark as I'd hoped, but it seems a little darker.  I got lots of sweet comments at the show and lots of poison apple remarks.  My mom couldn't see too well out of her mask, and it was pretty hot so she just wore it at the party.  I think this picture is as genuinely happy as I've seen myself in a long time.  We had a lot of fun even though we didn't win; the costumes that won were mostly clever costumes (rather than traditional ones).   In an effort to appeal to the judges, when it was my mom and my turn to be judged I  held up an apple, took a big bite, and collapsed dramatically to the stage.  Although the judges were unmoved, it was pretty funny; I landed with quite a bit more bang than I thought and my glasses fell off the stage all together.  My mom and some nice man came and helped me up.

All together a super fun Halloween!  I hope you guys enjoyed your celebrations.

Happy Halloween (ish)

I so wanted to post this yesterday but just got a bit behind. I hope you all had a fun and safe Halloween!   I dressed up for a party last weekend (as a knockout mouse), but didn't dress up yesterday.  I had choir practice at church last night so Mike stayed home and handed out candy (under duress).

I was in charge of the Cell Biology department pumpkin carving/decorating contest this year, so just wanted to share a few pictures from it (excuse the crappy phone photos)!  Here's my pumpkin

And here are some of the others.  There was an individual category, but also a lab category, and many of the labs had bunches of fun decorating their pumpkins yesterday morning with stuff from the lab.  Here are a few of the others!

Halloween-The Recent Years

Happy Halloween everyone!

I've always been one of those make-your-own costume people, but in spite of how much I love sewing, I try to minimize costume sewing  (this in spite of the upcoming massive non-Halloween costume sewing I'm orchestrating for a church event, but that's another post).  It seems like I'd just rather make quilts!  So usually my costumes are compilations of things I've sewn and things I've crafted and things I've cobbled together from all over the place.  

In recent years, I've only dressed up if we've had a Halloween party or event to attend since we hardly ever have trick-or-treaters around.  I really do love thinking up fun costumes, and of course the internet is a great source of inspiration.   We're not dressing up this year, but here are some of the costumes I've made from the proverbial "yore".

2010.  I was a fruitfly- drosophila to be exact.  I had fun making it, especially the hat with the big red eyes, and the homemade fly wings but most people didn't get it.

2009.  This was one of my favorite costume years.  Also, since it was the first year Mike and I were together, I was actually able to get him to dress up.  We went as Peanut Butter and Jellyfish (I mean, who doesn't love a terrible pun).  I made his peanut butter shirt and hat, and my jellyfish outfit.  I failed to consider that maneuvering through a party with a large umbrella attached to my head would be difficult, but it was fun all the same.

2004.  Another one of my favorite costume years.  I went as the Madwoman of Chaillot, as portrayed by the incomparable Katharine Hepburn.  I was working at a theater back then and we were allowed to dress up for work on Halloween.  It was a complete blast.  I loved gathering up everything to make all the layers of this costume, especially the hat.

2001.  This year I just went in one of my old RenFaire type dresses.  The year was mostly notable because my then boyfriend had just come here from India and had never celebrated Halloween.  He wasn't too excited about costumes, so I convinced him to go as a Christmas tree; I just sewed a bunch of fake Christmas branches and ornaments onto an old green shirt and there he went.  Sadly, my friends and I tried to host a big party with all the members of our class (~40 people) but not one single person showed up!  The five of us had great fun though.

1997-1998.  These were college years, and while my friend Melinda always sewed fabulous intricate costumes for herself and her now-husband,  I usually just made something up.  On the left- I was some sort of Chemistry-witch-street-salesperson with chemistry supplies hanging inside my cape for any passers-by who happened to need a graduated cylinder.  On the right- I went as the queen of hearts, inspired by Alice in Wonderland.

Hope you guys have gotten a laugh out of some of my crazy costumes.  What are you dressing up as this year?

Halloween-The Mom Years

I was inspired by Kenda to pull out some old Halloween crafty costume pictures to share.  She has made the best dinosaur costume (I want the tail really bad) for her son and the most clever skeleton costumes for herself and her husband.  Seriously, you should go check them out straight away.

Anyway, my mom is the most crafty art sewing person I know and she always made awesome costumes when my sister and I were little.  I have a few pictures from back then I thought I'd share since I don't have any kids to make costumes for now.  Maybe next year I can dig up some of the others.  I'm not really sure about some of the years; it's awfully hard to judge ages with all the costum-ery on!

c. 1987

c. 1988  That's me during my shirley temple curly hair phase.  The Snow White costume my sister is wearing was the most intricate thing I think my mom ever made us.  It had a bunch of separate pieces (the cape, the collar, the dress- not too mention the rather wretched wig) and was an absolute favorite in the dress up bin until we outgrew it.  Somewhere I have to find some better pictures of it.

c.1989  You can see we definitely reused costumes. Hand-me-downs are the way to go.  Also, yes, I am wearing a pom-pom on my head.

c. 1990  Simple matching kitties that year!

What are your kids dressing up as this Halloween?

Jack-O-Lantern

In addition to my witchy Halloween wall hanging, I also get out this fun Jack-O-Lantern around this time of year.   He's about placemat sized and I foundation pieced him about 6(!) years ago.  My mom made one too, hers is a tall skinny Jack-O-Lantern.  The pattern came from the Sept/Oct 2004 issue of Fons and Porter Love of Quilting.  I remember this random factoid only because I came across this particular issue in a stack of old quilting magazines my mom brought me.  I became so excited and nostalgic when I found the pattern!

You guys ever have a hard time getting your seasonal decorations down?  That's always my biggest holiday-decoration-challenge.

Witches Witches Witches!

I spent most of my quilting time this weekend working on my Big S quilt, but didn't make quite enough progress to justify another post.  It's shaping up to be a busy week, but maybe I'll have accomplished enough to show some more on it by Friday.

In the meantime, we've started October which means I pulled out my Halloween decorations.  I'm a little bit picky about holiday decorations; I love them but have a fairly strict schedule for myself in terms of putting them up.  Taking them down, not so much, but that's another story.  Although I usually put my fall decorations up  as soon as it cools off just the slightest bit in September, I try to wait on Halloween decorations until the beginning of October.

I made this quilted Halloween wall hanging about two years ago to try out hand drafting geese to fit inside an odd shape.  It works so easily, and since you foundation piece them, the subtle shifts in the size of the geese are almost undetectable (from an assembly standpoint).  I'd been hanging onto this great grey sparkly witch fabric for a long time and thought this project would be a great way to show off the large print.  I just love it since it shows witches doing not only witchy things, like sitting in pumpkin patches and flying on broomsticks, but decidedly non-witchy things like taking a bubble bath and reading in bed!

So what about you guys?  Do you put up holiday decorations?  Do you have a favorite large scale print you had to find just the right project for?