Gifts

Back in the summer my kind aunt gave me a bunch of yarn made from her alpacas and asked only for a scarf out of it (there was tons more than what was needed for a scarf).  I made her this one, and I love the pattern.  It has a nice lacey feel and can be found here or at ravelry).  It crocheted up really easily.  

And then I did this little embroidery for Mike's daughter Melissa for her birthday.  She loved the one I made for her sister Michelle and asked for one too.  I think I need to branch out in my embroidery stitches though!

Hope you enjoyed some handmade gifting this Christmas season!

Merry Christmas

I hope all of you are able to spend time today with those you love.  Merry Christmas!

The Quilting is Finished!

Last night at about ll:45 I finished the quilting on my mammal mandala!  Hooray!  Here are a couple of snaps of the back- I love the way you can see the animals in relief.

Now for the extremely large task of soaking and blocking (soaking always makes me nervous) and then binding.  I'm going to do a facing which is contoured to match the edges of the bats (rather than a traditional binding) and I expect the process to be a nightmare.  Who knows, maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised!

Still Quilting

Coming up for air again long enough to share some pictures.  I'm making progress....

Lights

We went to see the Christmas lights on the Chesapeake campus and out in Yukon last night.  That's really become one of my favorite new holiday traditions.  Plus, it's one of the only times Mike will let me play Christmas music in the car.

Someday I'm going to use these for a quilt....

Quilting

I've been quilting, and quilting, and quilting.  Coming up for air only long enough to post a couple pictures before I dive back in....  Hope you're all well!

Snowflakes

I crocheted a bunch of snowflake ornaments a while back and gave most of them away.  I found these recently so I starched them and gave them hangers.  The blue ones are actually flowers, but I think they make cute ornaments anyway.  I hope you guys are all enjoying the advent season!

Happy Thanksgiving

I'm so happy to get to be with my family in New Mexico for this holiday.  As much as I complain about the hubbub and chaos (and there's a lot of it), I'm just grateful I have such a loving family to generate it!

This is a piece of hand embroidery that has been my take-along project these last couple of months.  The leaf patter is one of Carina's.  She has a ton of fabulous embroidery patterns, you should check out her shop Polka and Bloom.  I used crewel wool embroidery thread (yarn?) and did a sampler of stitches in the leaves.  In the end, that thread was a bit thick for some of the stitches and leaves, but I think it turned out fun anyway.  It's mounted on stretcher bars with a layer of batting.  I'm not really thrilled with that method and don't think I'll do it again- it give an overall puffiness I don't really care for.

The writing says "Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower" which is an Albert Camus quote (according to wikipedia).  I actually like autumn much better than spring but the idea of falling leaves as akin to flowers makes me happy.

Happy Thanksgiving!

WIP: Update on the Mandala

I've been working pretty hard on my mammal mandala lately and haven't really stopped to blog much!  Lucky for you that means you'll be spared a few intermediate in-process posts.  Inspired by something I noticed during one of Caryl Bryer Fallert Gentry's lectures, I decided I'd try to take pictures of this from the same angle at a bunch of different developmental stages (do I sound like an embryologist?).  I'm probably the last person in the whole of internet land to try it, but here's my very first animated GIF documenting my progress so far.

And, in case you want to take a look at it without all the flashing, here's the final frame alone.

I decided I wanted to quilt the animals first on a single layer of cotton batting prior to layering with wool batting and the backing.  I think (hope) it'll give a sort of faux trapunto look in the end, but we'll see.  I'm not going to cutaway around the animals, so I'll have to get all the background quilted down tightly!

I'm headed to New Mexico for Thanksgiving and want to baste the whole thing together on my mom's long arm (to hopefully avoid any dreaded puckers), so I needed to get the first round of quilting (with the single layer of batting) done first. I spent all weekend on it, and aside from pretty sore shoulders and upper back, it went ok.  Unfortunately, at some point I quilted over this flyer which must have fallen off my bulletin board.  I'm not sure if you can tell, but it's cardstock and is pretty densely quilted down.  Ripping it out (the flyer not the quilting) is on my list, but will not be fun.

Anyhow, wish me luck with the no puckering on the back!  I'm going to link up with Nina-Marie and Lee as usual.  Have a great week everyone!

Quilt Alliance Interview: Seymour the Coelophysis

I think I mentioned that the Walk in the Wild exhibit that originally hung at the Albuquerque Open Spaces Gallery was shown at IQF Houston this year.  During the show, Betty Busby arranged for all of us who had quilts in the Walk in the Wild and who were at Houston to be interviewed by the Quilt Alliance.  The Quilt Alliance is a group whose goal is to preserve, document, and share the stories behind our quilts.

They did three minute videos with tons of quilters at Houston, not just us, and you can see a bunch of fabulous ones on their YouTube channel.  I talked very excitedly about Seymour the Coelophysis, you can watch it here in case the embedding doesn't work.  You may have to turn up the volume a bit, it was kind of hard for me to hear on my computer.

If you ever find yourself with some spare time, I encourage you to check out the Quilt Alliance channel, you can find so many wonderful videos there.  Thanks so much to them for undertaking this documentation effort and to Betty and the other SAQA New Mexico people for arranging it!