cherry tomato

Clearing out the Unfinished

I had to make a promise to myself to complete some unfinished projects before diving into any new ones. So, I am pleased to share with you not one but two completed projects! You have no idea how proud I am. 

The quilt was actually the first one I ever made, and I'm mortified to admit that it was nearly ten years ago that I started it. I had never, ever considered making a quilt before, but I was at an Anthropologie store one afternoon and became overwhelmed with the desire to make my own quilt with what I envisioned being a very French country theme, eventually settling on a simple nine patch design. I had the most fun selecting all the fabrics and held onto the inspiration long enough to complete everything but the binding. Oh, the binding - so, so tedious. I know there are those out there who actually enjoy this final step in the quilting process, but I just consider it a necessary evil to an otherwise enjoyable endeavor. And so, my quilt has gone unfinished for these ten years until now while I continually started new, more exciting projects. I spent my evenings last week diligently stitching, and Sunday night I stayed up until 2 a.m. watching old 120 Minutes while working on it - refusing to quit until it was finally completed. Such an exciting life I lead...

 

Here is a shot of it on the bed and not a very good one at that. Taking pictures of a quilt is not so easy, afterall, but I think you get the idea. I placed it on the bed to get a view of it, but its permanent home will be on the guest bed. 

Next up was the little bear above that I started a couple of years ago. I rediscovered it while working on my studio last week and decided it was a project that also needed completing. To be perfectly honest with you, I can't even remember why I was making him, but he was a little guy I designed and hand stitched and remember really enjoying making. I couldn't tell you why I didn't finish him, but I think it all worked out for the best because I was able to give him to little J, who already loves him dearly - promptly naming him bare bear. 

Now that I've gotten those things cleared away, I'm ready to get started into a couple new quilts - one at a time...I think. 

finally!

i am pleased to finally present you with the baby quilt i have been working on. according to the date on my sketchbook, i sketched this out nearly 3 months ago. i can't believe it's taken me so long to finally finish it. it was the applique. i've decided i don't really like applique. Oh, i love the way it looks, but it's really a pain. don't get me wrong, i like hand-stitching when i'm doing embroidery and cross-stitch. I guess I just don't like quilting by hand. Lesson learned.

thank you for all of the kind comments about the mudroom. i'm sorry i haven't been able to respond to each comment. i have been having computer problems, so i've only been online very sporadically over the past week or so. please know i am extremely grateful. i love that yellow even more now that i've had nearly a week to live with it. i was really worried the color wouldn't turn out the way i had envisioned it, so i am now breathing a huge sigh of relief. i know it's not a big deal if the color didn't come out they way i wanted. i just didn't want to have to go through paining it again.

i also whipped up this little thing to put in the mudroom:

i used a swatch from the fruit fabric to select the yellow for the room, so i wanted to make something with it to go in there. our plastic bags have been a little out of control for awhile now, and this seemed like a cute, easy solution.

now, i've moved on to painting the kitchen. after that, i'll just have the living room in the interior before moving on to painting the outside of the house. of course, that is contingent on the weather cooperating. so far, the weather is being pretty nasty, so it may be awhile...

the arborists...

My grandfather simply could not have chosen a worse day to plant trees. It was raining in Seattle on Saturday morning, but by the time we got out to our property it was snowing and obviously had been for awhile. By the time we went out to start planting, the snow had turned to rain. A lot of rain.

My grandfather is turning 80 in just over a month, but there he was, out planting 300 douglas fir saplings on his property. Here he is looking a bit like the Gorton's fisherman:

And here's his assistant, Eric. We worked as a team: he did the digging, and I did he planting.

And finally, here's on of the saplings we planted:

Isn't it adorable? I'm looking forward to seeing these trees mature and look back to this day when we planted them as tiny baby trees. 

While out at our lake property, I spotted some new goodies I had never seen before. My grandmother had several little birds sitting on the window sill. She told me a friend of hers was trying to get rid of some of her things and my grandmother selected these:

I was so excited to see her new friends, and I'm glad she brought them out to the lake for us all to enjoy.

so, so cute...

Now that the busy weekend is over, I'm looking forward to getting back to some projects. I have been working on a quilt for my friend's two month old daughter. I'm hand stitching the top, so it's a little more time-consuming, but really, I just haven't been steadily working on it. I had some ambitious plans to hand-quilt it too, but I think I'm going to just do it with the machine. I am determined to finish it this week though.

I have finally gotten my studio set up to a point where I am happy with it. I won't say I'm "finished", but I'm really happy with it right now. I'll be sure and show you some pictures this week (probably tomorrow). I'll have to snap some photos before I mess it up again. It never takes too long, does it?

Oh, and by the way, Eric and I tied to win the Oscar contest! That's two years in a row for me...

crawling out from the darkness

I have been out of it for so long. I was actually able to return to work this week, but whatever illness I had is still lingering. I have just been exhausted, so I haven't really had much energy to do anything once I get home from work. The last couple of days I've just been feeling really out of sorts because the balance in my life is off. It is really important to me to be able to incorporate creativity into my life everyday, and I've been able to do that up until the last couple of weeks. Some of my energy has returned over the past couple of days, so I'm determined to get some things accomplished this weekend. I have goals, dammit! I'm sick of being sick, and I don't have time for it!

It's supposed to be gorgeous in Seattle all weekend, and I couldn't be more pleased. Although it won't be exactly fun, I'm looking forward to spring cleaning, and getting this space all spiffed up. Once the sun comes out, I'm able to see just how grubby things are. There seem to be cobwebs in nearly every corner, and it's time to get out the vaccuum attachments and get busy.

So I know none of this is very exciting news, so I will leave you with a couple of things I've put in my etsy shop to leave you with at least *something* interesting.

I received some of Mav's daffodil cards yesterday, and they just brightened my day. she has such an amazing eye for simple beauty and is such an inspiration to me:

It looks like she's all sold out of these (which is no surprise), so I'm glad I was able to snag some before they were gone.

Well, I'm off to do some cleaning and spend a little time out in the sun. I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

completed projects and free fabric

I had an incredibly productive weekend that went by way too fast. I think the spring sunshine is definitely motivating me to get some projects completed. I finished my two art quilts and just need to frame them. here is a picture of the one I haven't posted yet:

and here's a close-up of the stitching:

I also finished two new aprons that are now in my etsy shop:

I also made a birthday present for my mother which I will not show you now just because I don't want my mother to see it. Finally, I knit a scarf for a co-worker who had expressed a strong desire to have a scarf made of ribbony yarn. I hadn't knit anything for awhile, so I just it as an excuse to complete a quick project. Hmmm, let's see, I think that's all I got done this weekend. It felt really good to get so much done and get some new things in my etsy shop. I'm planning to get some more aprons in there this week.

I have a friend who is an interior decorator. Last week she emailed me and said that her office had about 30 books of fabric samples they were looking to get rid of, and she wanted to know if I was interested in taking them off their hands. Well, of course I got myself right on over there. While I couldn't take all the books, I think I got about half of them. I don't know if you're familiar with these sample books, but they are filled with some gorgeous silk and cotton fabrics in addition to upholstery fabric. I'm going through the books right now, and separating what I think will be the most useful fabrics from those I probably won't use. While the samples aren't huge, they are large enough to make small zippered bags, patchwork items and a lot more things I'm sure you all could think of. I'd love to share the wealth, so if you're interested in any of these fabrics, please email me with your address , tell me your three top color choices, and I'll get a package of fabric out to you. If I send you some fabric, I would really love to see what you do with it.

hooray for photos!!

I finally have some photos to share with you. Some of them are over a month old, but some are recent, like this:

mmm, ginger scones.

Here are some things I worked on before the wedding and honeymoon:

this is a deer i made with all vintage and thrifted fabric.

this is a quilted mat i made for the kitty bowls. my apologies for the messy bowl, but hey, it's an accurate depiction of the mat in use.

my first potholder with obvious evidence of my struggle with the bias tape. i think next time the bias tape will need to be a bit wider.

Aaah, I'm so happy to be able to share these images with you. I'll post more tomorrow.

climbing mt. everest

I really enjoy baking. I think I've written before about the relaxing affect it has on me. As much as I enjoy it, I just haven't been baking much lately, so this morning I decided to pick out an apron, drag out the flour and get busy. I have never had any success making scones. As much as I try to not over-mix them, they always come out like dry hockey pucks. I haven't even bothered to try making any scones for probably a couple of years now, but this morning I decided it was time to give it another go. I bought some crystallized ginger a little while ago and haven't really put it to use, so I thought it would be nice to make some scones using the ginger - and I was right. I found a recipe online and was thrilled with the results. I typically prefer scones that aren't too sweet, but these were quite sweet, and so deliciously moist. I made my first successful scones today, and I was so excited you'd think I had just climbed Mt. Everest. Maybe scones are my Mt. Everest of baking. I'm not really sure what I did differently this time, I just hope I am able to do it again.

Today I also finished up a new art quilt I'd started a couple of weeks ago. I have already sketched out several more I want to make. As soon as I can, I will post some photos of what I've done.

I finally got around to calling customer service about the usb port on my computer. Of course, the department I needed is closed on Sundays, so I'm going to have to try to find some time to do it this week. I'm pretty sure I need a new motherboard, and I'm trying to figure out how much it's going to cost me. It's so frustrating that one small thing (the usb port) can leave me so helpless.

I hope you all have a wonderful week!

so much to say, so little to show

I'm very pleased to pass on information relating to a new project beginning on February 1st involving some of the blog-world's most creative women sharing their talents with us through their blogs. Please check out Whip Up. i'm excited to see what they all have in store for us.

I still haven't fixed my usb port, but a new card is on its way. even though i don't have any photos to show you, i have been quite busy over the past week with new projects. I finished my first three dimensional softie this week, and was really happy with how it turned out. I first made a muslin version, then went on to use some of my prized vintage fabric to make a small deer. I've really been drawn to foresty-themed objects lately: deer and other woodland creatures, trees, gnomes, mushrooms, birds (of course), nuts, etc. I do realize i'm not the only person who has been into these things, but I find it's a nice diversion from a lot of the pink, red and generally "girlie" type things i tend to be drawn to. If I was a better blogger, I would provide you with links to some of the great things I'm seeing out there, but right now, my brain is not allowing me to recall any of the things I wanted to show you. Just trust me, these items are everywhere.

in addition to the deer, i also made my first art quilt this week. i'm not really sure if that's the proper nomenclature for what it is, and of course, if I had a photo, you could actually judge for yourself. Since I don't have a photo, you'll just have to go by my description for the time being. I used fabric to create a design on a solid light blue background and used embroidery to affix the decorative fabric to the background fabric and batting and to "draw" images on the fabric. It is an unapologetically summery image, which I think is clearly a bi-product of an image in my head of where I wish I could be right now. I know those of you in Australia have been frustrated by the heat down there, but I am so friggin sick of the darkness and rain around here. It would be so nice if we could just switch places for a couple of days. Seriously, that is all I would need to lift my spirits. Since that isn't possible, I'll continue to create bright, pretty things and fantasize about bright, sunny places.

This week I also received a Holga my sister. She bought it last year, and upgraded to a Holga with a Polaroid back last week and kindly passed her older Holga on to me. It even had film in it, so it was all ready to go. I still have a lot of research to do about using them, so if you know of any good resources, please let me know. Otherwise, I guess I'm going to use google and see what I can find online. Because it's been so dark here, I haven't really used it, but I'll keep you updated on my progress.

Some things that blair and claire wrote about recently about how to define an artist and how their work can be defined. Their thoughts are ones I have regularly, but I think it really boils down to this: for me, I create because i want to, i create because I HAVE to, and yes, it's nice to have others validate what you do, but ultimately, I find the act of creating enormously therapeutic and would continue to do it whether or not I ever received validation. I think once you start a blog, you put yourself out there a little, and you may become a little more concerned with receiving validation for your art. If you just create and keep it to yourself, it isn't as much of an issue. I have been very positively affected by the support I have received from the blogging community, and it has already helped to motivate me to keep creating and challenging myself. There is always going to be someone more creative, talented, or whatever than you, but it really should just be about what makes you happy. I think sometimes it gets difficult to keep that in perspective.

I'll leave it at that for today.

Just for fun, here's a picture of my dear kitty, Vedo:

Here he is breaking in Eric's new table before he applied any finishing.

recovery and cleansing

(at my mom's house)

I finally feel like i've recovered from christmas. i spent a lovely couple of days at my mom's house out in the olympic peninsula. it rained so much that even when it wasn't raining, it still felt like it was raining. the trees out there are so tall, and there are just so many of them, that they continue to drop water onto the ground long after the rain has stopped.

(i think it actually WAS raining when i took this picture)

once i made it home, it looked like a tornado had ripped through the house. the christmas frenzy had left the house completely wrecked. eric and i have taken on some spring cleaning in the wrong season, but i think we both felt some cleansing/organization was in order. i want to go into the new year having things a little more organized. there are many new things on the horizon (new job, wedding), and i'm really looking forward to next year. i suppose i want to go into it with a clear head and a clean house.

that being said, my studio is just trashed. i can't even do anything in there. i plan to tackle that today so i can get busy on some project ideas i have.

i'll leave you with a couple of pictures of the log cabin pillows i made for my grandmother and my mother. i didn't show them earlier because i was worried they might look at this and get a peek at their gifts.

for mom

(for grandy)

my grandmother was so cute. she just loved the pillow, and once she opened it, she used it until the moment she left. anytime she sat down in a new spot she had to take her pillow with her. my grandmother has been quilting forever, so i was so pleased to get her approval.

well, i'm off to clean so i can get some work done!

all set for the sale

As promised, here are some pictures of some of the items I'm selling tomorrow. I have already posted pictures of most of the pillows and some of the aprons, and you can see all of the items on flickr. I am only going to post some of those you haven't already seen.

all ready to go!

some short cafe aprons:

 

other aprons:

and some pillows:

I still have to make some signs, but other than that I'm ready to go! I'll get some pictures of the sale and post them tomorrow evening.