The end of another year

The year is just about over and I've spent the last week finishing up some things and starting others. I did get the facing, sleeve and label on the big leaf. Took some pictures of it and entered it in the Paducah show. I haven't entered anything there in many years, but this one seemed to be a good fit. So now I get to wait to see if the jurors also think so.

I took a few days away from my mindless sewing, but have gotten enough strips sewn together for a twin size quilt. This picture is of a few of the strips, I do have leftovers for another project.

I've also played with my needle felting machine. I have a project floating around in my head that requires a trip to the store before I can do it. This piece is some cheesecloth and yarns on felt. I do like the needle felting machine and keep thinking I should do some samples, but that's not the way I work, I just want to jump in and make something.

I also started the hand stitching on a larger indigo piece, I did do a smaller one out of the leftovers from this piece a couple of months ago. This has been hanging around waiting for me to get to it.

My friend Dan sent me the following :

My Wishes For You in 2011

12 Months of Happiness,
52 Weeks of Fun,
365 Days of Success,
8760 Hours of Good Health,
52600 Minutes of Good Luck,
3153600 Seconds of Joy
...and that’s all!

Happy New Year

Mindless sewing and christmas music

Latlely I've had the urge to just sit and sew, what I refer to as mindless sewing. So when I came across a bag of batik samples that I've had tucked away for many years I knew it was the perfect time to use them. I thought there were probably about 100-200 pieces in the bag.

As I looked them over I decided that golden yellow would be the perfect addition. I had 1/2 yard, cut it into 1 1/4 " strips and began sewing the samples to the strips

The 1/2 yard did exactly 196 pieces. I had a pile leftover, they seemed to be multiplying. I dyed several more yards of golden yellow and one yard of strips later I finally finished the pile. There were 588 pieces in that gallon plastic bag. It took a couple of hours of pressing to get them ready to sew again.

I've started sewing them together in pairs. Then those will be sewn together until I have long strips, which will be sewn together with golden yellow between strips.

I'm really enjoying doing this and part of it is the music I'm listening to. I love classical music and listen to our local public radio station(Boise State Radio) frequently. While I've been doing this sewing I've been listening to some marvelous Christmas music, not the current commercial choices. The Christmas music will be over before the sewing is done, but I've made a good start on a quilt. A quilt that will probably go to a grand daughter that graduates in June, from both high school and community college at the same time.

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas.

Snow dyeing

Snow dyeing has been a hot topic for the past few winters on a list I'm on, but in the past I've never succumb to the lure of another way to apply dye. Well, we've had lots of snow and there were some dyes leftover from the Thanksgiving tie dyeing festival with granddaughters,so I jumped in and did some snow dyeing. Here are the results.




I may have to do some more!

Christmas Presents

For many years I made Christmas presents, especially for grandchildren, but as they've gotten older and live farther away I've pretty much stopped. This year I made only two of the gifts, the first was over Thanksgiving weekend and was a request for fleece pj bottoms. The second is for my youngest granddaughter and is the sock creature seen below.



I got a new toy for Christmas.


I have talked myself out of a needle felting machine for several years, so this year Santa ordered one for me. I've been collecting roving for awhile, so now I'm ready to play.


Don also got his present early. He got a snow blower and got to use it this morning on our new layer of snow.

My Twin and Christmas postcards

For the last three days my "twin" Kathy Loomis has been doing wonderful posts comparing our photos from our respective daily photo blogs, check them out at Art with a Needle

This morning I decided that if I was going to send out my usual hand made Christmas cards I'd better get them made!! So I pulled out a small quilt in greens that I made about 12 years ago.



I cut it up. I have timtex, misty fuse and wonder under, so everything I needed was on hand. This is my pile of parts, ready for the assembly line.



The backing and tree trunk fused to the 4 x 6 timtex, ready for the tree.



The "trees" cut from the quilt and a red garland stitched on each.



The finished postcards, waiting for address and stamps.



I still have parts of the quilt left so I'll have to come up with something creative to do with it.

Finishing up some projects

I've been trying to get some of my projects done. I've finished my "This is not a Sketchbook" for the sketchbook project and have it ready to mail. The quilting is done on my big leaf quilt, I've just got to trim it ,do the facing, label and sleeve and it will be done.



My sock is progressing, I'm now turning the heel so this one is over half done, only one more to go.


In other news; my on line friend Kathy Loomis has been doing daily photos for almost a year and today she did a post comparing some of my photos with her photos. She has also interviewed me about my daily photo project and will be posting that soon. You can check her posts at Art With a Needle and mine at Thru Linda eyes

Let it Snow

It started snowing very lightly yesterday morning, it's still snowing this morning. I took the photos above from various windows in the house. I should go out and help shovel, but my rational is that I shoveled yesterday so that it would be easier today for Don. The weather reports are saying that it's suppose to warm up this afternoon and start raining, we'll really have a mess then.

I've done a year of photos on my daily photo blog, so you need to go check it out. Pick your favorite photo from the past year, leave a comment by Sunday Dec. 5 and I will send you a 5x7 print of the photo.