Just a few completed projects :-)

I made this elephant for Katelyn from a pinterest pattern.

Bibs for Katelyn also from a pinterest pattern, but I added laminate to the fabric.

Bibs for my grandson-to-be! #1Son and his wife D are expecting in early September!!

Table runner that was a wedding shower gift, for the fiancé, of my nephew Drew!

 

I'm really enjoying these fun little projects!

The eggs of easter past!!!

          OK so not as many as I thought but still a plenty!!! These are blown eggs-that means we poked a hole with a cork board note tack in each end of the egg and then put our mouth over the little pin hole and blew--HARD-- till the white and the yolk came out the little pin hole on the opposite end. (About like blowing up a really small balloon that won't inflate) We usually ate scrambled eggs shortly there after!!! Better in my opinion than hard boiled eggs, I can eat some deviled eggs but not a dozen and a half worth! So blowing the eggs then eating scrambled eggs with cheese was a better choice. When time came to decorate, I bought as many colors of tissue paper as I could find, plus went through the crafting box for any doodads to add to the mix! If you look closely you'll see some ninja turtles, a cat, a chick and various cut shapes of tissue, besides all the free form snipped shapes. These tissue pieces were then applied with a mixture of glue & water, with a paint brush. I loved crafting with my children!
         So now I decorate the house, every year, with these egg creations by filling baskets and placing them on various tables to be enjoyed, add pops of color and make me smile remembering all the fun.

A crafting idea from Pinterest worked!

Yes indeedy! I pinned an idea to try and it worked!!! I covered my lamp shade with tissue from a sewing pattern, I picked up at the thrift shop!
I had previously covered the lamp shade with a linen paper I had leftover from my college art class days. I have a collection of vellum, linen, parchment and handmade papers from sketching class. So, the linen paper shade had a few tears from some unfortunate accidents and was begging for a fix! Sorry no before picture ;-( but just know it was really sad looking!!  Well I'm super pleased with the new shade and just love the sewing tie-in. I use to sew clothing but gave most of my patterns to the thrift store years ago, the ones I've kept are for sentimental reasons (my wedding dress pattern) or else children's clothing patterns that I made for my own children and knew that someday I would sew them again for grandchildren! This was an easy and fun technique, mix some water in with glue, (I used Aleene's Tacky glue, gold bottle), paint on lamp shade, and stick on tissue paper piece! I layered collage style and covered each piece with more water/glue mixture. Years ago my children and I covered blown eggs with colored tissue paper, using this same technique. Soon I'll be getting out my Easter decorations so I'll post a picture of these beautiful creations! We made about 12 dozen or more over several years, we just couldn't stop and new ideas kept happening!!
Ok back to the sewing room, TheManWhoHoldsMyHeart is out of town for several days so it's open sewing, NO meals to prepare!!!

 

 

 

Placemats and a tablet case :-)

I've been collecting coffee prints for awhile and this was the perfect project to bust out a few. I'm one of those fabric addicts that loves to "pet" my fabric! So cutting into a piece takes great effort!

I tell myself to "just do it" cut and use, isn't that why you bought the beauty in the first place!! So after I wrestle the demons on my shoulders, I get out the rotary cutter and slice, while a little tear rolls down my cheek. sniff sniff........moving on.......... the tablet case is my own design made with my needs in mind. The coffee cup print is a pocket with a zipper to hold my tablet charger and ear buds. The coffee bean print is padded and machine quilted with a double straight line stitch, with a key ring attached and not shown but added after the photo an elastic cord to hold the carrying case shut. It's just perfect for my needs and makes me smile seeing my coffee print fabric.

The set of four placemats are from my extra EXTRA large scrap collection! I just can't get enough scraps!!!  I have several quilt books devoted to scraps with great plans of cutting my collection into usable uniform sizes.....someday. (wink, wink) Really, I'm going to on a rainy day, we just happen to be in a drought cycle at the present!!!!! So these placemats are for DD and her husband, I think the colors will go well with her dishes and rustic wood décor.

In addition to my coffee print collection, I also collect chicken, sunflowers and Hawaiian prints. By Hawaiian I mean those fabrics collected while in Hawaii!!

 

Today is a sunny day full of promise!

It's the first day of Spring!!!!!!!!!! Bring it on!!

We're in for a treat today!

I'm going to hang our bed sheets on the line today! Sunny and 76!!! Oh boy, oh boy!

Here is the little table/counter topper I made for my daughter for February! Do you recognize any of the fabrics Jean? The inner strip sets are from you and the rest is from my stash. I'm trying desperately to use and not purchase fabric as I have so much! I also made a stuffed pink elephant for my granddaughter K but forgot to get a photo of it so when we are there (in less than a month) I'll get a pic and post it.

K's first birthday is coming up, April 3rd!! Our little sweetie is walking!

I'm almost done with the scrappy placemats for DD and her hubby. I'm so pleased with my usage again of scraps and some stash fat quarters for backing the placemats.

I made a case for my ASUS tablet last week! I've been collecting coffee prints for years now so I picked out a couple and crafted a case with a zipper pocket to hold the charger and headphones. I must get a pic of that too. With the sunny weather I hope to get some good pictures to post.

Hope it's a beautiful sunny day where you are!!!!!!!

 

 

Looking. Looking, Looking (for Spring)!

So very tired of winter, please "Go away"! Who does that sound like kids? We, central Kansas, are some of the sufferers of the endless cold and snow in the Midwest! We did get a particularly beautiful sight back on February 5th, a Sundog!

         

 

It is beautiful and so bright and means that it's pretty damn cold outside!

 Here is the definition from Wikipedia

Sundogs are commonly made by the refraction of light from plate-shaped hexagonal ice crystals in high and cold cirrus clouds or, during very cold weather, these ice crystals are called diamond dust, and drift in the air at low levels. These crystals act as prisms, bending the light rays passing through them with a minimum deflection of 22°. If the crystals are randomly oriented, a complete ring around the sun is seen — a halo. But often, as the crystals sink through the air, they become vertically aligned, so sunlight is refracted horizontally — in this case, sundogs are seen.
As the sun rises higher, the rays passing through the crystals are increasingly skewed from the horizontal plane. Their angle of deviation increases, and the sundogs move farther from the sun.^[8] However, they always stay at the same elevation as the sun.
Sundogs are red-colored at the side nearest the sun. Farther out the colors grade through oranges to blue. However, the colors overlap considerably and so are muted, never pure or saturated. The colors of the sundog finally merge into the white of the parhelic circle (if the latter is visible).

This was a regular site when we lived in North Dakota, but Kansas not so much and that's the way I like it!

I have been sewing and want to post a few pictures of my projects, so will have to work on uploading pictures and post about them very soon.
Here's to warmer days!!!!!!! With notes of Spring!!!!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

It's going to be a quiet turkey day here at Wandering Star Ranch, just TheManWhoHoldsMyHeart and myself. With grown children, distance (mostly distance), cost of travel, extended family and time off get in the way of everyone being able to come together for holidays. I should have known this day would come but it always seemed so far off, with all the daily hub bub of living. Since I am now on the other side of fifty and coming up on the golden years I realize the golden years have already passed us by...... They were the years when we were raising our children, dealing with day to day angst, but enjoying family dinners, teaching moments, reading books, discovering nature, dancing to oldies radio in the living room on Saturdays nights, making a mess in the kitchen mixing and baking cookies, crafting ornaments for Christmas, raking leaves and then jumping in the pile, cooling off (we adults always paid the next day for throwing our bodies on the ground) on the slip and slide out in the backyard, playing 500, and lots of board games, we got a new game every year for Christmas! Those times are GOLDEN! So on this day of giving thanks I'm so very thankful for all the family memories of the past and for the new "making memory moments" to come, especially with our granddaughter.

 

Family Fun at Wandering Star Ranch July 2013

 

I hear TheManWhoHoldsMyHeart waking up, so I think it's time to turn on the coffee maker and enjoy a cuppa with the person who help create all those wonderful memories. While I still think the golden years have passed, these are a ummm maybe the silver years to match my changing hair color, I'm really beginning to like my gray!!