White on White

I've told you all about my friend Crazy Judyth, who sells great packages of CQ (crazy quilt) fabrics. Here's what I did with one of her white on white packages. I saw this idea for a blouse on whip.net, where they took a blouse, cut off the bottom and attached handkerchiefs. I tried that and didn't like it. So now I had a blouse with the bottom cut off. Hmm. What to do. I know! CQ it! So that's what I did.

I added some embroidery, several pieces of lace, a doily with some silk ribbon embroidery on it and beads and buttons galore. I had to keep the embellishments a little on the conservative side since I do have to sit in my chair at work and lean back. Nothing worse then having a bead or a button pressing on your spinal cord all day (LOL). There are a couple of little yo-yo flowers also.

After I finished all the embellishing, I then sewed the bottom of the blouse back on to the rest of the blouse. The silk/satin/fancy fabrics are all from Crazy Judyth. There are a few cottons thrown in, just because I like to mix things up, and those are strictly from my stash. Judyth specializes in the fancy fabrics only, no cottons.

So if you have an old blouse hanging around that you're not too crazy about -- be brave and cut the bottom off and try this -- not just white on white -- use colors or make a theme blouse. I can't wait to try this on some of my other old blouses. It's a fun project and really didn't take all that long -- about a weekend project, working on it off and on.

The Dark Tower is Back!

Here it is -- The Dark Tower. (LOL). I left these pics nice and large so I think you can click on them and get the full effect. This is based on Stephen King's epic series of books, The Dark Tower. If you haven't read the book, you should. This is Roland's tower, set in a field of blood red roses, at sunset.

I was waiting for some special fibers -- it's hand-dyed roving. Most people use it to needle felt. I didn't felt it -- just pulled pieces of it off to use as the clouds around the tower. The picture above you can see it pretty clearly. It's held down iwth lots of feather stitch.

Here you can see one of the beams (the last one left) that is holding the tower and the world together. I used lots of my specialty threads, Sassa Lynn and hand-dyed perle cottons and floss.

Coming next: the beach scene with the Lobstrosity! I pulled fabrics for it last night.

Stormy Weather

We've been having huge electrical storms across my area for the last 3 weeks or so. Last night was a scary one with my trees getting struck by lightning not once, not twice, but three times! The fireballs were something to see. Madeline went and hid under the bed.

One good thing with all the rain is that the trees are just beautiful. This is my catalpa tree. It has the most beautiful blooms on it. It's a late bloomer and I hurried and took some pics last night before the wind and rain came in to blow all the flowers away. Luckily this was not one of the trees that got struck. It sits right outside the back of the house, is very, very old and very, very tall. It creaks and moans during wind storms -- almost sounds like a person out there moaning.

And of course my little nosey buddy couldn't resist seeing what I was doing outside -- she is hanging on the edge of the window of the back door.

Apron

When I visited my friend Judyth on Memorial Day weekend, she gave me this apron she had purchased. The embroidery on it is so pretty. Judyth finds lots of great things in the thrift stores in her area. She's a lot like me, when I see a needlework project or quilt blocks in an antique/thrift store, I feel sorry for it just sitting there so I buy it and bring it home with me. It's sad to think that there was no one in the family that wanted these things. I worry my own things will end up there someday.

I forgot to show you my Birds of a Feather block for May. It's all done but now that I've been looking at it, I don't like the little circles. These are smaller circles then the other blocks and I'm thinking I'm going to use the same size for all the blocks. Obviously this is a smaller block then the others, but I'll just use fewer circles. I have the next block all prepped and ready to go.

New Week

I had new windows put in over the weekend. Now I can open up a window and keep Madeline in and the bugs out (LOL). Madeline followed the installer all around the house at each window hissing at him. The poor man was afraid of cats -- guess she picked up on that. She wore herself out and had to take a long nap. (This is not one of the new windows -- could only afford to do the front half of the house).

Since I was trapped in the house with the window installer, I worked on Come Into the Garden Maude. This is it with all the embroidery done -- now it's time for the beading. I don'tknow if you can tell from the picture, but I used almost every single metallic thread I owned. Here's a pic of some of them. I bought this cheese box at an antique store, thinking it would hold all my metallic threads -- BIG LAUGH! It only holds about half of them. The 2nd picture is the rest of them, still living in the thread box.

And I'll leave you with some close ups of Maude -- flowers and the fairy. For those of you just tuning in -- all the picture elements on the quilt are "fussy cut" from other fabrics. The whole scene is collaged onto a crazy quilt background -- everything hand sewn. The fairy, little mushroom house and the owl are stamped (rubber stamps) and then hand colored. (Do you notice my bullion stitches (purple) on the right hand side near the tree and fairy?)