Peas In A Pod

Shoes, Glorious Shoes

I have a shoe fetish.  I totally admit it.

I think I love shoes because I don't have to worry about them fitting my rear end, hips, thighs, or belly!  Ha!

Several of you commented on my new, red clogs the other day.  Many of you wanted to know what brand they were, etc.  So, I thought I'd just do a quick post on that for you.  My day is really full at work (totally booked in meetings from 9-5 with no breaks!), so I don't have time to compose a nice quilty post for you.  Sorry!

Here is the shoe.  It is made by Spring Step, and the if you click here, you can go to their website to get more information.

I also tried on this pair:

Oh, did I love these shoes!  You can get more information about them by clicking here.  But I have a spot on my right heel where I had a bone spur removed several years ago.  It still hurts if shoes rub in that one particular spot.  And the back of this shoe hit me right smack on that spot.  So, they were no good for me.  I could have cried.  But when I saw the clogs, that made up for it!

I need to look for some shiny, red Danskos like this.  Danskos don't hit my heel in that sore spot.  :-)

Okay.  I've got to run.  Sorry I don't have anything more "quilterly" for you today!  Next time, okay?

Have a great weekend!

Until next time,

Really Kinda Random

It's been a while since I've been able to generate a Really Random post.  But here it goes!

I'm linking up with Cindy at Live a Colorful Life for Really Random Thursday.

My mom emailed me the other day that she finished making this shawl.  I think it's beautiful.  I want to do one.  I'm not sure I'm up to it.

Mom is so beautiful, isn't she?  :-)  This is a class on Craftsy.  There are three shawl patterns in the class.  I might cave and sign up for it, then work on it over Christmas.  Hmmmm.....

A little while back, my brother, who lives in Boston, called me one day at work.  It was about 11:30 in the morning. 

He said, "Hey, Steph.  Wanna go to lunch?" 

I was like, "What???!" 

He said, "I'm in Grand Rapids.  I'm a schmuck for not telling you I was coming earlier, but I'm going on a fishing trip with my inlaws.  They lost my luggage, so I have to wait for the 5:30 flight from Newark to get my bags.  I thought I might drive down to Kalamazoo and have lunch with you while I'm waiting." 

So, I rearranged my schedule and had lunch with him.  What a nice surprise.  Then, on Sunday, before he flew home, Sweet Pea and I drove up to Grand Rapids and had brunch with him before he flew home.  Sweet Pea was really excited to see her uncle.  Here, they are looking at a video of the salmon fishing they were doing.  My brother said he caught salmon on 7 of 8 casts one day.  One of them was 22 pounds!  I guess I didn't realize there was so much good salmon fishing in Michigan!  (Hope he doesn't mind me posting this photo.  I usually ask and didn't this time.)

I wanted to make this cowboy boot stocking for someone for Christmas.  So I ordered this pattern and kit from Shelly at Prairie Moon Quilts.  She sent it wrapped up in this red bandanna.  How awesome is that?  I don't want to open it.

Happiness is a new pair of Smartwool socks for the season.  I usually buy the plain black or brown ones.  I decided to get daring and get some patterned ones.  Love them.

And a new pair of cool red clogs.  LOVE them!  These were my purchases when I was on quilt retreat a couple of weekends ago (and I still need to blog it).

My rose bushes just won't quit!  Probably because it was 75 degrees yesterday, and it's going to be just as nice today!  This is the climbing rose bush in front of my garage.  (I never showed you all the landscaping I did out there this spring.  Too busy.  Maybe next spring!  Plus, it's not done yet.)  Isn't this a pretty one?

Here's the other bush, the one that had the pretty flower with the dew on it a while back.  There are new buds on this bush, too.  But I think the hard freeze we had a while back got them.  I doubt they will open.  I have been too nervous to do any cutting back for fear I'd encourage even more growth just before the snow hits....

Sweet Pea is pretty excited, because her dad bought her a basketball hoop.  We got it from a friend who is moving away.  Good price.  Papa Pea had to build a flat spot to keep it on.  He did a great job.  Sweet Pea will have a lot of fun with this.  This photo was taken a few weeks ago, when there were more leaves on the trees.  She's got pretty good form.  If she practices, she could be pretty good!

I have more random stuff, but I have been too lazy to download the photos from my phone and other camera.  Another day!  LOL

What's your Random Act of Kindness going to be today?  I gave my students an extension until Monday on their paper that is due today.  They were pretty happy.  One said I should have a wand and say, "Your wish is granted!"  So, I'm bringing Sweet Pea's wand to school today to use in class.  Ha!

Have a good one!

Until next time,

 

Harvest Kitchen Towel

I made another kitchen towel in my monthly machine embroidery class.  This was our November project:

Our lesson this month was to learn to eliminate parts of designs.  In the class, we learned to eliminate these leaves from the design.  But I kind of liked them, so I left them in.

This was only a two-color design.  The stems were to be the same color as the leaves.  But I wanted my stems brown, so I stopped the machine as it went to the stems and changed my thread to brown.

The leaves are actually cutwork.  Can you see how the centers are cut away?  I have done cutwork before, but I wanted to do it again.  It has been a while.  It's kind of fun.

However, I kind of wish I had left the leaves off.  This towel is pretty loosely woven, and the fibers are fairly thick, so in one spot, which you can maybe see in the photo here, they didn't all get caught in the satin stitching.  So, I'm afraid the towel will develop and uncontrolled hole here.  I even satin stitched over it twice....it was worse before.  I think this was the wrong fabric to try cut work on.  You can even see that the satin stitching didn't cover the cut areas as well as I'd like.  I don't think it's a problem with the design.  I think I should have done this on a finer weave of fabric.  One gal was doing this on linen napkins, and it was absolutely stunning.  That would have been a better choice.  It may have also helped if I had put stabilizer on top of the towel as well as below the towel when it stitched.  But this class is about learning for me, so this was good for me to learn firsthand.

The designs are Anita Goodesign Autumn Cutwork.  There are some beautiful acorns and oak leaves in the design set.  I would love to do those on some napkins.  Sigh.  If I just had more time!  I will admit, though, these designs took a lot less time to stitch out than my previous towels.  These would be pretty fast, easy hostess gifts.  It would be wise of me to make a small stash to have on hand.....

We also used our wing needle again and some heirloom stitching to finish the bottom.  We unpicked the little double folded, 1/4" hem that was in the towel (again, I was using a really cheap, premade flour sack style towel), refolded it to be about a 2" hem, and sewed this nice finish.  I really like that.  It's so professional and polished looking!

Here's a closer shot of the stitching.  I don't know if you can really see it well, because I used matching thread, but this is the "ladder stitch," I think they call it.  There is a stitch that goes across, between the two lines of stitching.  It's quite nice.

Next month we will be putting a ruffle on a towel.  The sample is on a terrycloth towel.  I need to decide if I'll do a terrycloth towel or keep with the flour sacks.  I have never done a terrycloth towel.  In the spirit of expanding my skills, maybe I should....

Until next time,

Halloween Mug Rugs from Sweetwater/Label Crew--Pattern Review

The October Label Crew project from Sweetwater was a really cute Halloween mug rug.  For the Label Crew, we got the pattern and four labels.  I ordered their Sew Mama Sew fabric kit for making the project.  (Labels and pattern need to be ordered separately.)  But I couldn't stop at two.

I made 10.  I decided to make some for our departmental secretaries, who have been majorly helpful to me lately with all the craziness at work. 

And I made one for a colleague who works closely with me on a project.

And I made some for collaborators at a local center that hosts a LOT of my practicum students.  They are cute little mug rugs, I think.  Then, Papa Pea saw them and said, "Hey, what about me?"  I said, "YOU want one?"  I couldn't believe it.  He likes the back side, which is just a black and white plaid.  He said, "Yeah, I could use one on my desk that is just this plaid.  And maybe a little smaller."  Okay, so I'm going to make one more, smaller, and plaid on both sides.  Maybe he likes it because it's black and white and not too frilly.  I'll leave the Halloween label off so he can use it more than at Halloween.

There is a little pocket that I filled with Halloween goodies and a little tag.  Too cute!  I thought Sweet Pea would want one.  She was mostly excited about the goodies.  So, I gave her those and she was satisfied!

As far as a pattern review, this goes together super easy.  Honestly, it takes about 15 minutes to cut one out, sew it, and quilt it.  But then it takes another 15 minutes to make the binding, another 15 minutes to sew it around, and another 15 minutes to hand stitch the binding down.  (That's how I did it.)  So, each one took me about an hour to make, I suppose.  It was not hard.  The binding was the part that took the longest.  But, they were very satisfying and fun to make....very relaxing.  I could easily make two more from the kits I have left.  In fact, I could probably make another 10!  (I ordered four kits to make eight, which was my original plan.)  And the fabric kits will make far more than two!  Sweetwater is so generous with their fabric kits.  You can probably make four out of one kit, as long as you have extra backing fabric for two.  Just sayin'!  I have lots of awesome scraps left, and some kits where all I stole out of them was backing fabric.  It's fun to have some of these awesome fabrics left to stash!

I was going to hand make the tags.  But then I found this pad of tags at Joanne's for about $3.

I thought the tags were pretty cute, so I just used these.

Spidey supervised the photo shoot from below on the lower deck.  He was meowing to come up!  (There are no stairs from one deck to the other.)  LOL.  I can't wait until we can tear off these old decks and rebuild them.

Although we are getting past the prime for color here in Michigan, I must admit, I really love standing on my back deck and looking through the trees that have lost their leaves to the trees with color behind them.  In the foreground, there are still some green trees (evergreens) and some that are now turning bright yellow.  The photo does not do justice to the color.  What a beautiful day it was when I took this photo.  I'm cherishing these days, as they are surely short lived.  Winter is coming too fast!

Tomorrow I hope to show you one more little project I've been working on!

Until next time,

Which Witch's Boot Finish!

Hi Everyone,

Sorry I have been away for a week!  Man, time flies.  Work is really kicking my butt lately.  Things are really, really busy.  And to top it off, I feel like I'm coming down with something.  I'll try to do better than posting once a week.  I miss it when I don't post.  But forgive me if work just gets the better of me now and then!  (I'm behind on responding to some of your comments and emails, too.  I apologize!)

I do have a finish to show you today.  (Blogging really does motivate me to get things finished.  I didn't want to show you this until it was all bound, so that got me to finishing that this weekend!)

Click on any of the photos to enlarge.

Which Witch's Boot is all quilted and bound!  Yippee!  I am so happy with it.  I love it.

The pattern is by Crabapple Hill Studio.  I blogged all the pattern information and my review of the pattern here.

Once again, Shelly Pagliai of Prairie Moon Quilts quilted it for me.  I think she did a great job again!  In the black borders, she emulated the ribbon candy.  What a great idea.  Love it!

In the orange parts, she did these great looking spider webs.  I love them.  SOOOOO much better than the spider webs I have quilted in the past!  Way to go, Shelly!

I asked her to do microstippling around the hand embroidery.  I am so glad I did.  I think it looks fantastic.  Shelly told me she was afraid she couldn't execute it.  Um, Shelly, your microstippling is fantastic.  Do I have some agreement here from the rest of you, or what?!

Here is a close up shot of all the microstippling and all the embroidery.  I really love the microstippling.  I washed the quilt after I bound it, and I threw it in the dryer.  I wanted it to get all crinkly.  I love how it crinkled.  I think I lost a little black on the boot when I washed or dried it.  But I still like the pale gray of the boot.

Here is the back.  I used more of the white ghost fabric, and then I used a bunch of the oranges that I didn't use on the front, because I thought they were too busy.  (Again, the fabric line is Guising, by Lizzie House, and I got it from the Intrepid Thread).  Sweet Pea wanted me to use the candy corn fabric for the binding.  I was going to, but I thought it might be too busy, with those bold, black borders.  So, I went for a solid (reading) orange from my quilt shop instead.  I used the candy corn for the sleeve instead.  That seemed to appease Sweet Pea a little.

I draped it over the wagon wheel for a shot.  Looks nice with the pumpkin, huh?

You know, many of you show photos of your quilts with your cats in the photo.  You write how you can't get the cat OUT of the photo.  I tried to get Spidey to sit to the right of the pumpkin (as you face this photo), but every time I put him there, he just kept running under my feet (which is where he likes to spend his time).  I couldn't get him to stay IN the photo!  You can see here, he went there by himself but he was about to scamper away when I got this photo.  Haha!

And Belle supervised the whole thing.  She keeps that cat rounded up well.  Her eyes look so crazy when she's "supervising" the cats.

After I finished the outdoor photo shoot, I brought the quilt inside and hung it up in my entryway.  I finally replaced the Christmas quilt that's hanging there (all year round!  LOL). 

I'd like to be able to rotate the quilt here with the season.  So far, I have two to rotate.  I better get more busy.  But I'm pleased with how this one looks!

Hope you like it!  I'll try to be back tomorrow with some more Halloween goodies!

Have a great day!

Until next time,