Taking a Break from the Charity Quilt

I needed to take a short break from the charity quilt once I finished the applique portion.    I have a lot of ideas swirling around my head, so it took me a little while to settle on just one project.

Before Christmas, I ran across a bunch of small wall hangings that I made back when I lived in Des Moines out of pre-stamped fabric blocks.  For some reason, I decided to toss one on the front door knob.

I decided that I kind of like having a small square hanging off the door knob.  It is a way for me to easily decorate for the changing seasons--a lot like the seasonal table runners I made a few years ago for our dining room table.  With Valentines Day coming up, I decided to put together a Valentines Day square.  Fortunately, I found plenty of pieces of fabric in the craft room that would be perfect for a Valentines Day square:

And, since I want to try out some hand stitches that I saw in a book that I purchased yesterday, I have some work left to do, but here is the way it is looking so far.

I had a lot of fun trying to figure out how to add the lace to two of the pink triangles.

Now, to add some hand stitching...another night.

Charity Quilt Update: Applique Is Now Complete

I finished the final five squares this weekend.

The second flower design Geff created for me looks like this:

Here are two of the squares that I created from this...

Taking time out from crafting to do some cleaning

My craft room was once again out of control.  Going in to the Christmas holiday, I opened the door to the room to discover that apparently things were multiplying behind the closed doors--I couldn't walk more than about 3 feet into the room without stepping on something.  I've been slowly cleaning it. 

I decided to try the slow route instead of just rearranging the piles to see if I could bring some organization to the room.  I'm pleased to say that it seems to be working--I can get from the door to the closet to the back corners now without having to step on things (I, ahem, may need to step over things to get to the back corners still).  In any case, my slow route entails picking something up and trying to figure out how it fits in with an organized craft room.

Tonight, I picked up a container and looked into it:

Hmmm, old film canisters.  What on earth was I storing in there?

The photo is a little blurry, but one container was holding black seed beads and the other was holding red seed beads.  And, with that, I had the night's task figured out.  I knew that on the corner of the dresser, I had multiple open containers filled with beads (just waiting to tip over).

And, somewhere, I remembered seeing some beads still in the original containers...

While the film canisters kept the beads contained, I couldn't see what beads were inside without opening the container.  I knew I wanted to put the beads in a secure container, but also a container that I can see through.  It didn't take me long to figure it out.  I've long had problems throwing out the containers that prescriptions come in.

Once I had the beads in the prescription containers, I needed to figure out where to store them.  Looking around, I found the perfect container amongst the piles of stuff.

The prescription containers may not be pretty, but the seed beads won't get scattered and I can see at a quick glance which container I need.

And, the bonus?  Space available on the dresser:

Okay, so I still have some more organizing to go...

Progress on the charity quilt

I have to admit that I'm surprised by the progress I've made on the charity quilt.  There was no rhyme or reason to it, but I decided to create four flowers from each flower design.  As I mentioned to Geff that I was finishing up the last flower for the third design, he offered to make me a design or two. 

The first one that he created for me looked like this:

I now have three of this design finished, with only one more to go.  Here is one of the three:

And, another:

I've decided that 20 flowers will be plenty, and I now have 15.  I'm pretty happy about that.

The start of the 2012 charity quilt...

Remember that charity quilt that I took down to the wire last year? The one with the frogs?  Well, I volunteered to do another one for this July.  And, once again, time is slipping away.  This weekend, I finally started on it.  Or, more accurately, I finally started on the sewing part of it.

Several weeks before Christmas, I noticed that the local Hancock Fabrics store was going out of business.  And, I thought I had a plan and a theme for this year's charity quilt, so I went ahead and bought fabric for the charity quilt.  While I got the fabric pre-washed, it has pretty much just sat, waiting for me to go the pieces I needed for the design.  I had planned on appliqueing hand prints on to the fabric.  I was very ambitious:  I wanted hand prints from both males and females from infants to the elderly.  Unfortunately, after sending out requests, I still only had five hand prints.

Then, yesterday, an idea struck while Geff and I were in JoAnn's Fabric store.

For Christmas, Geff had gotten me one of these handy-dandy little machines:

It uses die cuts to let you cut fabric fast and accurately.

JoAnn's Fabric store had the die cuts, and they were 25% off.  I suddenly had a new theme.  And, all it took was a new die that would let me create flowers like this...

And, this...

(Yes, you can see another flower behind this one...I managed to finish seven blocks so far...)

And, since it would look funny to have all the flowers look alike, I did draw up a tulip pattern that allowed me to create the next two blocks...

This is going to be fun!