Treasure Hunting!

Yesterday, I was in Cripple Creek for an Elks event.  With an hour of downtime between activities, I was a bit too antsy to just sit.  A friend and I decided to go and look through some of the stores.  I had in my mind to go into a store that I've enjoyed looking around before, and the store did not disappoint!

It is an antique store, and we weren't very far into the store before Shelly started looking through a basket on the counter.  When I said that yes, I do use beads, she started pulling out treasures:  broken jewelry pieces.  While the jewelry itself can no longer be used, the beads can be re-purposed into various craft projects.  The best part?  Each piece was just 10 cents! 



Thirty cents bought me two unmatched earings and a broken bracelet.

Upstairs, we  discovered a bowl full of lace bits. Some just a few inches long.  Some a couple of feet long.  And, again, all were just 10 cents.

My main splurge for the first visit was a piece of lace from a wall display.  I paid a whopping $2.50 for a piece of "Lace, Shamrock white" that is a little over two feet long by about an inch or an inch and a quarter wide.

And, yes, you saw that correctly:  there were two visits.  Shelly and I wanted to make it back to the awards banquet, but we were only partially through the store.  While I didn't see anything new on the second visit, I did have time to rethink one of the trims that Shelly had shown me (but didn't want to buy herself)--a $5 card of green trim.  I'm thinking a peacock would love to strut this stuff!

One More Top Finished!

When I first started sewing the strips together, I kept stressing that the finished quilt top would be too narrow for the length.  The stress was definitely not warranted.  Yes, it is a long quilt (I haven't measured it yet, but I will), but it is also wide.

I mixed up the strips, unfortunately.  It doesn't look quite like what I was picturing in my mind, and too many of the frogs wound up in one half of the quilt, but in general (and with all things considered), I'm fairly happy with the way this one has turned out. 

Now, I just need to take the batting and the backing (and, I'm really hoping that the backing fabric is large enough after seeing how big this quilt really is!) and put everything together.  I'm going to have fun with the machine quilting.  This is definitely larger than anything I've tried to machine quilt to date. 

Yesterday, I went to a quilt store that I haven't been to yet.  A number of quilt stores have closed recently it seems.  I didn't feel up to driving all the way down to The Creative Needle on South Broadway, so I used Google to find one closer.  (I also discovered that the home computer needed some work as a result of the Google search, but that is an entirely different story!)

I will definitely go back to the Quilt Store again.  In addition to buying some thread for machine quilting, I also had five fat quarters that begged to come home with me. 

Picking It Up Again

July is swiftly approaching, and the charity quilt is not yet done.  Between being in a bit of a creative rut and a having my sewing machine act up, I've been using the "I'm too busy at work" excuse not to make progress on the quilt. 

Being in a creative rut hasn't meant that I've stayed totally away from crafts.  I have two crochet projects underway (there is sure to be at least a post on each in the near future), but sewing just hasn't interested me lately.

That changed tonight.  I am still not exactly sure why the sewing machine started working again, but it did.  I know that when it acted up a few weeks ago, I tried changing both the bobbin and the needle.  But, when I tried to zigzag around the frogs, well, it just wasn't working.  The yellow thread that should have been on top was just a solid line, while the white bobbin thread sort of made hash marks over the yellow thread.  For whatever reason, changing the bobbin for a second time appears to have solved the problem.  I was able to finish appliqueing on the ninth frog and sew four of the strips together (shown in the photo) before my back said "no more for tonight!" 

Now that the machine is behaving, I hope to have the quilt top finished by the end of the weekend so that I can start machine quilting during the evenings this coming week.

Working with Frog Legs

Tonight, I finally got to start sewing on the frogs. On the one hand, it is going pretty good.  I was working on my third frog when my bobbin thread ran out and I decided that I was going to stop for the night.  The third frog happened to be the fun little guy who is all stretched out in the photo.

For the most part, it is going fairly quickly.  However, frog legs pose certain problems.  Frog toes pose even more problems.  That is a lot of tight turns to make!

But, I'm happy with the way that it is working out.  The sewing does make a difference.

The picture to the right shows a frog before appliqueing it on. 

The last pictures shows the same frog after finishing the sewing.

Playing with the Layout

When I was sewing the strips together, I had an image in the back of my head about how the strips would fit together.  It was a nice idea. Unfortunately, when I laid the strips all out together, it wound up looking more sloppy than purposefully random.

The frogs, however, still looked good!

I have five frogs ready to be appliqued on (they are just placed on top of the fabric for these photos).  And, I have five more that I just need to finish cutting around.  I started cutting out the new frogs, but the layout of the strips was really bothering me.

So, I played with the strips.

Right now, they are fitting together like this.  I'm a lot happier with this layout.  Although, there are still a few darker areas.  I'm going to leave it like this, though, for a little while and finish cutting out the frogs and then see how it looks with the frogs on it.

Flexibility is the key to quilting with only a vague plan.  :-)

More Progress

Only one strip left to sew!  The strips have gone together a lot faster than I had initially thought.  It has also been kind of fun.

I've started preparing for the next step: appliqueing the frogs onto the quilt.  I have the first four ready to iron on and sew around.  I'm hoping for a minimum of twelve.

But, I still have to find the backing fabric...

And, I have another glitch.  I bought thread for the machine quilting part shortly after I bought the fabric.  But, I only bought one spool, and now the store that I bought it at has closed.  The question becomes:  buy more thread or hope for the best?

Whew. Just in Time!

For a variety of reasons, I had to take a break from the blog for a time.  And, my desire to sew left for a while.

Fortunately, the desire to sew and to create and to imagine and to dream have all returned.  And, not a moment too soon, as I still have a quilt to finish by July that I would like to finish by May 1.  No pressure there!

The good news is that I think I can finish it on time. Saturday, I completed all the blocks for it.  Sunday, I started sewing the blocks into strips, with the blocks separated by random sized blue and white plain blocks.  Tonight, I'm halfway done making the strips.

The next steps will be to start appliqueing the frogs on to the plain white blocks.  Not all of the plain white blocks, but a sufficient number of them.  Then, it will be time to sew the strips together and quilt it.

Okay, when I type it, it sounds easy enough.  But, I'm sure that it will be tougher than I realize.  At least I have figured out the frogs that I will be appliqueing on the white squares. 

The toughest part may actually be finding a suitable backing fabric.  I guess that means a trip to the fabric store is in my future!