Warm & Humid & Patriotic Scroll

   Good evening,

    Super humid today and the pollen was very high here as well, so didn't attempt the much needed grass cutting. This is always on my mind as a major chore to do-we have two large lots on the lake and it is not an easy job being on a hill. We are supposed to get lots of rain so will see what happens.  It is too expensive to hire someone to cut and our yard is a real mess as well.

   Last evening I discovered honey bees on all of my nectar feeders-Such a pain this is-I am thinking the family farm up on the hill from me must have gotten bees-or the honey bees flew in from somewhere else and found my nectar.  So far the birds are still mostly getting some nectar.

  I decided to begin to set up my second slow stitch meditative scroll. I looked in my fabric stash and grabbed a few more homespun fabrics-and I dug out the big tub I shared to see what was in there.

   This brought back memoires of early years in my retirement. Ended up not being more civil war reproduction fabrics but I did find similar choices, along with reds and blues and even a couple of patriotic fat quarters. I even found some nice yardage that I forgot about and some pretty batiks

   I did order off of Etsy a patriotic jelly roll that were to be on the vintage looking side-I should have sent those back before I got into them-- not real happy with those fabrics-but I can use some of them. The rest I will donate to the animal shelter's thrift shop. I did fill up a couple boxes of books to donate too-

  Here is the start of the layout (click to enlarge)

I use quilters curved safety pins to keep fabrics in place. On You Tube many are doing an invisible baste instead of pins.  The take a very small stitch on top and large one underneath to secure everything without pins. Then they also leave the stitches in place. I do not mind these pins all that much but the stitches would probably hold the fabric smoother. I have not had issues with the pins on the bags I am using. So pins it is haha

   Have you been watching the soccer world cup? I know nothing about soccer but have been finding the games exciting and spectators very patriotic-so am enjoying learning about the game.

   It looks from the weather map that many of us will be getting rainstorms. We always can use rain here.

  Happy mid-week

This & That-Found Fabrics and Blue Jean Quilt

   Good evening,

  Hoping those of you that celebrated Father's Day enjoyed a good day today.  I can relate to some of the things my Mother had said (years ago now) that as we get older we lose special family and friends especially our parents.

 We both have lost our parents years ago now, so I do think of them but no longer celebrate the day.

  Last night I decided to work on my slow mail cards to celebrate our nation's 250th birthday.  My craft room is on the side of the house close to one of our neighbors that seemed to have lots of family visiting for several days now. They partied loudly til after 11 pm including very loud fireworks that just make those loud booms nothing else. Also not like them-very loud music as well.  So turned out to be a good day for that project. Ha Ha.  We have a couple neighbors that do not fire off pretty fireworks only those that are loud  that go boom-that's it  don't like those at all  Oh well there will be total craziness here at the lake on the July 4th weekend for sure.  I do enjoy fireworks just not those.

  I didn't sleep well last night at all-but ended up getting lots accomplished today-lots of laundry caught up especially.

 This afternoon, I decided to go through some books that I had bought but never got around to reading. I saved out some of those and started boxing up the rest to take to the animal shelter's resale shop this week.  I also discovered a big tub under a cabinet in my craft room-opening it up-Wow big surprise-full of quilting fabrics and at least 90% of it is more civil war era reproduction prints.  I knew that I had collected those over a few years planning to make a quilt or two-I may just make a simple quilt design with these-something I would enjoy as I love this period of fabrics-very earthy.

 The reproduction fabrics are mostly upper left and in the middle-there is a lot of yardage here

  I also took a photo of my huge patriotic rag quilt 

     Larry never liked this one as it is Very heavy. There is batting  inside each square and the backing squares are flannel.  I also had hand embroidered some of these squares as well, the stars are more jean material sewn on.  This ended up being huge around a king I think-I have it draped over the back of the couch to enjoy.  I t was quite the challenge at the time to get this heaviness into the sewing machine.

   We did get a bunch of rain during the morning hours but no storms thankfully.  I am off to refill the nectar feeders. We still have orioles here the one pair of hummingbirds and several other birds that are enjoying the nectar as well.

  Oh and I wanted to share a jam I found that is soooo delicious. 

     I am not a jam or jelly person at all, but I look for nicer preserves-jams for Larry as he likes it in his Greek yogurt or with peanut butter sandwiches on cinnamon raison toast.  When I went shopping last week at the family grocery store I found this Jam. This is soooo delicious and Not sweet like most are. I will be buying more for sure.

Found this photo on Amazon   

Happy new week

Slow Stitch Bag Progress

   Good evening, According to the weather people this weekend was supposed to be a wash out with rain and storms. Here at the lake today it was humid and hot-no rain.  A bit too humid for me to be mowing grass-I will see what tomorrow morning is like as I need to tackle that again soon-ugh. 

  One of our neighbors here had a big family gathering-which I thought was odd as they only come out on the big summer holidays and then I remembered this was Father's Day weekend. The lake has been crazy busy with lots of boats all day, and will be out there til dark tonight

 Late afternoon today, while watching a movie I worked on another section on the third slow mail bag. This bag has taken me longer as for some reason most of it was tiny stitches. When I was hand quilting years ago I always had tiny stitches, so I need to think about larger ones for these bags. I am liking this bag but is has so many sewing hours already. On the next one I will keep track of the hours for an idea. I  am enjoying these bags, but I am wishing now I did not cut out for so many of them.

  I recently bought  a few stencils to try so grabbed one with a flower. and used it in that green block.

I really like how this green block turned out. I have been having trouble getting a pattern marked, I have used chalk and tailors chalk too which is ages old from sewing days and both made too large markings. I bought a couple pens too for this purpose and those were not working either. I finally found a set that had good reviews included several colors and was perfect for marking through the stencil with fine lines. then when finished you just iron off-magic haha.  That will open up to using different stencils now.

Here is what I found-the set even included refills  (amazon) I wanted to share this product as so far only one with fine lines and works.

    Before Larry's bad fall over the wall going on 3 years ago now, we were at the woods house to gather some more items we wanted. I spotted Larry's  wood working table-I have shared it before I think-I love it-gorgeous wood and it is narrow and very long-perfect for sewing projects. I had fabrics stacked up on this for the slow stitch bags, and also lots of Kantha fabrics. 

    I had been gifted a good pile of those fabrics, loved them so bought more-I seperated those out according to sizes (vintage cuts of kantha cloth)  and had a bag to fit it all in-so now I have a tidy space again smiles.

    I am thinking of sewing  many of these kantha pieces into a quilt-it will be light weight for summer. These pieces are three layers of thin fabrics-so the backing is already there. I will sew the rows together with the seam facing out to the front-those are then clipped-I had made a lot of "raggy" quilts with this method from jeans in the past. I made a Huge all blue jean quilt with this method that I had added hearts and stars to each block.

I found this photo online if you are not familiar with this method for an easy quilt.  The kantha fabrics are already hand sewn together so that part is done already-should be a fast project-all the pieces are different sizes though so will need to play around with a layout

  Looking at my craft room I may just need to take a good look at things and consider downsizing a bit-taking some of it to the animal shelters' thrift shop. I never know what I may want in this room as this is collections of mine since the '60's and also sewing supplies from both of my late Grandmas, late sister, and late Mom's  So I may not be quite ready for that but I do have a bunch of books that can go to the resale shop. I will need to think about that.

  I guess I am rambling on smiles-Happy weekend

Good Morning Thursday & Scroll Layout

   We missed all those T storms and rain last night, but it is still humid out there this morning. I should be out mowing-but not in the mood-smiles.

  I did begin work on laying out my civil war era reproduction fabrics on to the large scroll. I am liking it so far, needed a distraction.

  I have quite a collection of these fabrics as I love them. The era with earthy colors-back then mostly naturally dyed fabrics I am thinking.  I am working with a jelly roll collection-which are numerous long strips 2 1/2" wide. If I remember right I had won this collection and started making a few handsewn blocks-but decided to use those as coasters-didn't want to make a whole quilt out of those-was rather daunting at the time.

 So since these fabrics are the same width-working on being creative with the layout. I did dig through to get to a tub of fabrics that had homespuns that were soft plaids-so am using some of those too.  I also grabbed a  man's shirt as well. I used to buy as large as I could find of men's cotton shirts at the resale shops, to make numerous quilts that I had gifted to many. Great project to repurpose clothing.

  I ended up staying up late last night almost midnight-sometimes I need to be extremely tired in order to get to sleep. 

  I do have yardage also of these civil war era fabrics but only grabbed a couple of those for now. I was browsing online looking for quilt fabrics celebrating our 250th anniversary-Wow the prices have really gone up since I last purchased quilt fabrics-so still looking for those to add towards the end of the scroll.

 My last post explains the meditative scrolls with a video. Here is what I laid out last night.

Oh and I am still have commenting back issues here on my blog-I ended up deleting that last post about it-working on not fretting over this issue with Google. At least I can finally post a blog-hopefully that will continue-so if I don't comment back to yours it's a Google issue-smiles

Now for the photos  sorry my camera is not all that great click to enlarge for better viewing

  

Some of the strips still have the dates for the reproductive fabrics-will include the ones I have

 

  It is amazing how far these fabrics go-I am still going to have some left from this collection looks like. I placed another large section which makes me at the half way point for this scroll. So now I am thinking this scroll will all be just these civil war fabrics with the homespuns  I will look for another large scroll for the fabrics below.

This morning early I did find a patriotic collection in jelly roll usa made and cotton on amazon-One really needs read the description and the comments there on fabrics many were not good.  When I first wrote this up thought I would end with these modern patriotic fabrics but will look for another large scroll instead. 

Enjoy your day

Update I just found these patriotic ribbons on Etsy-perfect for my scrolls  I do not have anything like this in my craft stash..-the seller was destashing

Slow Stitch-Meditative Scrolls

 Good Morning,

  I am still stitching on the third slow stitch bag. This one has taken a lot of time do to the smaller stitches. I had cut out already for 12 bags from my own hand dyes. This is starting to become a bit daunting. After this bag I will change the slow stitches to larger to speed up the process. I never should have cut out so many but my thought at the time was to begin using up my hand dyes to share with friends.

  Being my husband's care giver I have enjoyed working on these bags as we are very home bound now

   I follow a fiber artist and slow stitch instructor on You Tube. She lives in Europe and I have really enjoyed and learned from her. She has been sharing about meditative slow stitch scrolls that I am getting set up to do. This is an older video of hers but really explains the meditation of this process

Here is her video.

  I looked in my craft room stash and I found a bag of vintage wooden thread spools and also one larger weaving spool-of course I did haha   The last quilt I had put together used a cotton backing that was wide enough to have no seams, so I found a left over piece of it-just perfect for this set up. I have a bit more fabric left for a couple more small spools

My Mom was into making handmade bags of all sorts-this one is perfect to hold this project

This is some of the smaller spools I added to the bag, and found these civil war reproduction quilt fabrics that I have loved but not used much of-so thinking I may use these on the large spool I never did get around to making a civil war era quilt This year would probably be a good one to do that as we celebrate our country's 250th birthday.

I was happy to find this large spool in my stash-as looking around online they are very expensive now-These spools are now ready to start slow stitching on

In her video she mentions a book and author-and I have book-it is a good one.

   Hoping this blog will work-have missed all my friends here

Good Morning

   Thought I would give a new blog another try.

Still am not able to delete the blog that doesn't work.

  It has been very humid here this month with lots of rain. I always welcome the rain though as some summers here in the Ozarks get very little

  Still enjoying slow stitch projects-I am setting up a scroll soon-more later.

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