"French Country" Graphic 45 Mini Album

Been working on this for some time and it's still not done, but it's turning out to be one of my favorites. This pattern was done by a talented lady from Norway called Anne.  Her blog is annespapercreations.com and she has tons of tutorials via Youtube.

This one threw me for a loop because it's reversible.  It took me a week to figure it out.  I didn't have the long envelopes that she had and had to make my own from paper.  She used black so it was really hard to see which side she was using to put the envelopes together.

She also cuts very intricately and detailed so it takes time to do all of this.  This is not for the faint of heart.  I didn't have all the extra cut-outs from this set that she had so mine isn't nearly as detailed.

Love this page with the country blues:

It too me forever to cut out the scroll work in the picture above.  This is the other front page.  I couldn't get the girl to cut out right and ripped part of it.  I'll have to order more of the paper.

Love these two pages as well.  The barn doors open up and the barn itself is a tag.  Once I get some more paper I can finish it up.

Getting Stains Off Of White Fabric?

The last few days have been miserable.  My SI joints are really sore making my muscles stiff.  I just want to get out and do stuff and not hurt.  Feeling sorry for myself I figured I'd pull out my embroidery machine and do something.  I can't find the package of needles I bought last month.  I've looked everywhere.  I can't just to the store and get them either where I live.  So I figured I'd work on "Red December".

I pull that out and realize that there are stains on the white fabric!  I've been so careful with this quilt because of the white fabric.  I feel sick and cried my heart out last night.  The last thing I want to do is have the red fabric ruined by trying to get the stain out of the white.  I've had such a love/hate relationship with this quilt.  It's a stunning pattern and I love it.  The fabric is fairly thick and and a pain to fold over even with a template and iron.  That turkey red color is nearly impossible to find so I've just tried not to worry about all the excess fabric that keeps coming out of the corners despite my attempts to keep it folded under.  The quilt will never make it in a competition because of those issues.  Is there a way to get this stain out?    

  

Rose Pedals...

Hubby said I could have roses or pedals for Valentine's Day after showing him the Specialized pedals I wanted at the LBS.  I looked at him and said rose pedals would be great!  He rolled his eyes and said, "Roses OR Pedals".  Oh.  After thinking about it,  I figured roses would be the best choice.  I can get pedals any time.  Maybe he will sneak the pedals in since he knows what I want.  If you want your hubby to get you stuff, show it to him or he'll never get it right.

I've spent the past week looking at bike saddles.  Really they are just modern torture devices for your rear end.  The idea is to get your sit bones measured and somehow that number magically gives you the best saddle size.  So I called up my LBS and had my sit bones measured.  You sit on a squishy seat with lines and find the right lines that match up to the sit bone indentations.  The magic number for me is 155 and then you pick out your saddle against the wall.  If only it was that simple.

Saddles also come in hard, flat, soft, long, short, rounded, curved, racing, recreational, fat, bulky, fake leather, real leather, white, black, ugly, weird looking and finally even down to the truly bizarre looking ones.  Think back to when you first started quilting, walked into a fabric store with a great pattern and then spent hours trying to find the perfect fabric combination for it completely overwhelmed by choice.  Yeah.  I have a few of "those" quilts made as well.

With the 155 magic number I stood against the wall of torture and picked out the Lithia model.  The guy put it on and said to give it a test run.  I went around the parking lot, thought it was great and told him I'd purchase it.  A few days later I'm in agony after doing a couple of 5 mile rides.  It's like cutting out strips of fabric only to realize you've messed up the widths a short time in, but thankfully still salvageable as he said I could exchange out the saddle.

I took the saddle back and asked if I could try something else.  We talked some more and I came home with a Ruby to test out.  Maybe this the one that magically works.  If I can get a working saddle, I can get more mileage in and work up to my century plans.  Yup.  I'm going to do a century this year in August however; if I can't get in more than 5-10 miles w/o saddle pain, I'll never get that far.







 

SVG Cuts Gazebo

I downloaded SVG Cuts Gazebo project.  I resized it to 75% to save on paper and it came out fabulous.    Since I didn't want the winter themed design I went with my own.  I used a design from the Studio store to do the roof and the inlaid floor.  Without the vellum panels, the gazebo came across as "empty" so I added the floor.  My daughter wanted a swing placed inside but I'm not talented enough to create it.

I really like how the colors worked together.  Golds/reds/turquoise and brown make wonderful combinations.  They are hard to find in fabric so it was nice to have this paper collection.  The only thing I don't like is that box sides are too flimsy so I don't know how well it will hold up the gazebo over time.






 

Last Day of 2013

I realized I haven't written in a long time here.  I haven't done a lot of quilting/piecing because it hurts my back so much.  Paper stuff doesn't hurt so I've been doing more of that.  I was planning on finishing up this quilt top today but now I can't find it.  I took apart my closet, rummaged through the basement stash and nothing.  Even this hurt to cut out strips and sew so I'm not sure what to do.

This is a Kathy Orta mini album project.  This was a PITA to put together and I'll never do it again.  It's still not done.  My Cameo cut out the skeleton/spiderweb beautifully and fits perfectly with the box decor.  Kathy used Tim Holtz's stuff but I found most of it gaudy and did  my own thing.

It opens up like a desk with two panels.  This one is the bottom with two mini albums:

How the box folds out:

I happened to look at my cycling goal of 50 miles.  Didn't happen.  30 is the most I can do on a bike at the moment.  However; I didn't have to go to the hospital for any of the cycling accidents I did have.

According to Strava I have ridden 779 miles this year so even though I never made a 50 mile trip I've put in a lot of mileage.  Part of me wishes I could do the "Gravel Grinder" ride but that's 150 miles and given my speed would be at least a 15 hour day.  Three hours is the max I've been able to do.

I figure 2014's goal is to do 40 miles.  That's four hours on a bike..LOL.

Tim Holtz "Lost and Found" Mini Book

I did this album from Kathy Orta's tutorial on YouTube.  It was working great until I went to bind the book.  She had put holes in her covers and bound the book with chain.  I don't have a fancy thingy that does holes so I figured I'd do it the old fashioned way.  Well, her way of putting the bags together wasn't meant for it and I messed up.  Of course I've used Scor-Tape and there's no fixing it now.

It's not a huge thing, but the last page doesn't attach to the book very well, and it's off center.  Just like in quilting, make it a happy mistake right?

Speaking of quilting, I asked Graphic 45 if they would do a paper line with quilting themes.  I got a response back and she had said the idea was great and had forwarded it on to the design department.  Fingers crossed they do it.

Here's the cover:

One of the pages:

Flip wallet that still needs finishing:

I still need to finish up all the extras as she had more stuff to put in but it looks great!  While in JoAnns my youngest went nuts over Tim Holtz's stuff.  She was pulling out everything to match with these papers.  I'm still not sure I'm into the grunge stuff and my only complaint is all his papers look alike.  As a quilter, color is everything and having a mixture of darks and lights sets off a quilt and the paper.  If you were to take a grayscale picture of his paper, it would all look the same.

Now to put covers on my other books and hope they work out.  It's like binding a quilt and I suck at binding..LOL.

Only thing I really need are magnets and those are hard to find.  I need the 1/4 inch really thin ones and Amazon and a lot of stores are out.  They need to hold down paper so Wally World and the craft world ones don't work.  Great for refrigerators, not for paper.

Graphic 45 "French Country"..LOVE IT

My Graphic 45 "French Country" paper came yesterday!  What gorgeous paper and I'd love to see this in fabric.  I've got two projects I want to make with the paper and hoping I can do both with the 12x12, 8x8 and the 6x6.

Will put some pictures up soon!