Elly Sienkiwqicz's Books

While in a quilt store a few weeks ago I picked up Elly Sienkiewicz's book, "The Best of Baltimore Beauties, 95 patterns for Album Blocks and Borders".

Elly does exquisite hand applique work and this is my first book by her. It's not a "how to" book but has the designs from her books.

She has black and white photos of the designs and 1/4 of the design unless it's not symetrical. I don't care about not having the fabric colors, just having the designs themselves are amazing. Getting it at 40% off is even better.

Even if you don't do hand applique and see her book in a store, check one out, you'll be amazed. If I ever get around to doing a quilt by her, I'll do it with machine applique.

Getting Up And Running

Sigh. I think I got it fixed. I feel awful. Most of my friends deleted it knowing something was "off" but a couple didn't. I spent the afternoon making phone calls, doing scans and updating software.

I have a couple of things I'd like to do tomorrow:

• Make a You Tube video on doing Y seams (inset seams)
• Put away my Janome 350e..need big strong hubby for that
• Stitch out the last panel for my Christmas wallhanging

If I manage to get at least one of those done, I'll be proud of myself.

Oh..I need to call the doctor and see if he'll call in a weeks worth of sleeping pills. I haven't slept in 3-4 days. I need to get back on human night hours, not on whenever I can fall asleep hours. I'll end up having seizures or go manic. If I'm not heading to a stage of mania already.

Off to attempt to sleep..

Janome 350e Test Out

Now that I have my embroidery file cleaned up and can see my icons I finally stitched out a test design on my 350e.

Wow. I forgot how nice this machine is. It's SO quiet compared to my Topaz. Add in the touch screen for ease and I was back in love. At least until the machine finds a way to hate me.

I also have the little hoop for the 35oe which made this design easy for a test. The smallest hoop I have for the Topaz is the 120x120.

The only problems I have encountered with the 350e are that the needle isn't centered to the machine and when the bobbin runs out it pulls on the fabric pulling the design out of alignment. I haven't figured out why and the dealer didn't seem to really care. They are prewound bobbins so maybe I need to wind my own and see what happens. I have a love/hate relationship with Janome machines. Most of the time I just call them "Damn it" during usage. They are beautiful machines but I know they are out to get me in some way or another.

Quilt Journaling

Once I figured out how to get the comments working again, I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for their kind posts and encouragment. I thought blogger would just email me the comments and I'd just decide if I wanted to post them or not. I didn't realize you had to go into blogger itself and do it. Duh. I don't get a lot of comments anyway but couldn't figure out why nothing was showing up.

I was at Barnes And Nobles and picked up a spiral bound journal. I was going to use it for me but thought it would work for quilting. I had attempted with a 3 ring binder but it just wasn't "pretty". It just looked "blah" and sterile with clear inserts. I'm not a scrapbooker and I didn't want to pay those kind of prices just for a binder with the fancy paper.

Here's what my first page looks like:

From Blogger Pictures

Nothing fancy, but it gives the fabrics I used and some basic notes about the project. I should probably print out the paper piecing pattern and stick it in. The only problem I see is that it will fill up fast and be incredibly lumpy. It just seems more personal with a fun cover instead of a binder.

Anyone else do a journal of sorts with your quilts? If so, what do you use?

It's Finished!!!

It's amazing what you can get done when extremely angry. I now have one finished Mariner's Compass quilt. I guess I should thank Mark for really pissing me off. I probably increased his magazine sales as well. LOL.

From Blogger Pictures

It's been a long journey with this quilt. It started off with an idea from EQ6 and grew from there:

From Quilted with Love

To paper piecing it:

From Quilted with Love

and to quilting it:

From Quilted with Love

From Blogger Pictures

It's taken over a year to do this. Mostly because I haven't known how to quilt it. It takes time to let a quilt "talk" to you. And..someone to make you really, really mad enough to take out your anger on your quilt. I still can't believe how fast I got my binding done.

If In Frustration, Take A Class

I bought some more books on knitting and beading figuring they would help. They are wonderful books and if I had more knowledge, I'd do every one of the projects in each book. None of the projects have that awful "homemade" look. I was shocked as I've always assumed that's what knitting looked like. Get the books..they are incredible.

From Blogger Pictures

While in Michael's on Saturday a lady at the checkout counter mentioned a yarn store down the street so my sister and I went to investigate. Oh my gosh! I had no idea there were so many kinds of yarn and needles. I was in awe as I looked over the store. I explained what I was looking for and that I was learning to knit but couldn't figure it out from the couple of books I had. The lady looked at me, smiled sweetly, and said, "It's really hard to learn knitting from a book. We offer beginning classes on Mondays from 11-1 and in the evenings. Why don't you join us?"

*Thinking* 11-1..My husband has to work nights and is in bed by two. Dragging 3 kids around for 3 hours while I take a class. It's an hour up and back. I told the lady I'd love to sign up but needed to check with my husband. My sister wanted to take the class as well but it wasn't feasible for now. She gave me a sheet and my sister and I headed out the door. I was feeling bad as I never get to take classes because of time restraints, money and not driving.

Today in a 3 hour class with a skein of beautiful yarn and needles I have done this:

From Blogger Pictures

She made it SO easy. Well..enough that my brain isn't completely confused. The class is a scarf that teaches all the knitting techniques. Right now it's the basic stitch. I need *gulp* 8 inches of this stitch when I make it up again on another Monday.

It's been 4-5 YEARS (not kidding) since I've taken a real live class. Everything is online or self taught for me. To sit in a room with a group of women and learn was amazing. Actual human interaction! The only thing that would have made it perfect would be my sister sitting next to me. My husband was sooo wonderful to drive me up and back.

The next best thing was my sister taking care of my children so I could do the class. She wasn't able to drive me up and offered to take them. A huge thank you for her generosity.

Hardanger Doily Done

I haven't had a chance to post in over a week.  I did get my Hardanger doily done today after working on it for two weeks.  

I ordered the delica beads and those things are WAY small.  I couldn't choose one color and bought several.  I loved them all when I put them next to the fabric I was using but settled on the transparent light rose/gold colored ones.  By the way, buy containers to put the beads in and label them.  My sister helped me pick out some as she and my mom do some beadwork.

I am SO glad I bought the DVD on doing Hardanger as well.  It was much easier to do the beadwork as I knew the stitches the directions where talking about.  Plus, when I got stuck a couple of times, I could refer back and watch her do the stitch over and over and over and over..LOL.  

Here's the doily:

From Blogger Pictures

And close-ups of the beadwork.  Click on them to get the detail work of the beads and their color:

From Blogger Pictures

From Blogger Pictures

Truthfully; the pictures still don't do it justice.  I still can't believe I got those tiny beads on and did the picots and the dove's eye stitches to keep them in place.  

I've enjoyed this so much I ordered a kit to make a table runner.  What was I thinking??