Radiant Star Quilt is done!

Woohoo!! Finished the Radiant Star for my client, Randy Leonard, in time to begin focusing on the new school year. I tend to become ludicrously focused when I start quilting a new quilt. The process is such a lovely one for me... well, that is once I get past the nerve-wracking part of loading the sucker. There's always a chance something doesn't load straight or something isn't long enough, but I've been lucky thus far & haven't encountered much of either. I'm just the perpetual worry-wart & worry about these things even though they've never actually happened to me.

Anyway, I'm very pleased with the results & it seemed Randy was too. But being I'm a homeschool mama, I've been running ragged trying to catch up from my obsessiveness over the quilting. Once I start quilting, I just want to quilt & quilt & quilt. Sure my body protests, the feet hurt, my back hurts from hunching over, my hip hurt from hunching in an uneven way (I HATE being uneven as anybody who knows me will tell you!) I'm neurotic & a bit obsessive you might say ;-P

But I do think my obsessive quality does have it's payoff occasionally. For instance, I began this quilt with a whirling feathering going down the entire length on the largest border. I wasn't happy with my imperfect stitching so I literally spent a day picking out microscopic stitches done in invisible thread... um yeah, my eyes, neck, back AND head hurt after picking all those out!! Then I went back & restitched AND then took my fingernail over all the holes left by those rejected stitches!! But I was so glad I'd done it & was so much happier with the new & improved results.

The green border above is where I'd started the meandering feathering that was looking horrible, and thus replaced it with this meandering leaf. I'm not sure why the feathering in that particular border looked crappy & the feathered circles turned out awesomely?? My spellcheck didn't flag "awesomely"which is kinda cracking my up! Is that REALLY a REAL word??? 

Below is the backside of the borders......

Stayed tuned!! NEWSFLASH: I finally bought myself a belated birthday present.... a camera to replace the other one that got dropped on the hardwood floor on said birthday..... I'm trying not to harbor ill feelings about having to spend so much money to replace the camera which was being swung around & around by it's wrist strap, forming large O's near my DD's face. Imagine when -OOPS- the thing was flung to the ground & cracked?!?!? GRRRR... okay, gotta let it go... I'm a big girl now!

Anyway, the real point is that I hope to post more frequently the things I've been working on. Not only have I been quilting up a storm, but I've also been researching & testing out items to sell at local craft shows and/or etsy. I love to sew & create & quilt, and I'm at home (homeschooling), so I'd find it quite rewarding to manage to recoup some of the miniscule amounts of money I spend of fabric & such (no tittering!!)

Show & Tell

I finally snagged --oh, eh hem... BORROWED-- the daughter's camera whom dropped my camera & rendered it almost useless. Which reminds me, I did take my old camera to Best Buy & they cannot find any record anywhere that shows evidence that we ever bought my camera at any of their stores. Soooo I still have a fairly expensive digital camera that does take pictures but that I cannot see anywhere of what I'm taking pictures. It has no view-finder & the view screen is what cracked when said camera met the hardwood floor. But I digress...

First off, I finally bought some proper hardware with which to hang my thimbles. I don't recall what this piece was originally, but I picked two of them up thinking they'd make fabulous thimble displays. So after having them sit around for years, I finally got one up on the wall in my sewing room:

As you can see I have PLENTY of room for further collecting! Some of these are actually from my MIL.

This same week I also attended Quilt Odyssey in Hershey, PA. I spent two afternoons attending a luncheon & two lectures, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I heard Pepper Cory, Morna McEver Golletz, and Valerie Schlake speak, and each lady was chock-full of great information & so willing to share!

I went back to the show a third day to view the quilt show & visit the vendors with two very good friends. This was the first year I've gone on a Sunday, and I'll admit to enjoying the thinned-out crowd. You know how there are those certain stands that are near-to-impossible to get into without a little elbow-bashing & lots of patience? And while on the whole we quilters are on a giddy high to be at the quilt show, talking to one another like we're life-long friends, and giving friendly advice on those color combos you're picking out, SOME of us can become another type of animal when we see THE PERFECT bolt of fabric to finish that project at home, drooling with anticipation to just get our hands on it whenever this slow train of people would just MOVE already!!!!

Anyway, I've recently gotten into "stitchery". I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with this term, but it seems very befitting to the craft as well. The outlining method used to stitch these patterns are very simplistic embroidery stitches. Occasionally, there are other more traditional embroidery stitches used, but for the most part, it's outlining. I love how these stitchings are being coupled with and/or bordered out with fabric. It combines my love for hand-stitching with piecing & quilting... HELLO?!??! What could be better???? (well maybe if you throw some chocolate into the mix)

I guess I never explained that these pics are of the stuff I picked up at Oddysey.....

So the pattern on the left looks like it could be quite nifty if I ever actually make it....

And the pattern on this right is another stitchery pattern along with how to put it into a tote bag. I'd love to make this for guild meetings!

I was looking specifically for yardage of Toy Story fabric, but came up empty-handed at the show. Out of fabric-envy, I HAD to pick out some small yardage pieces to wet my appetite.






The following two panels may turn into bags?? The one on the left reminds me of seed packets, so I suppose I could put them on grocery sacks or aprons? And the panel on the right has my mom written all over it, tho I'm still not sure what I'll do with it.

And last but not least, here is where I feel I splurged just a bit. I bought patterns for three 12" X 12" quilts to be hung on a small free-standing frame, and I bought the kit of fabric SEPARATELY for two of them. It about killed me to buy the kits separately, I'll admit. I'm usually way too cheap to do such things, and I'm usually very capable at finding fabric in my stash to complete small projects like these, HOWEVER, I want to work on it NOW. Know what I mean? I want to be able to start these when the urge hits & not go searching for fabric. Pure laziness is what it boils down to! And I'm okay with that.

No camera!

I've been posting so little lately because I don't have a camera that works, and what fun is a new blog post without some eye candy???? Sigh, but alas, the camera my darling daughter dropped has finally given up. For a while it was just the screen that's supposed to show me what I'm taking pictures of that wasn't working. So I'd take 100 different shots of the same thing hoping to get one good shot off & then download them to the computer to see what I actually got. But now I can't even get the thing to go on, so off to Best Buy it must go for a visit to their Geek Squad. I know it has a 2-year extended warranty attached to it, but do you think I can find that lovely little piece of paper called a receipt??? NO... however, this may not actually be my fault. My hubby bought it for me for Christmas, and he's notorious for being shall we say..... absent-minded. He's truly like the typical absent-minded professor you may conjure up in your mind - brilliant in some ways but oblivious in others :-)

It's really a shame I cannot post a picture of my latest creation in disaster. There was recently a girls' sewing day hosted at my BFF's house, and three of us worked on sewing a lined, zippered purse! I was so excited to be learning how to put a lining in a purse, as I'd just recently learned how to put the zippers in. Toward the end we had to turn it all inside out, which we called the "birthing" process -there was a lot of huffing & puffing & grunting trying to get all that fabric & lining thru the little hole we'd left open to turn it all right side out!! So I'd birthed my bag right side out & sewed up the birthing hole, hung it so lovingly on my shoulder, petting that beautiful bag.... and when I reached inside to play with the pockets, thinking I'd start putting all my gadgets into the tailored-sized pockets for my hand sanitizer, chapstick, tissue pack, etc.... and realized that I'd sewn one whole pocket panel into the purse UPSIDE DOWN. You can all imagine the sobbing & screaming that was churning within!! Sigh.... I cannot go back to it yet. Yes, I could unsew a bunch, unbirth the sucker & redo it, and maybe someday I will... when I'm really, really bored & have nothing better to do.... hmmm... perhaps I'll just use it as a visual aid for when I do my next one?????

Stay tuned for pictures of my goodies from Quilt Odyssey here in Hershey, PA. I'm going to borrow one of the daughters cameras so I can do a show & tell....

Happy Monday!