Halloween Masterpiece(s)

This very well could be the last year I made my kids' costumes LOL!  It was a mere ... 8 years ago (wow was it really that long ago?).  I put so much work into them, that I let them quite literally wear them out in the months to come, because I wanted them to get USED (kind of like my quilts).  My kids obviously wanted to be "Buzz Lightyear", so I got a pattern, felt (never again), and got to work...

Aren't those little toes the cutest?!  It's been so much fun reliving those years through seeing other parents  getting costumes made for their little ones!  It could very well be the last year that my oldest does trick-or-treating, as he's now officially as tall as I am :-O.  But then again, I said that last year!  But I've earned enough gray hairs to tell the rest of you younger moms and dads to enjoy these precious years!!

When my boys got to be about 9-10, I figured they were old enough to start creating their own Halloween costumes!  Free candy is very strong motivation to get their creative juices flowing, and they have far surpassed anything I could ever come up with over the last few years, even without a sewing machine!! 

I encourage any other parents to do the same... let you child (once they're old enough) invent their own costumes!  It's been such a blast for me to see what they come up with each year.  One year my youngest was a ghost, and my oldest was a "MEAP test", the Michigan standardized school test... all we needed was white fabric, and 2 white poster boards and a black paint/markers.  Big brother got so many  laughs!!  It was also much less work for me, and much more satisfying for them!  Happy Halloween!!

Blogger's Quilt Festival - Halloween Quilt

One of the first big exposures I had to the world of quilting blogs was Amy's Creative Side's Blogger's Quilt Festival.  She hosts them twice a year, and stumbling onto one of these, a year ago was a huge revelation for me!  I've made so many on-line friends by connecting to some of the fellow bloggers who have posted quilts on her link-fest, and I've even been able to meet a few in-person!  I've also learned a ton, and been so touched and inspired by countless other bloggers' posts.  Thanks Amy!

The timing couldn't be more perfect!  I just finished up this quilt yesterday, and thought it'd be fun to post it on the Fall 2011 Quilt Festival.

It all started in September during a lunch and fabric shopping trip with a friend, right after our kids started school for the year.  I'm not a big home decor kind of gal.  In fact, we moved here 2 years ago, and just look at my bare windows (blush).

Needless to say, I don't do a whole lot of holiday decor either (sigh).  When I saw this Halloween fabric at the quilt store, it didn't initially "grab" me, but once I found out that IT GLOWS IN THE DARK,  I HAD to get some, which meant that I had to make a quilt LOL!

I based the quilt on the "Children's Delight" pattern in the book, "Quilts From the Quilmaker's Gift".  I've made a lot of quilts from patterns in this book, including my recent Project Linus Quilt.  It's an easy pattern, which came together fast, which is great, because more and more, I've been enjoying the process of the actual quilting more than the piecing.  My machine has been a bit naughty lately, so I did about half of it free-motion quilting, and about half of it is done with a straight stitch, or decorative stitches that anyone can do quite easily, even when your machine is not behaving.

My photographer was my tween son..  It was windy, which made it a bit challenging, plus my dog wanted to be part of the action too, so here's the great picture of the back that he took (he took the top picture too)!

Here's a few details of the actual quilting.

Can you see the spider web in the corner (all done with a straight stitch)?  The narrow orange border used a decorative stitch that reminds me of "stitches", and when I started the green binding, I still had orange thread on my machine from my Project Linus Quilt, and was thrilled at how it looked... a happy mistake.  I liked it so much, that I decided to use orange "fangs" to machine stitch on the binding.

And did I mention that it GLOWS IN THE DARK?!?!

I hope you'll take a moment, if you haven't already to check out all of the other amazing quilts on Amy's Blogger Quilt Festival!!

Finish it up Friday: Another Project Linus Quilt

I have 2 quilt finishes to share today!!  I finished both the 2nd Project Linus Quilt, and my Halloween Quilt (which I'll share in a post for the Blogger Festival)!  I'm also linking up with Amandajean at Crazy Mom Quilts, "Finish it up Friday" .  I had more free motion quilting issues that made my finish up a lot of the Halloween Quilt with straight stitching, but after a nice long spell of smooth FMQ-ing, I realized that I had forgotten to drop my feed dogs, and remembered that Leah Day recommends in her blog that it's fine to leave them up with some machines.  I put the feed dogs down, and had more thread breaks, so with my feed dogs up, I was able to finish it all up, which makes me very happy!!

Here's the back of the Project Linus Quilt (thanks to my tween photographer son for taking pictures for me!).

As I was binding the quilt, I remembered something that I had read on another person's blog who had written prayers for the quilt recipient in the seam allowance for the binding before flipping it over to be tucked inside.  I loved this idea, so decided to write a "hidden" message for this quilt.  As I've mentioned before, my dad was a minister, who loved children, and that I wanted to make these children's quilts, in part, to honor him.  So this is what's on the inside...

I wish every kid had a dad like mine.  It really makes me sad that some of the kids that these Project Linus Quilts go to aren't as lucky.  I'm doubly lucky that my own 2 boys got to know their grandpa, as we talk about him very often, which helps all of us with our loss, and help us remember his kindness and generosity.

Potato - Fail

What you are looking at is our entire potato harvest for the year!  Yep, pretty much a failure of our potato experiment this year.

The wire bins that we filled with soil, compost, and straw as the potatoes grew, proved irresistible to the many burrowing moles, voles, ground squirrels and such that we have in multitudes here.  The hypothesis was that the loose enriched soil would make it easy for potatoes to grow and people to dig.  We'll never know for sure, because it made it even easier for these creatures to weasel through for their 24 hour buffet.  I'm surprised that they missed this one!

Considering that we harvested fewer potatoes than we planted the summer before leads us to the conclusion that we'll be buying our spuds at the grocery store from now on!

But our tomato crop more than made up for it.  We also lost all 3 baby Aspen trees to deer, and they found our 2 fruit trees very tasty.  I'm hoping they'll recover and that we can find a better way to protect them next summer.  We haven't gotten a single fruit from these either, in their 2nd year, so those too may be a failed experiment, but our raspberries and blueberries have already shown promise and produce!

I've spent a great deal of time in our beautiful fall weather doing my least favorite chore... pulling up dead plants, cleaning up and putting the garden to bed for the winter.  It's time now for some serious sewing!!

WIP Wed: Postcards and Binding (and Kindle Covers)

It's Wednesday, so I'm linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced, WIP Wed.  Come join us!

Lately, I've been busy making postcards for my October swap, and trying to make up more Kindle Covers for my Etsy shop. 

The Kindle covers take a lot of binding, so I've been making more for those, as well as binding for a few quilts I'm trying to finish up.

I don't want to spoil the surprise for the October swap, but did get my final postcard for the September swap ("Wind, How it Blows").  This is what I sent off:

Here's what I got back!  Aren't they fantastic?

I also thought I'd share a postcard that I made for my Bengal-fan, Brother-in-law's Birthday!

 Get it?  LOL  He loved it!  So what are you working on?

Wind turbines

Blogger and fiber artist Kit Lang recently posted this picture on her blog that she took on her commute to work, and asked readers to also post commute pictures.

I haven't commuted to a "regular" job for 5 years now, but do spend a great deal of time driving my kids around to school, appointments, activities and such.  I'm pretty private about my kids though, plus I'm always the driver, and can't take pictures, so I thought I'd post a picture that I recently took (while my husband was driving) of the wind turbines that have been multiplying like rabbits out here in Eastern Oregon.  It's not quite as cool as a piece of subway art, but I bet many city-folk don't see these very much. 

One thing I love about reading blogs is that I can get little glimpses of other people's lives that are so different than mine.  Something as ubiquitous to Kit Lang as a subway commute is quite exotic to me.  I've been in a subway only a few times in my life.  The experience was so mentally novel that it's imprinted on my brain.  I can still see the faces of the other commuters, and could probably recognize them in a crowd.  I can still see my kids' excited, astonished faces riding right next to me!

So I though I'd post this picture of what's becoming quite a common sight here along the Columbia River, where wind is plentiful.  Like many people here, I have very mixed feelings about these things sprouting up all over the place.  We have solar panels on our house, grow our own food, and even drive a hybrid car, but we also love the natural beauty that we find here in the more rural parts. 

So what about you?  What does your commute look like?  What do you see every day that others might not ever see?

MQX-West

Over the week-end, our family had the opportunity to travel to Portland, to see family, and do some sight-seeing.  We had a great time, and really didn't want to head back home.  I was lucky enough to also be able to spend a few hours at the MQX-West Quilt show!  I was delighted and amazed at the complexity and beauty of these quilts, that were literally from around the world.  I took a few pictures of my favorites.  Forgive the poor quality of some of them, and forgive the omission of artists and quilters.  The "WOW"-factor was just too high to not share a few of them!  Enjoy!

I did find a website about "The Quilt Show, by Laura Peterson", which was a special exhibit.  Click on the link, and it'll bring you to her website, which explains the wonderful story and process behind this quilt!