Brown dishes, bowls, latte cup, and mug

pattern source  SewPrecise

Finishing up the color challenge of using brown scraps this month at superscrappy
I made a latte cup (above), some cool dishes, a tea mug, and a set of bowls to go with last week's teapot and cup.
Brown is not shiny and sparkly, and it's a bit hard for me to use. I do have some rich browns though and it took some digging through the scrap bin to find just the right ones for my dishes.
The latte cup is so pretty and graceful in person that I truly wish I had one for my morning coffee.

Now look at these five little dishes...

The top one is a dish of chocolates, heh heh. Then to match the little cup from before, some inspiring words, some brown with pink dots, a vine for growth, and spirals for the magic in life.

Wish I had these too.

pattern source quiltinginamsterdam

oooo these bowl fabrics, yum! I like that I repeated some fabrics like the rims and saucer are the same. Makes the set go together.

Maartje designed this pattern and it's my favorite of hers. Free on her site, follow the link under the pic.
She also designed the next teacup with teabag...

note the tea is called "Choc-la-Tea" 

So here are this month's dishes in browns.

It still isn't my favorite color but it's earthy and calm, organic, and can be rich.

I have absolutely no idea how to set these. There are different ones each month, so many colors. I could put all cups together, all pots together etc. I could keep color families together.

I could totally mix them all up!
I have a plan for a border though, interesting because I struggle with borders. This time I know what I want to do.
These have been lots of fun, but next year I think I might do something easier, know what I mean?

InkTober The Big (Sweet) Decision

"The big decision"

What is the scarriest thing about Halloween?? It's the sugar frenzy!
I have always loved sugar. The best thing about walking to elementary school was stopping at the penny candy store on the way home to spend my quarter on lots of candy! Sugar LOVE!
My favorite candy was sugar babies, and candy lipstick which tasted so like cherries. I loved it all though, and would start on my halloween stash with the chewy chocolate bars like 3 muskateers but eventually eat everything but the hard candies. 
In about 3rd grade we had to write a report, and mine was on how candy was made! 
I don't know about you but I have a hard time with the concept "just one" . One BAG?? So this year we made a decision since sugar lowers your resistance to illness, and creates cravings for us. We gave it up.

Three days later the cravings stopped. Whew! This is what I got to hand out, twizzlers and jolly rancher pops. I am not so tempted. Cole is not even tempted. I hope to give them all out. I could put out the bowl after 9, turn out the light and let the 17 year old boys without costumes but with a pillowcase, (extortionists) take the rest.
My sketch was done in ink, is pretty rough, and I don't love it, but it kind of says it all.

What was your favorite candy as a child??? What is your favorite now?

sketch of the day... on fabric

flower sketch  10"X 8"

It's not very seasonal but it was a sketch of the day, done with portfolio paint sticks on fabric.
Recently I led a workshop for my friends using paint sticks and texture sheets on fabric. One of the exercises was to draw orbs free hand blending colors. The next exercise was to draw a simple flower shape, to see how to control stretch of fabric while drawing straight lines. Then they were to start drawing their own compositions.

A friend gave me a little scrap of the striped fabric, when I got home I saw how my little demo piece looked on it. In order to keep the stripes going I had to do some fussy cutting and stitching.

I wanted to do some quick simple quilting. I started with couching the metallic fuzzy pink around the image. Then stitched repetitive lines with pink then red, rayon threads. I finished by stitching the border lines with sulky hologram metallic hot pink.

You can still see the texture plate through the stitching.

When you teach a technique, you end up with a lot of samples, and unfinished bits and pieces. Often they get thrown away. With my goal of a sketch a day this month, I was happy to turn this into a finished quilt.

Is it a plumeria? A poinsettia? I don't worry myself with reality. It's a flower, bright and pretty. I like the blue and green done on fern texture sheets giving the flower a place to rest.




 It was fast to paint, I'd say 5-10 minutes. It was fast to quilt, I'd say less than an hour. I bound it with black, done on machine.
I have no idea what to do with it but it was lovely to work on, and I like that the border fabric was a scrap given to me by a friend.
I have learned so much about drawing this month. I am no longer unnverved by a blank white page. I start making marks, add to them, move fast, enjoy seeing an image develop. I have turned three of my sketches into quilts so far this month, and will share the others soon.

Howl-aween walkabout

What? Go for a walk? I'm still woozy from my little nap under momma's halloween quilt, but okay.
Saturday evening we went for a wee Howl-aween walkabout and  first thing we saw were these little guys, all colorful and getting momma's attention...

Then, guess what we saw, and my momma went KA-razy for  this...

"A flamingo skeleton!!! I could NOT love this more", she squealed!

And the neighborhood was really skeleton friendly, I mean look at this guy...

" Hey, y'all! Come on in! " said the bony guy (love bones!)

Most of the homes on the street had done this fencing for the holiday...



Of course some of the spirits couldn't get out and about to decorate their cribs....

YOLO  (you only live once) a good sentiment for any time of year.
"Hey, you..."  

...the one in the black poodle suit!   Look over there!"

Cole says,
huh?? Wha' tha fizzy?
I've heard of some dogs being in crates and I've done some time myself heh heh, but that looks like it used to be a human! 





 uh, oh, that looks like trouble.
Those people want out!

Hey....who's this joker? I ain't 'fraid of no ghosts!!




Or am I???

If you want me I'll be snuggled up with my blankie....

little brown coffee pot plus InkTober sketch

hmmm must have broken all the brown dishes... better make some more!
I had all the best intentions but it was not the week for sewing. I did one little coffee pot, from SewPrecise to remind me I'd rather be in Lake Placid...
And this sketch of the day for InkTober:

Yep. I miss the mountains.

and one little  cup o' happiness...

 I'm enjoying the brown this month at the RSC2015

I have more dishes and tea cups to make for next week... for now please go see what the others are making with brown scraps
http://superscrappy.blogspot.com/

Inktober sketch Howl-aween Poodles

The point of Inktober is to draw more often, with pen, making every mark count.
I'm not a confident sketch-er but I have come to terms with my ability to get a point across in a whimsical way. Kind of graphic, kind of innocent, kind of primitive and it's all me. I like it!

I did this one last night during a Hallmark movie that I got bored with... I imagined all the poodles getting ready for Howl-aween, choosing costumes.The first poodle, despite being dyed pink is laughing at his  arrow-thru-the-head costume. Of course he's got a strong self-esteem and is closest to the treat bag!

Poor daisy in the center is embarrassed... Cole actually has a daisy headband like this, and accommodated me one year, but he's so far beyond a costume at this age...
 Daisy wants you to know she wanted to be a zombie

The last poodle is over it! A cowboy on a saddle??!   On a poodle??!   AS IF!

decorating inside, with quilts

"Forever Partners"  about 25" square

And now for the inside decorations... well at least one of my yearly Halloween quilts.
"Forever Partners"
I made it years ago, because I fell in love with the gestures of the dancing skeletons. Reminds me of my gallant husband dancing with me, his best partner. In the above picture you can click on it to see the three D details such as spiders, and heart beads.

This is a shot of the whole thing hanging in the hallway for October. I pieced in the circles and have a tutorial on the technique in my tutorials page. I did paper pieced stars and added background fabrics to allow them to circle the dancers, repeating the circle shape. The beads also repeat it, as does the moon. In the background to the right you see another of my Halloween quilts, a twin sized, "Dance of the candy corn fairies".

 I make a Halloween quilt every year, as well as a Valentine quilt each year.
It's my series and I have a lecture where I bring both sets and discuss working in series. FUN!

It's pretty simply quilted by free motion, swirls confetti, circles.

To place the tiny star blocks, after laying them out you start adding strips of fabric til it becomes the size you want.



Can you "Feel the magic"??

Hardly decorated at all....

Front dogwood

We decorate for Halloween. This is the front porch.We really pared down this year. Only the spider and ghost lights, jackolantern windsock, and a wooden ghost in the planter. New ghost lights went up along the path from the car. So we have lighted ghosts along the path, and around the tree.

In previous years there was an enormous sparkly happy halloween sign along with colored lights in all the bushes, lots of little decorations bought over the 22 years we've been together. This year, I just didn't have the desire for it all.

Do you get like that? Is it a sign of something?

I quite like the simple three real pumpkins by the door. I like the mums.

One of the ghost light strings from last year blew out, and dh wanted to toss them.
What!?  Just toss perfectly good plastic smiling ghosts?? Just because they no long light up?
I asked him to cut the wires off, and stuck the ghosts in the back yard around the trees so I could see them during the day.

Back garden and oak trees

Along with the Fall colored lights on the porch. And on the fountain.

We can see the fountain from our porch perches

oh, forgot about the 8 ft tall banner that says trick or treat

around the oaks in back yard

Guess I decorated a bit more than I thought.
She's waiting in the wings for Halloween to be over so she can come out to play

It makes me happy to see this seasonal stuff around the house. Do you do anything special for Halloween?

The news about the nose

know how I was concerned about Cole losing his sense of smell as he ages? (See that post right here!)
Well, the news about his nose is, it's still working.
From the mind of Cole:  "Is that TUNA I smell??"  From the middle of the back yard while investigating another chipmunk trail? With the wind blowing, squirrels running and lots of distractions? He smelled my salad with tuna.

Maybe I should just come in and check if you indeed have tuna in that bowl of lettuce, which by the way, you have thumbs and can fix anything you want so why eat grass??

Maybe I should stop everything, and come in and check. Maybe this time you remembered to put some in my bowl too. Or am I just, once again, neglected and forgotten? What's up with the dog food in my bowl, people?! I'm tired of being a second class family member around here! COME MOMMA! open the door!

"Great! Are you going to eat all of that tuna?  And I also like cheese"

Momma here, Cole is allergic to tuna among as well as several other proteins. I can no longer share with him, which I know upsets him, but he gets ear infections from yeast if he eats allergens. Do not accept any neglect phone calls from him, he is not mistreated despite his claims.

"Fine, then some cheese will have to do... pile in on my food..."

Portable hexie transport system

It's hard to get a good shot of this project.
I have been slow stitching on this king sized hexie project for at least 10 years I think. It's my take along, car/bee sewing.

Can you see the safety pins? When I am ready to take the project with me on a trip, I lay the whole caboodle on the bed, lay out colors of hexis, then safety pin them to the section to be worked on and the whole quilt is in 5 sections at the moment.

This way I know what goes where when I'm sitting in a car or at bee, and can do the zen sewing while chatting.
In the picture above I am setting in the border blocks of the darker hexies. These run along the bed line around the whole quilt. It's taken on a life of it's own at this point, very close to completion. 

This is a shot with the light pink petals already sewn into a unit, hanging around waiting to join the larger section.

Some are individual hexies pinned in place, some in groupings.

It's a way to organize it into being portable.

Don't you love a portable hand sewing project??

Fall for Flamingos

I was challenged this week, to make my wild flamingos in the color of the month at RSC 2015... brown...

I went through the scrap bin, and found these fabrics for flamingos, water and sky.

I printed out the sew precise flamingo pattern at 6" X 7 " which means half of it is supposed to be water so the flamingo itself is about 3 " wide by 7"

I thought, how in the world will I do a brown flamingo?? Then a smart person commented that I should use one of the fabrics I considered in this month's cow block. see it here

And then this one sang out to me and I positioned it just so as I did with the one above. I get so focused on these little blocks. I inked in the eye with black, then circled it in white so it showed. I put some black lipstick on the beaks.
Another challenge met!