Thursday, March 24, 2022

I Like Thursday # 289

 

day two lesson one
 
 Welcome to this week's list of likes... starting with the return of Sketchbook Revival
These are a series of lessons on art, two videos a day of instruction, for two weeks. I look forward to this every year and the page above is from day two, lesson one. 
 

 
I gather art supplies, watch a video and start. I always date the page, draw/paint a portrait of the teacher, and jot down notes on the exercise

 
day one lesson 2
favorite paints KOI travel set


I am already behind but I have time to take the lessons and absorb the learning, and had to take time this week to finish my round robin piece, "Glamingo" for it's post on Friday

just a bit of the finished piece

and to work on my "table scraps"  challenge piece with a prompt of "flowers". 

Speaking of which Joy and I had a bee meeting on zoom this week, where we worked on these projects while chatting and laughing. Where does the time go? 

It sped away this week when I talked to Cindy about sketchbook, and life too

I liked seeing all my  project quilting art quilts in one post last weekend https://lapaylor.blogspot.com/2022/03/sewing-round-up-summer-breeze.html

the latest one, Summer Breeze

 I made potato leek soup this week, sorry no pictures, and no recipe. Just sauteed leeks in butter, added potatoes, spices, chicken broth and it was just wonderful

I plan to make these buns for spring, maybe over the weekend

cardamom buns


 painted my nails this weekend for first time in a while...Essie "rome around"

reading

turned in two audio books unfinished this week

Lily and the octopus... too weird and   which got too scary but then listened to

which was fun and just started the next in the series

 

still reading at night on ebook


which is really funny. A character study of sorts where lives are intersecting

Watching on TV

sadly finished Agatha Raisin, Virgin River, and are on the last episode of Bridgerton...but new seasons of Virgin River and Bridgerton will start soon. Love Survivor this time, and American Idol has been so touching. With all the hate in the world, it's good to see young people who have a passion for music. 

This is US is always good and they keep reminding us it's in it's last season, boohoo. Murdoch Mysteries is returning thank goodness

Milo's Moments

Milo: come on Mama, let's go outside and play with my new ring toy while it still has it's skin!

Mama: I'd love to... will you give me the toy to throw this time or tease me with it?

Milo: while I'd like to make you happy and give it to you, I just don't think I am comfortable with that...

Mama: why not? Aren't I trustworthy? I take care of you after all...

Milo: you also pull hair out of my ears, cut my toenails and won't feed me enough treats, so you gotta fight me for the ring!

Mama: so Milo if you were a "food" what would you be... I'd be a big plate of Cuban Chicken and yellow rice! 

Milo: I'd be a treat or cookie.... everyone wants a treat right? now stop stalling and chase me for this toy!

please visit these folk to read their likes this week!

craftscaviescontras  
 
                                                                  LINKING WITH 

rosie and the boys nature pics 




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Saturday, March 19, 2022

Sewing Round up " Summer Breeze"

 

Summer Breeze  17" X 21"
My project quilting challenge piece for this week is finished! The challenge was to use pieced flying geese, start and finish the piece within one week. I made my improvisational flying geese with white sparkly fabrics and surrounded them with blue scraps

I used improv curvy strip piecing to form the sky,

I had to include the tiny sun scrap between the clouds

and put a hoarded pond fabric at the base

I cut out some components of that fabric to have taller grasses, embroidered then free motion with multicolored cotton thread, and stitched in some more grasses and dragonfly. Really that might have been the most fun of all!

I later added in a few crystals to catch the light,


I used a mix of walking foot, and free motion in the quilting, here are some leaves, and some more quilted geese to carry on the cloud "geese" sections, and when it came time to finish I needed to trim some off one side. 

On a whim I included the trimmed section on one side as I like Asymmetry  







 


To recap the challenges this season,  and each one of these has a post full of details:

1. "All the colors"challenge to use many colors

#2  challenge Sihouette   "Disco Poodle"

3. challenge word Kitchen  "too many cooks" 

 

4. challenge diamonds..."morning on Mirror Lake"

 

 5. challenge Repetition/rhythm  two pieces 

6. challenge Flying Geese  and "summer Breeze"

 


and another season of the excitement and stress of having to follow a prompt and make a quilt in a week is over for this year... I like a prompt, and a challenge but the joy of quiltmaking for me is in design and that takes time and thought. Being rushed takes that joy away. I'm working hard to finish my stay at home round robin for this year, and will share it when it's finished. 

Meanwhile I tried a couple more blocks in the RSC color of the month, yellow

this one from Superscrappy is called twinkle and the next one is from Gylene Fitzgerald called Wish upon a star free from AQS

It didn't come together perfectly for me, so I have to solve that issue but I used yellow scraps for each

happy sewing y'all

patchwork Sunday                    
oh Scrap Sundays 

 

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Thursday, March 17, 2022

I Like Thursday #288

 

I likes snow and cool weather
welcome to this week's list of likes starting with our little boy turned 5 years old! He makes us happy every day! 

I like that he stands very close to guard me when I'm at the computer and dh is in the kitchen

I like that he wags his tail when I yell "Yea!" at anything

I like that he's a thinking dog, and protective, and looks at me to understand everything I say

I like that he wants to touch us, he puts his toy and hands on dh's leg at night to chew on the toy, he wants to sleep with us, he comes up to bed with me when I get migraines, he checks the front dog window each morning like some people check their phone. 

I like that he loves a toy and is beautiful inside and out. 

He's our son.

enjoying my new ring toy! I also had a cookie and some whipped cream!

not much else to share about this week, sorry bout that... some weeks you just make it through...

Sewing  

 I've been making the challenge for this week's project quilting, and finishing my glamingo piece, as well as sewing with yellow for this month's scrap challenge...

I love to sew with fabric scraps

reading

   which is a lighthearted romp through a lot of character's lives

listening on audio to this in studio

3rd in the mystery series about archeology and Native Ameericans

watching on TV

I really like the new show like survivor with celebrities "beyond the edge" because these people are used to glamour and being pampered and to see them having to dig deep to survive was a lesson in how people DO survive. One of the contestants, a football player made the most touching speech on why to challenge yourself to do what's really hard ... loved it

Survivor, The good doctor, Queens of Mystery, Agatha Raisin, Bravo channel. And lots on youtube...

anyone else default to the wealth of youtube? 

 

this made me cry happy tears


 this made me remember how much I liked Dick Van Dyke as an actor/dancer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMjI2cRRzH0&list=RDz-K9rnNPCpI&index=2
 

Now please visit these people to read about what made them smile this week!

 

craftscaviescontras  
 
                                                                  LINKING WITH 

rosie and the boys nature pics 

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Saturday, March 12, 2022

some weeks you finish art some weeks you nudge it along with your nose

 

Some weeks you finish art some weeks you nudge it along with your nose. 

 Welcome to this week's sewing round up!

   RSC color of the month is yellow/gold

When I start a new month's color, I pull out my scrap box (usually an overstuffed plastic shoe box) of collected bits and bobs of that color. When I start an improv scrap color piece I start by making lots of components to use later in the design process.

This time I made lots of improvisational geese units that look ragged til they are pieced in. Then I made some drunkard path blocks free cutting from some old scraps


sewed them together into blocks. 

At this stage I keep all component blocks that are square around the same size, not fretting . 

After all who knows where they will fit into a whole piece later?


they could have checkerboards sewn in or orphan blocks  or geese








I spent some time making free form log cabin blocks from raggedy uneven strips... just playing and happy while I listen to audio books (just finished Guncle and am into the third mystery in in Faye Longchamp series on native american archeology) 

I sewed 6 of these before pressing and trimming them to see how they might fit together.

round and round, back and forth, moving them around I decided to make two more and sew them into circles of a sort. Well by then I couldn't resist starting to lay out some components!

where will you end up? and the drunkard path blocks? where will they fit in?

I went through a phase of LOVING yellow when I graduated from high school. I went off to college with yellow twin sheets and towels. I made a predominantly yellow quilt once, despite my bee mates saying 

"You CAN'T do that!!!" and it went on to win national prizes and be shown in a lot of venues. 

Right after college I moved into my first appt and found one of Granny's old dining room chairs in my childhood home's attic. I was given it as it had no worth to my mother. I cleaned it up and painted it bright golden yellow and had it as a showcase in all my homes til the move to CO when we had to pay a dollar a pound to move our goods and it was so rickety by that point it wasn't usable. 

so I welcome yellow this month.

 Oh and this will become something... maybe my table scraps challenge piece?

I'm finishing up the decisions on my stay at home round robin... had to remove the long row of postcard blocks because they were visually distracting and caused the center to lose focus. 

A difficult decision for me as I love love love the row of postcard prints! They will become a separate piece to go in the stairwell so we can enjoy them  all summer long! Back to glamingo and it's final layout and fabrics.

(oh I did keep three postcards along the bottom edge, and inserted flamingos in each one, heh heh)

I auditioned several pretty batiks, all of which matched and would go. It came down to whether I'd go with the "pretty" choices (read: tasteful) or the whimsical choices (why go tasteful now?) 

One of them I chose, guess which, but after I cut the strip to add on, it looked too pale. Wha??? 

here are the pencil additions
I took out these colors to add warm magenta, and orange to the butterflies, and shade in darker blues and greens in the background.

permanent when heat set, I love using these pencils. They may seem costly at first but these have been in my studio for the past 15 years or so.  I have that brand's watercolor pencils I use on paper too.

The round robin is due March 21, so I need to finish the top, get it off the design wall and quilt it. 

If you made it all the way through this post, GOOD ON YOU! Thanks so much for looking and reading my words. If you need me I'll probably be puttering around the studio...

linking with

patchwork Sunday                    
oh Scrap Sundays 



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