Quiltttt!

I finally got around to taking some non-cell phone pictures of the LDQ.





I finally got around to taking some non-cell phone pictures of the LDQ.

I'm not done with the quilting, but I thought I'd go ahead and get some pictures up. I'll take more (and better ones) when it's completely finished.

Some of the patterns I used can be found at the following places (some are even free!):

Red Velvet Art (which you should check out anyway, because it's amazing.)
BadBird (check in the "free patterns" category in the sidebar)

Other pieces were either originals by me, or found randomly via Google Images.


Now, I have to go drop off my cable bill or they'll turn off my internet... and that would be bad.

Quilttt!

Very quickly, here's the quilt. I spent three days with my Mamaw working on this. We got the top completely pieced together and we found the most gorgeous fabric to back it with. I've done a very tiny amount of quilting so far, but I brought it back to Statesboro with me so I can work on hand quilting it here. Hopefully I'll have a fully completed quilt in a few weeks. Yay!

Now for the pictures:
My favorite lady in the world, working her magic.



Aaaaand, a not-very-attractive picture of me quilting. I look very serious about what I'm doing. I'll try to get some more detailed shots of the quilt and the backing and everything this week. Several of the squares of embroidery were never posted here, so they're sort of like a surprise.

And now, I have to go finish packing for a quick trip to Jasper. Happy weekend, everybody!

Sunday Stitching

Okay, I didn't exactly do this today, but we'll pretend. Sorry it's so wrinkled. They get that way sometimes after washing the water soluble marker out.
This is another Elsie pattern. I think half of my quilt is going to be Elise patterns.

Now, I'm off to find food and clean my apartment (in that order).

Elephants, Unicorns and Rainbows, etc.

Okay, so I thought using flickr would make the blogging process easier. I was wrong. I'm sure I'll figure out how to make it all work more efficiently someday. But today is not that day. I have quite a few pictures up on flickr, but not nearly as many of my huge collection as I'd like. I can be found on Flickr HERE.

For now, here are several new pieces that I recently finished and mailed out to Mamaw for the long distance quilt.

First up is Trixie the Elephant. This was the free pattern for February at Badbird and can be found here.

This is another Badbird pattern. There's a pegasus to go with this little guy. I may do that one in the next batch. Sorry it's so hard to see. I think it was pretty late at night (therefore I was tired and probably half blind) when I took this picture.

I don't know if I like this more because it's an Elsie pattern or because of the pretty colors. It's probably a mixture of both.
Oh, and I definitely ran out of white after one cloud. I had to go to Hobby Lobby with a tiny piece of scrap to match it to one of the hundreds of colors of embroidery floss. That was fun.
And lastly, something not for the quilt, but for me to wear! I found this cardigan (I looooooove cardigans) at Sears for $15 while I was in the mall killing time until they finished my new glasses at Lenscrafters. I really liked the pearl buttons and it's so soft. Once I got it home, I realized that it needed something. This flower is the one and only pattern I have embroidered twice. I think that says something about how much I love it. This, too, is an Elsie.
Also, this was my first try at fabric stabilizer and I found that I like it quite alot. You just peel and stick and your fabric won't stretch on you anymore. It was just what I needed for this project. And it washes up quite nicely as well.
If I don't get pictures from St. Simons up tonight, it will be tomorrow. We'll see how that goes.

All New for the LDQ!

See what I did there? It rhymes!

I finally finished this piece for the LDQ! It took me a good three weeks, but I finally have my favorite lyrics from my favorite song (Romeo and Juliet by the Dire Straits) quilt-ified! This will run down the entire length of one side of the quilt. It's in two pieces, they're shown side by side here.
All those little letters were extremely tedious, but worth it in the end.

After all that tedium, I wanted a few "just for fun" pieces. This is what I did. Both patterns are from Elsie's Etsy shop.

That little lion makes me smile.

And finally, I made these little peach cobbler tarts the other night.This is pre-baking, but they didn't look much different after, just a little browner and less gooey. They were SUPER simple to make. Want the recipe? Here it is:

Ginger Vanilla Peach Cobbler Tarts

1 can of peach chunks
1/4 cup of sugar
1/4 cup of milk
1/4 cup of AP flour
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1/8 teaspoon ginger (Add more or less according to your taste, I like alot.)

Stir all the ingredients together in a bowl and divide among 3 or 4 ramekins (depending on their size). Don't worry about them overflowing, they won't rise that much. Sprinkle a little brown sugar on the top of each if you like, I did and it was tasty!

Bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes or until they aren't runny in the middle anymore. Wait for them to cool a bit then eat up!

Hope you had a wonderful Tuesday and will have an even better Wednesday!
Goodnight.

Shake It Like A Polaroid Picture!

Okay, I have to share this. This is one of the most fun things I've found in a looooong time. Have you ever wished you could make your digital pictures into Polaroids? Well, now you can! Go to this website and download the program. It's so much fun and a monkey could do it, it's so easy! It even makes the Polaroid sound when you convert a picture! I was most definitely born a couple of decades too late.

Here are a few that I did tonight. I hope they're not too hard to see since they're on a white background.





See, doesn't that look like fun?!

I also wanted to share two more pieces I made for the LDQ.

A tasty-looking cupcake, using Elsie's pattern. Yum.


And the cutest little love bear you ever saw, using a freebie pattern from Badbird.


Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go dig around for some stamps and an envelope!

Granny Squares and Rainy Day Embroidery

After a loooong hiatus, I'm finally back crafting things that I can post! For the last month or so, it has been Christmas gift after Christmas gift and I couldn't very well post pictures of gifts, now could I?

First, a new scarf that took forever since the yarn was such a small gauge, but it turned out so pretty. The yarn was part of my Christmas present from Chris' parents and I still have more of it, so you'll probably see more in the future.

I made the next scarf over Thanksgiving break, but for some reason haven't posted it yet. I love granny squares (they're just so pretty!) and have always wanted to make a scarf of them, so I finally did.


I actually wore this scarf a few nights ago to go eat dinner at McAlister's and the girl behind the counter completely flipped over it. She asked where I got it and I (very proudly) stated that I made it. I'm not sure she believed me at first. Then she started asking all kinds of questions about it. Afterwards, I realized that I should have offered to sell it to her. This sort of thing has happened a few times now, with scarves or bags or other things I've made. The whole encounter sort of solidified my desire to make business cards to keep with me at all times, for just this sort of situation. Hey, if somebody's willing to buy it, shouldn't I be willing to sell it?

Next, I've finally started back to work on my LDQ (Long-Distance Quilt) and I can't wait to pop these in the mail to Mamaw tomorrow.

This one is clouds with raindrops. I love how the droplets turned out, but they were such a pain. There were so many of them, and I had to tie off my thread after each one. As for the clouds, I have learned my lesson about picking out thread colors in dim light. What I thought was a nice stony gray turned out to be a grayish olive green. Oh well, they're pretty anyway... even if they are green clouds.


Now, this was super easy, but is among my favorites for the quilt. I just hooped my fabric and did concentric rings of running stitch, working from the outside in, using the hoop as a guide. I like that some of the rings aren't perfectly circular. And after spending what seems like an eternity on grayish blue raindrops, using lots of color was a welcome relief. This one only took me around an hour (using a 7" hoop). I'd love to make an entire quilt using this idea someday. It would be so pretty and colorful. Hmmmm... something to add to the "future projects" list....

That's all for now. I hope to have more soon. There are so many ideas floating around in my head and I can't wait to sit down and get them out!

I *heart* Crafting!

I know, I know! Sorry I've been AWOL for a while. School/crafting/life has happened in surplus lately. But that does mean that I have LOTS to share.

First, I've been working diligently on my Long Distance Quilt. I've sent several pieces in the last few weeks, but alas... I forgot to take pictures of a few of them. Here are the ones I didn't forget.
First, a leaf on iridescent purple! (FYI: Taking pictures of iridescent fabric is hard!)

(Haha! You can see the marks from the hoop.)

This one is kind of strange, I know. If you've ever watched Buffy, or Angel or Firefly, this is no stranger to you. It is the logo of Joss Whedon's production company, Mutant Enemy that comes across the screen at the end of every episode. We (Whedon fans) call him the "Grr Arg Monster."

Here's what he looks like in action. This is a compilation of all the variations at the end of Buffy episodes. There's regular monster, graduating from High School, Christmas, the musical episode, from a very sad episode, and then regular again. Hope that clears things up... or makes you think I'm crazy. It's cool either way.

The next thing I made was this little felt needle book to hold my embroidery needles. This was done in about an hour while having a crafting date with Lydia.


Next: Lydia and I had a craft date last night and made these pins
(for which we stole the idea from one of our favorite art/craft blogs.)


Doesn't it look fantastic on my jacket? I know. I'm especially proud of these.


And finally, more crocheting! YAY!

A hat and scarf set. I loooove this yarn. It's acrylic, but it's still so soft. And look at the pretty colors!

And this is my Georgia Southern hat, including a very nice "floof ball." Why yes, it is in blue and white (fight, fight!) I made it to wear to the Furman game last weekend (that we won, btw) but it ended up being much too warm. Oh well, there's always next season.

I think that concludes Katie's Craft Roundup '08. I have several projects in the works, including a scarf to match my GSU hat, a scarf made with pretty hot pink and navy blue cotton yarn, a plaid purse that will hopefully get done sometime this century, and whatever I end up making friends and family for Christmas gifts (though I'm hesitant to post those since some people would end up spoiling their surprises).

Jessica is coming to spend tomorrow night with me, so I'm cleaning my apartment like crazy. I'm even vacuuming! (Thanks, Mom for letting me borrow the Dyson.) Also, Chris' (and my future) sister Emily is coming this weekend to stay a few days. Even though I am now officially on Thanksgiving break, I'll be busy busy busy!

I love this time of year.

Movies, Music, and Makin' Stuff

Movies:

I watched The Darjeeling Limited last night and was so pleasantly surprised. I liked it way more than I thought I would. It was quirky and understated and just fascinating to watch. I think I love Jason Schwartzman just a little bit. Go watch it... now.

But before you do, you should watch the sort-of-prequel short film Hotel Chevalier. You don't have to watch it to get the movie, but it adds a bit of insight into one of the characters.


Music:

I have found the perfect fall music. I blogged a bit about Jenny Lewis a while back. She has quickly become one of my favorites... and she is how I found the album I'm currently playing NONSTOP. You see, Jenny Lewis did an album with The Watson Twins, which I absolutely love. Jenny Lewis is good enough on her own, but the Watson Twins singing backup is just phenomenal.

So, I decided to look into The Watson Twins a bit more and came across their album, Fire Songs and fell head over heels in love. It is absolutely the perfect music for fall. Remember that song by The Cure, Just Like Heaven? They cover it in this album and it is so incredibly divine. If my iPod were a person and had feelings, it would be sick of that song by now. I seriously play it every time I get on the bus to go to campus.

Anyway, here's a sample of both CD's. Get one. Or both.

Makin' Stuff:

Yay! I made this today for my Long Distance Quilt. Found the pattern online... though I don't remember where. I love the contrast of the bold red with the icy blue. I think this is a favorite color combination.



I'm quite pleased at how quickly I'm making things for the quilt. I love that satisfied feeling I get when I slip one into the mailbox. This is shaping up to be a really fun project.


Happy Tuesday (and Election Day!) everybody.