my stitch diary

I decided to put a few pages of my stitch diary on my blog today.

you never know where an Idea will come from.

most of these are just random drawings & some have a purpose,

all are things I've seen & liked the look of or imagined & worked with until it felt right.

I don't always use everything I draw,but sometimes in drawing something I find another solution to whatever is stumping me.

maby by looking into my stitch diary, It might encourage you to make your own.

I find that sharing is helpful & it almost always shakes something loose.

enjoy!

Flora;)

my creative mess & a critter tale

OK!
since Allison Aller has shown her mess & given the link to Alma Stoller, http://almastoller.typepad.com/almastoller/mastoller.typepad.com/almastoller/ .
who has challenged all of us to show our creativity storms.
I am posting pics of my own mess, which surprisingly enough isn't so messy.
Here is my room from the door looking north

the corner leading to my "Closet" looking out from the closet

the west wall with all my rulers, skiving pictures & shelf stuffmy sewing table.
I had to clean it up a bit to move it around some & make it easy for the DH to get out the window to fix the roof before we had bigger problems than a little leak in my DS's room.
not to mention replacing tiles where a raccoon was trying to get into the eaves.
pesky critter!
I was up late one night sewing to the light of my Machine & looked out the window to see this very FAT raccoon digging up tile outside the window!

so I yelled at it, & It HISSED at me!
Cheeky Bugger!
I then flapped my hands at it to shoo it off the roof,
it turned it's back on me & went back to digging up the tiles!
That's when I decided, I had enough of this sort of behavior.
Bad enough, to get that sort of thing from the DD's & DS, I was not taking it from a Raccoon!
so I threw my shoe at it.

& missed. Crap!
so I threw the other shoe at it.
Gotcha!
right in the tush! ha! take that wild kingdom!
(run around the room with hands in the air, yelling YES!)

Flora, the fearless raccoon chaser!
( hear queens-we are the champions in the background!)
any how I got rid of the critter.
we fixed the the problem & put new tiles down on the roof.


now back to that messy fun stuff,
the press by the couch, where I put all my works in progress. makes it easy to clean, just shut the lid!

one of the chests of drawers I keep my larger stash in
2nd drawer is full of "after 5" fabrics
I've also got drawers full of velvet, gauzy & meshy, eyelet & muslin, old cloths to pretty to toss or hand down.
I can't understand it, Its usually so messy I can't get into the door!
I'm sorry I've let the community down by having a mostly clean room.
I could cheat & show you the children's rooms,
but I'm afraid the board of health has condemned it today!)

well that's the grand tour. hope you enjoyed it.


MommaBear

foolin' around

I've not gotten any of the RR's, so I have been trying to work on some old projects.

But I keep getting distracted by things, like re-arraigning my sewing room .

must be under the influence of Allison Aller & her blog Allies in stitches http://alliesinstitches.blogspot.com/!

yeah, that's it! It's all allisons fault !)

but seriously folks, don't you hate the dry spell that, propels you into the room love to play in, to CLEAN?

maybe I need a new distraction, & put those old projects in the ufo file, for now.

maybe I will be inspired to them later.

Flora

YFS- I have been blessed

I have finished what I intend to do on Lori's block.
the picture is from an old childhood book of mine, I loved the picture & it fit right in with the song,& the tatting is my first attempt so be gentile !)
Ahh it's good to have a scanner again!
the old one was dieing a slow and terrible death by inches & grinding noises, so we finnally got a new one after much fussing & pricing. I must say this one while noisier , is much faster. the old one was 7 years old, so it was about time to upgrade anyway. & it does double sided copies. COOOL!

weather, or not

Well we just had one of our patented Chicago weather changes
one day its 85* & the next its 50*( brrrrr!)
we do the same thing in what passes for spring around here.
one day it'll be nasty & 35* & the next thing you know the suns out,
it's 75* & your still in a sweater & heavy socks!

we had to run around the house closing the storm windows & bleeding the radiators!
I need to get all the sweaters & fall & winter coats out of the storage space & put all the shorts away before someone thinks it still 85* out!

we all need to acclimatize some. I discovered to my dismay 3 sweaters were almost enough to keep warm!
I love this weather!
the leaves on the trees will start to change any day now, & chimneys will start to smoke.
then after Halloween, Thanksgiving is next, my absolute favorite Holiday! The whole family will get together With a few Friends & mt DH will make one or two of his marvelous cheese cakes & deep fry a few turkeys (YUM!) i'll make sweet potato crunch, green bean casserole, fresh cranberry sauce & a honey baked ham! OOOOH! I can't Wate!

now if I can just find the humidifiers, before my lips start peeling!

Ann's Oriental all done

I don't normally post this much with one project
But I had so much fun with it,that I am thinking of making one for myself!
I'm pleased with how this one came together, tho it is not in the same colorways as the other 4 blocks, it doesn't clash with them either. it does stand out! (G!)


I loved the picture of the girl brushing her hair, It's so calming. then I thought about who is this girl?
is she the wife or daughter of a well to do family ?
what things would be a part of her world?
What peaceful pieces could I incorporate into this piece.
the flowers from her garden.
the 3 trees were fun to do. the ginkgo & the bamboo were the first things I put down,
The orange tree ws last because my thread would have caught on all the oranges, & made me crazy!
the boy fabric, is he her teasing brother or her son ?
the butterfly fabric is beautiful with the butterflies & cherry blossoms & it's that "honking orange" I love to incorporate into almost all my quilts .

the koi pond is also some of my favorite fabric.
It reminds me of when we go to the Morton arboretum, they have this pond with the most Enormous koi. the children keep feeding them & every year they get bigger & bigger.
this year they look big enough to swallow small dogs!

anyway thees where some of the thoughts I had while stitching & I just thought I'd share them with you.

thanks for coming , see you again some time!

Flora

Ann's Oriental update

I thought I would give you an update on how the progress is going with the oriental block. I don't do this muck, not because I don't want you to see what I'm doing, but because I get all involved & for get to!

most of the seam treatments are laid down but not finished, I have a few beads planned, some embroidery to be named later & maby even some SRE. well have to see. I just got my next YFS block so I'll have to cogitate on it.

FLora

Ann's Oriental block

I just got my hot little hands on Ann's fabric & here is the result!

I'm planning on a whole lotta seam treatments beads , bells whistles & suff! he,he,he,!
Flora

Romance & Lucy

This is the finished romance block for Lori. I wish I could have put a few more things into it I just ran out of creative gas for this one & I wanted to get it out to the next in line by the dead line. tho I think I did ok. It's a lighter block than the previous two, I hope it pleases Lori's sense of theme.
It's just not as encrusted as I thought it should be, given Lori's example.


this is the first block in the YFSRR that I received & I enjoyed it a lot.
Lucy in the sky with diamonds is one of my moms favorite Beatles tunes so I heard it a lot growing up. I'm glad I got to be the first to embellish this one. Lesa, I hope you like my rendition of Lucy. I took the outline from an Illustration of Polychrome, the rainbows daughter, from one of L.Frank Baum's later OZ books. the seam treatments are depicting the sky with diamonds. thankyou for the song!

Christy's Kitty

Ok, Christy, here goes,

I couldn't find an other open block so I tried to work with what was left & the results are

so-so. I'm not entirely pleased but I'm not disappointed enough to rip it out & start all over again. if you have any idea's about colors that will pop on that patch everything i have tried so far has blended right in.

I'm also gonna do a bunch more seam treatments on the leftover open seams.

YFS-Romance

Here is the work so far on Lori's romance block & closeups of the corners.
I had the idea of incorporating some of my favorite love songs into the piece,
with a smattering of love stories, thrown in for good measure.


Upper left hand corner is not done.
Persuasion-by Jane Austin, is the name for this corner, she is wearing a"string of Pearls"
so far I have just added beading to the lace, the Eiffel tower for "an American In Paris" the tatted flowerlets for"April In Paris" & a few seam treatments


Lower left hand corner don't have a title for yet maybe I'll keep"She Loves you(Yeah, Yeah, Yeah)" or maybe" a tattoo for my love"

lower righthand corner is "Jane Eyre"-by Charlotte Bronte they have "Star Eyes" & "Blue Velvet' but as I said before that one seems like cheating, so far that's all I have for this one


Upper right hand corner is "When i'm 64" they are standing under "pennies from heaven" &
" stormy weather" also "three coins in the fountain"

so as you can see I've got more work to do.

new work

Just a little update to let you all see what I've done so far.

I finished piecing my block for the MFS RR. I need to do a little more sewing on it before I send it out.

good thing I have until the 1st of September, because I just got the new CYOT RR blocks, I also finished the piecing on that & need to get going on the embroidery.

I was thinking love songs, so far I've got when I'm 64,pennies from heaven, 3 coins in the fountain, & blue velvet ( that one is kind of cheating, as I just had to put a piece of blue velvet in the piece!)

I need to research more songs!

I am a bad Blogger! Bad, Momma Bear! Bad!
I'm sorry, I have not been keeping up with things the last few weeks.

I've taken some well deserved family time & gone fishing, amongst other things!

It's been so hot & humid in Chi town the last few weeks ( & having no air conditioning for the whole house ) I tend to get things done in small steps, since doing anything is sticky! tho today we had some respite from the heat it was 87* this morning! BRRR!)

time to get back to sewing.

I'm looking forward to the new RR in crazy quilting for newbies, It's the your favorite song RR.

mine is going to be "Lydia the Tattooed Lady" as sung by Groucho Marx in the Marx brothers movie " A Night at the Circus" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4zRe_wvJw8

It's the reason I named my first daughter Lydia.

It's been my favorite song, since I first saw it on the late night show, when I was a child & got to stay up late in the summer.

I haven't gotten the rest of the fabric to finish yet, so here's a picture of what I have so far

I plan to add a little more in the way of applique`& a bit more stitching. this is contingent on weather we actually do the RR or not. either way I get a cool cq piece!

CYOT RR silver group

here is the latest installment of cq for the "create your own theme" RR.

the first is janets block
The second is christy's block
& the last is mine.

sorry about the blurriness of the photos,my camera is not behaving!

my work place

this is my sewing room under the eaves. as I am right under the roof there is no head room so watch you don't bump your nut!
I do all the time & it huurts!
as you walk in from the door, we're facing north.I love my picture window! all the light I could want & no sun!

this is the east wall, & as I am in the throws of creativity ( throws being the operative word!) things tend to get a little messy! watch your step!

most of the south wall is taken up by the little alcove & the door so this is

what there is of the south wall & the other part of the west wall.
as you can see I have quite a few porcelain dolls. they were my grandmother -in-laws & I love each one of them!

this is of course, the last room that gets any attention, so my attempts at organizing it have been sporadic, to non-existent!
it's also so small (8x8) with sloping walls that storage is at a premium.

I have been peeking at some of the other storage systems from the ladies blogs in CQ4N , collecting idea's .

maybe some day I'll be able to incorporate them into mine!
but for now I have to paint the porch!)

how soon they grow!

It seems like just yesterday that this little guy was running around the house, getting into things.

now look at him!

He's 16 & going off to JROTC camp he will be away from home & for a whole week I will be "boyless".

"sigh!"

they grow up so fast!

He wants to take my best friends daughter out on a date when he gets back.

A date! EEP!

STOP! youre growing up too fast!

for me at least!

summer has arrived

well It's definitely summer now!

Chicago just started hitting the 90's consistently for the last week

( thank goodness no humidity yet!) & we finally put up the pool! there's nothing quite like the cool water of a pool to sozzle in at the end of a hot summer day!

& having somewhere to put the kiddies for part of the day isn't such a bad thing ether!

Finally! pictures of my kiddies from the sil's wedding!

don't let the picture fool you the were having fun!

.

& this handsome devil is my son with his cousin Lily

The happy family!