The snail

 So my DD#2 has requested a quilt to cover her new king size bed (!)

 So we started by picking colors and fabrics

Equilter is really handy for this

I told her to pick 2-4 of every color she wanted 

and we would narrow it down from there

 

 

 

then we had to pick a pattern that she liked

 

 

 

This was the pattern I made for her first "big girl" quilt when she was 8

she also picked the pattern for this one

This was the first Quilt I ever made (not actual) Its crib size and was originally made of clothing scraps and the most hideous purple polyester geometric for the back because it was bargain basement cheep and all I could afford at the time.

It was wonky, barely square and I was really proud of it.

It was originally intended for her older brother 

but he received a quilt from my maternal grandmother that he fell in love with so this was handed down to the next child in line DD1 who rejected it in favor of a sunbonnet Sue & Sam

When DD2 came along this poor old quilt had been neglected rejected and sad but she fell for it and still loves it as a cuddle quilt.

It has been repaired to several layers of backing and many repairs of the diamonds as they shredded over time

So now to choose a new pattern

 There were several choices 

That I already had on hand in books and magazines

                                  They were nice buuuuut

 

                                               Until this one caught her eye but it needed 

something                                                                     

 

 more 

 

 

 

 

 

OOOOH!

 

This one!

 

Allrightythen

 

Now I need to plug all those colors in.

Remember those?   Pink, Grey and yellow? 

I ended up adding a turquoise for a contrasting pop because otherwise the colors blended and were rather distressingly boring to look at

 

With an emphasis on the yellow swirly pattern which was her favorite

so not my colorway

or my comfort zone

But Baby girl gets what Baby girl requests 

when she actually asks for something, so here it goes.

 

First I needed to make sense of the  pattern. That only took a week to design

 

 This pattern combines snails trail with Ocean waves and is definitely NOT for beginners!

What you see here is the final draft, of about 5 or 6 drawings, to plug in the colors the right way round.

I also made myself a chart for each block to keep them straght because the snail block needs 2 different directions to make the swirls go the right way!

Advice if you are trying this at home; charts and labels, are a godsend!

Problem one, I miscalculated the yardage I needed and was constantly having to go back and order just one more yard of something. *Ugh*

Problem two, I miscalculated the size of the triangles for the long diamond squares AFTER I cut out all bazillion of them *Ack!*

 Lesson; Make samples of everything so you can sus out the mistakes and correct them BEFORE you waste a yard and a half of fabric cutting it the wrong size. *Smackhead* 

I should know this by now after quilting for 30+ years bUt nOOOOO........ -.-     *sigh*

For this pattern there is a cutting ruler that saves multo time and ageta getting the long diamond triangles right, It's the creative grids 2 peaks in 1 6" triangle #CGR2P1. This makes life SOOOO much easier!

Also cutting the diamond triangles a quarter inch bigger so you can cut it down to the right size, helps to keep from loosing your corners, which you really do need to make this pattern look right

Here is one whole block of 4 snails, 4 diamonds and the corner block that make up one panel

 

And here is the whole shebang.

 

After much backing and forthing, ordering just one more yarding and changing this color for that oneing, because yikes that one is just eeew! 

 

The flimsy is done!

 

You can see the secondary swirlies here^

 

 Its definitely big enough though!

Big enough to hit the floor on both sides of my queen size bed and drape over the end!

 I made it big enough that I had to add the last 2 feet onto my quilting table to accommodate it and its still a bit big! by a foot. foo! -.-

 

Next step the back and then on to quilt the sucker!  I need Wine first.

SRE Embellished Cabachon Tutorial

 So now that it has been published, I get to share this with you all! 

It's in the latest CQ Magazine on sale now at magic cloud!

My thanks to Lisa Plooster Boni for inviting me to be a part of her lovely magazine,

 So exciting! I love being able to say "I've been published!" Tee-Hee!

 

 

I Have reprinted most of it here with a few extra pictures

Materials

A large cabochon, button, or piece of jewelry for a centerpiece   

Silk ribbon
Glass seed beads
Beading needle
Nymo beading thread 

Felt or the piece you are currently working on 

E6000 glue 

Sandpaper
Clover water soluble blue marking pen

First gather your treasures. I like to “audition” several different items before I sew it all down.

Choose your focal piece (cabochon/ button/etc.) first.

For a focal piece that has no hole or place to sew it down, sand the bottom first with some heavy grit sandpaper. Then use a small amount of E-6000 to glue it down to the felt. You may then sew the item to the project or the felt backing by running your needle and thread through the felt.

Note: It is better to glue the item to the felt and then sew it to the project rather than gluing directly to the project.

Then decide how the design should progress. Do I want it round, offset, or shaped?

Mark this line using the blue pen.

There are two ways to do this type of embellishment. This tutorial shows how to do it on a piece of felt for later application. You may also do it directly on the piece in progress. 

 

 

 

 

 Stitch the smaller focus beads down around the marked line. For this project, I choose flat polished horn beads and #11 seed beads.

 

Now add the lines of beading between the main focal item and the smaller focal items. Fill your needle with enough beads to fill the space between. Don’t worry if it is not a symmetrical number of beads, this will vary, depending on that space and the size of your beads.

Secure the line of beads by coming back up and tacking the thread down between every 3 beads to secure the line. If your line is wobbly after this,

pull the thread through your line of beads again once or twice more, this should straighten everything out.

Now for the silk ribbon crown. Choose your colors for top and bottom row and start on the top (outer) row first.

Secure the ribbon on the back by pulling through the ribbon.

The outer crown complete.

To stitch the loop, come up through the felt/fabric and loop the ribbon around a paper blending stick aka smudge stick, keeping ribbon flat with no twists. Stitch down through the felt/fabric as for a simple Japanese ribbon stitch.

Do the same stitch in front of your first  circle to complete your crown.

 

 

 

You can add as many rows as you like.

I leave the stick in the loop, until I have taken the next starting stitch, so I don’t pull the preceding loop out. You may leave the stick in for several loops if desired.

 [Note: You can find paper blending sticks with the sketching materials, they come in several diameters.]

 

 

Lastly I trim the excess felt being careful not to snip any of the ribbon on the front or the back. It is now ready to place on anything you like.

.

 just so you don't think I'm perfect or anything

  I put the Brass filigree circle under this glass button so I didn't have to cut a hole in the CQ piece so it lays flat. 

 
If you do cut a hole to accommodate the shank of the button make sure you take a few buttonhole stitches around the hole so the fabric doesn't fray over time

This is the original Cabochon From another piece that will be featured in  a future CQ Magazine so I will leave that till later.

 

Go get your copy of Crazy Quilt Magazine if you love CQ like I do, 

it has so much more eyecandy in it to enjoy!

 

 

 

I have worked on nothing

 I have worked on nothing

                                                For months

It's been a full week since the mango menace was replaced by calmer and saner governing but I am Still mentally exhausted. 

I have started a quilt project that I will finish but it is frustrating that it is taking me so long to get it together. Gathering the fabric took a month, design took another 2 weeks, I cut some of the fabric but now I need just a little more fabric and one more ruler (fuck) to finish cutting so I have started assembling what I have so far and I only seem to be able to concentrate on it for a few hours at a time.

I don't know about you all but this is pissing me off. Except that I really have nothing to be pissed off about. Which then confuses me and leads to hours of binge watching Mrs. Mazel and now I've run out of Mrs. Mazel. *Sigh*

Then I remember this is how I felt after I divorced my first husband. Well damn. 

If any of you are having this kind of reaction to life, You are not broken. Take a breath. 

Talking it all out helps. I know it makes you feel stupid because, really, just how much did the administration change our lives? I mean aside from the pandemic.

Find your quiet happy place and stop beating yourself up for not being productive.

You are feeling the after effects of having been in an abusive relationship. 

How's that? 

the last 4 years were an ever escalating circus of badness that none of us was able to get away from. Everywhere you turned, there it was, Breaking news of "Ohgodwhathashedonenow?" And it was all over the place, tv, radio, news feeds facebook, instagram, music radio, the corner store, word of mouth. You couldn't get away from it, It followed you, even if you unplugged! 

Ever increasing levels of anxiety, no matter what they are and how they affect one personally, raise the levels of hormones in the brain/body and when that stimuli is gone, tend to leave one in a state of exhaustion. When this pattern goes on for a sustained period of time, The brain/body gets used to that level of hormones. When something is removed and the level of hormones is dropped, it leaves one feeling fatigued for a period of time and recovery is required to return to a state of new normal.

No wonder some of us still feel fatigued.

So I take it out on myself, well I need to stop that and so do you all, if you are feeling the same way.

Please. 

 

Squirrel!

Seriously? How does this work? What is wrong with my brain, that this is the convoluted backwards way, that I think? This then take me hours to unravel. How did I get there? What triggered my need to understand this thing? This small random thing, that I ran across doing something totally else, but I then diverted my whole morning to trying to figure out. Not that it was a big loss, my morning consisted of coffee, email and browsing my various feeds.

Have you ever understood something deeply before you have even translated it?

This happens to me every once in a while. It's one of the things that frustrates me about my thought processes. How does my brain do this? How do I feel so drawn to something, I can't yet understand?

I think it comes from growing up in a trilingual house, mother spoke both german and french to me with some yiddish thrown in because why not? I also grew up in a Hispanic neighborhood in Chicago where you soak up enough of the language by osmosis but not enough to speak or totally understand it.

All this informs how I think and speaks to an enduring inability to concentrate on just one thing. That is my story and I am sticking to it. Its better than the alternative, which is, that I am an idiot.

Anyway,

I found this phrase scrolling through Instagram and immediately felt the need to translate it.

 "Warum ist das Naheliegende machmal so weit weg?"

                                                                            translation; "Why is the obvious sometimes so far away?"

Which then prompted this;

 

 

Trying to think coherent thoughts is sometimes difficult. 

they get splintered,  

                                they fly off like started birds,   

                                                                                    they skitter under the sink,

                                                                                                                                To get lost for days

Weeks, 

                                        Months, 

                                                                                                        Years...........

I try to think in a linear fashion, about a thing.

I try to thing deep thoughtful things, Analyzing them, how I feel, how........

.............

                                ...........

                                                        ..............nope,

                                                                                            it's gone.

I am easily distracted by the squirrels in my brain.

no words

I have no words, for any of this, I have plenty of feelings ranging from anger to deep despair. but no words

Goodby 2020

Do not read if you are at all politically sensitive.

This post has nothing to do with anything I normally post, feel free to ignore it. This screed is me venting, if you are offended at the things I say here, too bad. 

Go away, I really don't need you as a follower and I am not interested in why I am wrong.  

You have been warned. Don't make me say "I told you so" It won't be pretty.

 

As we bid adiue to this Zeno's paradox of a year let us look back on and say goodby to, where we hoped we would be by now, as a society as well as goodby to the year that never ended as well.

I think it's a forgone conclusion that we are all, not where we thought we would be.

As I look back from my dining room table, in yoga pants hugging a cuppa, I am struck by all the things that haven't come to pass. As a child I was told the future would be a utopia. My parents insisted things would get better, My mother and I fought and protested for things to get better and they did, for a while. It was a dream, a fever dream as it turns out. Reality is cold comfort where I get to watch my children struggle for the basics and get smacked down again and again. They were supposed to be able to do better than I did. Watching them struggle to make ends meet in the most basic of ways, breaks my heart.

For a while we made incremental progress towards that future but for every step forward societaly we seemed to take 3 giant steps back governmentaly. Until the two were diametrically opposed and here we are, to the now. The now of not having gotten to Mars, no flying cars, no utopic nearing star trek society where everyone gets a seat, no equality of opportunity for people of color or women and in fact things seem to be going backwards. To the point of needing to protest the same god damned things Mother and I protested for in the 60's through the 80's. Say what you want about the hippy dippy 60's generation, their dream of everyone participates, with no strings and their willingness to protest for it, was a beautiful thing. Even if they had no follow through.

To say it has been a frustrating time is to understate it, bigley. And god, do I hate that there are things that will be said, for the rest of my life, that will point back to this fucking terrible administration. This illegitimate, corrupt, greedy, idiotic, ignorant, willfully stupid and yes, evil, administration. The whole thing and everyone in it is a bad actor. The fact that at least 48% of the nation thinks this is just fine tells me we are in for a very bad time, for much longer than anyone anticipates. Simply because these, ignorant neanderthals, will hold us back from the innovation we need to push forward, to the future that is just there.

Biden is a ray of sunshine but at this point I am so jaded on the possibility that a government for the people is even possible, I don't trust any of them. Especially not at this hour, when the pain and suffering of the last 4 years has been so perpetuated by the republican party and the pansies on the left, who say all the right things then think they can "Negotiate" with them. It smells like caving to compromise on anything and we the people always seem to get the short end. It is disheartening in the extreme to have tried to do all the "right" things in the "right"way to get ahead only to be told they weren't actually the right "right" things, were not enough, or to have the goalposts moved, again. 

I am sick of this shit!

I am sick of old white men who are so fucking afraid of sharing power, with Gasp, the other 60% of the population, the future and the fact that they are no longer the authority on everything, that they sabotage the entire country! I don't understand this mindset, that is so selfish, that they would destroy something rather than share. To what end? Who benefits if the world burns? That 48% of the population, that votes, is willing to tapdance into hell after them is frightening. and what the hell is wrong with at east 30% of the population who doesn't even vote? What the actual hell? 

I have never, in my life, been harmed by being kind,  by sharing what I have with someone, or by being polite. So what is up with this attitude of "Fuck you I've got mine" that seems to prevail over the country? I will never understand why this administration has not been condemned, in the strongest possible terms, by everyone unconditionally. Especially when you Know, if this was a democratic administration, it would have been pilloried and set on fire by now. These people need to be rounded up prosecuted, to the fullest extent of the law and if there are no laws to cover this, we need to make them so this NEVER happens again.

So Flora, tell us how you really feel.............. I told you you didn't have to read this, that I was venting.

I may even write it all down long hand and burn it, just to get rid of this sick feeling of trapped exploitation and gaslighting, that 2020 has invoked. It makes me want to punch people and that, while satisfying, is just not conducive to forward progress. I am just so tired of fighting the same damned argument we have had as a nation since 1864, please stop. It's boring.

My hopes are simple, A future where everyone, regardless of anything, gets to participate in society.

Where people are not, oppressed, jailed, beaten or killed for the color of their skin or the flavor of their gender. if we can just get that part right,  maybe we have a chance at the rest.

My wish for Peace to you all

Tiny House backyard

Time to work on the outside of the first floor

I am really proud of that bay window, 

yeah its a little chunky

and yeah, it's not even or straght 

but I made it from scratch 

myself.

Therefore it is awesome.

Here is the whole backside mostly done

Doesn't that little bit of brick foundation look real?

So cool when that happens!

So now I have all these bricks left over

I think I'll make a patio

Needed to place the greenhouse 

so I could judge where to stop

If you do this, brick by brick, start in the corner

Duh.

Here you can kind of make out the stair step pattern

This is almost as therapeutic as sewing together 2" blocks, almost.

Now it needs some grass 

I'm just a girl with a glue bottle today

all this miniature work is oddly satisfying.

 

I have a tendency to go overboard on new things and then 

 

never finish them when I loose interest or life pushes it aside

So getting this far is something

I have plans for a second floor 

 

and furnishings for the rest of the house

Lets see how far I get

For now I'm pleased with the backyard so far.

Everything needs some weathering 

It looks too newly painted

and It needs more plants

but so far so good

 

Tiny House Livingroom

 

The Living room needs help

 

 

 

 

I have discovered that yes

 I do need to cover that doorway with wall paper 

 

 

because you can see it from the front 

AND the window

I wish I'd figured that out  

BEFORE I glued the walls together!

It's not a difficult job but would have been faster to do if I hadn't

Glued everything together first. *Sigh*

 

 

 

 So here it is with some garden furniture for scale

 

It's very pink

 

And It needs furniture 

but I haven't decided how it should look

 

I haven't decided who lives here yet either

 

 

 

 

 

I think the who would inform the what 

 

but I haven't gotten that far yet

 

One down

 

the Kitchen floor

In the beginning there was a floor and some walls and a whole lotta parts

I thought I had taken more pictures at this stage but it was months ago now and I cant find them.

Waiting in the wings

 

Assembling after wall papering & flooring

with size appropriate graphics 45 

paper 

The ceiling

I also experimented with some of my paper cutting dies 

for the tin look on the ceiling and  walls 

This one came out quite well. Wiring is an acquired skill, I have obviously not mastered yet.

Rats nest

Though it is not as scary as it looks (really!)

this is 3 rooms worth that will run off the ceiling of the kitchen.

Inside wall wireing

The short hallway leading from the front room to the stair room is around enough of a corner it shouldn't be seen from any angle, I hope!

Because that is a nasty mess!

There is a lot of initial planning that has to be done here

Before I just start to "wing it"

And building out the walls and ceiling with cardboard, elmers glue and spackle is part of it

kitchen through the window

It looks ugly now but some sanding and wallpaper spiffies it up quite a bit!

Here are the done pictures of the assembled kitchen.

Left side

 

 

I'm a little chuffed because a few friends have suggested it looks like a real room!

Right side

 

there is a lot of baking going on here

I am really pleased with how this all turned out

Full frontal

 

 

 The trim looks good and despite not having a stove top

the kitchen looks like a workable space

 

Though something seems to be missing.

 

Here is the ceiling put on 

My wonky hinges

The refrigerator ! 

No wonder it looks strange that big empty spot needs to be filled with a fridge.

I cant find an appropriate one But I did find one on Bently house minis 

Ara is super detailed and very precise.

 

  She gives you a lot of really good advice and watching her make stuff is soothing.

 I got a ton of great ideas and lots of encouragement to try new stuff

.

From the stair room

she is well worth the watch.

 Her fridge is made for a 1:12 scale house, so I had to scale it down for my size.

I think I succeeded 

 

Looks pretty good in spite of those wonky hinges

 

Now on to the front room. Starting with the floor.  Those clamps are a life saver BTW,.

I could use s few little "C" type clamps I cant find any small enough

 

I'm also quite proud of this window.

 

 

I bashed the whole thing with wood, plastic I scrapped from a container 

and cardboard with its front panel ripped off

So now on to siding and maybe some paint for the garden side

 

This will take some thinking time.