Sunday, February 1, 2009

Where does the time go?!

Ya know, can we talk?  Last time I posted it was January 15th... where has the time gone?!  Perhaps into my sewing... and i've got the work to prove it!  Taking the WedgeWorks class proved to be much more fruitful than I thought.  Here, i actually did have plenty of time to work on the blocks and it was a challenge but you know, in the end aren't the challenges what make us feel most rewarded?  The fighting, the thinking, the struggling, the lack of the one fabric you need most of... lol!  Yep, I used from my stash thinking 'oh i'll just stash bust' and stupid me could've slapped myself silly when I ran short about a yard of the ONE fabric that was so important to be recurring in each of the China Blue Sampler blocks... It actually made a cameo in the Star O'er Bethlehem block below too... hey!!  so did the other light blue fabric!!!  See, i have favorites and i'm not afraid to admit it!  The fabric line I fell so madly, deeply, crazily in love with was Floret line from Blanktextiles.com I mean aren't those just absolutely beautiful delicious?!  The color array and the design just make me want to eat my heart out!  I have a few of those but not nearly as many as i'd like to have!  I seem to have digressed a bit here lol!  Ok, so I ran out of the Night color (seriously isn't this like amazing... too bad it's all out of print!)  I of course found some on my saviour site: thousandsofbolts.com i love that site and i cannot stress love enough.  So here I am in my creative ocean just flowing and going with it and bam!  I run out of that fabric, so I had to place the order and wait a few days for it.  My goal for this class was to make one Persian Star and the China Blue Sampler.  In making the China Blue sampler, I noticed that in order to get the same effect the author had displayed the directions were absolutely inadequate and I had to start drawing things out, trace the template and draw the 'design' i wanted onto the template so I knew where to cut my fabrics.  That was a 10 hour day in and out of it all.  Yikes!  I am so glad I had that "ohh!!!! i have an idea" moment and thought to trace the template out onto paper and go from there because otherwise I just could not picture in my head how in the world I was going to recreate these blocks!  Trust me, if you have the book and you attempt this, you'll understand what I mean by all of that.  

Now back to the goals of the class... I figure, If I could make that star, yay for me!  I'd mat and frame it and be merry.  Well let me just telllll you!  These stars are like Lays potato chips... you can't have just one.  And of course me, in my silly 'stash busting' mode had used fabric from my stash that I had limited amounts of.  This one however, I was not so lucky with because it came from Joann fabrics and I don't have the sku #.  It seems they don't have it now and of course, this was my background fabric lol!!!  I'm on a roll here right?!  So, I decided since there are 8 stars in the quilt (oh yes, I decided to go for it and make the WHOLE darn quilt!  as if I need another quilt, and no I most certainly will not give this one away!) I would do 2 of the same and make 4 sets of 2.  Ok grand!  So far i've made the 4 blocks for the China Blue Sampler but they are still circular, I have to set them into the squares and I've made one Persian Star but I do have fabric cut and ready to start sewing to make more.  

Here are the pictures:

Persian Star
Block #10 China Blue Sampler
Block #7 China Blue Sampler
Block #5 China Blue Sampler
Block #3 China Blue Sampler
Ok, next on my list... well this really wasn't on my list but yesterday I made a pair of earrings that i am in love with!  I am calling them Tears of the Moon:

they measure 5.25" from the top of the ear hook to the bottom of the pendant.  I noticed that photographs rarely do jewlery any justice.  Oh well, in real life they sparkle like crazy!

I did work on a few other things but I cannot post because they are Secret Sister related, and who knows if she'll pop into my blog ;)

Lastly, I've been (unsuccessfully) trying to tat one basket a day, but I do have like 9 or 10 done so far!  I'll have to take a picture of them later and post :)

Happy creating everyone!