Let's play catch up, shall we? . . .

5 months?! what?! who?! when?! where?! how?! . . yes! how exactly does 5 months pass since i've posted anything?! Well let's not slip into that as much as what has been going on... if i can even recall!

Ok, so i am tempted to say that i haven't been up to much of anything. . . and i don't really think i have been plus i am on a new computer (my MacBook Pro! - thank you to my gifter ;) i love you!) so i don't even have photos on here yet to jog my memory. I was surprised to be entered into a swap called "All I Want for Christmas" hosted by Bea of Bea's Hive. My surprise pollyanna was Kathy of shawkl.com. She picked out the PERFECT gifts for me! Here are some pictures of a few!

ok, i keep trying & trying to post the pictures but it just won't happen, so please visit my flickr page. thanks.

I'm trying to close up my swap obligations which are very few. I have the Secret Sister swap which closes out this month. We reveal in this last package due to be sent out with a photo by Dec. 1st and then the CQ Embellishment Birthday Swap where you send out 6 embellishments to the birthday girls each month. I've already sent out December and the swap closes out on March 1st. I have most of the rest of the 7 last bags ready to go.

What does the future hold for me? Well getting through the holidays is always a bit of a toughie for me. I'm not fond of them, don't believe in them and would love to have the option of not celebrating them but my 2 loves (son & boyfriend) believe otherwise, so out of love, i am obligated. Last year we had the big CQ Round Robin going on the HGTV message board at this time and i am so sad it's not happening right now, so perhaps if the previous hostesses are ok with it, maybe i could head that up, although i will admit - due to past issues of blocks not being returned, i am hesitant. I don't know the details of why certain blocks were never passed on, i just know that it's completely unacceptable and wrong. I wouldn't want to be the hostess of that swap with something like that happening because i'd be livid and i'd make phone calls that would scare the dead into awakening & getting those blocks passed on. Like who the hell does that?! Sign up for such a big swap only to fail on your part. Anyhow, i know that i'd use my best discretion with who signed up & i'd choose group leaders who had good discretion & leading abilities. (not that the past ones didn't! i might choose the same!) Anyway, this is all given that i 1: even decide to head it up and 2. am given permission to. I just miss working on the blocks & getting all antsy about getting mine back.

I haven't had much luck in the falling asleep department lately so i've been awake some ridiculous hours lately. Well, it's 9am and i still have not slept :( and my best friend is here visiting so now, i'll probably pass out during the day while she is awake. This sucks!

Well, that is all from me! Drop me a comment, let me know you stopped by :) i think we all like that here! :)

cheers!

talia

Update! December 3, 2009

I got an e-mail this morning telling me that a CQ RR swap will be held but someone is just trying to tie up the swaps they are hosting and wait until after the holidays. I don't know any more details than that but I am thrilled that I won't have to host it, because as I had mentioned earlier it's a really big deal and I have not really been in the hosting mood. I am really brain dead because after checking through previous e-mails someone had told me that they were going to host it after the holidays. So this is me openly telling all of you that I am really having a DUH moment! To end on a lighter, happier note though - YAY! It's coming up! Wooohoo!

Serendipitous Altruism. . . Wow! Thank you so much Bea! (holee)

Yesterday I came home to a package waiting on my doorstep. . . the contents of the package unfolded the most beautiful treasure box i've ever laid my eyes on! I think you'll agree!

My friend Bea of Bea's Hive made this and I am so grateful I cannot believe the detail and how textile it is! The carefully placed stitches and ribbons. . . silk ribbon embroidery. . . just beautiful! It goes perfectly on my table of treasures, doesn' t it?!

The star tea light candle holder was from my mom as a house warming gift 4 years ago

*the little lamp was an expensive purchase i made to hmm one of those expensive candle home party companies

*little kitty photo holder is from my sister

*tatted doily & little CQ/quilty mouse from Kathy S. (shawkl) isn't the quilty mouse so adorable?!

*little glass mouse was a purchase i made in LBI while on vacation last year

*the photo in the top left corner was me, my mother & sister in law & her sister in law while on that same vacation

*other photo is of Allan & I while at my nephew's 2nd birthday party

*the 4 glass perfume bottles are all i have left of a larger collection i had that mostly shattered during basically being homeless & many moves.

*The lighted primitive 'garland' is from my friend Rae

*The blue crocheted afghan i made while staying at my brother-in-law's when Allan & I were homeless

*the blue/purple glass plant spritzer was a purchase from Acme that i made when we got our apartment 4 years ago

*the small little tea light candle holder was a gift from my friend Sandee when i worked for the March of Dimes - i was a secretary that helped her with work requests and she is the sweetest thing in the world!

*The glass white "stem" was to another tea light 'lamp' but the top fell & shattered, there is a home-made sachet from my friend Jean (jayardi) that was given to me at our annual CoF retreat

*the coaster is from a set of 4 that my mother bought me several years ago

*lastly! the little fox on the right is from my mom & he's sitting on top of a covered mason jar that i throw change in. *The chair was from my mom's aunt's friend who was giving it away, it's a beautiful rocker with a floral print that i take most of my photos in

Look at little quilty mouse from Kathy of shawkl.com!!! Kathy knows how much i love mice & hamsters :) how adorable!? ♥

Thank you again so much! I am surrounded by such beauty, talent & passion for art, all I can do is smile :)

Wanted: Gifts for Breast Cancer Auction [please]

A friend of mine is doing a charity gift auction. Do you have something you'd be interested in donating? It could be a CQed block turned into a purse, a pair of earrings, home made stamped cards, quilts, crocheted items, cross stitch, the sky is the limit... YOU NAME IT! Any help would be greatly appreciated and I need to have it in my hands no later than July 27th.

Here's the letter from her:

"Hello all,
Do you have any unwanted gifts? Perhaps you really don't care for what you received during the holiday, your anniversary or last birthday. Maybe you don't have a gift receipt to return it or the moxie to ask for one. Don't let these items collect dust before you re-gift them, stow them away until their forgotten or worse yet, thrown out! I can, make good use of these items. My name is Gerrill Furda and I am walking 60 miles in the 2009 Philadelphia Breast Cancer 3-Day Event. I must raise $2500 to be eligible to participate in the walk. Last year I was able to raise over $8300. On of the ways I did it was to hold a Charity Gift Auction. Please consider this request seriously. You likely have something you can donate. Even if it is gently used someone will likely bid on it."

Exciting update! Miranda Bags, Baby Quilts, Crocheted Sweaters, babysitting chinchillas and a Husqvarna Designer Diamond! WoW!

Happy Summer Solstice everyone! Apparently I suck at keeping up with my blog, but in my defense up until the past week or so, I haven't done a whole lot!

When I went to the Circle of Friends retreat in April, my friend Christine was teaching a class on the Miranda Day Bag by Lazy Girl Designs it is a marvelous bag and extremely easy to make. The full color, step-by-step instructions make even the dumbest of us dummies (yes, i am the epitome of the girl who needs those "for dummies" books, hehe!) able to understand and execute each step. This bag is very heavy duty and stands on its own. It is fused with fleece and fusible interfacing. It has 10 pockets that go around the entire inside of the purse. I'm telling you it's fabulous and the pattern is a "must have" for all of us because this bag makes for a lovely gift. It makes a great diaper bag, a great purse or a great business bag! I cannot rant enough about it, so I hope you get the point that I love it! I've made three. On each bag, I did all of the quilting on all of the fabrics before constructing the bags. Here they are:

This is the small version:

"Pockets in the Round" on the inside:

Luna approved hehe:

Wooden handles with seed beads, purchased from Joann:

This is the 2nd one I made, this is the large version that the pattern teaches. I got the fabric with the peacocks and ladies from a friend in Australia. I love the blue fabric, it reminds me of the peacocks and the purple reminds me of the dresses the ladies are wearing. I think this tote is going on etsy :)

Inside:

This is the 3rd one I made for a friend, I love muted colors!

The inside:
I have to put 'bottoms' in each bag to stabilize them even more. My friend Christine was kind enough to have her husband cut out some small and large for me! Speaking of that, it reminds me that I have to make the sleeve for them. I'll get to work on that after I'm done blogging!

Next up I had crocheted a baby sweater and made a baby quilt for my mom to give her friend at work whose daughter had a baby. [-WHEW! Side note: Google Chrome just crashed as i was typing this out GOOD THING blogger save drafts! i would have been so absolutely discouraged to retype everything. Not that i've done a whole lot of typing so far, but it's taken me over a month to even blog so i probably would've been like eh, screw it! LOL THANK YOU BLOGGER FOR SAVING DRAFTS!!!]

Here is the baby quilt. I have said it before and i'll say it again! I LOVE putting eyelet and minkee in my baby quilts. Eyelet gives it an heirloomish, timeless feel and the minkee makes it 'baby' This was given to a little girl. Yep, it has blue in it. I'm not afraid to use colors that move me at the time. I don't believe colors should be gender specific. It only limits you and with sewing and well, every other hobby in the world where the possibilities are endless why limit yourself? So yeah :) This is my interpretation of this little girl's baby quilt:

Close up of the eyelet and gingham, I line the eyelet with white cotton so that the batting does start to pull through the holes:

And minkee almost always is on the back of all my baby quilts unless the customer requests something else. This particular minkee has hearts imprinted on it:

Next, the crocheted baby sweater. This pattern used a cable stitch and I love this particular pattern. My aunt made this same exact sweater with the matching booties and bonnet for my son when he was born. I didn't have the time to do a bonnet and booties, but honestly I don't know many people who go all out and use those these days. Hell, i've heard many people who receive crocheted sets don't even use them either because they "don't want to ruin them" or because they think they're very pretty but aren't 'into that kind of stuff' I, on the other hand, used every single one of the crocheted sets (multiple times) that were gifted to me for Sebastian and if I used the sweater, the bonnet and booties were always on to match! Ok enough of my ranting lol! This is actually a very happy blog entry!

Here is the sweater with a close up in the bottom right corner of the Beatrix Potter buttons I used on it!

cute eh?!

On Thursday, June 18th my sister dropped off her 2 chinchillas: Hugs & Petey for me to babysit for 10 days while she is on vacation #1! I always look forward to babysitting these 2 adorable little guys, because well, they're adorable, comical and silly! I've had a blast babysitting so far. I have let them out at 9am and have been letting them stay out for 12 hours at a time! They're so mischievous! The white one is Petey, named after the bird in the movie Dumb & Dumber (haha! my sister Jess and I love that movie!) the dark grey one is Hugs.

Petey deciding which fabric he'll use hehe!

This was hysterical because they had been out for about 11 hours and decided to stop in their cage, grab a bite to eat and then they both sat there in the front of the cage resting for about 10 minutes! As if they were sitting there relaxing & talking haha! They're too cute!

Hugs climbed all the way to the top of my jewelry case pile... and it's pretty high!

Hugs inspecting the serger

My little chinese dwarf hamster Luna riding Petey for fun

weeeeeee!!!!!

Petey managed to get up on my sewing table and was hopping around up there lol!

Lastly and most exciting for me! I am pretty sure within the next 2-3 weeks i'll be the proud new owner of a Husqvarna Designer Diamond Sewing & Embroidery machine! I also hope to purchase the 4D™ Professional Software! I mean... really! Can you even stand it? The excitement had me so crazy today I paced the floors in my apartment on the phone with my mom for almost 2 hours! LOL! I am looking forward to being able to embroider labels for quilts for charity and do anything I can charity related with this machine. I am so thrilled the machine will be a sort of vehicle for me to be able to participate on different levels and in different aspects in more charity work. Oh! I'll also be purchasing a MacBook Pro Laptop! Finally! I won't ever have to leave home without my computer again!! When I go on the next CoF retreat and other places I'll be able to have my computer with me and post my pictures to my flickr account immediately! I am over and quite frankly have BEEN so over with PC. PC technology & software sucks. I'll say it again, it sucks. It's not efficient and I am so sick of errors and blue screens, I'll be thrilled to be on Mac technology never having to worry about the bs that is PC again! Well... actually I can't fully say that because this computer will be right next to my new Husqvarna and it will be wiped clean except for EQ6 and will be devoted 100% to my sewing machine. I don't want to have to worry about walking back and forth having to USB in and out of a computer for my sewing machine. It'll be nice to have a computer dedicated only to the machine. Convienient, efficient, nice!

Well! I guess that is all for now! Who knows! Maybe the next time I blog i'll have pictures of my new sewing machine too hehe! I'm off for a nap! Happy Wednesday everyone!

A quick little burst of sunshine & more! Oh what a day!

Hi All and HAPPY SPRING/SUMMER!  Oh, I just went out on my balcony to hang my windchimes and felt the warm sun beating down on my arms, back & hair and while I don't like to sun bathe, I must admit that I was enjoying feeling the warm rays sink deep into my skin, into my bones!  The feel, the smell of summer, the trees blowing and the flowers!  I am in a fantastic mood today!  Today is a tad chilly here in NJ but the sun is very warm and I'm just loving it!  I should be outside today but since i've just finsihed the bridal party jewelry job I was commiessioned to do, I'm going to 'reward' myself with working very hard on my Miranda Day Bag.  

Ok, I started that post hours ago, and then took a 3 hour nap LOL so much for sewing, but i'm off to sew my Miranda Bag now :)

Another reason I wanted to post was to invite all of you to view my retreat pictures from the 2009 HGTV Quilting & Needleworks message board Circle of Friends retreat!  There are lots of pictures and I'd love for you to leave comments and let me know  you stopped by!  [Click here for the photos] 

Well, i'm off to sew, wish me success because then I can show you pictures!

Cheers!

talia

CQ RR, Artfire Sale, CoF Retreat and more!

Hello blog land!  It's been over a month since my last post and wow, do I have so much to update you on!

Ok, let's do this in chronological order so that my little mind can get everything!  

We'll start with the last 5 peeks that belonged to two people in my CQ RR.

These were Libby's 2 peeks:

The first peek was a spray of flowers that I saw in the Silk Ribbon Embroidery Bible.  The 2nd peek is just a small area of a large scale seam treatment that looks really cool when seen as a whole. 

These next three peeks were for Shelly: 

The first picture - the "beaded ribbon" was inspiration that came from Jo in NZ's blog.  I am a big fan of hers and since she posted hers, i've really wanted to try it.  It was pretty easy, just time consuming.  The picture looks a little silly because the peek had some other girls' work in it and i couldn't show that :)  The 2nd picture was an embroidered Eiffel Tower.  I had seen that in a motif book that was sent to me by a good friend, another thing i had really wanted to do and that was fun too, so much fun to see it come along!  Lastly I beaded a piece of dyed lace. 

So Shelly's block was the last one in our group for me to complete and I got mine back!  First girl in the swap to get hers back and I was just so excited and when I received it, it just brought me to tears, it is phenomenal to say the least!  

This is how my block was sent off, naked to begin with:

This is how my block came home to me, so gorgeous isn't it?!

A couple close ups, you can click on the 2 images above for high resolution pictures, but here are a few:

This is work done by Rae & Shelly.  Shelly did the heart and Rae did the rest:

Organza flowers by Mary:

Center faerie wings done by Shelly, she calls herself a newbie... isn't that just ree-diculous!?

The swirls were done by Lisa

The crystals on the black were done by Edna

Button cluster top left by Shelly

So yeah... can you just imagine the shock and awe I was in?!  I hope you enjoy the pictures as much as I enjoyed getting it back... well maybe you can't be that excited ;)

Over the weekend, I had my very first artfire sale!  It was so very exciting!  My needle tatted choker "Dianthus" sold to (get this) a woman who will be wearing it on her wedding day!!!  Well, didn't I just feel like as proud as a peacock!  She then asked me if she could commission me to make the jewelry for her bridal party!?  6 bridesmaids, a flower girl, her mom & step mom.  WOW!!!!  

Here is the choker she purchased:

The necklaces that her bridal party will be wearing will be 2 & 4 strand "illusion necklaces" with pink & clear swarovski crystals.  Her wedding is in August and she said she'd e-mail me photos so that I can use them promotionally... even more cool!

The past few days I've been making jewelry.  I've been wanting to make jewelry again a lot so since all of my sewing obligations are now finished, I can focus on jewelry making oh, and adding more to my artfire store.  My friend Erica is doing the write ups for me because I am just not clever enough to describe my items & she's just doing a bang up job!  I'm going to add pictures even though I hate inside pictures with flash!  It just washes everything out.  I need to get outside to get some good natural daylight photos!

I still have lots more ideas, and I cannot wait to make more!  If you'd like something custom made or if you'd like to check out my artfire studio, the link is: Talia's Artfire Studio

Oh, earlier I mentioned Jo in NZ... a few weeks ago, I ordered her book: SEAMS Like Fun

it was a lot of fun to page through, her work is just so beautiful.  I encourage anyone interested in CQ (whether you've jumped in or you're still just collecting items, waiting to jump in) to make the purchase!  They're reasonably priced and you can find them in her etsy pagre.

In December I ordered an industrial sewing machine & table from harborfreight.com.  Well, first it was back ordered for something like 8 weeks, so I didn't get it until February.  My mom's boyfriend was putting it together only to come across the pulley on the motor being cracked! :(  When I called harborfrieght to ask them to send me a replacement part they wouldn't and told me I had 2 options: 1. return just the 42lb motor and i'd have to wait for it because it was on back order or 2.  I could return the entire machine (over 100lbs) back to them, shipping paid, and they'd send me a whole new machine.  What the hell?!  The machine, complete with the motor was in stock, but the motors individually weren't.  They came separately.  Well, I was so beside myself.  Part of the machine was already put together with oil in the bin and everything!!!  I couldn't go taking it back apart and loading that monstrous thing into a box and to the PO!  So, I took the part to my lqs that repairs machines to see if they could order the part.  (That was back in the 2nd week of February)  Well, to make a long story short... the part just came in Monday!  Almost 4 months!  What a tease and a bit of a disappointment.  I just hope when he gets back over here that we don't come across anymore broken parts.  Luckily for me, since the lqs was having so many problems with the people they were ordering the part from, they kindly gave it to me for free!  So i saved $15-$20!  Lucky me!  Now it probably won't get put together until after I get home from the retreat, but that's ok because I won't have time to learn to play with it before then.  I've only sewn on one once and that was enough to understand the speed and power of it!  

Lastly, I've been packing my suitcase because in 2 weeks, I'll be leaving on a jet plane ;)  Heading to Manchester, NH to reunite with old friends and make new at the HGTV Quilting & Needlwork Messageboard Circle of Friends Retreat (CoF)!  I'll be staying from Thursday thru Sunday.  My suitcase is half packed and I just keep piling items in it.  There are still things I need to complete to bring with, but things are coming along!  We're making the "Miranda Day Bag"  I'll be making a large and a small bag.  I love, love, love the fabrics I have picked out and i cannot wait to see my new bags!  I know i'll be using one of them for tatting.  I might just have to make the other one day to day practical because I don't want them collecting dust, they're going to be too pretty!

Well!  I think that is all for now!  I hope to get back to blogging at least once a week!  

Cheers!