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!

China Blue Sampler Wallhanging and a surprise little gift in the mail!

Hi everyone!  Happy March!  I hope everyone is very busy, churning out project after project!  I wish I could say that I was, but I'm not.  I really need to make nice with my new sewing area and just have at it.  The industrial machine that I "got for Christmas" (which didn't arrive until mid-February) is still out of commission.  The pulley on it was broken and the company wants me to send back the whole machine... a 72lb machine and a 40lb motor, all over a little stupid pulley!  So I went to my local machine repair shop and they ordered one for me and that was at least 2 weeks ago.  Le sigh!  I just want to play on it already!

Anyway, on to happy news!  I finished this Wallhanging the day before Valentine's Day, as it was a gift for my boyfriend.  I just never got around to taking pictures of it finished.  I'm not happy with the quilting I did but I'm over it lol!  So here it is!

I'm so happy to see it finished.   I really did accomplish what I set out to do in that class, I made the sampler and I made one Persian Star (pictured in my blog post below.)  After having made the Persian Star, I decided, I don't want to frame this, I want to make the whole quilt!!!!  Maybe I really should've just stopped, squared it off and framed it lol because there is no way I can make that whole quilt right now!  If I didn't already have pieces cut out and set up to start on another block for it, I might just call it a day... We shall see!

Next, I recieved the sweetest card and present in the mail!  My friend Becky from the HGTV Quilting and Needlework Message Boards sent me one of her tatted seahorses!  She had shown a picture of one she made and I was drooling over it!  He is so beautiful (in a tatting kind of way) and so cute (in a little seahorse kind of way).  Thank you Becky, I love him!

Other than that, I wish I could say I've been up to more but I haven't.  I've been working slowly but surely on our CQ RR.  We're on the 5th round right now.  Next round is the last one and then I get my baby back!  Oh the tears will be streaming I am so sure of it!  I've had fun, working on everyone's block, adding my touches and getting to see the lovely work more and more as the swap progresses has been just astounding.  If only these girls knew what their blocks look like now! Hehe!

Ok, I'm off to figure out what to sew first.  Hopefully I'll whip up a whole bunch of stuff and be back to entertain!

Cheers!

talia

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!

Paper Piecing, WedgeWorks and Classes!

Hi everyone!  Lots to update you on!  Today was so cold and it snowed quite a few inches, I have been frozen solid all day.

Alright, so I've been determined to really get down to brass tacks with paper piecing.  Last year I attempted a 4" block from Carol Doaks "300 Paper Pieced Quilt Blocks" book.  It wasn't anything special, not even a pattern just a crazy patch style block, very easy, 4 pieces.  At the time I was like ok, easy enough... until I volunteered to make a 12" block for a friend for a charity quilt she was putting together.  I decided on the "Star O'er Bethlehem" block from quilterscache.com.  It was a struggle, there were a lot of tears, a lot of cursing and more tears.  I had almost given up, it was tough and all of the piecing and ripping and repiecing was really getting to me.  I finally wound up with this end result: 

The blocks were also voted on, there were many, many very beautiful blocks and I actually won first place!  I was extremely honored and very humbled.  So it all paid off.  I tried to re-make the block a while later and i was not successful.  The end result was completely wonky and unable to be worked with.  

Fast forward to now, yesterday I decided to pick a block make it 8" and work on it.  It took an hour, jeez!  But I am satisfied with the end result:

Today, I worked on this one, love it!  The whole thing reminds me of my boyfriend's mom and her love for florals, coffee and shabby chic design.  I chose the fabric with her in mind.

My goal is to do at least one a month and by December make a nice little wall hanging.  I don't know if I can commit to more than one a month at this point, my time is very limited.

I started taking a class at my LQS today.  It is a 4 week class that is held every Thursday from 10am-12pm.  Those 2 hours fly by so fast!  The class is for Cheryl Phillip's book "WedgeWorks" it's an 'easy' Mariner's Compass with no paper piecing.  Here are 3 photos from the book *please note these are not my work:

Cover of the book:

"Persian Star"
"China Blue Sampler"

At first, I wanted to make the China Blue Sampler.  Then I started leaning towards the Persian Star.  When I got to class, almost everyone was doing the China Blue and it really made me want to deviate and since I wanted to do the Persian Star anyway... then I decided i'd make one Persian Star then mat and frame it and make the sampler.  I pretty much understood the directions for the sampler and since everyone wanted to make it the instructions were being talked about a lot.  Once I got home I was reading over the star instructions and while I don't feel like I can't do it... i'm like hmmm, I wish I had spent more time in class reviewing it.  At this point though, I feel like i'm beyond the technicality of the directions and i'm really faced with a challenge with choosing the fabrics.  I know contrast is everything with a Mariner's Compass and I am keeping that in mind.  I just also feel like I have a big opportunity to learn a lot from this class but with my given time constraints I really feel like I can't do the class justice.  It's a horrible feeling.  Hopefully my shopping trip to Joann tomorrow will relive me and i'll find some incredibly inspiring fabrics.  

This weekend I will be spending with my 8 year old son and we have my nephew's birthday party to go to on Saturday.  Tuesday I start teaching my Crazy Patch Heart class and I'll have my Thursday class going on, then next weekend I'll be in New York with my best friend.  Not to mention I will also have the next round of the CQ RR block to work on, it'll probably arrive tomorrow.  Oh!   And i'm hosting 2 buy ins: silk ribbon and perle 8 cotton.  

Over the past 3 days i've managed to needle tat up 7 or 8 baskets too.  I'll post a picture of them tomorrow.

I always manage to keep myself extremely busy!  I hope to post pictures of more progress on the paper piecing soon!

Cheers all!

CQ RR, Round 3!

This round i had the pleasure of working on huntres9's autumn themed block.  It proved to be a bit difficult and challenging at times because I was concerned about adding the wrong colors!  My work on the block is finished and it's off on its way to the next gal.  Here are the 2 peeks that I shared for the blocks owner.  

I traced this tree out onto tissue paper, basted it down and embroidered over it ripping the paper off after.  Added a couple SRE flowers at the base of the tree.  It has a small bird's nest with 2 blue eggs in it.

I needle tatted the "R" monogram and added a SRE rose and a little blue glass flower bead: 

Embroidered Pillowcases & an update on what I'm up to!

I made these pillowcases for a dear friend who was my "Secret Sister" last year.  I have been working on them since early December and I had really wanted to get them to her by Christmas but it just didn't work out that way.  So, I got them off in the mail to her on Tuesday.  Hey, at least they're done and they've arrived!  She was very good to me, extremely attentive - always right on top of my posts on the messageboard.  I always received a heartfelt letter in a box that was packed full of bows and ribbons with lots of care.  Hope she enjoys them!

I seem to be lacking here in blog land.  I have been extremely busy, honestly... seems I don't have too much to show for it though.  Ah!  I know, i'll have peeks to share with  you from this round of our CQ Round Robin and I also just finished the siggy wedding quilt I was hired to make!  I'll have photos of that for you soon!  

What's coming up for me?  Starting Tuesday, January 20th I'll be teaching four 2 hour classes at a LQS for a Crazy Quilt heart (i had blogged about this earlier this year.)  So that is very exciting!  I am prepping my kits for that, still have some work to be done but it's well on its way!  2 weeks after that I'll be starting my 8 week class on CQ.  I still have lots to do for that one.  I'm also taking a class for Cheryl Phillips "WedgeWorks" book.  (the first one)  That starts Thursday January 15th!  I am a little concerned that it's a time intensive class and I have so much going on I hope I can give it the attention it deserves because I also have the CQ RR going, 3 more rounds to go!  Oh!  Oh!  And i'll be visiting my very best friend of (eep!) 15 years in New York for the weekend of Jan 23-25!  Then i'll also be visiting her for my birthday on the weekend of Feb 20-22.  We're going to a comedy show and we'll hang out a little bit, i'm so looking forward to a nice weekend away, but you know i'll bring at least one needlework project ;)  probably my tatting since it's so space friendly and portable.  

Well, there's my update for the new year.  I hope this entry finds you healthy and well!  See you soon with some CQ peeks!  Stay tuned...

CQ RR, Round 2!

Ok, ok already... It's been forever since i've posted... or so it feels like it!  I've been up to a little bit of this and a little bit of that.  

We're actually on the 3rd round of the HGTV round robin and let me tell you I haven't even touched the block yet!  I've been too wrapped up in the holidays, but I thought i'd at least share the 2 peeks with you that I did on the 2nd round block.

The first treatment was made using some templates my friend Kathy shared with me.  She works up all kinds of cool crazy stuff!  

This is a silk ribbon Christmas tree with gifts under it.  I basically copied it from the Silk Ribbon Embroidery Bible.

Stay tuned for more!  I start teaching 2 different CQ classes and I am pretty nervous!