A Perfect Studio Day

When I started work today, all parts of these Technicolor Dream Totes were ready to assemble. Yesterday I had some trouble with my machine and thread and tension. So today I swapped this older good Husqvarna Sapphire 830 with my sew Husqvarna Sapphire 870, the one I bought on eBay two months ago. My 830 needs new feed dogs and some work on the tension disks. And my Sapphire 870 was perfection to sew with. I sailed through two complete bags and have the bodies of 4 more ready to go. I'm foundation-piecing the bodies of these totes onto to Soft and Stable (byannie.com), which is why these two bags are standing. I love the body and sturdiness of this purse batting.

It was a luxury to have to whole day to sew. I think I'm going to make this deadline of finishing the totes by next week. Perhaps I can even come up with some additional totes - I've got some fabulous red scraps...

These bags are 15" high.

LaSalle Street Church Alternative Christmas Market - December 10

Good neighbor Pam is on the ministry team at the LaSalle Street Church at 1111 N. Wells in Chicago.  This congregation hosts a fair trade market for local craftsmen.  A win-win situation!  Pam suggested I host a table on December 10, and so I am.  Over the next two weeks I'll be adding to my exisiting stock of 20 Mors bags, several envelope purses, some Hobo bags, some one-of-a-kind things (like the MiPad case and the Serenity Purse), and beginning work in earnest on some Amazing Technicolor Dream Totes.  

This is a huge step out of my comfort zone. To have to give thought to pricing and labeling and - HORRORS! - handling money are things I'd rather not do. However, I do have this stock of terrific items that just might appeal to some Christmas shoppers.  And it's only from 10 until 1:30.  Surely I can handle less than 4 hours.  The one thing I was fretting about was a coat tree.  I knew I would need one to hang my purses and bags from.  And guess what John found in the basement.  Who knew?

Quilt Dreams

I want to work on a quilt that has perspective and depth.

I want to do a landscape quilt of nothing but trees and their changing colors.

I want to do a landscape quilt that combines textures, perspective, and colors. These ruins of the Heidelberg Castle will be good for this.

Or perhaps I'll use this one.  I was at this  ruin in 1973 and am hard-pressed to believe that I actually have to able to return to this very place.

And I can even see which fabric I would use as the water in this picture and what kind of threadplay I could do on it.


Meanwhile, I'll keep these photos in my Dreamin' folder and get back to the tasks of Thanksgiving Week. 

Back ... and back to it!

We're back from our Rhine cruise and mostly well. How do I know? I spent the day in the studio. First, I finished a shower present for QFF Wayne - his son is getting married in February. And just in time - the shower's tomorrow!

Now I can think about the Christmas Fair I'm participating in on December 11 - I'll post about this shortly. So I did two more Mors bags and then prepped another four. Bring on the holidays!

A View from My Studio

Tomorrow we leave for Basel, Switzerland. We'll get on a river boat and cruise up the Rhine and Moselle River, ending in Amsterdam. Very exciting! If what we see is a beautiful as what I see from my studio windows, I'll be a very happy quilty traveler!

Soup and Christmas Presents

 Our beautiful sunny fall days are over - today is grey, rainy, and cold. Split pea soup is perfect for a day like this, and I made a ton - enough for my parents, a friend with a broken foot, my favorite body-work massage therapist, and us.










And I used today in the studio to finish the 8 bags for Dorothy - she wants to give them to her office mates at the Department of Labor for Christmas. One of her co-workers has a thing for eagles, thus the picture printed out on fabric.










 These 10 bags were in all in various stages. After purchasing more handle material yesterday, I was able to finish them and hope to sell them at a neighbor's church holiday art fair. Details to follow!

The heart of Mors bags is "Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle." These last three bags are all from recycled fabrics. Someday I'll get around to making bags out of all the blue jeans I have in bags in the studio!

My Quilter Friends

On Sunday October 23 QFF Wayne and I lead the Chicago Modern Quilt Guild in making Mors bags. Despite the advanced quilting abilities of many in this fabulous group, the simplicity and usefulness of this project really struck a chord with everyone. Towards the end of the afternoon the girls just assembled themselves into this cute little picture. Thank you, Robbi Ecklow, for snapping the picture!

Need directions for Mors bags? Here they are! Just look for Make One!

A Little Help from my Friends

My shower present is ready to assemble. Thanks to Ebony of Love Bug Studios I have finally learned to wind binding on empty toilet paper rolls, a great tip from my friend Ebony. And my binding method is the one that Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr demonstrate in their book Quilts Made Modern. I get by with a little help from my friends!

Texture

That's what quilting is about. Of course color and design are factors. But for me quilting is really textural. Today I started working on a shower present for QFF Wayne's son. The first step in making this casserole carrier is simply to quilt two fabrics. Maybe it's because I haven't had much studio time lately, but today was joyous. The process of quilting and laying in rows of stitches after rows of stitches was satisfying. Tomorrow I'll continue working on this and put the studio in order in preparation for leaving town for a couple of weeks (doing a Rhine River cruise - woo hoo!)(missing the Chicago Modern Quilt Guild retreat - boo hoo).

Winter is a'comin in...

The temperatures are dropping. That means swapping our summer quilt out for our winter quilt, which is dark and heavy and changes the whole look of our small bedroom.  Bottom line - it's warm. So the summer quilt, made with shirting fabrics from Beijing, is packed away for the winter.

I'm unsettled. The studio has piles all over - prep for my guild's work on Mors bags next week, fabric combinations for projects, and finishing my second vest.  And there's something in me that wants to start a big quilt.  But the calendar is packed, and we're leaving the country in two weeks.  Hard to get my mojo working... It'll happen. Just not today.