Smells like happiness

My husband bought me a bouquet of pink lilies last week and they were all still in bud and more and more open every day. The smell always reminds me of our honeymoon. I love that man.

Finished item # 2

I know, its slow in coming, but I've finished something else. Its a set of monogrammed flour sack towels for Mom. I don't know what's taken me so long, but my real job has been occupying my time lately, so I'm going with that for my excuse to myself. I just love this thread color.

Something finished?!

Well, the top is finished. That counts, right? I ripped off the remaining two sides tonight and put them back on. It looks much better. I'm annoyed with myself, though, since its not quite as "perfect" as I expected. Its not really anything big and once its quilted and washed, it shouldn't be very visible. Oh well. There are a lot of pieces and the wovens are very easy to distort.

Toulouse by Miss Rosie's Quilt Company with 3 Sisters Maison de Noel fabric

P.S. I have a second copy of the Toulouse quilt pattern for sale on Etsy

On Pintucks

No, I still haven't actually finished anything. I tried to finish monogramming the last flour sack towel for Mom this afternoon and ran out of thread.

So I decided to try out my new pintuck foot that just arrived in the mail from eBay. I didn't realize that this was done with a double needle (it could be done with a single needle and no special foot, I understand, if you can sew straight and right on the edge of the folded fabric) and was happy to find that I already have a twin needle and the extra spool needed for it. I hooked it all up and threaded it - easy enough - and started to sew. It didn't work right the first time, but that's when I remembered that you need to change the upper thread tension. I bumped it up to 9 and off I went. Its rather neat! After you sew the first one, you just line up the pintuck in one of the grooves and it guides the next one.

This is what my experimental piece looked like (still can't photograph white for the life of me - I need a lightbox set up).

Summer Love

So here's a welcome picture in my inbox today! I love this look!

Its Brocade Home.

A Whole Lotta Nothin

I would post more often if I can actually finished something.

I thought I had finished up a quilt top last week, but the borders are driving me nuts. There's a pieced border and then a solid border. The pieced one was a bit longer than necessary, so I eased it in when adding it to the top and it was fine. But now I have to adjust when adding the solid border and its waaaaay too wavy. I took two off and tried putting them back on and then I lost track of which ones I had done. Apparently I didn't do them well enough or I would be able to tell, wouldn't I? Ergh.

I was bored a few days ago, so I found a crocheted hat pattern and thought I would try it as a quick distraction. Um. It looks really stupid. My gauge must be off. So I didn't finish it either.

I have a set of flour sack towels to monogram for my Mom and for some reason, I've been putting that off too. I did finally do one today. 2 more to go!

I put off trying to speckle the eggs for Mom until after midnight. My husband turned out to be better at that then I was, but that really could have used some better technique.

Oh well. I think work has been driving me nuts lately and it is cramping my style on the creative stuff. Too many little things taking up too much brain space, I guess! Hopefully this weekend will be better!

Here's a lovely spring picture to make up for the lousy post and lack of accomplishment. Yesterday was 79 degrees and tonight it is snowing. Go figure. This is spring in Pittsburgh.

Spring 2006 at Phipps

Robin's Eggs?

I had mentioned a few days ago about looking for natural looking fake eggs and I've still not had any success. Back in the fall, I found a bunch of white egg cups for super-cheap at Ikea and bought a bunch for my mom & me. I've been keeping hers to give her for her birthday or for Mother's Day or something, but I thought I would find some pretty eggs to put in them as well. So I've given up. I'm too cheap to pay for blown eggs on eBay, even though there are some very pretty ones like these. So today I decided that I was going to blow my own regular eggs and paint them.

I recruited my poor husband to help. He loves when I do this, of course! But I only needed eight eggs and I'd already done a couple myself a few nights ago. I'm running out of time, so I thought we'd just do six more and that wouldn't be that hard. Oh my word - I hate blowing eggs! It hurts my ears. I didn't want to make the holes too large so that they couldn't be covered up, but sheesh. My husband was a lousy egg blower. If you ask me, I think its just that the man can't possibly allow himself to be capable at such a stupid thing as egg-blowing. But I digress. He blew all of one, while I proceeded to blow 5 and break 2 more. So we have lots of eggs in the fridge and I guess we'll have to make omelets or a quiche or something this week.

So then I had to make a quick trip to the stupid WalMart near us and see if they would have the right color paint. Amazing! They actually did! I sponge painted them all and they turned out rather cute. I also got some grayish brown paint to try to speckle them with, but I haven't done that yet. Perhaps tomorrow. For now, I at least have some pretty eggs. To be honest, I'd rather stick them in an apothecary jar with some moss or something, but the egg cups are alright.