Loads Of Finishes To Share!

I spent yesterday afternoon running my sewing machine and finishing up a bunch of my crazy quilt projects.  It always feels so good to complete things, doesn't it?

These are my most recent Crazy Quilt Hanging Pillows:

I used Vintage Handkerchiefs for the focal point on all of these.  With Flea Market season coming, I thought I'd better use some of the things I picked up last year!

And these 2 little Crazy Quilt Cat Dolls are a Custom Order:

I started stitching on a little gift for my aunt for Mother's Day so I'll photos of that soon.

Crazy Quilting with Vintage Handkerchiefs

My crazy quilt block with the vintage handkerchief that I shared yesterday is complete:

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, this is a gift for a friend.  Her favorite color these days is green so I wanted lots of green.  Look closely at the bird.  It's a peacock.  A vintage brooch that I've been saving for something special.  If all goes as planned, I'll get this sewn up over the weekend.

My next project incorporates another vintage hankie:

If you look closely, you can see that I don't obsess over my curved seams.  I just top stitch them and then sew trim and lace on those seams.

I'll be starting on this block later today.  The floral in the center is from a vintage hankie that I found at a flea market.  I thought this would be pretty with blue stitching.  Yellow and blue always look nice together!

Purple Roses

I finished up stitching my Eagle Door Hanger yesterday:

It's very colorful and very Patriotic!

I started a new piece with a purple rose:

The rose is from a vintage handkerchief.  I love the soft colors on this one!  I'll do some stitching on this later today.

I have some new door pillows that mom made so I'll start adding them to the shop today and post photos tomorrow.

My plans for the week are to sew up my 4th of July hanging pillows and to sew some new blocks since I'm down to just one or two in my stitching basket. 

Today is opening day at Wilmot Flea Market in Wilmot, Illinois.  I'm going to straighten up and then Scott and I head up there to walk around for a little while.  Maybe I'll find some goodies!

Handmade Thank You Gifts

Busy day yesterday!  I'm trying to get the Spring cleaning on the inside of my house done so I can get outside and do some work out there when it warms up a bit more.  I have all the windows and curtains done now so the next project is to clean my 4 ceiling fans.  Anyone want to come and help me?  I have cookies and iced tea here?  LOL!!!

In between the boringness (I make up my own words) of doing windows and curtains, I've managed a little bit of stitching.  First, my little crazy patchwork pillow with a red poppy:

The poppy is a vintage handkerchief.  It's so much fun to use old things in my stitching projects!  I don't normally work in red but it's so cheerful!  I think it's time to expand my rainbow a little bit, don't you?  I mean, I do know that there are other colors besides pink, purple and green!  Ha, ha, ha!  Can you find my little red spider?

Okay, now back to purple and green, this is my current project.  A door hanger pillow with violets:

The violets are also from a vintage handkerchief.  I have little velvet violets that I'll be adding next.

Last but not least for today, and speaking of vintage handkerchiefs, here's the newest addition to our shop:

Awhile back, I found a vintage handkerchief at a flea market with the words Thank You on it.  I bought it and gave it to mom and this is what she made from it!  The blue fabric is from another vintage hankie!  Anyway, what an awesome Handmade Thank You Gift this is! 

Okay, that's my Boutique Commercial for today!  I'm off to stitch for a little while before I tackle those ceiling fans.  If you have nothing to do today, you're welcome to come help me!  LOL!

A Little Too Busy These Days!

I'm feeling a little too busy these days.  Seems every day I have some dumb thing I have to do or some place I have to go that takes too much time away from what I really want to be doing.

Today I see my Dr. regarding my medication.  I know she'll let me take the final step when I'm ready.  I confess, I'm a bit frightened now that I'm down to getting off of it.  It's been a long road.  A very long, hard, bumpy and frightening road.  And now that I'm at the end, it's a matter of being "ready".  I assume that it'll be like everything else.  When I'm ready, I'll know.

I have not had much in the way of stitching time.  5 minutes here, 10 minutes there.  Too many interruptions.....no sooner do I start stitching and someone's pounding on my door or my phone is ringing or I have to drop what I'm doing and run somewhere.

Tomorrow, I hibernate!  In my house, by myself.  Just me and my cats.  We're supposed to get a few inches of snow tomorrow.  We made it 1/2 way through this Winter with no snow!  And I'm okay with that!  So I guess I'll let it be my excuse to have a "do what I want to do" day!  I will be running my sewing machine and I will be stitching!

In the meantime, I've added a few more of my mom's beautiful door pillows to our Valentines Day Shop:

These are both made from vintage handkerchiefs!

Well, I think I'll get offline now and squeeze in 10 minutes of stitching time before I have to get myself together to head out.  Have a great day everyone!  I think I'll be back to my regular daily blogging schedule now!  LOL!

More Vintage Hankies

After going out for breakfast yesterday, Bubba took me to the Colonial Antique Mall in Woodstock Illinois where I wandered around, in my own little world for awhile.  I found some gorgeous vintage laces but some vendors seem to think they have gold and I know better so I didn't buy any.  Instead, I found a few more pretty vintage handkerchiefs:

So Springy!  2 are for mom and 2 are for me. 

If you remember from my post yesterday, I said I would share a photo of the pink Mile A Minute afghan my mom made me for Christmas:

It's crocheted in strips and then the strips are crocheted together.  Yes, I have white wicker furniture in my living room.  When we remodeled our living room a few years back, it just wasn't in our budget to buy new furniture but I couldn't live with what we had so I bought a set of white wicker patio furniture.  It's really pretty.  Light and airy and gardeny however, it is not particularly comfortable for living room furniture.  The plan is, at some point to get something more Victorian looking.  Either a set of antique furniture that we can have reupholstered or something new that looks antique.  As you can see from the photo, it has to be cat friendly so I'm thinking of leather.  It comes in soft, pastel colors like pink and aqua blue now.  I can't live with anything dark.  We also plan to put a wrap around front porch on our house so we'll then move our wicker furniture outside to enjoy.

Anyway, that's the afghan mom made for me.  As you can see, mom is well aware of my love for the color pink!

Finally, I did do a little stitching yesterday:

When we got home, I put my Marie Antoinette movie on.  I may have mentioned that my husband has been working on Saturday's and doing a lot of side jobs and saving his money.  Last week, he bought us a 60 inch television.  Christmas has been very lean for the past few years and he wanted to do something nice that we could both enjoy.  All I can say is wow!  It was a surprise and I was blown away.

Of course, when you upgrade one thing, you have to upgrade everything.  The picture was quite grainy so we had to buy a new DVD player and we also have to upgrade our Direct TV box and service.  It's crazy.

But anyway, the new DVD player made a huge difference in the picture quality and so I decided it would be nice to see Marie Antoinette in all her pink fluffiness!

I was so taken with the quality of the picture and sound that I couldn't hardly tear my eyes away from the TV long enough to stitch!  Ha, ha, ha!  I felt like I had never seen the movie before.  Too funny!

After that, Bubba put National Treasure on and again, I was just in awe of how different it looked and sounded on the new TV.  I'd better not plan on any movies today or I'll never get that cat doll done!

For today, I actually plan to do some straightening up and hopefully, I can finish up on that cat doll.

Christmas Door Pillows from Vintage Hankies

Mom has quite a knack with door pillows!  Her latest creations are made with vintage handkerchiefs:

I'm looking forward to seeing what else mom comes up with.  I've recently given her a whole pile of vintage handkerchiefs from my collection so I'm sure they'll be more of these little Christmas Door Pillow Ornaments to come!

In other news, I'm still working on my custom order.  I'm almost done and then I can do some sewing.  I want to sew up some Christmas Cat Dolls and I'm planning on some Snowman Dolls!  Stay tuned!

Vintage Handkerchief Door Pillows

Mom has come up with such a unique little door pillow using vintage handkerchiefs! 

I just love the shape of these!  I let mom raid my vintage hankie stash so I know there are more to come.  These are now in the Boutique as well as Etsy.

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Wedding Ring Pillows & New Project

Just a quick post for today everyone.  Mom just finished up a few new Wedding Ring Pillows:

Mom uses vintage handkerchiefs to make these!  Something old, something new!!!  Both are available in the shop.

I've also started on a new crazy quilt project.  Well, it's actually almost done:

I just love this little girl with the kitten!  It'll be a framed piece.  I expect to finish it up shortly.

I guess that's my news for today. 

Busy As A Bumble Bee This Week!

I was planning on getting Part 2 of my Art Quilting 101 Tutorial up this week but it's been rather crazy here so that will be delayed until sometime next week.  I know that several of my readers are enjoying it so please don't worry, it is on it's way!

Well, I have DSL now and all I can say is WOW!  I can actually read my favorite blogs now instead of waiting for pages to load.  It's great!  My email program still isn't working but Kathi will get it figured out as soon as she can.  I can do email via the web but I am just a twinge behind.  If you're waiting to hear from me, not worry.  I'll be caught up over the weekend.

I took some photos yesterday of my garden, which is a bit of a mess because I wasn't able to do anything out there last year and this year, I'm honestly not into it much either.  But I do have some pretties to share with you:









I have no idea what those yellow flowers are.  I just can't remember.  I planted them years ago and I love them!

In other news, here are few more of mom's vintage hankie hanging pillows:





I've never used my vintage hankies in this way but it sure is a lovely way to enjoy them!  Mom added beads, charms and ribbons.  Amazing for someone with limited vision!

And then, I thought you'd enjoy seeing my sister's needle-felted kitties:





These are absolutely precious!  They're tiny!  Only about 2 inches high X 4 inches long from the front paws to the tip of the tails.  I don't know how she does anything so tiny!  Of course, I've never done needle felting and I don't intend to try one more thing! 

I do have 2 of these for myself.  She made me one and then made one for the shop but I mooched it.  And Kath, if you're reading this, I love the violet kitty!!!!

Ok, so what else am I doing?  Hmmmm....oh, I finished up my Marie Antoinette Brooches.  I'll have that photo for you tomorrow.  I made some Art Brooches and again, photos coming tomorrow.  And now I'm working on some whimsical brooches with polymer clay faces:



I made the poly clay faces a few years back.  I thought it would be fun to make brooches with fancy yarns, silk ribbon, beads and sequins.  You know, I gotta pile on the glitter!  I have another ready to stitch on.  I probably won't get that started until the morning.  I have laundry to fold and salad to put together and my Nightmare is telling me that it's time for his medication. 

I'm off to take care of those things!  Tomorrow I see my new Dr.  I'm looking forward to that.  I really think I'd feel better if I drop this medication just a twinge.  I'll keep you posted.

Marie Antoinette Brooches Almost Done!

If I'd stop running around and shopping, I would be able to get something done!  This is a sneak peek of my Marie Anoinette Brooches:



These still need finishing but I've been talking about them for so long, I thought I'd share what I have so far!  I'll describe what I used and did with these once I get them done.

I'm also working on some little Art Brooches.  Very abstract and so cool looking! 

Judy asked me awhile back if I might be able to get a photo of all my 3 kitties laying on the bed together.  No luck there but I was able get this photo Sunday morning:



It's not too unusual for them to eat off the same plate from time to time.  Lucy is on the right, Nightmare in the middle and Simba on the left.

These are my mom's latest finishes:





Both are made using a vintage handkerchief.  For those of you how are vintage hankie obsessive collectors (like me), this is a great way to use them and enjoy them!

Well, I need to get myself together.  I need supplies (LOL) so I'm heading off to Hobby Lobby today.  Yes, I know, this why I don't get anything done! 

Have a great day everyone!