KItty And Me Designs In 2 Locations

I've added a few new handmade items to our Boutique.  First are mom's gorgeous Crazy Quilt style pillows:

And then Mom made this gorgeous little pink door pillow:

Notice the unusual shape of this one!

And here's my newest addition:

I sat on my deck and stitched the entire Southern Belle design on one of the days that my power was out!  That's a lot of stitching in one day!

And for anyone who prefers shopping at Etsy, our products are also available at Kitty And Me Designs Etsy Shop.  Yes, we're in 2 locations!!!

A Whiter Shade Of Pale

Ok, I just gave away my age!  LOL!!!  I mentioned yesterday that my next project would be mostly white.  While I was stitching on this earlier, I kept thinking of the 1967 song, A Whiter Shade Of Pale.  This will be a Wedding Purse:

A Godchild of mine is getting married in September and I wanted to make her something special for her Wedding so I decided on a purse.  She's very creative and bit non-traditional, like me! 

For some reason, I just didn't want to do an all white purse. She has a lot of life in her and life is colorful.  To say the least (if I may add from my own experiences)!

I wanted white but I also wanted a twinge of color.  I want it to look old but not ancient so the block is pieced all in white fabrics.  The lace at the top is vintage but the lace at the bottom is antique.  Late 1800's.  I wanted cream colored lace so it shows up.  I hand painted the little love birds applique along with the butterfly.  The seam treatments are all stitched in the lightest shades of pink, blue and cream that I have in my stash.  The beading will all be done in white, cream and perhaps some silver.  We'll see how things look when I get to embellishing this.  I want to be incredibly sparkly!

Anyway, when I was picking my thread colors, I kept thinking, A Whiter Shade Of Pale!   I'll be doing some silk ribbon embroidery on here as well.  Hope I have enough pale colors to use on it!

Stay tuned!

Stitching Complete on Cellphone Pouch

I finished stitching up this little cellphone pouch this afternoon:

I don't work in red and black too much but is really is so pretty!  I will get it sewn together and finished up in the next day or so and then I'll share a final photo.

My next project will be almost all white!

Before I Start Beading This......

I thought you would like to see this cellphone pouch now that I have the seams embroidered.  All seams are worked with my Waste Canvas technique:

I plan to do the beading on this later today. 

In other news, it's been really hot here and we've had tons of thunderstorms.  What weird weather!  We went almost all Summer with no rain and now it's one storm after another.  Well, better rain than snow!  We don't have to shovel this!

Red And Black Cellphone Pouch

We're finally getting some much needed rain here!  I can live without the thunder and lightening but the rain is most welcome!

I have an order for a custom cellphone pouch in reds and black.  I don't usually work in these colors so I think this will be a lot of fun!

I'm going to sew the lace and trim on now and then I plan to head over to mom's so we can put our Shabby Lane Shops Boutique Bags together.  These will be the Boutique Bag goody's for August.

When I get home later, I plan to relax and stitch!  Que pasa un buen dia!  Have a great day!

Crazy Quilting From Start To Finish Class

I have a sweet lady coming up to my home in McHenry, Illinois to take my Crazy Quilting From Start To Finish class.  This is a 2 day class and the title says it all!  Learn how to Crazy Quilt from foundation piecing to stitching, to embellishing to finishing into something useable!

We're looking at the 3rd weekend in September and I would love to have at least 1 more student.  We'll be making a small Crazy Quilt Door Pillow:

A healthy, homemade lunch will be included for both days and there are always freshly baked muffins and my famous cookies here!  It'll be like an elegant ladies tea party!!!

If anyone is interested in taking a weekend class Sept. 17th & 18th to learn the elegant art of crazy quilting, please give me a call at 815-344-3442. Class Fee is $130 for the 2 day class, 7 hours each day.  We'll have loads of fun!  You'll get to see my crazy quilts in person, meet my awesome husband and see our beautiful Model A!

Crazy Quilt Heart Shaped Door Pillows

I thought I'd share a few more finishes with you before I turn the computer off for today.  I mentioned last week that I was stitching on some Crazy Quilt hearts.  These are little Crazy Quilt Door Knob Pillows:

I'm almost caught up with my finishing for the time being so I'll be able to get back to stitching soon.  If I don't stay on top of my finishing, I find myself a bit overwhelmed.  Finishing is not my favorite part of the process but the stitching doesn't do me or anyone else any good if I don't sew my things into something useable!

For now, I'll go sit on my deck for a bit.  It was a hot one today but with the sun going down, I should be able to enjoy my yard for a little while and still breathe!

Presenting.....Marie Antoinette!

It took awhile, but I finally have my Marie Antoinette crazyquilt hanging on the wall in my living room!  If you're new to my blog, perhaps you'll enjoy seeing the individual quilt blocks first.  This was my Winter project.  I started it in October and just finished it a few weeks ago.  Enjoy!

Be sure to click on the images to see larger versions of them.

Sunday Flea Market Treasures

Despite being hotter than Billy Blue Blazes on Sunday, I just can't pass up a Flea Market!  I hadn't really planned on going anywhere this past weekend.  I wanted to hang out at home and get some stuff done around here, but when my sister sent me a text message saying that there was a Flea Market at the McHenry County Fair grounds in Woodstock, Illinois (a hop, skip & a jump from where we are), I just couldn't skip it!

All in all, it was a little disappointing.  Not many dealers for the $5.00 admission fee and of the dealers that were there, they all thought they had gold!  I'm a Flea Market Queen so I know my prices! 

I did manage to find a few treasures though and all for only $10.00!

A couple of pretty hankies, a gorgeous piece of crocheted lace and some fun trim with sequins!  Not bad!  But I really do need to stop buying it and start using it!  My stash runneth over!  'Course, that won't stop me!

Central Air Conditioner Repair

First, a terrible storm that left us without power for 3 days!  Then this afternoon, I'm walking around the house, straightening up and noticed that it was just too hot in here.  I check the thermostat and it said 76.  I keep my A/C on 73.

Anyway, I call my repair service and sure enough, something in my A/C fried due to the power surges!  $218.00 later I'm sitting all comfy cozy again in my 73 degree house!  Does it ever end?

Hand Embroidered Pillows

I'm Back!

Whew! 3 days without electricity! Talk about stress!! We had a horrible storm go through here first thing Monday morning. 70 mile per hour winds took out trees and electric lines. There are still people without power and there are trees and branches down everywhere. It looks like a war zone around here!

I had to put 5 bags of groceries in the trash. Since my fridge is now empty, I took the time last night to scrub it real good so I now have a nice clean refigerator and I'm getting ready to go to the grocery store now and get some food!

I managed to do a lot of stitching the past few days. The dead silence in the house makes me insane so I spent most of my time out on my deck or over at mom's. Her power came back Monday afternoon. Anyway, I finished stitching up 4 heart shaped crazyquilt door pillows and I stitched a pillow with an old fashioned bonnet lady.

I told Scott last night that I don't care to go anywhere this weekend. I want to stay home and relax and just play with my stuff so that's the plan.

I'm am so thankful that I bought myself an IPhone!  I was at least able to get some information through all this!

Ok, I just wanted to drop in and say hi.  I'll be back to my regular posting now.  I'm off to get groceries!  I need strawberries!

Crazyquilt Strawberry Ornament

Pam Without Power

Hello Everyone,

My name is Jason, and I am Pam's E-Commerce Consultant and Designer. There were some storms that rolled through the Illinois area over the weekend which caused a massive amount of people to lose power. Apparently, they are still working on restoring service to everyone, Pam included. She asked me if I could write up a quick blog post letting everyone know. Pam will be back before you know it!

-Jason-

Beads For Crazyquilting

I've been looking around over at Kay's Pizazz Beads site and there are some really beautiful things there for Crazyquilting:

I love using crystals on my Crazyquilts because I love the sparkle!!  And I love anything vintage!  I like to stock up on supplies over the Summer so I have plenty of things in my stash for my Fall & Winter stitching!  Ok, so I stock up like a Chipmunk but hey, one can never have too may Crazyquilt supplies!  These are gorgeous! 

Going to head up to the Wilmot Flea Market this morning.  It's going to be a hot one today so I want to get up there early.  Grayslake Flea Market is today too but because of the heat, I think Wilmot is a better choice.  If I find anything cool to stitch with, I'll post again later!

Handmade Thanksgiving Greeting Cards

Nothing terribly exciting to share today.  I've been stitching on some heart shaped crazyquilt door pillows.  I'll have photos to share soon.  I also added some new Thanksgiving cards to the Boutique:

I made all of these using vintage greeting cards and of course, lots of glitter!  Ya'll know that all that glitters is gold to me!

Autumn Greeting Cards

I thought for today, I would share a few of the new Glittered Autumn Greeting cards that Mom and I made.  I'm not feeling great today so I'll just leave you with these:

Beads On Sale

For all the crazyquilters out there, I thought you'd like to visit Pizazz Beads.  Kay has a lot of great beads on sale that would be perfect for crazyquilting!  Please hop over and check out this fun site!

Crazy Quilt Peacock Purse

Happy 4th Of July!

Happy 4th of July everyone!  It looks like our temps are going to be a little more tolerable today.  It was a hot weekend but that didn't stop us from heading out to a small flea market yesterday.  The walking feels good and the thrill of the hunt is pure stimulation for my crazy ADD brain!  LOL!!!

I didn't find a lot of treasure yesterday but that's ok.  What I did find are 2 little vintage cookbooks to add to my collection:

The Watkins booklet is copyrighted 1934 and the Carnation booklet is copyrighted 1946.  There are some nice recipes in these little cookbooks and I'm thrilled to have these in my collection.  I only paid $4.00 for the 2 of them!

Be sure to download the PDF file for my 1925 Bakers Chocolate Cookbook!

I also picked up a couple of cards of vintage buttons:

The white buttons are glass with touches of gold on them.  The little pink cameo buttons and the purple rhinestone buttons are plastic.  These were kind of unique so I thought they would be fun for my crazyquilting.

Have a safe and Happy 4th of July everyone!

A Crazyquilt Comfort Cat Doll

For Vicki, because there just aren't any words:

Crazy Quilt Door Pillows

After yesterday's long article on coping the side effects and withdrawals of antidepressants, I'll keep today's post short and sweet!

I did the finishing on my 2 newest crazy quilt door pillows.  I had planned on doing something new and fun with the finishing on these but I forgot!  ADD!  What else can I say!

I've already made these available in our Cottage Boutique.

Also, be sure to read my article on the History Of Victorian Crazy Quilting!

A Little Crazy Quilt Eye Candy!

I've gotten a little behind on things like email and blogging lately!  I've been doing some organizing, cleaning out, straightening up and so on.  Getting the house ready to the best of my ability to hold crazy quilt classes here. 

My husband is in the process of painting the hallway upstairs.  When the tree hit our house back at Christmas of 2009, it cracked some of the drywall upstairs.  As many of you know, I went into a horrible state of depression a week later and it wasn't until now that I've been able to focus on getting him to fix the drywall and and repaint for me.  I'll paint the trim as soon as he has the walls painted.  It's hard to keep him in the house this time of year.  He loves to be outside and I can certainly understand that but I asked him to focus that ADD mind of his and try to get the painting done by the end of this coming weekend.

My next project is to repaint the bathroom which I've been planning on too since before the nightmare depression hit me.  So that's next on my list when the hallway is done.

As you know, my Marie Antoinette Crazy quilt is completely done now.  Well, I still need to make a quilt label for it which I'll do tomorrow.  Once I get it hung on the wall, I'll share a final presentation with you.  I also bought a rod today for my Button quilt which will hang in the bedroom over my husband's dresser.  I need to make a quilt label for that tomorrow as well.  When I have that hanging on the wall, I'll share another photo.

I have been doing a little stitching and worked up these two little crazy quilt door pillows:

Wait till you see how I finish these!  They'll be a little different than the way usually do my door pillows.

In other news, I've just finished up another round of horrible Zoloft withdrawals.  Every time my Dr.drops the dosage, it's 8 weeks of pure concentrated hell.  I didn't really plan on talking about depression too much anymore but I'm thinking, that maybe it would be helpful to someone if I just talked about the withdrawals, the symptoms and coping skills for getting through it.  Is anyone interested in me writing about that?  Please leave comments for me and let me know.

For now, I'm off to fold laundry.  Yeah, that's what I live for!  LOL!!!

1925 Bakers Chocolate Recipe Book

Ya'll know how much I love to bake!  And I love anything vintage as well!  I've been collecting vintage baking booklets for quite a few years now.  I find them for a few dollars here and there in my flea market and antique shop travels.

The prize in my collection is this 1925 Bakers Chocolate Recipe Booklet.  It's loaded with recipes for chocolate and cocoa:

I've made a Free PDF file of this little Chocolate Book available in my Cottage Boutique.  Enjoy!

How To Assemble A CrazyQuilt - Step 7

There's one final step in finishing a crazy quilt.  We need to hold the front of the quilt to the back of the quilt.  The best way I've found to do this is to sew buttons onto the back:

I simply sew a button on the back of the quilt at every intersection with the exception of where the sleeve is.  My stitches on the front of the quilt are hidden behind the trim.  These buttons also add extra support to the quilt.

I hope you have found this tutorial for finishing a crazy-quilt helpful!  I will have a final presentation of my Marie Antoinette crazy quilt for you next week.  Before I hang it, I want to show a few friends in person.

Be sure to see the entire tutuorial for How To Assemble A Crazy Quilt!