Lots Of Stitching Time Yesterday

I completed the stitching on my Red Hat Lady pouch:



Don't you just love my little green spider?!!!!

After that, I worked on Maxine's quilt for a few hours and added this motif:



I found a whole package of these at an antique shop in Peoria Illinois. I think they were taken off of curtains or a dust ruffle. There's something familiar about them. Maybe they remind me of something my mom or my grandma had years ago.

Anyway, I trimmed the excess fabric away from the outside and then I hand painted it, sewed it onto the quilt and then beaded it.

Looking at this quilt, I feel that I'll be able to do anything I want, just as I would my own pieces. The only thing that I need to do is to keep everything in the muted antique colors. Anything new that I use will have to be "aged" with fabric dye before I use it. In fact, I "aged" a few other things yesterday and hope to have time later to work on this some more.

In the meantime, I'll be sewing up the Red Hat Lady pouch and getting it ready for it's new owner. Stop by tomorrow to see the finished pouch.

Red Hat Lady & Velvet Pansies

Digging around in my stash, I found some white cotton velvet that mom had given me not too long ago. Well, you know what you can do with cotton velvet? You can dye it! And that's just what I did:



They don't look like much now. I still have to Blanket Stitch around the outside and then add the do-dads to the centers. I'll work on those today. I want to make some leaves too.

I then worked on the Red Hat Lady pouch:



This is ready for some beads! I'll work it again later this afternoon. If I complete it today, I'll do the finishing tomorrow.

I must say, I love the way red and purple looks together!

Speaking Of Dragonflies......

Isn't this a gorgeous little creature?



Scott took this photo yesterday evening when he got home from work. We were sitting on the front porch watching this guy bounce around in the garden.

We have many varieties of dragonflies here, but this one is one of my favorites.

Cellphone Pouches

Yesterday, my goal was to do the finishing on the Dragonfly Cellphone pouch as well as do the foundation piecing on the Red Hat Society Lady Cellphone pouch which is a custom order.

Here's the completed Dragonfly Pouch:



OK, so my hot pink cellphone doesn't quite work with the colors in this pouch! It's only there for size reference!

Here's the pieced Red Hat Lady pouch:



I'll begin the stitching & embellishing process on this later today.

On to Maxine's quilt, I'm happy to say that I now have all the deteriorated patches replaced as well as the stitching. Now, I can start the embellishing!

Because this quilt is quite large, I want to put some larger embellishments on it first. I'll start by making some velvet pansies. Do you know how hard it is to find velvet or velvet-like fabrics in anything other than black, red and green? Geez! In this day & age!

Anyway, I'll also be making some sunflowers using yellow sparkle organza and brown velvet for the centers. Ok, wish me luck on this one because at the moment, it's only an idea in my mind. I'm hoping I can execute it the way I see it!

Stop by tomorrow for another update on my current projects.

Buttons

Well, my Flea Market finds yesterday were quite minimal! The market was huge but I just didn't find anything all that exciting. In fact, I only spent $5.00!

I found some pretty little vintage buttons and some little appliqués, all from the same dealer:



Usually, I find some nice lace and other odds & ends but not this time. Very disappointing! And I haven't seen a vintage iron-on transfer in months! Actually, I haven't seen any since last Summer! What's up with that? Now, it's not like I don't have any. Actually, I have a huge rubbermaid container filled with vintage transfers. I can barely lift it to get it off the shelf but it's one of my obsessions! I love them and I won't apologize for it!

Back to the buttons, it occurred to me that my plastic button collection would be more accessible if I separated them by color. At the moment, I store them in this huge 5 pound antique coffee jar:



They look really great in the jar but I when I want to use some, I have to dump them all out into a big cake pan just so I can find what I want! So what to do? I have a bunch of old blue mason jars that I could use. Yes, I love old stuff! Methinks I'll contemplate this a bit more!

For today, I'll be sewing up the Dragonfly Cellphone pouch. I'll also do the foundation piecing for my custom order, a Red Hat Lady cellphone pouch.

I worked on Maxine's quilt for a few hours yesterday. I have 3 more patches to replace the stitching on and then I can start embellishing it. Yes, I found 2 more deteriorated patches the other day so I replaced them. I'll have another update on that project for you soon.