Happy Easter Weekend!

Good Morning everyone!  Well, I'm almost done with my Crazy Garden Quilt.  All I have left to do is to put the back and sleeve on, top stitch it and hang it!  I'd like to get the back on tomorrow morning before we head over to mom's.  Still not sure if I will try to do that or not.  When I do the top stitching, I'll do that on mom's machine.  Hers is much newer than either one of mine and it's electronic so there's a bit more precision there.

In the meantime, here is an Easter card that I made:



Happy Easter Weekend!

Borders

I just finished sewing the pink satin borders on my Crazy Garden Quilt:



My mom has tried showing me about 2 dozen times how to do mitered corners but unfortunately, my crazy ADD brain just can't seem to get it.  So, to quote Frank Sinatra, I did it my way!

The next step is to hand-sew more of the trim along the inside edge where the quilt meets the border.  I have a little straightening up to do and then I'll start on that.

I won't be using the pink satin on the back.  I just don't feel that it's sturdy enough of a fabric to support the weight of this quilt.  Instead, I have some light pink Quilter's Cotton that I'll use.  When I get that to that step!

I was thinking more on my Crazy Button Quilt.  I'll be putting that one together not long after I finish up on this one.  The Button Quilt will weigh at least twice what this one does so instead of supporting it with quilt batting, I plan to use a heavy weight muslin.  If you would like to see those blocks again, click here.  I did these before I got sick and never got around to doing the finishing.  I plan to hang the Button Quilt over my husband's dresser in the bedroom.

In the meantime, I made some Easter Haystack candies this morning:



For mom's birthday, I made them with chocolate.  This time, I used white almond bark (which just tastes like vanilla) and I tinted it with food coloring.  I tucked a Cadbury Mini Egg on top.  Aren't they pretty?

In other news, I finally re-posted my Tutorials in my sidebar.  If you're looking for how to do Crayon Tinting or How to Wash Vintage & Antique Lace, you can find the directions in the sidebar on the left.

I've received several email messages from some of my very sweet readers, asking me how I'm feeling.  I don't talk about it too much anymore as I'm trying to focus on my creativity, my blog and my Etsy shop.  I'm doing ok.  I still have some physical pain, well discomfort really, mainly in my back.  I still have that awful feeling of crushing pressure in my body.  Although it's not as bad as it was and yes, my head still feels screwy.  Again, not as bad as it was.  I still can't feel much in the way of emotions but I do get twinges of it now and then.  I really try not to get discouraged.  After 15 months, I do feel sometimes like maybe this is as good as it gets.  I'm told it'll go away in time so I try to keep that in mind.  Still, I just want to feel like myself again.  It's been a long time.  I'm always tired and still go to bed at 7 pm but some of that may be the Zoloft.  Geez, when they say "depression hurts", they ain't kidding!

Finally for today, I'm thinking of adding a list of my favorite Etsy shops to the sidebar.  I really do believe in "Buying Handmade" and I'd like to help promote that.  If you have an Etsy shop and you make pretty, feminine "cottage style" items, please email ( please don't post it in my comments) me your shop address for consideration.

That's it for now everyone.  Have to wash some dishes, fold a load of laundry and then I can sit and do a bit hand sewing.  Have a good night!

Crazy Garden Quilt Assembly Continues.....

Just a quick post for today everyone.

I've sewn the trim down the seam lines on my Crazy Garden Quilt:



The next step in the process will be to put the borders on.  I won't be doing that today but we'll see what tomorrow brings.

For now, I'd like to let you know that my friend Cathy S. at Treasured Heirlooms blog is have a Contest Give Away.  Please do check out her blog.  It's beautiful and Cathy creates the loveliest cottage style adornments!  Be sure to scroll down to Cathy's March 20th post!

Crazy Garden Quilt Assembly In Progress

I know so many of my readers have been eagerly awaiting the completion of my Crazy Garden Quilt.  I started the process!  First, I had to trim off the excess fabric:



Some may think I waste a lot of fabric.  Well, I do but I have my reasons.  First, I like to stitch in a hoop so I make sure that my ground fabric will fit in a 12 inch Quilting hoop.  I use a vintage one.  I feel it's more sturdy and better made than the new ones.

If you look close in the first photo, you should be able to see that I mark my sewing line and add a 1 inch border around that.  I do this for several reasons.  I have a tendency to push the envelope when it comes to beading!  I mark that line and then run a basting stitch so I know how far I can put beads.  I leave the extra inch around that for "squaring up" the block.  With the stitching, the beading and the weight of it all, CQ blocks can get "out of shape".

So, the first thing I do is remove the basting stitch and then trim the block 1 inch from the sewing line.

Next, I square it up leaving a 1/2 inch seam allowance.  Again, the 1/2 seam allowance helps to support the extra weight of a CQ:



Once I had the blocks all trimmed up, I laid them out on the floor to be sure I was happy with my arrangement:



Next, I started sewing!  I first sewed them into vertical strips:



Generally, crazy quilts do not have a batting layer inside.  Again, my crazy quilts weigh a ton so I need the batting layer to help support them.  To this, I sewed vertical strips together horizontally but directly onto the quilt batting:



In the next photo, you can see where the quilt is sewn onto the batting.  Once I had that done, I top stitched along the outside edge to keep everything in place.



I can't go any further on the machine now until I hand-sew the trim on the seams.  I'll do that while watching TV.  You can see the pink satin fabric that I chose to border the quilt with.  It's such a pretty shade of cottage pink!  Anyway, the excess quilt batting is there for when I get to the borders.  Once I have the borders on, I can trim the excess batting away.


And all the while, I had my little supervisor overseeing my work:



That would be my Simba!

Anyway, once I get the trim sewn on the seams, I'll post another photo.  In the meantime, mom and I have completed a few more projects so I thought I'd share them:

First, is mom's little Swan Trinket Box:



Seems like I have a lot of bird items today!  This is my "trash to treasure" Dove In A Basket:



The basket was a broken vintage candle holder.  Now, it's a dove in a basket of flowers!

Last but not least, I just had to do another Birdbath:



I just love doing these!  A vintage candy dish turned birdbath!

I'm also thrilled beyond words that one of my Etsy items was featured on Paper*Cakes Finds.



How exciting huh?  Thank you so much!!!  Do visit the Paper*Cakes Blog.  Lots of pretty handmade eye candy there!

Ok, in other news, I'm tweeting now!  Ha, ha, ha!  Makes me laugh!!!  If you tweet, please look me up!  I could use some more followers.

I guess that's my news for today.  I just pulled some Banana Chocolate Chip bread out of the oven.  Oh, does that smell good.  Now to put some salad together for dinner!

Widgets, Gagets and Do-Dads!

As you can see, I've been playing around with all sorts of Widgets and so on.  This is all way more fun than it should be!  I also set up a Twitter account but I'm having some troubles with it.  I tried adding it to my Facebook page.  It asks for my Username & Password which I type in and then it tells me something went wrong and it can't log me in.  After fooling around with that for about 10 minutes, I said enough for now!

I don't have anything terribly exciting to share today.  My sister came yesterday to update some things on my computer.  I'm not always comfortable updating certain things myself so she came and we got some of that taken care of. 

I also put out a few of my Easter do-dads:



You may remember the shabby basket that I bought at the junk store awhile back.  I said I was going to fix it up for Easter with my glittery bunny and metallic eggs.  Well, that's what I did!  I think I'll dig around in my fancy ribbon stash and add a bow to it.

I didn't put out a lot of Easter things.  Just a few as it's only a week away.  I really prefer it when Easter is in the middle of April.

Today, I'll be heading over to mom's to play with some projects there.  And later this week, I'll be working on putting my Crazy Garden Quilt together.