A few years ago at an antique store, I found a jewelry box with a tiny ballerina inside. I waffled on buying it during two separate trips there. Somebody else finally bought it, which made the decision for me.
It was the ballerina, not the jewelry box that I liked.
Earlier this month at my new favorite flea market, I found tiny ballerinas for sale all by themselves. This time there was no doubt about what to do.
This is the magic behind how they balance.
Some have that blue base which doesn't always guarantee they're going to stand up. I went through around 30 ballerinas before I found three that met my approval. And even so, the pink one hasn't finished putting on both shoes.
I'm making great progress on my Project Runway Faye quilt.
Yesterday I did all the free-motion quilting. I edge stitched all the fused pieces, then echo quilted around Faye.
You might notice some threads in the center of this photograph.
When starting and stopping, I left long threads so I could pull them to the back and tie them off with the bobbin thread. It makes for a neater appearance, and I need all the help I can get in that department, since my stitches aren't the most even.
It didn't seem like it would be that much work, but that's because I underestimated the number of times I would start and stop. I just counted, and I need to make 38 knots.
I'm going to make myself do them before I get to the fun part, which is straight-line stitching in the border.
I'm pretty sure I'll get this quilt done this weekend. Hooray!
I spent all afternoon yesterday in my sewing room, making some good progress on my fused quilt.
The pattern is Project Runway Faye, from Fiberworks.
I cut out all the fused pieces and arranged them on my sewing table. That seemed like a good stopping point for the day.
I didn't care for the face on the pattern, so I'm going to leave mine blank.
And I didn't like the legs on the pattern either, so I separated them and put a full shoe on each foot.
At first I was a little worried about that striped fabric for her skin, but I'm happy with it.
Next step is to fuse her on the background.
Ballerinas are starting to pop up all over the place in my house. Not sure how that happened.
This 1940s ballerina hanky/stocking box showed up in one of my new-favorite vintage stores. It's 10" on the long side and 7" on the short sides.
The box came with three hankys, which I gave back to them. I don't know why people get nostalgic about hankys. I bet the people that used them back in the olden days would have loved to have disposable tissues.
I liked the idea of fabric, though, so I just folded up some of my quilting cotton and laid it in there. Then I added the ribbon to the hole in the front corner. That's how you lift the hinged lid.
Here's the ballerina.
The box is from the Hommer's Manufacturing Company. The boxes come in different colors - some have marbelized sides. Some have ballerinas; some don't. I think I like this clear one the best because it offers the best view into the contents. But if I run across one with the marbelized sides, especially if it's the pink one, I bet it comes home with me.
Yesterday morning after walking the dog, I decided we should do a little yard work. I scared up a very young baby rabbit while the dog was looking elsewhere. Seeing where this could head, I put the dog in the house to keep him out of mischief.
After finishing my yard work, I came in the house to find this, not the way I normally store my safety pins. Somehow the dog managed to flip this cabinet upside down and spill the pins into a tangled mess.
It wouldn't have been much of a problem at all, except for I had two drawers of carefully segregated safety pins - the bent ones that I use for pin basting, and the straight ones that I dip into only when I run out of the bent ones.
So here they were, nicely comingled like peas and carrots, embedded in a loopy Berber carpet.
As Jake Worthington likes to say. "ain't nothing to it but do it". I set to work on my sorting, on hands and knees on the carpet. The easiest way was to grab a small handful and drop them - splat - onto a mat board, in order to loosen them up a little bit.
I'm pleased to let you know that our dog was peacefully napping nearby, throughout this process.
28 minutes later, order had been restored.
Next step - throw out the straight pins and buy another bag of the bent pins so I'll always have enough for pin basting, and won't waste another 28 minutes of my life if this happens again.
At Quilt Expo last year, I bought four patterns for fused projects. I really like fusing, and don't know why I haven't been doing it lately. Since Quilt Expo is coming around again in a few months, I thought I better get a move on and make some of these patterns.
The first one I'm doing is Project Runway Faye from Fiberworks.
I pulled this fabric many, many months ago and stuck it in a project bucket. I still think it looks pretty good. The zigzag is going to be the bodice.
I might to need to shop for a bit of fabric to use as her body, though. Right now I see I picked a pastel stripe (?!?!?!). But come to think on it, I remember seeing prints of models in a magazine where their bodies were patterned. It looked kind of cool. I'll try out a couple of different looks and see what works.
I'm happy to say I don't have a deadline for this. After two short and intense deadlines on my last two quilts, I decided I don't like that! That kind of self-inflicted stress is stupid.
I found a new flea market this weekend.
I don't even mind that the seller embellished this donkey with a plastic rose necklace and a ribbon on her hat. I think if this donkey could dress herself, she would do it in just the same way.
This week I finished my second quilt using the fabric from our quilt guild's fabric challenge. The first quilt was a combination snowball/bow tie block.
This second quilt is a pictorial quilt, and it measures 46" wide x 40" tall. I hope you're in the mood for a story, because here it comes.
The challenge fabric is the black fabric with circles - Juggling Summer, part of Moda's Zen Chic collection by Brigette Heitland.
For this second quilt, I wanted to pair it with the princess and the pea bed from Heather Ross's Far Far Away collection that I bought at The Sewcial Lounge. I knew I wanted to build a house or some type of structure around the princess.
Initially, I was going to call this quilt "Princess Has Horrible Night". In this text print from Carrie Bloomston's Paint collection (which I also bought at The Sewcial Lounge), I found that phrase. It seemed fitting for a princess that couldn't sleep because of the pea under all her mattresses.
I was going to make a mini-newspaper, fussy cut around those words, and work it into the quilt.
The quilt was going to be filled with all the noisy things that kept her awake - frogs, fireworks, telephones, drums, etc. But I just couldn't get the retro fussy cut images and text to fit with the princess; the styles were too different.
I redesigned it and drew a little sketch of what order I would sew the pieces in. Once I had this sewed together, I was disappointed and distressed. The whole thing felt so negative and the colors were too harsh.
I almost wanted to give up, but I had told a lot of people I was making two quilts for the fabric challenge. I didn't want to be a quitter, so I kept at it and came up with a third plan. Sometimes three times really is a charm.
Now we come to the final design. This central part stayed the same through all three iterations.
The princess takes her first trip to the Big City, looking for excitement.
But uh oh:
- the mattresses aren't working for her
- she hates the wallpaper (challenge fabric) in her hotel room
- it's too hot (orange fabric)
- the buildings are crowded together (house fabric next to orange fabric)
- and there are fireworks going off
The "fireworks" fabric is by Sarah Watts from her August collection offered by Cotton and Steel - I bought it at The Sewcial Lounge. The roof fabric is by Jeni Baker. It's from her Nordika collection and I bought it at Mill House Quilts, although you'll find lots more of Jeni's fabric at The Sewcial Lounge.
The hotel the princess is staying at is on a busy street and fire trucks are going by all night long.
She thinks back to yesterday, when she was still home. Instead of fireworks in the sky, there are soft breezes filled with the scent of flowers and gentle colors. Frog ponds abound, as do meadows. The frog and meadow fabrics are also from Heather Ross's Far Far Away collection.
Instead of the crowded city, there's her castle.
Here's the front again - the harsh city fading out to the free and relaxed kingdom she can't wait to get back to. The Princess Prefers Her Palace.
The back uses up the rest of the Heather Ross fabric, along with a yard of umbrella fabric, just because the colors worked.
Because I started this quilt last Friday and finished it on Tuesday, I did simple quilting. I'm showing the stitching from the back, because sometimes it's easier to see that way.
Most of it was vertical lines, except for the "nice" sky where I free motioned around the large flowers. I also free motioned around the mattresses on the center front (not shown here), because I did that piece last, and there was a lot of bulk to take up.
A really simple label, because I finished this quilt just two hours before I had to leave for our guild meeting where all the fabric challenge quilts were going to be shown.
