Monday is Fun Day - Rudolph in the Terrarium

I've had this terrarium for over four years.  It did really well until the plants started dying off earlier this year.

I was tempted to run to the nursery this morning to refill the right side.  But then I got sidetracked digging out winter decorations and I decided to fill it up with non-perishable items.

I already had Rudolph (his nose lights up when you push on his tail) and the ornaments.  The mailbox and fire hydrant are recent acquisitions from a non-profit organization's thrift sale.

I moved it to the corner of my desk; nice company for Rudolph and nice company for me.

Monday is Fun Day - Vintage Fawn

My favorite flea market was open this weekend, and I was a bull in a china shop.  Oops.

I picked up this tiny (2") fawn and promptly dropped it on the floor, breaking off both ears.  Before the accident, I was pretty sure I wanted to buy it, and my clumsiness sealed the deal.  

The problem was, I couldn't find the ears.  I asked the owner to help me, and she said if we couldn't find the ears, she would make it a hat.  She was the one that gave it the tinsel-and-bell collar, so a hat wouldn't be completely amiss.  But with some effort, she found one ear, and I found the other one five feet away.  My husband glued them back on and all is well.

The Start of Two Dogs

I have three dog patterns laying around the house, so I think I ought to make some of them.  I'm starting with my most recent acquisition.

The pattern is by Stephanie Nordlin and its name is "Sirius Fun".   You're supposed to make two dogs, then slice them in half and swap their halves.  I'm not sure I'm going to do that.

I could have just bought the kit, but I thought I should use up my own fabric.  It took me forever, and I mean forever, to pick my fabrics.  Like this, they don't look the greatest.  BUT...

This fabric is going to play a prominent part in the quilt and I think it does a good job of pulling everything together.  At least that was my intention when building the dogs.  Plus the white gives a nice break from all the saturated color.

So far, all I've done is fuse the fabric.  But like I said, picking out the fabric was the hard part and everything will be much easier from here on. 

Monday is Fun Day - Cloisonne Jazz Age Bead

On a trip to the International Quilt Market years ago, I came across a vendor with the most wonderful assortment of beads, buttons, pins, and trinkets.  

I bought this cloisonné bead depicting a Jazz Age party.  

It's shaped like a discus - fuller in the center, sloping outwards along the edge.  The diameter is 2.5" and it's  .5" tall in the center.  It feels heavy, but it only weighs one ounce.

I never came up with a good idea on what to do with it, but I think I have one now.  

From the Vault - Zinnia Quilt

I still have lots of old quilts I haven't shown you, so I'm not sure why I haven't shown any in six months.  Too busy making new ones, I guess.

Zinnia Quilt is a small (13" x 22") wall hanging that I made in 2008.  I don't have the pattern any longer, so I can't give proper credit to the designer.

The technique is fused applique.  I free motioned the zinnia petals.

The center of each zinnia has LOTS of French knots.

Veining on the leaves was also done in free motion.

All the fabrics are batik.  For quilting, I stitched in the ditch on both sides of the purple border, then did an outline of the leaves and zinnias.  All the leaves and flowers are nice and poofy.

I wove this rake in October 2012, and it's been hanging next to Zinnia Quilt ever since. That all came to an end this week.  More about that later.

Plum Millie - the Finish

This morning I finished my latest quilt, based on the Modern Millie pattern.  I call my quilt Plum Millie, because of the plum-colored background fabric.

It was mostly done for a long time - I just couldn't decide which binding to use.  These were the contenders - the green at the top was a very late entrant.  

Here was my thought process:

• The plum binding on the right didn't give enough of a stopping point for my eye.  
• The peach at the bottom was a candidate because I used it on the back sashing.  It softened all the jewel tones of the quilt front, but it looked too puny.  
• The fabric on the left is what my strips are made of, and it felt too matchy-matchy to use that in the binding.  
• I went through my stash one more time, and this time unearthed the chartreuse batik at the top, which was the winner. 

This was the perfect choice - powerful enough to hold its own while introducing a nice contrast.

This photo also shows a good view of the quilting.  You might remember that I quilted each 12" block separately, made with a full sandwich.  

In an ideal world, it would have looked better if I had pieced the top, then made a normal sandwich with one large backing piece.  That way I could have carried those different colors of thread continuously from one block to the next.  But I do all my own quilting and only have one domestic machine, and I'm not a fan of heaving and pushing all that bulk around.  So lately I've been experimenting with various types of quilt-as-you-go.

From this far back, the quilting doesn't really seem to matter too much.  

I spent a lot of time arranging the blocks just so, and making sure I didn't mix them up when quilting.  Now I look at it and wonder what the big deal was.  Besides, I picked a spot where I need to hang it in a landscape, not portrait orientation, which completely wasted that time.

  

Since I quilted full sandwiches, I had to cover my seams with sashing.  This peach fabric worked well, and it was one of candidates for the binding.

There's no sleeve on here, because I wanted it to be a double-sided quilt.  I'm going to put those pinch-type curtain rings on it and slide it onto a curtain rod.

I'm not sure I'll do this type of quilt-as-you-go again.  Those back seams are bunchy and knobby, and the sashing isn't straight.  I didn't think I would care, but I do.  

I guess I found my limits in the number of shortcuts I'm willing to take when making a quilt.  I've never sent a quilt out for quilting, and never will, so I need to find a happy medium.

Tired of working on this quilt, I made the simplest quilt label ever.  Then I stitched it into the block that coordinated with it the best, so it would blend in.

Monday is Fun Day - Elephant Cookie Jar

I was waiting in line to pay for a roll of handmade paper, when something far off, high up, caught my eye.

 Is it a teapot, I asked the clerk?

No, it's a cookie jar, she replied.  It made no difference to me, since I wasn't going to use it for either function.  I just wanted a teal elephant to display on my shelves.