More or Less

Hi and welcome back!  I missed you!

Since I started this blog in late August, I've learned a lot and had more fun than I ever anticipated.  But I've done very little new sewing / purse making / book making since then.  I've seen this happen with other bloggers.  Some slowly wind down; some stop altogether.  I don't want to be either one of those, so I decided I needed a new plan.
 
I spent last week catching up on some things and thinking.  Each time I did something, I found myself asking if I wanted to do more of it or if I wanted to do less of it.  Sometimes I didn't know what I wanted to do!   For example, I spent the first two days of my vacation cleaning.  I got on such a roll, and things were looking so clean and shiny, that I halfway wanted to keep at it the rest of the week.  Luckily, my husband set me straight on that being a bad idea!

In order to regain some balance in my life, I'm going to cut back from five posts a week.  Most of you don't check in every day and probably won't notice a difference.  I'll keep my same features (Not Just Another Pretty Face, Tea for Tuesday, Thursday Theme, Thursday is Purse Day, From the Vault), but in most cases you won't see all of them in the same week.  

By spending more time on new creations, I'll be sure to continue to fill my energy pie.  And I hope to have more of a balance of new to old on my blog.
 

This is an ad from the November 1935 issue of McCall's magazine.  I bought it last month on a trip to a vintage store.  It looks to me like these women are coming up with a new plan, too.  Autumn is a good time to start re-evaluating, what with the short days and all.

I'm excited for the future for me and, if you decide you need a new plan as well,  for you too!!

Refocusing

We'll be taking a little break in order to take some of my own advice.  See you next Sunday, November 25.  Have a good week and be sure to spend your time in a way that is important to you!

Thursday is Purse Day - Poodle Purse

Let's mix it up a little - sometimes Thursdays have a theme and sometimes they have purses.  
In the Thursday is Purse Day series, I'll show you purses I made and explain the process/inspiration behind them.

 

This is the front of Poodle Purse.  I was inspired by the poodle appliques with the 3-d pom pom tails.  I think this is my only purse with a V-neck.  That shape and the black lace help to emphasize the poodles and give the purse a really feminine feel.

Pom poms everywhere!  The fabric is seersucker - you can somewhat see the puckers around each of the tiny rectangles.  Lots of texture on this purse!

This is the back of Poodle Purse.  A strip of sparkly beaded trim frames the poodle picture.  The vertical sides of the outer frame are velvet ribbon woven through cording.  I can't take credit for it; I bought it that way.

I had two tassels left over from the front, so had to use them of course!  I love tassels; they're so silky and soft like a poodle's ears.

Interior pocket, attached with bugle and seed beads.

Nearly all of my purses have cards where I write my name and the completion date.  (Elephant Purse doesn't have one.)  This is the front of the card, made from a wallpaper sample.  It looks like she's talking into her shoe.  I wonder what's in that cup?

All Packed Up

When I bought the embroidery books and hoops that I told you about in Hoop Dee Dah, I naturally bought more embroidery floss.  Well, I had to, because it was on sale.

This is the new floss I bought, twenty skeins.  Are they called skeins?  Anyhow, this is how they always start out, nice and parallel. 

 

This is what my old stash looked like when I took it out of the drawer.  I didn't try to make it messy, either!!!  No way was I going to put my nice new parallel lines of floss into the piggy drawer.  I need a new system.  But what???

This is one of the new pigs that recently joined the sounder.  He tells me he has an idea on what to do.  I'm all ears.

Sorry, I misunderstood.  I thought he meant he had an organizing solution.  We better leave this to me.  This calls for another shopping trip...

This is my 3-ring binder.  They sure make some cute binders nowadays.  I'm going to store my floss inside the cute binder, so that every time I open it, I get excited, instead of annoyed with a piggy drawer.

This is the storage solution.  You wrap the floss around the cardboard bobbin, tuck the bobbin in a slot of the plastic sheet, then file the plastic sheet in the cute binder.

Monday night I wound 58 bobbins in four hours.  (I couldn't help it; I had to keep track.)

Let me tell you why I'm glad I did this:

• I got rid of intra-floss tangles: Some of the paper on the old skeins was really stuck to the floss and pulling on the tail just wasn't working.  How frustrating that would be, to be needing another little piece of floss, and then running into a tangle when you go to get more!  It would destroy your embroidery karma. 
• I got rid of inter-floss tangles:  You were there - you saw the picture from the piggy drawer. 
• The floss is easily accessible.
• You can see at a glance which colors are heavily represented, and which aren't.  I found out I have LOTS of green.
• I learned  which colors have enduring appeal to me.  There were four new ones that were the exact match of ones I already had.

So here it is - all packed up and ready for me to go embroider.

Tea for Tuesday

Each Tuesday I'll be featuring a vignette of tea-related items.  Most of them will have one of my teapots; they all have at least one thing you could use at a tea party.

This is the other dinner napkin I got at the antique store last month.  You saw its partner yesterday in Hoop Dee Dah.

I could see using this set at a dog's birthday party.  You could put special treats in the sugar bowl and fine water in the creamer.  The napkin is a hint as to what the dog should do before the party.

 

Here's the back.  Taking the photograph, I noticed a chip on the handle of the creamer.  Oh well.

I bought these at the Elkhorn Flea Market last year.  That place is HUGE!!!  The day I was there, it rained like crazy, but it was still fun.
 

Hoop Dee Dah

The essence of the Modern Quilt movement is that it takes old concepts and updates them with contemporary colors and fabric.  Instead of turning its back on Log Cabin, Churn Dash, Half-Square Triangles, etc., it plays with them in a new way.  It makes them fun again.  And you know what fun does - it inspires you and gets you going.

I particularly like what's happening with hand embroidery lately.  For those of us that like to color inside the lines, and who cut out their paper dolls exactly on the lines, embroidery has a strong appeal.  I'm not talking about the stitching done in crazy quilting, which is more free-spirited.  I'm talking about transferring a pattern to fabric, then stitching on the lines.  This might be a little bit paint-by-the-numbers for some, but for others there is calmness in the method.

 

One of the things that attracted me to this Madeline dress form pattern was the chance to stitch the words "hand made" by hand.

Last month I found this hand-embroidered dinner napkin at an antique store.  I think it's most likely from the 1950s, maybe earlier.  The whimsical style is not unusual for embroidery patterns and it really appeals to me.

Sublime Stitching is a site that has lots of modern embroidery.  It lit a fire under me, inspiration-wise, so this past weekend I got charged up and decided to do something about it.

 So I bought this book ...

 ... and this book ...

 ... and this pattern.  The pattern has iron-on transfers, but with the books I need to transfer by tracing.  Between the two books and this pattern, I have a choice of motifs in all sizes - some are as small as one inch, some are nine inches.  I think the hardest part will be in deciding which colors, and how many, to use.  Too few and it will look flat, too many and it will look crummy.  Hopefully, paging through all the color photographs in the Doodle Stitching book will be like taking lessons. 

Look what's happened to embroidery hoops --- HOOP DEE DAH!!!!  Aren't they gorgeous?!?!?!  I love plastic!  Since I'm not sure what to do with my embroidered goodies (I'm not into tea towels or pillowcases), I think a good share of them will remain in one of these colored hoops which will make a nice frame to hang on the wall.

Not Just Another Pretty Face

Each Sunday, I'll take a break from the material aspects of this blog and spend a little time looking at the finer points of pigdom.  Most people probably appreciate the ham and bacon side of pigs; little do they know they have a deeper side as well.  We'll start the week with a peek into the favorite quotes of thoughtful pigs and also learn a pig factoid (pigoid?) in a feature called Pigipedia.

PIGIPEDIA
In the summer of 2008, 60 pigs were rescued from a levee in Iowa where they had been stranded during a flood, left behind by evacuated farmers.  They were severely dehydrated, emaciated, and had third degree burns from the sun.  Their lungs were damaged from water inhaled as they swam for their lives.  Many of them were injured.  All were terrified.

After months of rehabilitation, most of them were stable and ready to move on.  Fifteen of them found a home in a sanctuary in West Virginia where they will live out their lives far from the factory farm where they started.