The Plarn Rug

The plastic yarn rug is coming along ...

It's going quickly, and looking good, and it actually feels nice to stand on.

I'll probably sell the little rug on eBay or Etsy when it's done ...

More Reclaimed Textiles

There's just something about those thrift store shirts ...

I do enjoy finding a good deal on shirts and then "turning them into fabric"!

So, I've got some fun ideas what to do with these, once I finish the shirt quilt top I've already got going ...

Looks like at least a couple good projects ...

So, for today, my favorite fabric designers are ... Banana Republic, Izod, Old Navy, Dockers, and Roundtree&Yorke, just to name a few! (Yep. They make great shirts, and reclaimed textiles like shirts make great fabric for cost-effective sewing!)

Butterflies!

I've mentioned it before, but, again ...

I just love seeing butterflies on my flowers!

Know ye that
the Lord he is God:
it is he that
hath made us,
and not we ourselves;
we are his people,
and the sheep
of his pasture.

Psalm 100:3

Plastic Bag Yarn Crochet ...

I like crocheting with plastic bag "yarn" (a.k.a. "plarn"). I've made lots of crocheted plastic-bag bags (including these) ... but last weekend I saw a RUG crocheted out of plastic bags. 

So, of course, I had to try that idea ...

So, this crochet is a little tighter than my usual plarn crochet ... single layer of bag-yarn, and smaller crochet-hook ...

Anyway, I'm trying stripes of gray and white in a rectangular rug shape ...

I'll post more pictures when I have more progress to report.

Working on the shirt quilt ...

I've been sewing this up ...

But first, I had sixty-something of these blocks to trim and square up ... And that took a while.

And, yes. I purposely sized them so I could trim them with the only big-square-ruler I've got. This made it SO EASY to get them all square without a bunch of measuring!

The trimming was time consuming, but so worth it, since it resulted in a nice, neat stack of blocks that are all exactly the same size.

(See, messy ones on the right with funny corners; nice, neat ones on the left ...)

Such a nice, neat stack.

I've started sewing them together ...

And I'm loving the look!

Yellow Perennials

Last year, my family bought me flowers for my birthday: most specifically, they chose a variety of perennials ... And these ones are blooming happily! 

These are a type of Coreopsis, called "Creme Brulee".

I took these pictures in July ... and here it is September, and these little yellow flowers are still blooming!

Coreopsis. Very cheery.

Quilt Letters, again

So, I've been blogging about quilt-y letters here and here ...

And I'm making a few more letters. Here's a random assortment.

I love the idea that these letters have no raw edges sticking out, and there are no rules for how you put them together, or how crazy they can look ... 

But I still find it a little disturbing how unusual some of my letters end up looking ... and how not-alike the "same letter" can be ...

Since I'm planning to put these letters into a crossword-puzzle-quilt, they're supposed to look unique and sort of handwritten. (Right?)

There. There's an "H" that looks a little more photogenic than some ...

Here are some letters before being trimmed/squared up ...

And after getting nicely trimmed, they measure a nice, neat 2-and-a-half inches square:

Still having fun with these!

This. Is. Exciting.

Well, exciting in a sewing-geek kind of way: 

I GOT ALL THE STARS DONE!

According to this post, I started on this in December. (Didn't realize it's been than long!) 

Since this is English Paper Piecing, it's all stitched by hand, and it's become one of my favorite rocking-chair crafts.

Seems like there's always a lot of little bits coming together ... 

 

And one of my most-portable projects right now is a set of "parts" to put together the edge pieces that are whites and off-whites and creams ...

... which means that the minute I got the stars done, I was ready to add the beginning of the last side border!

Being realistic, I have to point out that I'm planning on a lot of diamond-border. So it'll be a while before this piece is done. Another row or two of cream-and-white diamonds, and then a single row of colored diamonds, and then a lot more white-and-cream. 

Too ambitious, maybe? But, right now, the whole thing is only 40" x 32". So I want the diamond-border part to be pretty substantial, to give the quilt a nice size. (Yeah. I used tiny diamonds. Remind me to use bigger diamonds when I try this design.)

In any case, I'm pretty excited about the progress! 

A Little Girly Quilt

A while back (see this post), I handstitched some pastels into an English Paper Piecing design ...

Last week, I finished it up into a little quilt, just in time for a friend's baby shower.

The pebble-quilting was fun on the other two little quilts I recently finished, so I did some more of that on this quilt. And I like the defined look that some contrast stitching gives, so I handstitched some pink perle cotton around the centerpiece.

It's hard to tell it from the photos, but the pebble quilting in the center is stitched in white, and the pebble quilting on the background is stitched in pink. Lately, I've started "signing" most of my quilts by stitching initials and a date into the quilting somewhere.

I'd had this cute piece of patchwork-looking fabric for a while, waiting for some cute baby-gift project, and it worked out well. The quilting even looks pretty good from the back!

All finished up!

I'm linking this post with this week's Little Quilt Monday ... so you might want to hop over there and see some little quilts that others are sharing!

Red Cannas!

Red cannas have been blooming lately ... Orange cannas were blooming a couple months ago; lately, there have been lots of red ones blooming!

One of the striking things about cannas is how enormous the leaves are ...

And another interesting thing is the neat look of the stalks after the flowers fall off ... (What do they call these? pods?)

Ooodles of flowers. About the time one flower fades, the one next to it is blooming ...

Tall, broad leaves - lots of them!

Tall, vivid flowers! I love them!

"O Lord, our Lord,

how excellent

is thy name

in all the earth!

who hast set thy glory

above the heavens."

Psalm 8:1