A few odds and ends

None of these worthy of it's own post so I decided to make a "grouping". What the heck!!

This is a beautiful arrangement I received in December. You can't miss with purple and green!

This is a print done by my friend Janine on white linen/homespun. I heat set it and will probably "color it up" with thickened dyes. In French it means, Anything is possible or Everything is possible. You've got to love that.

This is my sweet Owen on "his" love seat and on "his" quilt. Usually he has his head on one of the two pillows he has claimed. He actually sleeps in this position!!

First few dolls

They finally arrived on Saturday and I went to work immediately going through the box FILLED with clothes and accessories as well as 16 dolls. All the clothes went into a bag to try to resell on eBay and the dolls went into a "hot tub" of warm water and Ivory dish washing liquid.

I used a nail brush to scrub their bodies and rinsed them off. You can see some feet/shoes I soaked as well.

Drip drying

Action central: acetone and paint

From this

to this

From this

to this 

I forgot to get a before picture of him

From this

to this

From this

to this

After a few experiments I decided to make all the shoes in white and add color with paint. I love the Mary Janes.

 

Five painted and with new clothes, ready to find new homes.

Another dolly pattern of a dress this time.

EPP finished

When Ellen first gave me the finished top, I put it in a post and asked for suggestions on how to quilt it. The majority of comments were to follow the seams. I stitched to the side of each seam with a 1/4" row of stitches. I stitched both top to bottom and side to side.

The sandwich all pinned.

A saw this on a DVD. Take a photo of the quilt and practice drawing stitch lines on the paper. It's much easier and faster tha ripping out stitches.

Finished

Binding and a close-up of the stitching

The flannel back.

After I finished this post I put the quilt on the chair in the living room. It looked so amazing as thought it was MADE for that room that I had to take a couple of pictures.

While waiting for the dolls to arrive

One of the four dolly knit patterns I bought and the tiny blue sweater I knit. Man, small isn't necessarily easy!!

Ellen's English Paper pieced quilt

You may remember way back two and a half years ago when I was having chemo, I had started a nice, easy to carry project for the hours I would spend in chemo. Well, I ended up with neuropathy in my hands and feet and couldn't feel the needle. My friend Judith's daughter, Ellen, who is also a friend, offered to finish the EPP quilt for me. I had done maybe a foot square. She spent A LOT of time taking teeny tiny stitched and assembled this 45 X 50" quilt. She gave it to me over a year ago and I am embarrassed to say I have been looking at it since then. I HATE UFOs so I decided to clear up all the pieces staring me in the face.

Look at all those tiny stitches. She developed a callus on her finger from the needle!

Zigzagging odd pieces of backing together to use.

This was white flannel I had used on my design wall. I popped it in a plastic basin with green dye. I thought flannel would make a soft backing.

Ready to pin. Stay tuned.

Something a "little" different

OK, this is marginally embarrassing but I am so psyched that I don't care. While recouping from some surgery in December, I spent an inordinate amount of time on the computer. I happened to spot this on Facebook and started watching all her DIY videos. Well to make a long story short, I bought a "lot" of 16 used Bratz dolls (hideous things) and they should arrived Wednesday. Sonia also sells knitting patterns for her sweet dollies on etsy so I bought four variation. I managed to find my 2, 3, and 4 size needles and gathered up some yarn scraps. I think you can count of a few posts about me playing with dolls.
Of course my ADD self can't just do one thing so I am finally finishing the English Paper Pieced quilt Judith's daughter, Ellen, made for me while I was having chemo 2 years ago. It is really stunning. I will post about next. Today I am dyeing some white flannel purple for the back of the EPP quilt. That will be soft on my lap and it will stick to me and not slide off.

* Tree Change is an Australian term used when one moves from the city to the country. It basically means "back to nature".

Quilt finished

I have been working on this for about 6 months, on and off. So to recap, this is a bed quilt I made with my gynormous stash of commercial fabrics. I made it up as I went along trying really hard not to make it another Drunkard's Path quilt although I did do 3 blocks using that template. The template also came in handy later...

As you know on a QAYG quilt you connect the blocks into rows then use connectors to join the rows. I thought (what a great idea) to join 2 rows then two separate rows instead of rows one, two, three and four. My rationale was that at least for a short time I wouldn't have the weight of all four rows while connecting. Remember this quilt is backed with flannel - HEAVY! So here are the two sections of two rows each.

Here is the quilt center completed. All four rows are joined and it is ready for the sashing and border. 

Actually, that block with the green circle is the "signature" block and is supposed to be on the lower right like in the photo below even though you can't even see it!

I cut all of the commercial batik for the border and then thought It might not be quilt large enough so I dyed two yards of fabric a matching/complimentary turquoise to add 20" in width and length (10" each side which trimmed out to about 9")

The halogen lights in my new "studio" take terribly inaccurate COLOR pictures. The fabric which I will try to photograph in natural light is actually a nice mid-value. Below is the turquoise fabric stitched to the Batik that will be the border. Also on top of that is continuous bias strips (in progress). 

Finally a sunny day! Would you believe I ran out of my custom turquoise for making bias strips!! The fabric on the right came out of my hand-dyed stash. Phew!! Now I have enough to bind the quilt.

All the bias strips are joined (36 ft) and ironing in half ready to stitch on but wait.....

I have to trim off all the raged edges before stitching. At night, in bed the thought occurred to me,"This is for a bed and not the wall so why not round the corners."

The Drunkards Path template came to the rescue and I had four perfectly rounded corners.

I of course didn't get a picture of the binding which was probably the best binding job ever (for me). I also didn't want to put it on the floor to take a picture. Trust me it was beautiful. Maybe Patricia will send a photo of it on her bed.

Here it is all ready to be mailed. It is rolled with a couple of layers of this weird fabric I bought 100 yards of but use for odd purposes like covering a quilt.

I did make a "sample" of the binding with a cut off scrap just for continuities sake and would you believe both camera's batteries were dead. Ugh! I took a picture under halogen lights with my phone. Guess it's better than a stick in the eye (Maine expression).