Leaf it to Abby and me!

As I mentioned in a previous post, the Liquitex didn't work out for coating and preserving the leaves. I bought some good old fashioned gloss Modge Podge and used that.

Then I used my sewing machine to punch holes along the edge of one of the leaves.

I did this so that they would be evenly spaced.

It was tricky (but not as hard as I'd expected) to then crochet into those holes.

I did a simple design around the leaf, starched the crochet thread and pinned it to set the pattern.

This is all the farther I've gotten. I'll keep you posted.

I got the center of our guild's Mystery Quilt 2022 done.

I love the way this dances!

 

I took two photos because the lighting in my studio is not the best for photography.

Next I'll do the borders and then it will need to be quilted.

Abby has been as busy as I have been:

On today's design wall I am back to organizing orphan blocks.

Not snow, but big ol' drops of rain!

I hope you enjoyed my rainy day post.

Till next time, enjoy your life!

Summertime slowdown? . . . NOPE!

I hope you have time to read all this. 

I'm sorry it's rather long today. I've been a tad busy.

This is my design wall as of this afternoon:

This is what it looked like last week:

I have not actually been making a bunch of quilts. I've been playing with orphan blocks. The ones in the above photo, on the upper left, are the beginnings of "Swirlygig" our guild's mystery quilt challenge. All the rest of the blocks in both photos are orphans that need to be set into some sort of organized chaos before coming together into a quilt top.

I finally got back to working on the embroidery 2022 project. 

Jingly Bits Minstrels are coming along quite nicely!

Remember the leaves from last time? I had covered them in Liquitex. Well, that didn't work like I'd hoped. 

I went and bought some actual Modge Podge in the glossy finish and did some new leaves.

 

I'm not quite sure why it's going on so strangely on the back sides. 

I will give them all more than one coating of the goop, before proceeding to the next step.

I have a walking stick that I use sometimes when we're camping. I always wished it had a handle. I don't know why it took me so long, but I figured out that I could actually MAKE one!

There's an interesting side note to this project. The tutorials I found online all used paracord. It's a type of thin strong rope that melts when you burn the ends and that stops it from fraying. Well, a few months ago, while camping, my husband found a long length of paracord in our campsite! We'd brought it home and had set it in the garage with no idea what we'd use it for. I guess Ms Fate knew! hahahaha

BTW, I tested the handle today and it worked wonderfully!!!

I recently had to rip out about seven rounds of crochet work because I had discovered a mistake.

Can you see it? Look at the bottom of the left hand photo. That is the correct stitch. I had made three out of four of those, wrong!!! I have finally caught back up to where I had to rip this out and it is back on track again. 

 

Oh look! Here's a little visit from Abby:

Don't worry, Abby is fine. Just don't drink rain water, ok?

My #3 Son has a plant named Robert. 

(Yes, Robert Plant)

He let me have one of Robert's kids. 

We have named him Bobby.

I hope Bobby will be happy here. 

Till next time y'all, happy crafting!

 

Don't Leaf Me Alone!

I have strange friends. No surprise there, right? Anyway, one of them started talking to me about doing embroidery on leaves. I've heard about it but have never tried to do it. I went to my neighbor's house and asked her if I could gather some leaves from her magnolia tree. She gave me a strange look but said "Sure, go ahead." Then she quickly jumped into her car and drove away.

 

I got both dead and live leaves. I used my sewing machine on one of the leaves, just to see what would happen. The rest have been coated in Liquitex. (A type of ModgePodge) I don't know where this will be going but it's fun to try new things.

I joined a bunch of fabric strips together and am messing around with them. I cut the piece into two parts and have put a border strip on each. I am setting this one aside for now. I'm not sure where I am going with it.

This is the mystery quilt challenge project for our quilt guild. There are two blocks that make up the quilt. The pattern is starting to take shape. There are SO many little pieces though!!!

Abby visited all week too:

 

That's it for today! Till next time, happy crafting y'all!!!