What a coincidence! I finished Session 3 of my Longhorn appliqué wall hanging and WordPress chose “Create” as this week’s photo challenge. And here he is, Dippity-Do after Session 3, where I finished the Longhorn body. I see that I need to tweak one of his back legs, where it looks like a pirate’s peg leg.
The headless Longhorn
I still have to arrange the grass, sky and clouds. The pattern is by Susan Cranshaw.
Now he has a head and horns!
Weekly Photo Challenge: Create
This is my gift to Shelly for her birthday: I sewed a fabric bowl in her favorite colors (red, black and white). Once I have a gift ready, I’m in a hurry to give to the recipient, so she got it a couple of weeks early. Shelly and I were Muddy Buddy buddies in 2008 and a few days ago I posted a photo of us after we crossed the finish line/mud pit.
Shelly’s birthday present
Yes, we have bananas!
All wrapped up!
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Here are some bananas in the bowl, so you can get a sense of its size.
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I always use fabric as the wrapping for Shelly’s gift and that becomes part of the gift. I put a paper towel roll (not bananas) standing up in the bowl, to disguise the shape until she unwrapped it.
Recently I took a class at Sew Much More in north Austin. It was the Rope Basket Class. I’d had the It’s A Wrap book for years (literally), but hadn’t done anything more than read through it several times. I was happy when I saw they were offering a rope basket class.
Fabric bowl and lid
So here’s my rope basket and lid from the class. I used a little bit less than a yard of fabric and about 50 feet of cotton clothesline cording. The sewing time in class was just under two hours. Our pre-class homework task was to wrap the cotton cording with the fabric. That took me five hours. I kid you not. Thank goodness baseball season had started so I had something to distract me during the five long hours of fabric wrapping. And the Cubs won, so that was a bonus.
Open for business
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The next day I had a definite pain in the back of my shoulder. I was sure it came from me holding my left hand and shoulder in pretty much the same position for that five-hour period, holding up the cord while I wrapped it with fabric using my right hand. As I knew where the pain originated, I didn’t overreact and think I was nearing the end of my sewing days so soon.
Yes, we have bananas!
I took an appliqué class recently. The morning of the class, I had my sewing machine, class supplies and lunch all loaded up. I looked as if I was going off to camp for a week instead of a one-day class.
I had seen the wall-hanging appliqué quilt at the quilt show and I thought, “That’s really nice. I bet hubby would like that.” I bought the pattern, the fabrics and the thread. I was ready to go to class. When I bought the pattern, my goal was to have it ready for hubby’s birthday, in September. After a few hours in the class, I updated that time frame to Christmas. By the end of the class, I changed it to Christmas 2013.
The pattern I bought, the longhorn, probably wasn’t the best choice for someone who has never done any appliqué. The longhorn head alone has almost 50 pieces. I managed to cut out five pieces in class. Five. Now that I think about it, Christmas 2013 may be just a wee bit optimistic.
Some time ago I talked the editor of my local chapter of the American Sewing Guild into letting me submit columns for the quarterly newsletter.
I named the column “Thread Tales.” (A cute sewing/writing pun, I thought.) For those of you who are not a member of the Austin chapter of the ASG, here is my upcoming column.
Thread Tales: How to Shop For Fabric
(1) Clean out the trunk of your car (or the back of the SUV or the hatchback, whichever is appropriate) so that you have room for your purchases.
(2) Load the fabric shop addresses and phone numbers into your smart phone or GPS.
(3) Start out with a full tank of gas and an empty bladder.
(4) Pick up your best fabric-shopping friend.
(5) Have an envelope with your cash in it for the shopping trip. It’s very important to stick to a budget.
(6) Have two credit cards with available balances to use after you spend all of your cash.
(7) Be ready with made up stories you will tell people in the checkout line as to what project you are buying the fabric for. Fabric does not need a project in order to be bought, but some people just don’t understand this concept. Pay no attention to them; they are amateurs.
(8) Buy fabric.
(9) Eat lunch and bring the bags of your new fabric into the restaurant so you and your friend can swoon over each other’s purchases even though you were right next to each other when you bought the fabric.
(10) Buy more fabric after lunch.
(11) Buy enough fabric so that you have enough to fill up your washing machine when you get home. There is nothing worse than coming home to a house with nothing that needs washing and not having enough new fabric to warrant using the washing machine. (We are, after all, very ecologically aware.) Under no circumstances should you accost your husband and say, “Take off all of your clothes!” He will get the wrong idea and you will not get to wash your fabric right away. Those of you who do not wash fabric before using it can skip this step.
(12) Add the new fabric to your collection. It is beautiful just sitting on the shelf.
(13) Schedule your next day to shop for fabric.
It's a long story ... 