2013, Almost Wordless

JANUARY

 

 

FEBRUARY

 

 

 

 

MARCH

 

 

 

APRIL

 

 

MAY

 

 

JUNE

 

 

 

JULY

 

 

 

AUGUST

 

Good Bye.

 

 

SEPTEMBER

 

 

OCTOBER

 

 

NOVEMBER

 

 

DECEMBER

 

 

Thank you! to all my quilt-bloggy friends for your generous support, brilliant ideas, and true friendship.

 

I am lifting my glass to you all, and wishing us a healthy, healing, meaningful, and stitchful year ahead.

Black Friday! Fabric! Yay!

I am not a huge fan of Black Friday, uh uh.
The decade I lived in the US, I pretended it didn't exist.
This was made easier by the fact that I hate and despise shopping.

That was in the pre-fabric-addiction days, obviously.

Luckily for me, my good friends - my Shopping Advocates - at Hawthorne Threads kindly let me know that if I were the kind of person who loved fabric, I might enjoy their store soon after Thanksgiving.

And hoo, boy, did I ever!

Look what just arrived in the mail -  yay! When you live on a whole nother continent, this passes for BIG NEWS! Oh, who am I kidding? Fabric is always big news. Right?

These are for my purple and fuchsia quilt, and I confess, I am rather in love with the eggplant solid, yum.

These were Just Because.
They all match. And are village-y. And just adorable. And they stuck a bird on it.

These yellows are for a wall hanging that features a glowing light. I have no idea how I'm going to create a glow. So I just keep collecting yellows in the hope that one day, it will come to me.

By the way, you totally can't tell how beautiful these fabrics are in this photo. But trust me. They are beautiful.

 

I am not the world's best fabric photographer, and I did wonder if I should take a tip from male photographers all over the world: would it look better if it had a naked woman on it? You know, like in car ads?

 

I think it does.

 

 

 

Linking up with Live A Colorful Life - enjoy! 

O Gel Pen, How Do I Love Thee?

As I started to embroider my sister's challah cover, the key question was "How do I stitch navy on navy?"

I started by using sewing chalk, and my usual folksy philosophy to stitching anything: a little back-stitch never hurt anyone.

 

 

Well, it might not hurt. But it ain't helping any.

 

So I hunted around, and discovered the insanely phenomenal website of Mary Corbet, Needle 'n Thread, where Mary explains everything hand embroidered in great, fabulous detail. This is like a drug for any stitchy perfectionist. Big love. 

 

Then I turned to my non-Google resource: my quilt group.

 

Here is a good opportunity to introduce my stitching buddies: we quilt, sew garments, knit, crotchet, embroider and grow food. We are a bunch of 30- and 40- somethings from the USA and UK, all living now within a 5 minute radius in a small town in Israel. We get together when we can to admire each other's works in progress, share books, celebrate birthdays, and laugh a lot. Between the 7 of us, we have over 30 children, and nearly all of us hold down out-of-the-home jobs, so our meetings are few and far between. But very wonderful when they happen.

 

Quiltmeet! Enjoying a rare breakfast date.

These friends are my greatest resource for just about anything stitchy. We email each other constantly. They are the kind of people who can say right off the bat, "Oh yeah. Water soluble stabiliser," and "I have some if you need." That's what I call friends. And then my stabiliser-giving friend gave me a tip: don't trace the design onto the stabiliser in black, because it won't show on the black background fabric. Smart lady.

 

So I bought a WHITE GEL PEN. I ♥ my gel pen. It is perfect for the job and makes me happy.

 

I printed out my text in a few sizes.

I traced it onto the stabiliser with my AWESOME gel pen.

I put it in a hoop.

 

Ha ha! Just kidding.

 

 

Didja notice?
How I wrote so nicely and neatly near the edge of the stabiliser?
And how completely USELESS that is when hooping up?

I wrote it again, in the middle of the stabiliser, and put it in a hoop.

And started stitching.

 

 

I backstitched around the edge, just like Mary Corbet told me to, and I'm using one strand of thread to ensure smoothness because she told me to, too. Clearly this is never, ever going to get finished. Ever. But I shall keep sewing on, as the hand-stitching is very calming and peaceful. And because my sister might kill me if I don't.

 

Teaching the Next Generation

Okay, so first of all. I kinda missed November. Like, completely. I'm so sorry.

I mean, really sorry. Because I'd much rather have been sewing than arranging my son's surgery, and holding his hand through it.
Good news! The surgery is behind us, and he is doing great!
So that little no-sew excuse is over. Phew.

While we were juggling that whole hospitalisation thing, my Mum came to visit.

And, after leafing through a variety of quilting magazines I've accrued over more than a decade she decided to learn to quilt. And that I would teach her. In 1 day.

(To the soundtrack of "Rocky"...)

We used scraps to learn to cut, lay out, chain piece, and iron. We were awesome.

She then did it all again with non-scraps, and turned it all into a quilted place-mat with hand-stitched binding (hand stitching was finished after she flew home) - check out the mitred corners, next-to-the-ditch machine quilting and neatly meeting corners.

 

With much pomp and circumstance, I give you, my Mum, New Quilter Extraordinaire!