Posts….

Oh, Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree….

It is now the ‘official’ start of the holiday season, the turkey has been eaten, the crazy folks who wanted to do Black Friday are napping, curled up amidst their shopping bags.

I got this idea for a Christmas tree pin from… well,I was walking around the Houston Quilt Show, in an overloaded daze, to be honest, all sorts of ideas flying through my head, and this one glided by slow enough for me to grab a hold of it and plot it out, step by step as I wandered.

  • Create snips or burrow through your waste basket for the left over snippets of your last project. Don’t worry if they don’t play nice together.
  • Then, locate a piece of Peltex about printer paper size. Lay out the scraps on the Peltex, covering pretty much the entire surface. (If it’s fusible, iron it now, if not, press down with your fingers to kind of lock everything in place.

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  • Rummage through your specialty yarn stash and artfully drape a yard or two all over the fabric.
  • A nice glittery piece of gold tulle is layered on top of all of this.

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  • Head over to your machine with a pretty thread and go wild practicing some free motion quilting.
  • Because too much is never enough, I spritzed the entire thing with some fabric paint. (This, along with the yarn, tulle and stitching, kind of makes it all blend together nicely)

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  • Once that dried, I got out my paint knife and a bit of Golden’s Medium and swiped it across the entire thing, and sprinkled with glittery stuff. (Not really glitter, it’s tiny little flecks of iridescent goodies I found somewhere, once.)
  • I glued a piece of white cardstock to the back –(next time, I will use green, so I don’t have to worry about paint on the back)

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  • After it dries (LONG time, lol, go to work or something fun like that)  I cut the entire thing into 2 inch strips, and then cut out tree shaped triangles. (Forgot that photo!)
  • I used a mix of medium and bright green acrylic paint and painted all the white edges, dipping the bottom edge into micro beads before laying out to dry.

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  • My last step was to paint the back green, because of the sloppy edge of the green I applied.
  • Signed, dated and glued on a pin back!

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The finished pin!  A full sheet produced 24 pins.

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Enjoy!!!

Linking to Off The Wall Fridays for the first time!

Don’t forget! Christmas Photo A Day starts on DEC 1! Register to receive notifications every morning when this blog updates.

We want more STUFF!!

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Somewhere on Staten Island, NY, post Sandy. ©DESIREE ARROYO

Every day, we go out and buy STUFF. It’s how we entertain ourselves— strolling the malls, poking around in clothing stores and home repair stores and home décor stores and grocery stores and book stores and craft stores and –well, I was going to say record stores, but that isn’t quite what they are anymore—and when push comes to shove, the dollar store or the corner market.

We shop. We acquire, we accumulate.

The stuff we own possesses us after a time.

We buy bigger houses with bonus rooms, or at least go rent a storage unit so we can keep all of our stuff. The stuff we buy attempts to announce our worth to the people who ring us out at the cash register, to the people who see us with it, and to the person we stare at in the mirror each morning while brushing our teeth.

We want MORE! Bigger, better, faster, cheaper. Stuff. THINGS.

I’ve written before about things. Actually for a while there I was writing about things, and getting rid of things ….but I digress. (because I have not succeeded; although I am more aware, I am not cured)

  • Look around you.
  • Take a look at that photo, above.
  • How are you doing?
  • Do you NEED anything more than the people you love surrounding you and laughter and memories made?

Remember, there are MANY who would be thrilled to have a home in which to have dinner this year.

Happy Thanksgiving.  (And here, a smallish little rant-y kind of blog about shopping on this weekend from a few years back. Add to it Thanksgiving DAY shopping and those in food service. Remember, if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.  Rolling on the floor laughingNyah-Nyah)

Post-Houston..

…I’m back. The heck with Sandy my ass. Sandy  destroyed huge swathes of my home town, of my childhood. I purposely chose to avoid as much of the televised experience as I could. I preferred it that way after 9-11, when we had no TV because our antennas had been on the towers. I preferred it that way this time as well.

It hurts my heart to see photos posted on Facebook. It is worse as days go on, and more and more people come back to post, finally with power, and tell their unique, yet universal, tales of woe. It pleases me beyond measure to see my forgotten borough of Staten Island behaving in such civic minded and neighborly ways, via the magic of Facebook. And now, a week out, news cycles later, with the wonderfully Hooloovoo color our country turned on Tuesday with the election, we need to remember it isn’t over, not by a long shot. New York and New Jersey will be suffering for a long time to come.

But, this post isn’t about that. It’s about QUILTS! And fabric. And the International Quilt Show in Houston, TX. (my photos,– none my quilts!– with placards after each piece. It requires a password. IQF/12 ) Enjoy!

The show was amazing. Fantabulous, even. Just inspiring and tiring and crazy large, and overwhelming and just perfect. I met so many wonderful artists at the SAQA/Quilt Art reception hosted by Karey Bresenhan, I met quilters from message boards I frequent, and I even serendipitously ended up next to someone I had tried to reach out to via email and never connected with! And those wonderful Facebook friends that I finally got to meet IRL!

Patricia “Pokey” Bolton and me at Craftsy’s Open Studios—(VERY cool idea)

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A quilted Yurt… (with Jamie Fingal posing for me as “Gert in a Yurt”)

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My “Haul”…or as male quilter I met from Kentucky called it, new items to add to my collection. (the idea being no one is expected to USE the stamps or the coins they collect, so….) ETA:  I had shoppers block! It was odd… I didn’t have a vision of  what I wanted to buy, and was paralyzed by all the choices…. I finally found one booth where I let loose.. and it was over. The fabrics I bought…many feel like Sandy. There is a quilt there, about my home…we shall see.

An overview….T-shirt, yardage and other assorted toys (Emails from China quilt on the wall)

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A selection of the ATC and Mug Rug Swap that was set up by the Craftsy booth.

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A ‘detail’ of some beads, rulers, paints, as well as my purchase from the  Pet Charity postcard booth, by Sylvia Weir (the Green piece)

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And because no vacation should be considered complete without a trip to the beach….We went to Surfside Beach on the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday. (plus other random photos from the trip.)

I’m ready to go back. Eithne, Robin, are you up for it??