Merry Christmas!

 Hello, everyone! 

A few pictures for the day:

A few of the angelic choir on the door with trumpets

And another one inside with a violin

Ornaments old and new, with the memories they bring of friends and family

And gifts in honor of the One whose birthday it is.

I wish for all of my readers a wonderful Christmas.

The project completed

 Hello, everyone.

It's been busy around Ye Olde Homestead these last few days--is it ever not busy at Christmas time?--and some of the busy was finishing up the embroidery project from the last post.

This is the front of the tote bag. There are a variety of different skills that were used to finish the embroidery. The new one for me was the multi-hooping technique of embroidering something that is too big for the hoop. The program came with a step for match points, both on part 1 and part 2, which were later picked out as not part of the design.

I elected to box the lower corners. The bag as set up was basically flat and it didn't seem as useful as a bag with boxed corners. So I added that at the end. This bag broke 2 needles, and stalled the motor on my regular-duty sewing machine. It had to be finished on the HD-3000 with a size 16 topstitch needle. 

I think that, while the bicycle as digitized is more conceptual than realistic, I might make another tote bag with the design. Possibly omitting the cute words at the bottom. There is a good sized chunk of beige twill cotton in the stash and it might work out well as a tote bag.

(Of course some of that twill is already going into another bag. But there's a lot left.)

We had a day of Grandma Camp also in the last week, and DGD wanted to make a Christmas ornament.

We did a felt one, using freezer paper to get the cutting reasonably smooth, and she chose beads and stitched them on to the felt. 

This was her first time stitching beads onto a piece of felt, not in an embroidery hoop, and she designed her lines by herself. There are two kinds of seed beads here, a pink/clear blend and a gold.

We glued the back to the front as time was running short that day, with some Tacky Glue. 

A new embroidery project, almost completed

 Hello, everyone.

My local quilt shop has classes, both quilting project classes and embroidery project classes. I have been going to the embroidery classes to learn how to work with my Janome embroidery machine.

Yesterday we worked on a tote bag project. It was a Kimberbell class, so we had a tote bag to embroider on. Today I finished the stitching on the decorative design.

All it needs now is soaking, to get the dissolvables out, and finishing the bag.

There is a bit of colored chalk to come out. After the chalk is cleared up, I will drip dry the fabric and complete the bag.

It was fun to  learn new things and try something different. This one was a multi-hoop project that was designed to be sewn in stages.

From the garden

 Hello, everyone.

Yesterday some radishes were pulled from the garden. These are icicle radishes, so they take a little longer, and possibly were in the ground longer than the usual time, but still:

Holy cow.

I have been watering almost every single day, as there has been precious little rain this season. 

A small walk report

 Hello, everyone.

We went for a walk at Bentsen State Park and enjoyed it very much. We went later than usual because the morning woke up very chilly--so it was around 9 am. 

My favorite of the pictures we took (so far) is this shot of the Rosa de Montaña vines near the entrance:

Also it looked like the painted map sign had been redone.

We found a new bird blind (with roof and seating) along the Kiskadee Trail which runs in a straight line and crosses the center loop. (Hiking only, shown as a pink line.) Saw cardinals, titmice, orioles, kiskadee, of course chachalacas and green jays. Also javelinas at the older bird blind hut near the resaca. And a pair of coyotes along the road while driving over there.

The La Coma were in bloom and smelled wonderful. (Yes, for those excessively picky people: "la" is the article. But I think that when using a word from another language there's nothing wrong with going with that language's convention of attaching an article to the front. "Las Tules", anyone? And a lot of people refer to La Coma trees not Coma trees. Which sounds in English like a medical condition: coma. Disambiguation is a good thing.)

It felt so good to walk again. Probably did around 5K but didn't really calculate.

Preparing for Christmas

 Hello, everyone.

It's Advent now, as of Sunday, and in our family that means decorating for the holiday.

This little scenic eggshell was given to me by a neighbor of my late grandmother. She used to make them. My little angel gets a prominent place in the tree every year. 

There hasn't been much done outside yet, but the wreath is up.

Last year's little additions were wired in very well, and still solidly in place when we got it out. I kept them there and added some clip on birds and angels. The bow is off-center this time. I used silver glitter ribbon.

Sewing: a Mixer Mat

 Hello, everyone.

There has been interest in the family for a mixer mat for persons who have stand mixers in the house.

The mixer mat is a kind of a coaster for the mixer; it keeps the mixer from scratching the counter top while it's in use.

This one is based on a Log Cabin method, but using the seaming trick to conceal the end of the row. I am indebted to my buddies in the Sewing Club for this method, it's really neat. At the end of the piecing, I used decorative stitches that were canned in the sewing machine to do the quilting.

The mat could also be used as a hot pad.

Fabrics used were quilting cottons from stash. Corners are mitered. Reverse is a duck print that reminds me of DF.

Mitering the non-45-degree corners did require me to pay attention. There might have been some un-stitching involved...

DF always did like ducks.

Test stitch-out on a new embroidery pattern

 Hello, everyone.

I found a really cute pattern for machine embroidery and bought it. Then began the study of how to use it.

I decided to both try it out and try out using faux suede for the fabric.

I like the way the colors show up on the black. I don't think that faux suede is the right fabric for the project I'm thinking of, though. 

This one does call for several different shades of red. But the little bird is just pretty.

A brief bit about Michigan

 Hello, everyone.

We were in Michigan a couple of months back for a family event. While we were there, we stopped in a small bar for lunch, outside of Kellogg. 

This is their privacy screen/empty bottle display. We thought the arrangement was well done and creative. 

I wish I had taken a photo of their sign...now I can't remember their name. But they are on the south side of the highway between Kellogg and the Ft. Custer National Cemetery. Highly recommend the hamburger! Lovely patio seating, with shade.

Progress on a Christmas project

 Hello, everyone.

This is a progress post of a new project.

This will be a tank top Christmas shirt. (Because here in deep South Texas we frequently have short sleeves weather for Christmas!) 

The design is a "vintage" style Christmas tree with birds in various colors. As y'all can see, the topper is still between the stitches; I decided to wait until the top is completed before soaking it off. I used the Sulky Stick n Stitch to float the interfaced knit in the hoop and the Sulky Solvy for the topper. Both Sulky products will soak off, leaving behind the ProSheer Elegance Fusible interfacing from Fashion Sewing Supply. The bobbin thread here was not the usual "crystal" 60 weight bobbin thread. I had noticed that letters look a lot better if I use the Aurifil 80 weight thread left over from the Lion Purse project when testing a design for Thanksgiving decorations. It's so much clearer and nicer on thin lines that I loaded a bobbin on purpose with that 80 weight cotton thread. There just isn't any occasional frost of bobbin thread showing at the base of the stitches on thin lines with it. 😊 

The pattern is from Burda Style 2006 November issue number 111...back then the magazine was still called Burda World of Fashion. It's an easy, wearable tank top that works well with bra straps. Somewhat form-fitting in shape, more so than the similar Kwik Sew tank top is, but unlike the Kwik Sew version it doesn't have a scoop back neck. 

A note on the Aurifil thread: it comes on wooden spools, not plastic ones, so there is no handy built-in thread clip to hold the end. And one of my spools had a snag at one end of the spool. The others seem to all be okay, but I have learned to feel around the edge to see if it will grab the (very thin!) thread while sewing.

On the colors: I ran "auto levels" in my Photoshop Elements and the colors of everything popped up a bit. The blue of the shirt is a little bit dustier in color. The fabric is the same Telio knit that was used for the night shirt a while back...there was quite a bit left over from that!

A recent walk at the Hike and Bike

 Hello, everyone.

I realized that there are some photos that would be nice to share from the Hike and Bike trail. This trail has been a lot busier lately, but sometimes it's not a huge crowd of bike riders.

One of those times we saw blooms on some of the many long-stemmed cacti that have been being planted along the paved trail.

The long stem with its several blooms. (Are these "dragon fruit" cacti? Dunno.)

A detail of some of the large, lovely flowers.

This year's second Halloween costume

 Hello, everyone.

This year's Halloween fun for the little ones was a much shorter trick or treat experience than usual--though the three year old probably was ahead of the game with a short set of visits and then family dinner with the grands.

He wanted to be a flying dinosaur this year.

Using the Simplicity costume for bat wings and butterfly wings, adjusted for a wild guess that the bones of these critters probably showed from the front of the wing, and with safety dots added in the back. (Flying dinosaurs were probably road-colored as that would hide them from larger flying dinosaurs and prey they were trying to catch. At least, that's my theory and I'm sticking to it! 😊)The costume was built on a base of purchased tee and pants. They were in the exercise wear section at Target and are a little large for him, but he can wear them as play clothes for a while. Win!

The front, with tail draped over the hanger. (Tail just whipped up with a bit of low fill batting between two layers of the knit. Totally unnecessary tie strings--forgot the pants have elastic waste!) Wing folded back to show "bones" on one side. 

Base fabric for the set of wings was a suitably lizard-colored polyester knit. It stretched. But it was interfaced on both surfaces and was not completely impossible to work with. The bones were an applique. They were made from Kona cotton in a light gray. Heat n Bond Lite was used to stick them down to the front wing fabric, then a row of stitches was added to keep them there. (Being not at all confident that the Heat n Bond would stick well enough at a low enough temperature not to melt the main fabric, I went with the "belt and suspenders" theory of attachment.) I lengthened the back connecting panel and the inner edge of the wings, and used zebra-patterned fold-over elastic for the straps. Dispensed with fabric cover for the wrist loops and the straps, there was plenty going on already. And I ignored completely the idea in the instructions to hand close the wings after turning. (Come on, folks. You're kidding, right?) Instead I edge stitched around the wing with both stabilized the edge of the shape a bit and closed the hole. Much more satisfactory.

On the back, the safety dots. These are cut from one of the lovely reflective bits we had lying around to add to hiking poles and increase walker visibility on our hoped-for pilgrimage walk in Spain next year. (Via de la Plata, a fair amount of roadside walking seems to be on the way.) The sticker was stiff, but cut well enough with my paper scissors and stuck on nicely.

A new finish

 Hello, everyone.

Today's post is a new finish, but it's also a stash item. And a rough-draft of a future garment.

This is a cardigan from a prior year's Burda Style (July 2019, number 103) with a shorter length--the design original length looked a lot like "commune clothes" when tried out--and with the sleeve enlarged to accommodate my non-stick-figure arms. 

I guess the way to keep a long, long cardigan from looking like that is to use the shown metallic knit in the magazine photos. Or to be 5'10 or over, weigh 107 pounds and combine it with skinny pants and high heels. The cardigan's more usable at this length because like most people I go places in cars while wearing sweaters or jackets. 😉 And at this length a person isn't constrained to wear spike heels and leggings with it.

Detail of the new sleeve. I tried to keep the wider lower sleeve from the design as much as possible, while opening up the upper arm. I kept the armhole seam length from changing by following the directions in one of my fitting/alterations books to open a cross shaped cut inside the seam line and pull it apart until the needed width was achieved. This was a first time for me!

The fabric is an ice-blue poly or rayon with spandex knit that has been lying around the place for a while. I am thrilled to have used up some of it.

For the seams I used the canned "stretch" slanted-zigzag on my sewing machine. It's a useful stitch, but it works a LOT better if it's sewn on a more stabilized knit--I interfaced the sewn bits all over the place with a knit type interfacing.

This was a test drive for using the beautiful piece of gray knit I got from EmmaOneSock to make a cardigan with. 

Thanks to DD2 for making phone photos for me!

The tee shirt is my spiffy Montana merino one from Duckworth. 

Stash busting (fall season)

 Hello, everyone.

It's been finishing-projects time around the place, and as always stash busting is the first thought.

This is part of a set being made. There is some new fabric in this, and some old. 

The placemat is quilted on the seam lines with purple decorative stitching (vines) and in the wide pieces with the triple zigzag line in variegated green thread. Three of the face fabrics are from stash, plus the backing. (I'm calling the binding a face fabric here.)

More Christmas stuff (Updated)

Hello, everyone.

Having finished a gift for DS2, looked around and didn't like any of the on-hand options for wrapping. Aha! says I. There's all this fabric in the house!

 Decorating the gift bag with an embroidered Nativity tree in silver and green.

Owing to the troubles experienced when making the owl pillow, also embroidered on Kona cotton muslin, I followed the suggestion of my friend Diane, an experienced machine embroiderer, to float the fabric instead of trying to hoop it. This worked out well.

After embroidery,  the bag was sewn and the bottom corners boxed. Then it was soaked to get the wash away Sulky Sticky Solvy out, drip dried, pressed, and had its ribbon ties added.

Update: the finished bag

Embroidery for Christmas season

 Hello, everyone.

It's been months now and still there are new things to learn with my Janome embroidery machine. There are so many different things that can be done with machine embroidery!

These are free-standing lace ornaments.The top left is the same pattern as the bottom left, but it has Mylar gift wrap sewn into the design. (This is the shiny stuff people use to fluff the tops of paper gift bags. It's actually thin shiny-coated plastic.)

The Mylar gets enclosed between two pieces of tulle...gosh, a way to use up some of the oceans of tulle around here!...and laid onto the wash away stabilizer. Painter's tape or embroidery tape is used to stick the edges down to keep them flat. And I like to use the automatic tack down box in my machine as well. At the end of the stitching, the ornament is carefully clipped out of the hoop and the remaining bits of stabilizer are soaked away. I like to finish off with a bit of Fray Check too prevent any untoward happenings later on.

I think the hearts and angels, being in the 2 to 5 inch range of sizing, could be added to a wreath as well as being hung on the Christmas tree. They all fit into my 5x5 hoop.

The Stabilizer Holder in action

 Hello, everyone.

I hung up the stabilizer holder and loaded it up! (Used a more utilitarian hanging method than the pattern, it doesn't bother me to see a naked dowel.)

The round "cans" of stabilizer rolls fit (almost) perfectly. Only one or two of the thick ones need to be eased into their pocket. The shadows on the right are from the thread spool racks on the adjacent area. 

This freed up part of the tiny shelf where the stabilizers were previously stuffed. Though I do need to scrounge around the house for an unclaimed basket for loose bits of things that are still there so nothing falls out the open back of the kit shelf.

On another note, last fall the sewing club had an iron-on applique project and I didn't finish it at the time. Things were just busy that month. It sat in the closet in its project bag for lo these many moons and recently was pulled out and finished.

Very fall-y, don't y'all think? It's spending its days on the kitchen table between meals for a little while, then it will go into storage until next year. 

For the interested readers, there is outline quilting around the pumpkin pieces, done with the walking foot, not freestyle. The pumpkin segments were outlined with a decorative stitch on the sewing machine in orange thread. And the binding is a straight grain strip cut from another orange blend and sewed on by machine. The runner was a project featured by the Heat n Bond people. 

Return to Bentsen Park

 Hello, everyone.

We're returning to walking on a schedule (yay!) and this week we went back to Bentsen Park. It was lovely walking, not crowded, and we saw something I'd not seen down here before.

I think these are two wasp nests on the same tree. They were flat but looking through the phone camera lens it appeared there were cells, one layer deep only, and there were lots of brown bugs on them looking down at us. Paper wasp? 

I was surprised not only to see this type of wasp--definitely not the more usual yellow jackets!--and to see them so close together. Wouldn't the wasps fight to keep apart?

This tree is on the main road between the group picnic area and the volunteer hut at the entrance. We only saw the nests on our return route, because of the way the morning light hit them.

More Christmas fun

 Hello, everyone.

A couple of weeks ago I attended a class on making Christmas things. We learned to make the little decorated embroidery-hoop ornaments and some other things.

This was at the end of class; final touches were to be added at home. This was my first experience working with hot fix gems.

At home, hot glued another gem into the center, added the bow, and added the rickrack on the outside.

Posing in the kitchen. 

This was fun! And the package of Kimberbell 3.5" hoops had two in it, so I can make another one. 

A little something for the sewing room

 Hello, everyone.

At our sewing club meeting--I'm so glad we've begun to meet again!--we worked on a project to help organize the sewing area. It's called a stabilizer holder, and it is a storage place for all the rolls, and more rolls!, of stabilizer that are a necessary part of working with machine embroidery.

The project called for pet screening for the mesh pockets, which works fine, but I wanted something brighter. The white mesh was at my local quilting shop and it's also available at ByAnnie.com. There was some extra in the cut after the project, and I'm wondering if it would be a useful as part of a charger and cord wallet for travel. Possibly as a pouch for the charger, next to elastic to put the cords in? The design is of course still just vaporware right now. But since we now have cameras with incompatible batteries, there will be more chargers to keep track of.

The clip hanger shown here will be replaced by a dowel and some picture wire when it's hung up in the sewing room. 

 

Starting to think about Christmas

 Hello, everyone.

It's getting toward on Christmas if you're thinking about making things for people! Or making new decorations to expand what you already have.

I tried out a new embroidery pattern. (Thinking about doing it with Mylar shiny stuff but wanted to try it out just as it is first.)

This is a free-standing lace heart. It's being done in red, because Christmas, and it came out nicely. One little thing, though: if you're patching together the good parts of used pieces of wash-away stabilizer, you might not want to use those patched pieces for the free standing lace items. The patching stitching shows between the stitches.

But it's not super obvious.

My other new discovery is that stitching on the mylar stuff dulls the needle really, really fast.

The rest of the costume shiny bits

 Hello, everyone.

The remaining shiny bits for the Sailor Moon costume are in recognizable order. All that is needed is to attach an elastic to the sides of the tiara so it will stay on.

The earrings are clip on. There is some wire wrapping going on there and some jump rings, plus the found clip-on backs.

The tiara gem is a little more complex than some of the illustrations, but I think she will like it. The elastic band will attach at the loops on the sides. 

The Mylar wrapping foil behaved this time, probably because it has gold tulle over the top. I sewed the tulle on at the back to pull the foil edges around to the back instead of trying to stitch it. (Gluing the edges didn't work, they were cut too close to the size of the tiara base structure.) The stitching of the accent rows along the edges went smoothly. The main gems are glued in place, the other accents are all sewn down. The little red bobbles at the top corners are seed beads.

Working towards Halloween

 Hello, everyone.

Halloween may be a bit different this year, but the children still enjoy dressing in costumes.

DGD expressed an interest in being Sailor Moon, an anime character in a cartoon series. The character is a schoolgirl in Japan, so her outfit is based around the typical Japanese girl's school clothes. That means a sailor (middy) blouse and a pleated skirt. 

Years ago I made a costume for DD2 of this type, but it's long gone to another relative and even if it were findable, DGD isn't the same size. So I'm doing it again.

This time I started with a purchased school girl outfit. Added a pair of red knee-high athletic socks for the "boots," and sewed a gem onto each one. (She is intended to wear the knee socks with her tennis shoes.) The sock gems can be removed later for normal wear.

That was the easy part. Next began the work on the gem for the bow, the tiara (no pictures of that yet), the ribbon choker, and so on.

The bow gem in progress. As there are a number of variations of the bow gem in various drawing of Sailor Moon, I used artistic license in designing something that has multiple colors around the central red element. A ring of the round gold beads was added after the photo. 

The back side of the bow gem, showing the pin back. The beads are sewn with Fireline 6 pound test crystal colored line. Yes, I have a fishing line cutter to cut it with, the braided nylon line will ruin your regular sewing scissors.

The ribbon choker. The ends have extender chain and a spring ring and are somewhat adjustable for size.

Many of the components are from stash: Mylar type gift wrap, round gold beads, stiff interfacing and felt, faux leather and pin back, etc. The small round gems were even in stash, though I had forgotten about them.

The larger, acrylic gems were from JoAnn's. 

The tiara is still under construction, with more of the stiff interfacing and Mylar and also some gold colored tulle, and more of the acrylic gems. Like the bow gem, there will probably be a line of gold beads around the top and bottom edges of the tiara. The plan is to have a strand of elastic to hold it in place when she wears it. 

Sewing Club is Resuming

 Hello, everyone.

For the first time in a bunch of months, our sewing club is going to meet.

Our project for the meeting will be a wall-hung holder for rolls of embroidery stabilizer. (Seeing as how so many of us have embroidery machines now.) It was supposed to be a project for March, IIRC, but was put on hold when the store we met at was made to close for the duration. 

This meeting will be at our local quilt shop instead, as the other place hasn't opened its classroom space yet.

This will be the decorative panel at the top:

It has a filigree-style sewing machine, a couple of flowers at the sides, and the label STABILIZER at the bottom. (The Hoop Hangout label turned out to be almost invisible on the hoop holder, so this time I made sure to have a solid fabric for the background.)

The mint green is Kona cotton. The mesh pockets will be made of ByAnnie's white mesh and will have white binding. I'm all about increasing the amount of light available in the sewing studio!

Project from Grandma Camp

 Hello, everyone.

We have the custom of spending time with grandchildren in their summer break, for a week or two, and learning new things during that time.

This year we had another hand embroidery project: A small felt pillow.

To put it together, after cutting the heart shapes from the felt, we did something analogous to floating the fabric on the embroidery machine: A piece of scrap voile was hooped in the round embroidery hoop and the felt for embroidery was basted in place on the voile. The voile held the felt in place and under reasonable tension. It also reinforced the back side of the felt against pulling. After she finished the flower, most of the voile was cut away before completing the little cushion.

DGD was interested in learning a new stitch, satin stitch, and wanted to make a flower with a huge satin stitched center. We talked the length of the stitchs over and decided that over the satin stitch she would also learn to make lattice work to stabilize the satin stitches.

DGD is a rising third grader. She used my floor embroidery stand to hold the hoop and chose her colors to meld together rather than contrast. After stuffing the heart she overcasted the edge all around. I have hopes that she will continue to make projects with satin stitch and lattice work, developing her skills and making beautiful gifts for her family members.

DGS, some years younger, also learned a new skill: using a needle to string pony beads. He used one of the plastic needles that comes with child-level needlepoint kits, and cotton string. I wish I had known how successful this would be back when I was teaching first grade CCD! 

 

I have left the childrens' faces out of these pictures. This is in line with my philosophy that other peoples' lives are not mere raw material for my publishing. Those lives belong to the people who are living them. Attentive readers may have notice the lack of personal notes about other people in my Camino and other travel posts. This is the reason.

It's a good year for the lizards

 Hello, everyone.

 I was loading photos into the computer and doing some cropping and noticed that, since we have scads of lizards this year, we have some photos of them. And, though I hadn't noticed before, they don't all look the same.

This little guy hangs out at the palapa. He bobs his head at us.

This fellow likes the pergola. Here he's showing off his red patch next to the pot of succulents.

This little guy was under a dog water dish. It's got a sheltered spot between the outside wall and the underside of the bowl. That broad-leaved tendril near him is indeed an ivy stem. It's part of a pot of needlepoint ivy. I didn't think those could grow here but this one is doing fine.

There are also many, many young lizards around, which we haven't caught on camera. They are half the size of these when we first see them, and then they grow to be like these. 

Pretty clouds

 Hello, everyone.

Yesterday, about 0730, DH came in and said, "you have to see this cloud." He was right.

It was so beautiful, I ran inside to get the cell phone and snap a photo to share with y'all.

The Camino stays with us

 Hello, everyone.

Even though this year we have not been able to walk the Camino--not even a short route--there are things that stay with us.

We have been watching Camino videos on Youtube. (Sarah Dhooma's videos give a pretty good idea of path surfaces.) 

Occasionally we make tapas for dinner. We use a baguette recipe to make the barra bread. Sometimes we make garlic soup, too.

And we drink the Spanish and Portuguese wines.

These are three we have tried recently. The first is a lovely white, the other two are reds. We liked the bad rabbits a little better than the other red. (All found at Spec's.)