More birds, different place

 Hello, everyone.

Last week DH and I went over to Bentsen Park for a refreshing stroll. (3 or 4 miles. Why, yes, we want to return to the Camino paths!) We wanted to see birds, but as we entered the park we saw hawks flying overhead. "Oh, well, guess all the birds will be hiding today."

We were walking down to the bird blind, the one with  seating, and saw the resident wild turkeys. On the road! 

This was a zoomed shot when they were far off.

Here they were walking past us.

When we got to the blind, we learned that the local birds weren't totally hiding under cover after all.

One of our local specialties, the chachalacas, sipping from the pool at the blind. They also like to hop up and take peanut butter from the stick feeder--which is much smaller than a chachalaca! 

Another local specialty, the Alta Mira Oriole, who is usually very shy about being photographed, even from inside of the blind. This day he was brave and posed next to the water and I was able to capture a reflection portrait of his glorious plumage.

The Alta Mira Orioles are sometimes seen on the blooms of the large agaves. 

A quick post about birds

 Hello, everyone.

A few days ago, I had reason to be out and about, and remembered to bring my phone. Rounding the second to last turn on my route, I was delighted to see a local specialty: green parrots.

The first look when I walked from the parking lot back towards them.

I heard enthusiastic squawking, waited a moment, and got this:

A couple of minutes later and they all got up and moved elsewhere.

These birds are native to the general area, though they used to live farther south. Sadly, the habitat in the neighboring nation has been steadily destroyed, so they've moved across the river.

Color and stitch play

 Hello, everyone.

Since the phone is still being difficult when I try to upload a photo into a blog post, I am reverting back to the (more clumsy) method of emailing myself the pictures from the phone.

I was challenged to make something new recently by DD2. The format is "coasters." I am digitizing this myself, so there are of course a lot of iterations in the design:

First attempt:

I tried out the batting here, and the design, and also now know that this purple stripe is too busy for the design.

A later attempt:

Stash usage is happening, as y'all can see. I changed the lettering font of the words and did some work on refining the crown. (This one has been finished off into a future patch pocket on something. Interior purse pocket? Mixer cover decorative pocket? We'll see.)

After this, a wadder which has been tossed into the trash--you cannot do "backtrack" a bunch of times on the same spot, especially not when the stitch is already emphasized. Fortunately the needle didn't break. Unfortunately, I had to change it because it seemed to have gotten bent while the thread was breaking repeatedly in very nearly the same spot. 

After this, I figured out how to get rid of the extra "backtrack" commands and cut the little ornaments on the top down to one each. 

This next one has had the stabilizer trimmed and is ready to turn right side out:

This is still a rough draft, so when trimming I left the tuck-in flaps to make another future pocket. The stabilizer is black polymesh cutaway from OESD. In the event, I plan to use White and Natural thin all-cotton batting, with or without an additional stabilizer. But the Polymesh was on hand and the background fabric is on the dark side, so I used that on the repeat tests.

Probably when the coasters are ready to deliver, with ribbon and all, I'll shoot a picture of the set and post it. There may still be more repeats, though I sincerely hope not. I've been watching the Youtube videos by John Deer about fixing designs and also studying the online help of my Hatch embroidery software. Little by little, it gets better!

Color play (edited)

 Hello, everyone. 

This started out to be a post from my Samsung phone, but the electronic mice ate it. I don't know why the blogger interface won't let me make posts with a photo from my phone any more, up until a few months back it worked fine.

Anyway, I emailed the photo from my phone to my email and here it is:

This is from a spring-themed charm pack. I'm making a charm pack apron for an Easter gift, as y'all can see it's a very spring-y color assortment.

The long strips between the many charm-pack squares are from a separate piece of fabric. (Don't faint, all of this was bought for this project!) The general appearance will be like the Christmas apron that was recently made, only in spring colors.

The progress on it is that the name strip at the top has been embroidered, and the layout is done, so tomorrow I will probably begin stitching together the squares that have been laid out. 

The pattern calls for dividing the charm pack in half, then one half is split into even parts and reassorted and pieced together, while the other half is split into three parts and reassorted and pieced together. These would be the ones with a small horizontal piece below a square in the picture. After all this piecing you lay out the two kinds of squares and then sew them together.

I am using the method developed by Bethany of Shabby Fabrics to make a fully lined pocket. It's very functional. I love my Christmas apron that was made after this method!

(After this was posted I found a HUGE blank space with  the scattered remnants of the lost text. And the failed upload of the photo, too. It's all cleaned up now.)

Another sewing club project (updated)

 Hello, everyone. Yesterday in sewing club we were working on an oven mitt. I finished mine today--but I fell back on traditional quilt binding techniques because the one step binding we were learning didn't work out well for me. No, I take that back. The new binding method was impossible for my fingers to put together. Next time it might work better!

This is the heart shaped mitt from Crazy little projects.

The idea is that you insert your thumb into one side and your fingers into the other and use it to take a pan out of the oven. I did add an extra layer of padding (Warm and White) in addition to the specified Insul-Brite layer. 

All fabrics and and the button decoration are from stash.

The newest pinny

 Hello, everyone.

In a recent post I showed some layout stuff on the new small design boards. They were the top and bottom of a new pincushion, from, of course, the stash of small bits and small pieced bits. (Had one of the bottom strips upside down in the picture, oops!)

The pincushion is now finished. The final size is around 3.5 to 4 inches.

The top, made of pieced triangles. I used plain straight stitch for the quilting. There was enough going on already. Most of these tiny triangles are offcuts from the Patriotic Flag wall hanging I made last year or the year before.

The bottom, made of 1.5" strips. I used the canned feather stitch on my sewing machine for the quilting here.

The collection of completed pincushions, in a bowl. The trucks in the background are on the Valentine's Day embroidered table runner that was made a year or two back with the Sewing Club.

Another project completed (updated)

Hello, everyone.

When I got the pattern for the Charm Pack Apron from Shabby Fabrics, I also got a pattern for a tote bag. Today it was completed.

This is the inside-out, quilted bag, with its straps and the top of the pattern booklet.

The front of the pattern booklet.

The pattern instructs you to stop at a seam end that is not the fabric edge sometimes.

When that point comes, both on the lining and the external bag, you need to clip the seam almost to the stitching or the bag will not lie smoothly.

This is a leftover half-charm from the apron project. I thought, and still think, that tote bags should have somewhere to hang dangly things like keys.

The half-charm is ready to sew into the top edge of the bag.

I got a little excited with the larger pocket and folded it so that four all of the six charm squares show. The other two and the remainder of the top and bottom form the lining of this pocket.

The completed bag.

This was an interesting project. I found that on the final sewing, the stitching got a little hard for the machine. Don't try it with a size 11 universal needle, it gets pretty thick at the end. And the batik lining fabric was resistant to piercing, too. I used a size 14 top stitch needle, which is sharper than a universal needle. It still had some hard going while top stitching at the straps and the key loop.

And yes, I was still dialed up on Christmassy fabrics when picking out the charms. I used stash fabric for the sashing instead of cutting up charms for it. The interfacing is Thermolam, which is iron-on. It's thin and stable.
 

A new year, a new gadget

 Hello, everyone.

It's been apparent that some organizing needs to happen in my sewing studio.

A small example of the problem:

This is just a tiny corner of mixed up want-to-be's, a collection of little things for making pinnies out of. They get stacked, this dish is actually an improvement over the stacks on the table that get knocked off by sewing on other projects!--then something happens to mix them up and the layout work never gets started.

I found a couple of things on the Youtube that looked interesting. They are project design boards, but not the wall-sized ones people use to lay out whole quilts. These are just little ones for one block at a time. (Links go to two different ways to make them.) I know I once saw a Youtube look at someone's sewing room where the lady had a whole stack of them on her windowsill, each of them a different block in process, and the stack was neat and organized. (Well, it was a video about her neat and organized sewing room, so of course it was neat and organized, but the idea stuck with me.)

I'm not an experienced glue gun lady, but I didn't want to use up the iron on sticky stuff, so I tried Lori Holt's method. I had a 9x30 leftover bit of foam-core board in the studio. And there is a lot of 2.5" stripping in my stash.

The first, smallest one. 9x6. Much of the border was offcuts from placemats done in the past.

The other two were 9x12. Borders also from stash.

I should have ironed the batting. (Who knew that rumple would stay?) I think it will work anyway.

A new pinny soon to come:

The top is the upper one, the bottom is the lower one. And some more stash will leave the room!