An Easter project finished (updated to add link)

Hello, everyone.  I finished another Easter project, probably the last for this season.

This is the front. I started with a blank rectangle and imported the applique egg and the row of tulips.  (I will probably change this if I do it again. The row of tulips took a *really* long time to stitch out.)

Pages 2 and 3: Palm Sunday and then Carrying the Cross. Used without changes from the Resurrection Table Runner design.

Pages 4 and 5: the Crucifixion and Finding the Empty Tomb. Used without changes.

Pages 5 & 6: a Bible verse and the traditional Easter greeting. The Bible verse page was used without changing. The Easter greetings page is my own.

The back cover. Another page of my own.

This began as a banner/table runner embroidery pattern set. I added the front cover and the Easter greetings page/back cover to convert it to book format.

There is a lot of stitching in the rocky-ground portion of each image. I will, if I do it again, make the ground surface as an applique piece. (My Hatch software has the feature to convert a shape to applique.) This will make the pages less of a "bulletproof" experience. 

The Bible verse was digitized in block letters. I sewed it out with #60 thread, finer than the standard #40 embroidery threads. It came out a bit hard to read. (The dots on the i's were merged into the rest of the letter.) I was in an experimenting mood, so I swapped the block lettering for a scrip font for the next time. Haven't done a test prototype yet! 

The book pages ended up being 8 layers of cotton, so sewing it into a book was difficult. I suppose leaving off the back cover piece would help it a little. This one, however, will do nicely for a gift for visiting children this Easter. 

Pretty flower for Easter time

Hello, everyone.  

We have the first blossom from the new, little Desert Rose plants we got at last year's Home and Garden show.

I'm not sure which way these little pictures will be facing when it's published. The last one was an experiment to see how an extreme close-up of this large double flowered blossom would come out.

The top is a side shot to show the structure.

It's possible that another of these assorted-colors plants will bloom in a week or two. The first one, which finally got repotted into the biggest pot on hand, is also displaying some single flowered, deep-pink blossoms and a whole flock of buds are coming on.

Easter greeting to all

Hello, everyone.  It's a little late, for Latin Easter, and a little early for Eastern Easter. But I'm going to send out Easter greetings to all today.

This was part of the Easter decorations in my local parish this year. I was delighted by the candles and the butterflies. Kudos to the folks who worked hard on Holy Saturday to get things set up!

And this is an Oxalis plant we saw at Estero Llano Grande State Park last week. It's about 2 inches high.

An Easter decoration

Hello, everyone.  It's only about a week and a half until Latin Easter. I understand that Orthodox Easter is a week off from that this year.

I have gotten it together to hang an Easter wreath. 

Components: Dollar Tree wreath form and plastic eggs, Hobby Lobby fabric peonies and lambs quarters, JoAnn fabric hydrangeas, and an entire 3 yard roll of ribbon.

(I looked at the Hobby Lobby hydrangeas but I didn't like them. I checked out the ones at JoAnn while picking up the ruler holder.) 

It does put some cheer on the door, doesn't it.

Lace butterflies in place

 Hello, everyone.

The lace butterflies have been wired into place. 

They are decorating a lace skirt on a pot. (Assumed riser for pot is about 14".) The pot itself is only on loan for the holyday, the skirt and butterflies are going to stay there. 

The butterflies are removable with care. They decorate only the front side of the pot...nobody is going to notice the back side after all.

The lace skirt has a taffeta underskirt so the pot won't show through.

The lace was part of another lady's stash, and the taffeta is from mine. The butterflies were made on my Janome 500e embroidery machine. There is another post about their construction. I attached them with a beaded wire, using my awesome skilz of making wire-twist hair ornaments from DD2's wedding a couple of years back.

Getting ready for Easter

 Hello, everyone.

Easter decorations are beginning to be assembled. Butterflies, besides being emblematic of the return of flowers and sunshine, are also symbols of the Resurrection: from a dead-looking cocoon comes a beautiful flying insect. Very poetic!

This is, I think, an OESD free standing lace pattern. It fits twice in the 5x7 hoop, as y'all can see, and in the next photo the Mylar will show better than in this one. (I am currently in a phase of liking the look of a Mylar layer in free standing lace. The opal colored Mylar reflects light without looking heavy.) 

 

Here is the whole flock of butterflies. I am currently thinking of adding them to a lacey cover, possibly by using beads along the butterfly's body covering a piece of wire that goes through to the back and through the substrate fabric and is twisted to hold in place. The beads will of course have to be lightweight...gold? iridescent ivory? we shall see what works.

Catching up on things

Hello, everyone.

We were supposed to be walking on the Via de la Plata in Spain now. Instead, we comfort ourselves with memories of prior Camino walks and Spanish foods. Not tortilla this time! We had tapas for dinner last night: made barra bread on Friday, sliced it thin on Saturday and half of the slices got a piece of manchego cheese and a piece of prosciutto (no serrano ham available at the grocery store these days) on top. The other half of the slices got a new-to-us recipe for topping:

Sliced "Baby Bella" mushrooms cooked in butter with garlic and parsley from the garden. Simply wonderful, and easy too.

In other developments, this is the current pile of completed masks in the house:

It was a bit of a surprise to get 6 of them from that 9 inch wide strip of quilting fabric. It was left over from a big quilt. Then there are 3 of the roses print and a couple of odd ones.

I have enough elastic in the house to finish all the cut out blanks in my workroom. I am using a piece of plain fabric on the inside so the quilting muslin will better contain the germs being breathed-out by the wearer. It's still not hard to breathe and no more "steamy" I think than one-layer ones or paper ones.

In honor of Divine Mercy Sunday today, for the Latins, and Easter Sunday, for the Orthodox, a picture of last year's Easter lily, the one that survived and came up again:

I had thought the buds would open today but it appears there are still a couple-few days to go.

A blessed holy-day and much happiness to all my readers.

This 'n' that

Hello, everyone.

As we're all penned up in our houses because of the Wuflu, I've been sewing more masks. Have shipped out some to various family members. Now using pipe cleaners for the wire element.

The spring lilies that were potted up last year, at least some of them, have survived. Even one of the Easter lilies from last year is alive, and has a big budded stem. It's probably not going to bloom out until closer to Divine Mercy Sunday (the Sunday after Easter) but there are a lot of growing buds on the stem. And a number of baby lilies growing from root sprouts. I'll try to get a picture of any flowers that result.

DH is still tending the bird feeder.

This is one of his little friends. They really like the bird seed.

We had our first 100F day of the year a couple of days ago. It's actually a little bit late--frequently there is one in March.

I wish for all of my readers a blessed Easter and lots of spring flowers.

Easter greetings

Hello, everyone.

I have been head down in a project lately--still not done--but wanted to wish all y'all a wonderful Easter.

Dahlias from the container garden, with cilantro stems as filler.

Blessings to you all.

The Easter placemats are finished

Hello, everyone.

The Easter placemats are all done.

As y'all can see, there was not enough of the bright Easter-egg covered print to bind all of them. There are 6 of them bound with a spring-like floral print.

The names were done with the walking foot; since then I have learned how to free-motion quilt and it's a much nicer way to make names on fabric.

I wish all of you a happy and blessed Easter.

This 'n that

Hello, everyone.

Today's post is just a little update on various things.

We did 6 miles on Monday, on the Hike and Bike. There were only a couple of birds of interest--the returned swallows at the bridge and a roadrunner--and the camera wasn't already out and focused so no photos of them.

The Easter placemats report: 7 are completed, except for the final run through the washing machine. 2 have their binding half-done, and 5 are awaiting binding.

And some time last week, we saw some zone-tailed hawks chillin' on a tree. DH got a nice photo of them.

Standard springtime weather has arrived in our Valley--highs in the 80's and lows around 60. (For my metric zone readers, that works out to about 27 and about 16.) Chamber of Commerce weather, with sunshine galore!

Update on the Easter placemats: progress to date

Hello, everyone.

There have been fewer posts lately, because the placemats and other things have been using up time a lot.
This is one of the placemats pinned-up for quilting.
The quilting scheme begins with sewing in-the-ditch where the top is pieced. Then, as seen in the picture below, other elements are added.









The name of the person who will use the placemat goes onto the light blue stripe. After the name was sewn in purple, another color of quilting thread was used to stabilize the stripe (it's one of the wider stripes) and underline the name.
After that, a zigzag was quilted onto the green strip and lengthwise lines added to the purple one. Finally a row of stitching around the edge was done, just inside the marked cutting line.

As y'all will remember, there is binding to be added yet. I expect that all of the binding on the ribbon spool will be used, and also more that hasn't been cut from fabric yet.

Easter is just about two weeks away, and the (fourteen) placemats aren't completed, so there may be a slow posting rate for some little while yet.

A little crafting tip

Hello, everyone.

Things have been busy, but also there has been a little time to do creative things. And Easter is coming. My local sewing club is working on a project for Easter decorating--placemats. There were a couple of variations to choose from, so I went with the one in the Jo-Ann's project list. It involves several fabrics for the egg stripes, plus backing fabric, batting, plus a good amount of bias for the binding. (Translation: a lot of stash is going bye-bye with this one! Even though there were some new fat quarters purchased from my local quilt shop.)

I cut the bias strips from a piece of fabric and sewed them together in pieces that are long enough for each placemat shape. Then I realized that there are a lot of pieces of fabric running around in this project, and expected to be a lot more, too, and they have to be kept organized. Especially the long bias strips that will tangle and become impossible.

I "recycled" a ribbon spool that was left over from decorating a little while back. As the bias is folded in half and pressed already, the spool holds two strands side by side, and I can keep loading it up until either the spool is full or I run out of strips to store.

Happy Easter

Hello, everyone.

A painting for today:

"And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week they went to the tomb when the sun had risen. And they were saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?" And looking up, they saw that the stone was rolled back--it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe; and they were amazed. And he said to them, "Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee...."  Matthew 16: 1-7

Besides the blazingly obvious, that this is from the account in the Gospel of Matthew of the discovery that the Lord had risen, another thing occurs to me. Did y'all notice that *every* Mary has a surname or other descriptor to tell the reader which Mary we are talking about now? That says to me that Mary was one of those bog-standard names that appeared in so many families that you couldn't walk without tripping over a gal named Mary. Mary of Magdala is not Mary of Bethany (sister of Lazarus?) is not Mary the wife of Cleophas is not Mary the mother of Jesus. And that's just the Marys that I can roll off the top of my head.

Sometimes when I read spiritual meditations or Bible commentaries it seems like the writer has it in their head that there are only maybe 2 ladies named Mary in the entire Holy Land of Jesus' time. But it is there in the text, if one reads with attention, that there are LOTS of Marys. Also there appear to be lots of men named Jesus--why else does Jesus have a surname?--and lots of James and Jude and Simon as well. Possibly other given names in the Gospels give evidence that their holders had fairly common names. Having advanced the thought, I will leave it to the interested readers to explore for themselves.

This painting of the Resurrection of Christ was in a Portuguese church, but without digging a lot into the things from a couple of years back I can't remember which one. It was after Coimbra, I think. And certainly before Tui in Spain.