A little TLC for my pressing mat

Hello, everyone.  Today it is, as usual in this part of the year, hot outside. I have been sewing during the hottest part of the day instead of working outside. 

I have a wool pressing mat that is wonderful.  It had developed a little bit of pilling--it is wool, after all--and I  thought maybe it needed something protective to keep abrasion and debris off of the felt.

Behold the mat pillowcase.  I measured it from the mat and allowed a little extra for turn of the cloth. There's a little pleat at the folded end for the thickness. The fabric is some cotton from the stash. After sewing the seams, I serged the raw edges to prevent fraying. 

A pincushion is done

Hello, everyone.  It's confession time: the stash is immense around here! So I'm looking to use up random pieced strips, orphan blocks, beads, ribbons, and anything else that can become part of something.

This was made from two pieced strips plus three random half-square triangles. It happened that the colors matched. I think it's got a modern-quilting vibe.

The back side.

This little pincushion is about 3 inches square. I used scrap shreds for the stuffing, and scrap batting for the quilting of the two pieces. When you make a quilt, there are always strips of batting that get trimmed from the edges. They're great for little projects.

One project completed (edited for mis-typed word)

Hello, everyone.  A small weather update, we have had a number of days with rain lately. This is very welcome. The sweet potatoes are so vigorous that some tendrils are climbing a volunteer aster plant in the bed. Perhaps we will place some tomato cages for them.

On the topic of this post, a scrap sourced purse. 

The blue strips are from a large amount of binding that was created for the butterfly quilt a while back. (I got excited and just kept adding pretty blue pieces.) The lining is some orange bubble-print in the stash. I digitized the embroidery myself. The coordinating buttons and zipper are, of course, from stash. 

The purse is a shoulder bag, sized for an older girl or a petite woman. 

Still on the "to do" list, another purse in cotton, a shoulder or cross body pouch in cream damask, a gift (already cut out), another quilt, this one in pinks and pastels (blocks 3/4 assembled, needing a top strip to be ready for arrangement), and some more bags and purses.

Trying out new skills

Hello, everyone. 

As it says in the title, I'm working on improving my skills on the embroidery. Today, as a tangent from going through the lessons of my Hatch program, I decided to embroider the included beetle design on terrycloth. 

Before actually getting going on it, I added some "laydown" stitching to keep the loops from getting in the way.

I also learned that my hoop refuses to latch onto the fabric. The towel was just too thick for this, so I floated it on top of the hooped stabilizer. Put pins in to help it stay, too. Made the double bounding box after the topper (the shiny stuff) was placed.

The fabric stayed flat with the many layers of encouragement and now I have a psychedelic bug to use somehow. 

Garden update: TS Alberto brought us rain

Hello, everyone. We have gotten much-needed rain in our area. 

The sweet potatoes are really taking off with the heat of summer and the clean, natural water of the last couple of days.

One of our newest plants, this is Dichondra "silver falls" which was struggling with every other day hose watering and has really perked up with the rain. This dichondra is native to Texas and I'm hoping it will spread throughout the bed, along with the "Curry plant" and its cousin the "white licorice " which is a scented, silver-foliaged low plant. They are all together with a big Italian Oregano, a Mystic Spires hybrid Salvia (one of its parents is the native Salvia farinacea) and a Greek Oregano, a French Thyme, and a lemon grass clump. The Salvia is still blooming and has made long branches to expand its area in the herb bed.

Camino memories

Hello, everyone.  Today a little remembrance of our visit to Me Gusta Comer in the village of Rionegro del Puente.

This is the beautiful card the chef gave each pilgrim at the end of our meal. He wrote the date out in Roman numerals. (Of course this means that it really is still important for our children to learn this system of notation!) 

This was the table setting when we sat down. 

DH, who misses the Camino Trails already, decided to make a little touch of Rionegro del Puente for our dinner.

I can see Me Gusta Comer in my mind's eye just looking at this.

Progress on the newest quilt

Hello, everyone. It's been hot and dry since the rains mentioned in my last post--so it's been time to do some inside things.

There has been progress made on the purple-sashed Building Blocks quilt. 

This is just before the last border was added.

It's waiting to be basted together. This requires floor space! But it's another  baby/lap size quilt so it won't take *too* much floor space!

In the second picture there's just a snippet of the piecing scheme that extended the backing to be large enough for the job.

While this one has been waiting to be basted, a third Building Blocks quilt has been begun. This one will have hot-pink sashing as the blocks are from the Celebrations prints, pinks and lavender and blues and greens in a party theme. Some of these squares are leftovers from the heart table runner a while back. I also had a charm pack of them, so there are a lot of blocks that can be used. More information to come on that, the first interior sashing strips are still going into the Blocks.