Sunday, August 19, 2012

New Home, New Studio, New Look

Well, it has been awhile since I've posted, but it's because I have been super busy with graduation quilts, buying a new house, and getting ready for moving to new location.  Wow-  a lot has been going on.  Tried FB for awhile, but that is is not as gratifying as blogging.  Hope  I can be more consistant in the posting.

Well, the big new is that we are MOVING!  The movers come September 1, 2012.    I sure hope the new studio is complete by then.  Of course, that is optimistic as they haven't started on my building yet.  Bummer.

East end of new studio.
Here is current photo of studio.....   Right now, it is a mostly empty steel building.  A whopping 24' by 40'  building.  Bare walls, a few lights hanging and two garage doors.  This is the new building for T-Shirt Quilts of Texas and Shadywood Quilts.  We are moving September 1st, and we have NOT started on my buildout yet!  Yikes!!!!

The double garage door you see faces East  and will be replaced with  a solid wall and a couple of windows. 

The west end, is a solid wall with a couple of windows and we are adding an office, half bath and kitchen-ette.


West end of studio
 The contractor (and hubby) assure me that it will be ready by September 1, when the movers are coming to move us, lock, stock and barrel to the new location.

We have to finish hubby's new building, so we have a place to put all of our STUFF!  We currently have an attic, garage, barn and LOTS of stuff that we need to transport to his barn while we are moving. 

I am so excited, and can hardly wait for them to start, but the contractor says it will just take a week to do the build-out and they assure me that it will be done by the time we move.  We'll see....

OK, this is the BEFORE pictures.  I will post as we make progress.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Quilty Field Trip With Friends

The Daystrippers Bee (Tri-County Quilt Guild) went on a field trip to the quilt show at The Woodlands last Friday.  We crammed six of us into Shelly's SUV, and went to the show, lunch and then to Quilters Crossing in Tomball.    Pictured are Beverly, Katherine, Betty, Diana, Shelley and Barbara C.

That quilt we were standing in front of did NOT win a ribbon.  It was thousands of little tiny 3/4 inch squares to make that scene.  Should have won something, it was  neat quilt.   Speaking of winning, I did win a rolling chair in the Tin can raffle.   It only takes one ticket!!

Lots of vendors at the show, not really anything new, except for the Ruler Revolution bunch.  They are local, and I think her rulers are in the local shops, but have not hit the distributors yet.  Take a look at them.

Lunch was at Rico's just off of 45.  Ran into some friends from West Houston, who took the picture for us.

Then we stopped at one of our favorite quilt shops.   Quilters Crossing in Tomball where Deb and Mandy have a great selection of batiks and bright colored fabrics.  HUGE classroom, and lots of classes. 

Thursday, December 08, 2011

Needle Felted Pin Cushions














I found a cool tutorial on WC Mercantile website  for making needle felted pin cushions.   Well, I have quite a 'fondness' for pin-cushions (OK, I'm a bit obsessed)  and even picked up a couple of containers at the WC Mercantile shop in Navasota to make these little creations.  Now, you have to understand.  My Thursday Night (Quilt) Bee exchanges 'homemade' gifts each year at our Christmas party.  (Yes- Christmas - not Holiday).  there are 14 of us, so that means making at least 13 of something.... Not always easy to come up with an ideas of the time to do it.  In past years, I've always wooosed out by buying Quilt calenders for everyone.  but, if you look at last years gifts  Mariet and a couple of others upped the ante on creativeness...  So, I've been thinking about making felted pin-cushions since this past summer.  

 I found pottery type votive containers on eBay, and they have been sitting on my dining room table since July!  Finally got them done last week, and can show the pictures now that the party was last Thursday.  Oh,  I did NOT hand needle felt these like in the tutorial.  I have one of those fancy dancy felting machines (Pfaff 350) that I got at Quilt festival a couple of years ago.  I used Wool Batting that I kind of shredded for the stuffing and as the base for the needle felting.  I used wool roving for the color swirls and machine felted the crud out of it.  Then made the pin cushion.

Got lots of cool things from the Bee members.  Cherry Salsa, some AWESOME Rum Cake,  a knitted Cowl from Michelle, a knitted/felted pin cushion from Mariet (these are COOL), Cup Cozies, Shoe pants, Texas Pin cushions (see a theme going on here..) and several other cool items.  

Tuesday, December 06, 2011

Doing a Little Dyeing



Yarn drying on the back porch

This summer, a couple of my knitting/quilting friends came over to the house for a day of experimenting with dyeing yarn.    Most of the dyeing was in the microwave, but we did some in the crockpot as well ( the brown & turquoise ones).  Mariet made a big bucket of Indigo dye, which was really fascinating.  It's GREEN when you first look at it, and pull the yarn out of the mix.   Then as you watch it magically starts turning blue.  A couple of the hanks were pretty bright, so we experimented with over-dyeing in the left-over indigo bath.




These are the ones I dyed.