Good Morning Everyone,
T Stands for Tuesday where we share a drink related post with friends. You are most welcome to join us, the link to our hostess Bleubeard and Elizabeth is in my right hand column.
Last week was mostly crafting on my fabric pages for my journal. This has been fun, finding things in my craft stash that I had gathered for a wool crazy quilt. I have a big bag of wool threads that I found at resale shops, from friends, and I also had found fine wool threads that were sample cards from a store back in the '60's located in France on Etsy-those are a wonderful collection of wool sewing threads, and I have been using them on my pages-much finer than the tapestry wool threads even after splitting the plied threads down to three. The assortment of colors is awesome.
I was hoping by today I would have had my opening page and my January pages completed but not so.
I was waiting on the number and letter stamps to arrive and my ink stamps which I have now received, but now I am waiting on a wolf stamp-lol I am really trying to only use what I have but I needed the right ink stamps for my fabrics and I am in love with the number-letter stamps I bought-Those were an excellent buy as what I paid would have bought only one of the sets.
Since January has two full moons-which has not happened since 150 years ago-I stitched down two fabric moons and then stamped on them-ugh I did not like the look at all. Also reading more about the two moons the first moon-January 1st was the wolf moon, and the one on the 31st is the blue moon. So I carefully took all the stitching out so I could make the moons differently. I completed one of them this morning.
I do not have good hand writing so it shows in my stitches too. haha
I did add the corn husk paper piece to another piece of cloth and then stitched that down-I love it
I posted this photo of my opening first page of book in my last post-It is finished I believe except for some lettering
I also had fun trying out the puff paint for the first time. It took a good 24 hours to completely dry but I think it worked out good for snow.
I am going to sew on the beaded lace pieces for more snow also the snowflakes will get stitched down, and this page will have the wolf moon added.
The grey fabric is a cotton batik that to me looked like big tree branches
I have a stash of very old sewing threads so they can get used in this project too-was either my Mom's or Grandma's thread
I haven't decided where all of the snowflakes and lace will be placed yet and on the tree side there will be a deer and a quote too.
It does not look like all this would have taken so many hours but it has taken allot-which is fine as I am enjoying working on this project.
This week I finished basting the main rosettes and have started to stitch them together-I am very slow with this-hoping it will go faster as I continue stitching. My hands are always rough which will not work at all with silk threads so I work lots of hand lotion into my hands before sewing. I am also keeping up with getting two water bottles of water drank each day.
This week I plan to get back on the rest of the hallway project. I stopped in November to work on the building for our guests, and I also needed to move those heavy heavy tiles-I did that last week-No way could I pick up the boxes so I took 3/4 of the tiles out of the box-moved-and them put the tiles back in.
I moved them from above and moved them to the middle of this hallway section
I also managed to move the heavy screen door behind those ladders-so I am ready to prime the walls and ceiling-texture-prime paint again and them paint this area and the last section I did.
Yesterday I made us yellow angel food cakes-this was my Grandma's recipe and you whip the yolks with sugar, then whip the egg whites and then fold in the flour to the yolks and fold in the whites-sooo delicious. We have been getting fresh eggs from a friend and they make the best cakes. The cake on the left is my gluten free version and turned out awesome I added extra whites to mine to help with the rise and I added a bit of coconut sugar to mine for color. I served with strawberries.
I guess I need to clear this kitchen work table and change that table cloth haha. These cakes rose so much that I needed to carefully cut around the edges to get them out of the pans
For my drink today I am sharing our pour over coffee maker. It makes a nice brew of my chicory-dandelion beverage which I brew and then place on the top heater and below a regular pot of coffee, So your choice: tea or coffee. and I found a coconut milk creamer.
Happy Tuesday everyone!!
Good morning everyone,
The other day I made six very large sweet pepper halves stuffed and 'baked" them in my slow cooker. They turned out so delicious we had them two nights in a row and invited our friend Mr L over. He does not eat allot but he ate all of his supper this time. One night I served with kale and last night some of my garden green and yellow beans.
About an hour's drive from me there is an Amish community named Leadmine. A couple years ago they started an auction of their grown veggies and fruits. Some years they have good prices for a family and some years one has to buy a huge quantity to purchase, so we quit going.
Last year my friend went and brought back gorgeous canning tomatoes for me and also these wonderful huge red sweet peppers I have never seen them so large-and after freezing they are still sweet-so these peppers just turned out so well. I have froze sweet peppers in the past that will turn bitter after being in the freezer.
I am making progress on my first page of my fabric book and started working on January's pages. My staz on ink pads arrived yesterday and tomorrow my letter and number stamps are to arrive-so I am anxious to stamp some wording.
I have over the years collected beads and buttons. I have a few things that I found at yard sales and thrift stores of old jewelry that sometimes works out nicely. I found three small glass leaves in my stash that I sewed on, and added a few rock beads too.
I did make the mistake of getting a little too close to the bottom edge as it is just barely over 1/2 an inch but I think it will be ok. For my next pages I will mark a line to remind me.
Since I am not going to seal this over with mistyfuse and tulle I put a cloth over the needle felting and pressed it a bit front and back.
I am pleased with this first page so far. I do not have drawing skills so I have been looking online at coloring book pages of things I can make into appliques. I found a neat tree for January.
I have decided after watching a good you tube video on using freezer paper to print on fabric that I have the wrong ink in my printer and she also pointed out tips so the ink would not smear. so I will try this technique again but not right now.
I have a fun story about the pair of ducks that have been visiting us. At first hubs noticed that there were two different pairs of muscovy ducks visiting but never at the same time-he is always so observant. Now it is pretty much the same pair and they are hanging around all day, we do not know where they are going in the evenings to be safe from predators but they are always back at first light.
Yesterday when I was walking my compost pail to the compost pile, miss calico kitty was following me and all of a sudden we must have startled the ducks and they flew off to land in the pond. I am thinking they were up in one of the trees. On the way back to the house they flew out of the pond and landed right in front of me. I told them sorry but it is not 2 in the afternoon yet-so you will just have to wait for your corn. haha
When they see me with the corn they come right up to me-waiting for the hand out. too funny. hubs wouldn't mind if they stayed here to raise some youngsters as eat lots of bugs. We used to raise them back in the '90s when we also had goats, a couple black angus and hogs for eating. We also raised chickens and pheasants.
I took this photo just now
I also wanted to share some very nice surprise gifts I received. My friend that drove me to Yellowstone last May loves to knit and crochet-she is always making something, and her favorite thing to knit is socks. Last year I gifted her with 8 skeins of alpaca-wool that I picked up at the thrift shop-expensive yarn if in a yarn shop. I have so much yarn here for weaving that I gave it to her. We went over to visit and she surprised me with these that she made from that yarn. How awesome and sooo soft I love them they are a neat color a red orange. I was totally surprised.
and a couple days later we got a ups delivery from our new friends in Wisconsin that came down in November for deer camp
A big box of chocolates and three sets of sewing scissors from Japan that seem to be very high quality.
I needed the smaller pair with the sharp point for my applique pieces as I was just thinking I would need to buy a pair, and I have never owned the clippers which are working out great with my hexagon hand sewing. So another total surprise
I want to thank you all so much for stopping by and also helping me with my fabric art journal-this is a totally new craft/art concept for me too lol
I am so happy to have found all of you lovely people through Elizabeth's T for Tuesdays I enjoy blogging so much more than facebook and all of my original blogging friends of 12 years have all left to facebook--so I just want you to know how special you all are to me--big hugs from the Ozarks.
Wow I am sooooo loving our weather today (Sunday) we made it up to 70 f degrees here A big thank you to Mother Nature. The snow and ice are totally melted off the rural roads today, and snow outside my window has melted as well.
Tonight thunderstorms move in and we will dip 40 degrees colder-today was a welcome break from those arctic temps. Next week looks like a more normal winter temperature pattern.
I got up early this morning and left for town-to get a few things we needed and I browsed in Wal Mart's craft department.
I live so rural that I have no craft stores of any kind in my nearest towns. There are two fairly good sized towns in either direction of me, but if I want to visit a Jo Ann's or Hobby Lobby, Marshalls craft type store I have to make a whole day of it to get there and back.
That is why I do allot of my shopping online-I compare for best prices and I look for free shipping. and it's easy and fast haha
Actually I really do not need much but there are a few things I was looking at for my Fiber Art Journal-which has turned out to be so much fun for me this past week. It has just been way too long that I spend quality time in my craft room-loving it lol
Note: I am posting more to my blog now so if you missed my last posts and care to read them I have a couple older posts about my journal progression.
So I was quite surprised to find things that will work on fabrics today at Wal mart. I also picked up a couple stickers and will find out if they will work on fabrics.
These looked fun to try and a great color assortment too
I need trees either in a stamp or stickers but they did not have any so thought I would try these pretty stickers for the warmer months, also I have never used puffy paint so curious how that works-was thinking snow perhaps-have any of you used it??, and I love Elmer's glue and this one is for fabrics so I added it to my stash I like the misty fuse over glue but I thought I might need it for the stickers.
I also bought those ribbons to stamp letters and numbers on to
I have yet to try this printing on fabrics-any tips that you can share?-I am hoping it will work with black ink and not color which is just too expensive to use in the printer and I think I want black and white for my journal.
I really needed some help threading the wool threads so this is what they had
I have a small alphabet stamp set but the letters are a bit small for the title of a page and my set had no numbers. So I searched online for stencils and then decided I really did not want to do that sounds more messy and I love stamps more.
So browsing online I checked on Ebay and wow I think I found a good deal as the stamps are by Stamping Up-and looks like different sizes of letters and also numbers and also different fonts too. I didn't want to spend allot for this but adding up the money this was a good buy and I asked the seller if he could mark it down and and he gave me $5.00 off plus the free shipping It was $29,00 and the stamps looked clean. I love the choice of numbers. This will be nice to use in my card making too.
The other item I looked into was the Shiva oil paint sticks I bought a sample set of 3 several years ago and really loved them. I have spent enough money on crafts this month so will see how the fabric paint pens I found at Wal mart work out in my fabric journal and then decide on the shiva paint sticks-I thought they might be nice to blend some colors in the background.
So to show what I have done so far
Yesterday I started stitching the wool applique pieces down. I grabbed my crazy quilt book of stitches to freshen my memory on the stitches.
For the deer I did a blanket stitch and it looked awful around the deer so took that all out and just did a whip stitch.
I have a big bag full of silk noil with lots of colors that I use in my needle felt pieces. and of course I have lots of wool choices-grin
So I had much fun playing with my needle felting again I used Navajo Churro wool on the deer.
and here is a sneak peak so far. The deer needs a little more needle felting, especially so he looks like he has 4 legs. and perhaps a little more grass and rocks etc. I am hoping he looks like a deer and not too "furry"
For my civil war hexagons I am down to 8 more sets of rosettes to baste and then I can grab the silk threads and begin sewing them together.
For my drink this week I am sharing two. My friend suggested drinking a cup of thyme tea in the mornings since I have the hoshimoto thyroid disease. I have my own dried thyme and I grabbed one of my pottery single serve tea pots. I have not used this pretty cup in awhile so since the colors matched I grabbed it too. I was surprised that the thyme tea was actually delicious.
and you all know I have been drinking brewed dandelion and chicory root tea in place of coffee since it is for sure caffeine free-well when I just want a cup or two and not a whole pot I use Teccinno tea bags. They have many delicious flavors so I tried the caramel nut that also has in it carob, dates, almonds, figs and a natural caramel nut flavor. Their teas are very mellow and full bodied. I found them online at the company Vitacost where I buy allot of gluten free items too
Happy T Day everyone, hoping you all got a break in winter too
A heat wave-lol-well 50 degrees feels like a heat wave for sure-does a body good to get warmed up. Our highway that we live on is just a little snow covered now, while our long drive way hopefully will melt off by Sunday.
Last night I could not sleep as I was thinking about my fabric book and how I want to bind it. I just could not grasp it, even with our Elizabeth explaining it well so I thought I got it-but no not quite right. Then it came to me-and I finally Get it-happy dancing, as I really wanted to bind it that way-see previous post.
So today I decided I wanted a few more pages and a extra page in front that will be attached to the cover. So I knew I had more yardage in wool and got lucky that it was in a trunk in the bottom drawer that I could get to easily. It is a soft plaid and the blue matches perfectly to the blue I am already using. So I got the idea to alternate the colors which will give me enough to have two pages per month and a couple extra, so I am pleased. This plaid is allot thinner but I am going to add some quilt batting between the two layers.
I took Elizabeth's suggestion and bought the right ink pads for stamping on to fabric. Thank you much Elizabeth, as what I had on hand will not work at all. I found a good price on ebay and bought a couple colors-so I am waiting on those inks to stamp some lettering for the January page.
After cutting more pages I worked on the first page when you open the book. I got out my stencils I had made and used for quilting and made some wool appliques. Then I remembered I still have mistyfuse-which is a product I love You can seal together papers to fabric or fabric to fabric etc it is great stuff. I used it allot several years ago when I was making artsy postcards and atcs to swap. So I am going to seal down the wool appliques with that first and then stitch the edges.
Before that I remembered about ironing on freezer paper for a stencil-so much easier to cut out then tracing the stencil with chalk. My past quilting techniques are coming back to me haha
These are stencils I made from our oak leaves and sumac leaf and the deer I cut from a photo in a magazine.
This is going to be the opening page of the book with lettering on top of the page.
A peak at some of the shelving filled with fabrics, reclaimed linen, silks, velvets from clothing found at thrift shops. also bags of laces,-you name it I probably have it if is sewing related lol I orginally was collecting items to make a crazy quilt-but that is not going to happen now-I think my fiber book will lend itself well for smaller projects.
This is my set of letter stamps I am looking forward to using allot of my stamps with this project too
and I found these inks that I had forgotten about-I probably picked them up with a coupon and do not remember now what I was going to do with them. this package has lots of safety warnings on the back--any of you use these?? will they work on fabric??
Thank you for stopping by and enjoy your weekend!!
This morning it is finally a bit warmer and the sun is still shining. I look out my bay window and we have the returning ducks and crows eating left overs from yesterday afternoon lol
I really enjoy the crows when they visit.
I read through my new Fabric Art Journal book this morning, I also browsed around the internet and Pinterest a bit too. For binding the book I am liking the stitch coptic bound method the best so far. There is also one I found online that I love but have not quite figured it out yet-I am slow at figuring things out like this see here I am quite inspired with her work so I started following her-and her latest post is amazing what she made for 2017
I was quite pleased how the wool fabric worked out for cutting-very little if any waste-the last piece I could use to tie the book too perhaps. I decided easiest to cut on the floor-my chalk pencil worked out perfect for marking across the width of fabric. Then I just cut that piece in half for the pages. I didn't choose to cut the selvages off so gave me a wider page and no waste.
The strips were cut at 13 inches high and then when folded in half to make the pages are 9 inches wide. I will be embroidering or embellishing all the wool edges.
My question and what I have not read about anywhere-is how do you cover the back of each page from the stitches made on the front of the page?
I may just use the fabric like I used with the handmade paper piece and match the size fabric on the back side and stitch them together hope that all made sense any ideas??
Or does one make a page entry on the front, and then flip it over to the back and then embroidery the edges together which would hide the stitches? that idea just came to me while writing this lol
So I need some tips, methods for this part of the journal so any suggestions of what you have done or can think of would be helpful.
Hoping the weather is warmer for all of you as well.
Enjoy your day
Oh and I have another question those of you that have used stamps on fabrics what brand of ink pads would you suggest thanks
This morning I think all of these arctic temps have gotten to me as I woke up chilled-really early this morning. The furnace is keeping up, but I think everything in the house is just so chilled now including me. haha
Our garbage needs to be wheeled down to the road for pick up around 7:30 am as it gets picked up before 8 am. Being in the minus again-nope I wasn't wanting to warm up the car and way too cold for a walk down the driveway early this morning-so I will just get it all out next week instead.
I brewed up myself a pot of my herbal decaf and have been drinking that all morning long-still have a couple cups left.
Tomorrow the warm up really begins and I really just can't wait lol How are you doing with the arctic temps if you have them too??
On the plus size I finished with the information for taxes and completed all that this morning, and every day now I am basting up hexagons. Loving the progress as I have less than 20 now to baste. (that of course is Not counting all the background hexagons)
The Fabric Art Journals book arrived in today's mail. I am really happy with it. For buying used it was well taken care of and is like brand new. I am going to sit down and read most of it. I don't think I am into those metal grommets for putting the pages together-I want to keep it all more organic. I am going to see if I can figure out the stitching instead. Or once I get into it more will just develop it as I go. I always work that way and nothing like this is ever really planned out-unlike my hexagon quilt where I have planned out the project more.
With so many days here below 0 this cold weather is just drinking up my propane gas. Instead of it lasting 4 to 6 weeks which is more normal for winter, It is only lasting 2 to 3 weeks-so I have not been baking as much as I would love to during these cold temps. I have been making soups and I did bake cornbread this week though.
I made a big pot of white beans with lots of ham
We enjoyed this two days in a row and then I froze the rest. Below I sprinkled on some shredded cheeses.
Years ago I found on King Arthur's Flour site a recipe for cornbread that only uses cornmeal and no flour-so this is my go to recipe for cast iron skillet cornbread They must have taken down the recipe as I don't see it now. If anyone would like it let me know and I will share it in my next post.
We still have many bird and deer visitors and a couple big red squirrels enjoying the corn and seed. Of course now many of the deer are stopping by earlier and earlier in hopes I am feeding twice I guess lol
Today we have lots of sunshine so enjoying that over the cloudy days we have had
Have an awesome day!!
