You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May 2009.
Come, Holy Spirit.
We saw these at a craft fair a week ago. Being the tightwads we are, we didn’t want to pay full price for them, so Charlie made his own.
The bow is a length of narrow-enough-to-be-flexible pvc pipe with a shorter piece of heavy-duty twine tied to each end.
The arrow is a wooden dowel with a piece of foam pipe insulation (fun noodles would work for this) glued to the arrow-head end, and a notch cut in the back end.
Yes, his pants are on backward.
Hannah is a talented artist. These are all pieces she did at school.
This one was printed on a magnet, which is what I took a picture of. Sorry about the flash – my cheap camera doesn’t give me the option to turn the flash off.
Mixed Up Clown
Crushed Sunflowers was displayed at the Catholic Education Foundation’s Treasurefest at the Power and Light District in Kansas City on May 3.
I’m seriously considering getting prints made and selling them, or printing greeting cards for Hannah’s college fund. What do you think?
Way back when I made this quilt top…
…I had several people ask how I made it. Almost two years later (ahem) I’m going to tell you how it’s done. This isn’t a tutorial proper – just sort of a guideline.
I was using Bonnie’s Scrap User’s System at the time. (I’m seriously considering reinstating that system – it made stuff like this quilt a LOT easier than it would otherwise be.) To make a row of this quilt, I would reach into the 1″ strip drawer and pull out a couple. I paid no attention whatsoever to matching or coordinating colors. I sewed the strips end to end to make each row. For the next row, I might reach into the 3″ strip drawer and pull out several strips, again sewing them end to end to make one long strip. I used strips 1″, 1.5″, 2″, 2.5″, and 3″ wide. That’s cut width, not sewn width. If you don’t already have the scrap user’s system set up, you can cut strips from scrap and sew them end to end.
At some point you’ll have to decide how long you want your rows to be and cut them all that length. Then sew the rows to each other. I think I sewed the rows together as they were made, but it’s been so long I can’t remember. You can sew them each to the rest as they are made, or you can wait til the end and arrange them for a more pleasing composition and then sew them all at once. It’s easier to pick a direction to iron the seams between rows and just use the same direction all the way through the quilt.
I started to make another one that ultimately never materialized (I slay myself) that was more color coordinated. For that one I chose three colors (blue, green, and yellow) I thought worked well together and chose only strips that read as one of those three colors. There were some other colors in the strips I chose – for example, there was a blue with red ladybugs on it, but it’s overall color was blue. Really any two or three colors could be used in this way to make a quilt that still looks scrappy, but a little more coordinated. Just one color might even look sophisticated. I think all browns would look nice, especially if there were no jabs of any other color – just shades of brown from tan to dark chocolate and maybe a bit of almond for sparkle.
You could also orient your strips vertically instead of horizontally. Or diagonally – just don’t ask me how to do that, because I haven’t figured it out yet.
There’s really not much planning involved. I prefer to make quilt tops with a sort of fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants method. I find the process more fun that way.
Everyone was outside except me, when one of the kids came in very excited. “We caught a bunny, Mama! We caught a bunny.” I grabbed the camera and came out to find there was a bunny in a loose piece of drainage pipe that has been in the back yard for a while. The bunny had apparently seen children coming at him and run into the pipe for shelter. We tried to get him to come out of the pipe, into a bucket, from which we could get a good look at him and then release him. He was almost out of the end of the pipe when I tried to get a picture of him, but he disappeared back into the pipe too quickly for me.
We eventually laid the pipe and a bucket on the ground and discouraged Mr. Bunny from going out the other end of the pipe.
Hannah tipped the bucket up as soon as Mr. Bunny got to it.
He looked so incredibly soft. We all felt a bit sad that wild rabbits won’t let people pet them.
Did you know even a baby bunny can hop out of a 5-gallon bucket? Josiah brought a carrot and the instant he dropped it into the bucket the bunny gave one big scrambling jump, scaring the snot out of just about everyone, and tore across the yard as fast as he could go. He stopped when he reached the far side of the fence and watched us for a few minutes.
I’m trying something new. New to me – it’s actually a very old thing. I’m making watermelon rind pickles, the old-fashioned way. I cut the hard green outer layer off the rinds, and then chopped the rinds. I pressed them and added 1 tablespoon of sea salt to each jar. One jar has a bit of nutmeg added. (Not measured.) The rinds had enough liquid I didn’t need to add water. I will check them on Thursday to see if the fermentation process has taken place correctly.
I really hope this works. We got a new stove recently. It was given to us by someone who’d been through a divorce and had ended up with a brand new stove sitting in his garage for about 3 years. Well, it’s not brand new anymore, but it was still hardly used and in great condition. And it has a ceramic top, which is so easy to clean. So when it was offered to us, we jumped at it. But a friend told us that we can’t can on it because the ceramic top can’t hold the weight of all the canning pots. So I hope our lacto-fermentation experiments free us from the need to can on the stove-top.
Want more info on lacto-fermentation? Try these links:
Just gonna jump right in.
I finished this dress today.
I used Simplicity 3900, which is no longer on the Simplicity website. The fabric was a $1 cut from an estate sale.
The zipper was from stash. The ribbon is a tiny velvet from JoAnn. Velvet ribbon seems a bit incongruous on this breezy-thin fabric, but it works fine.
Have a wonderful Memorial Day, if you’re in the States, and if you’re not, have a great Monday!
Mama Long 