The world is full of amazing opportunities for crafts and self expression. Sometimes there are so many opportunities I start five things at once…okay, often I start five things at once. I have made some progress on my aunt’s quilt, right now I am using clear thread to ensure that her applique is solid on the first set of flowers. I think that the center looks good, I’ll see if I can ask my cousin when I see her at the Funeral.
I am trying to find a pattern with Celtic meaning and a lovely phrase to commemorate my Uncle that passed, I’ll make three (one for each of his kids and one for his widow…maybe one for his ex?). Mostly that is adding the elements for the design and getting them stitched out.
My library is kicking off their summer reading program in two weeks and I found out last week that we will be having ‘spirit days’ that week. I will not be at work for two of them, however I will be at the library to volunteer at a booth for one of the guilds I belong to. This means that I need at least ideas, if not projects, for each of the other five days. One of them is for a piece of art or inspiration by an artist. I am currently working on an applique design for a t-shirt I purchased. Hopefully that turns out.
I am still low-key working on my Fey piece, it is currently percolating in the back of my mind as I sort through my fabrics, tulle, lace, etc.
There have been some great sales on embroidery patterns, I sort of need to lay off of purchasing those until I have made some products and sales.
In addition to all of that I have started playing around with Notion as a way to keep my projects organized and my inventory/purchases recorded. All of this is on top of my work stuff, a class I’m teaching this weekend, the funeral, and preparing for summer reading. I’ve bitten off a lot to chew, I hope I can keep up with it.
I did take time one morning before work for an artists date to the beach. Even though it means waking up super early I love going to the beach for sunrise, I got a great photo of the moon before it set.
I will freely admit that since I have returned from H&H I have gone a little overboard with my inspiration and trying to bring those to fruition. There was a bit of a lesson to everyone about how disease is still out there, I and several other attendees, came down with COVID when we returned from H&H Americas. I wore a mask the entire show, except for meals, so that I would not get sick and miss more work. Despite my precautions I tested positive. Next year (or trip) I will get a booster beforehand to minimize risk further.
Due to my excitement about the binding tool and information by Pauline’s Quilter’s World I ordered the tool set from Fat Quarter Shop and the book “Pauline’s Quilting World: Quilt As You Go Handbook Book” from Amazon. I could not order just the tool set, so looking at the items that were on sale from Fat Quarter Shop I also got several mini charm packs, as well as a half yard of one of the Highland patterns and a half yard of one of the colorful fabrics.
I also ordered some amazing beads from Artbeads, they had some beautiful seed bead assortments I am hoping to use to experiment with the seed bead mosaic techniques created by Sabrina Frey. I was able to see this in person at H&H, they were absolutely gorgeous. I will be ordering the Skinny glue and art edge foam strips from fire mountain gems when I am ready to take that project on.
I did order 2 shawl buttons from Jul Designs to try out. I am really excited to see what they look like and how they work.
The final 2 things that I ordered are the Spindles I need for the class I will be teaching in May as well as the wet felting fibers I need for the class I’m teaching in June. Writing this out I realize I have not ordered as much as I thought, so I’m doing better that I thought.
It has been two weeks since I have last posted, but things have been moving forward. I received one of my tax returns so I was able to put more toward my debt as well as putting some toward my business. I ordered some PLA filament to 3-d print Turkish spindles not only for my job, but some extras for me to sell and use during my classes in my friend’s store.
I have potatoes in pots as well as strawberries in their bed. I looked it up and it seems that these two types of plants will not try to sprout until the time is right so putting them in the ground now should have no negative effects. I also planted up some seedlings in my home so I can give them a head start, I lovely combination of food and flowers to delight all aspects of my life (the flowers are also dye-plants, I have to tie crafting into everything).
Among all of that I am trying to figure out a fun project that I believe will be a big hit among the local sewing community!
Sorry for the quick post, I hope that you remember to Live Life A Little More Abstract!
I was lucky enough this past week to have encountered a rare productivity burst. Throughout this burst I was able to get one of my rooms organized, start several projects, and make progress on other projects.
Not all of my projects turned out great, but most of them did what I wanted. The first paragraph is going to be about outside projects I was able to complete during a warm day, and the rest is going to be about crafts I have started, some are a little more artistic than crafty, but everything I do comes back around to crafts eventually. Even my garden, which is what the next paragraph is going to be about, is going to have plants that are good natural dye producers. Speaking of, onto the outdoor projects.
During a windstorm my downspout decided to blow off of my house. This seemed like a sign to add a rain barrel to my gardening. I bought a rain barrel, and the device to connect it to my downspout. To see if I was able to get away with a cheap solution I purchased a connector that was a little too big, sealant, and some screws intended for a downpipes, under $10, and decided to try to connect it from the ground… It didn’t work, but I really didn’t think it would I was just really hopeful.
This means that I am going to have to wait a little longer since I will need to purchase a 7′ ladder, new downspout, and probably an elbow for the top. I also noticed that there is no downspout on the gutter that surrounds my porch so I’m probably going to add one on just to be sure. The downspout was not my only outside project, I also managed to put up my mini pop-up greenhouse. It is weighed down with some stones from my front yard and it currently houses my mower, clippers, and a few other gardening things. This prompted me to finally put together my two workbench sawhorses, one of which is currently in the greenhouse. I’m hoping to start some plants in March or April. Okay, let’s get into crafts now!
In getting my home back in order I have discovered several projects that I have been meaning to work on for quite some time. One of which is my Unicorn in the Library fiber from Hipstrings. I finally managed to finish spinning it up, I did split the last puff into 4 pieces so that I could spin some other fibers in between that I will use as ply experiments. I also rediscovered my love for spinning silk, this caused me to spin up some lengths that I will allow my library craft patrons to use in their slow stitching project. That reminds me I need to make up a sample for that sometime this week.
I have been exploring some crochet techniques, mosaic crochet was not as much of a success as I would like, I found a Tunisian Crochet pattern video that I am working through and transcribing into a written pattern, and I will be seeking out resources for two sided mosaic crochet to eliminate the weird stair-stepping I am getting on the inside of my mosaic crochet.
Now we are getting to the part where I can never be content, I have to try everything. I don’t know if I mentioned that I bought a Rock Tumbler? If not, well yes, I bought a rock tumbler, some sample rocks, ceramic media, and enough grit to last me a while. I have been watching YouTube Videos by Michigan Rocks for some time, and my Aunt mentioned not getting around to using her rock tumbler, plus a way to force myself to go outside to find rocks all combined to have me starting this new hobby. I have had a ton of fun so far, I have owned it for a month, and I managed to get my ceramic media tumbled through the first 3 stages ( I didn’t bother to polish it), as well as some of the bag of tiny chips that I only half regret purchasing. They aren’t going to turn into anything great, but I’ll run them through the cleaning and two polishing stages to see if I can get them to have a shine. I did put about three pounds of the bigger rocks into each of my two tumblers to get them started on the stage 1, I’ll pull them off on Saturday to see what they look like. I’ll put out a post of how to get started Rock Tumbling, as well as linking to some great resources later.
Of course I cannot start just one hobby at a time, you think I have any self control? I haven’t started this one but it is going to go hand-in-hand with the rock tumbling, I plan on wrapping the rocks in wire when they are tumbled. To be able to sell these for something like a decent price I plan on purchasing some Sterling Silver wire. I’m not selling necklaces, just the wrapped stones for now. This brings me to my last two projects that I’m working on, skipping over the fishing poles I purchased today because I found out that there are ‘no license fishing days’ in New York State. I will need to find pictures of the types of fish it is legal for me to keep, and I have to remember to invite my friend out since I bought her a (cheap like mine) fishing pole.
Okay, so I did manage to have a sale on my Etsy site (thank you to whomever bought the Dino Plushie) and that caused me to realize that I hate having to pay Etsy out of what I had calculated as earnings. I know that people look for inexpensive items, deals, and sales. This means that I’m going to be paying about .20 per item, every quarter (I think that is how often), create listings, and pay for shipping, to make very little if any money. I do plan on creating some spreadsheet and other printable items to put up on Etsy once I have them perfected, to create something like a passive income stream. I have some great ideas I just need to slow down and find enough time to start working on them, I think I might start staying a couple extra hours on the days I’m supposed to leave early, or go to Panera Bread for a couple of hours before I’m supposed to be at work to get these things done.
Due to the slow nature of my Etsy Sales I have decided instead of dripping my products onto Etsy as I get them done, and sort of rushing to get them done, I will take a little more time and sign up for a couple of craft shows this Fall. There is one in September and another in October I would like to sign up for. There are registration fees, I’ll need another table, and I need to take photos of my setup, but all of that should be doable by September. I’m really sort of excited about this, though I am not sure what type of craft I should bring. There is an apple festival that mentions having old-fashioned crafts, so I’m thinking about seeing if spinning and weaving would work for them.
I think that this is long enough of a rambling post to be getting on with for now. Until next time remember to Live Life A Little More Abstract!
Yay! This past week was the last week of our summer reading program. We will be having a finale and prize drawing this upcoming Saturday. I’m teaching a needle tatting class to a guild that day so I will not be available. For the end of our summer reading program I ran my usual classes and two extra events. Due to this I’ve been really busy and not able to get a lot of crafting done.
I have been working on hiding the threads for my big quilt, I’m done tying the top and bottom threads together and just need to thread each one into a needle and slide that needle between the top and bottom quilt pieces and then snip any extra thread off. This will help the threads stay together better and not allow the quilting to unravel. I did wash the quilt and it has amazing crinkle. I’ll post photos next week when I’m ready to put it in my Etsy store.
I haven’t managed to make much progress on my second Tunisian crochet square but I’m having fun with it. I have managed to make progress on a couple of projects. I put some wood filler into the cracks I’ve found on my back porch railing.
I am certainly going to have to do more sanding and possibly more filling. I cannot wait to get this ready for the winter. Speaking of prep for the winter, I’m still working on my garage. I’m going to show you the shame of my garage window and the hole I need to fill in.
As stated in my earlier post about how to repair the window, get the right sized glass. It makes all the difference unless you are good at cutting glass…which I am obviously not good at.
My handyman left a bunch of stuff behind that I need to figure out what to do with. I’m more concerned about getting the hole covered so that I can store my garden stuff in there for the winter. I did spray the place with all natural cat repellent as well as a bug spray to make sure I can get in there without any real problems. I’m on vacation in two weeks so I plan on doing more work at my home then, while wearing some very durable gloves.
I also managed to finish a garment which is one of the few garments where you would ask your significant other ‘Does this make my butt look big enough?’ I am going to be playing the part of a mother from 1880s who is in mourning. I’m trying to put together a costume with minimal purchasing so I used an old pillowcase that I stuffed with fabric scraps and sewed in a semi circle. I then sewed a few lines to roughly keep the stuffing in place before adding in some twill tape to use as ties. This is not how you should make this garment if you want it to last and look really authentic. For a quick job this is an alright result. It will cover my entire backside and give my hips a little more padding. I’m going to try to put together my rough costume this upcoming week to see if it all works.
The final bit of news I have is that my local government is going to release a new grant this week for an opportunity to get home repairs completed. My last application contained a bunch of small things I would like to get done and my application was denied. This time I’m asking them why my last application was denied as well as asking for a list of contractors that will do repairs on my roof. I did see an article released about someone that obtained the initial 10k grant toward a roof replacement and their roof was actually leaking. I’m trying to get this repaired before it leaks, so here’s hoping.
That is it for this week. Until next time remember to Live Life A Little More Abstract
*I managed to update the photos so they should all show up, sorry about that.* I’m really not sure what got into me this past week, I finished so many projects and started some more. I’ll start with my quilt that I’ve been working on for a few weeks. I did finish all six types of blocks then I spent some time before work sashing the pieces and putting rows together…then once I was almost late to work (just one more row), I finished putting the top together.
This quilt is on a queen sized bed, so the entire quilt would fit on a queen sized bed without any overhang. I managed to get the quilt sandwich made, I pieced the back together and I love how that turned out. I’ve started to do the actual free motion quilting on the quilt, I’m considering the quilting something like ‘entropic chaos’. Okay, now that I’m looking at it through a camera lens it doesn’t look as bad as I thought, maybe once I wash it the quilt crinkle will hide things.
I can only do a bit of quilting at any time because of several circumstances, my hands cannot move against the natural movement of the quilt for very long and the top thread is giving me trouble by fraying often. Of course this is not enough for me. There is a new free tutorial on how to turn corners when you are sewing, those sort of internal corners that cause so many problems. This worked really well….okay so it would have worked well if I had ironed the pieces down and squared the two halves before connecting them. The new instructions were created as a masterclass be Plains and Pine, I highly recommend this! It is so simple how they have written it out!
As you can tell from my Lemoyne Star quilt I love all things spooky, so I’m playing with coffin shapes.
I also managed another kitchen towel and finger towel on my 16 shaft loom.
I did some weaving on my saori loom, two pieces have clasped weft and the rest is yardage I hope to eventually use to make a shirt.
So five projects in a week, that’s it right? No, not really. I also found a Tunisian crochet challenge, it’s supposed to be weekly but I finished the first in less than two days, it was the Tunisian Simple stitch. I had a minor problem with counting after the first row, I managed to correct it and I’m hoping to ease the extra into a seam when I put it together. I’ve started the second square which is the Tunisian Knit Stitch.
I cannot wait to see what this next week will bring me. I have 4 classes I’m teaching plus makerspace this week so I don’t know if I will have any energy for crafting, but if the rain holds off I should be able to sand my back porch some more. Until next time remember to live life A Little More Abstract!
So yesterday I taught my last planned scissor fob class, and it went very well. I had seven people take part and they all made beautiful scissor fobs. Someone did ask if I would be willing to teach another class for another organization that they belong to so if that goes through, that would be lovely. I organized and brought a lot of materials that I had created out of resin because we were going to be having a sort of garage sale event, however, no one was interested in my creations. They were mostly seconds that I had priced just for the cost of the resin and slight cost of the molds. However, since they did not, so at this point, I am probably going to either offer them through Facebook marketplace as seconds, or try to gift them to someone. Onto the very exciting parts of this post, the crafting.
so over the past couple of weeks, I have managed to get my loom, completely warped, and I have completed two towels, one of which was finished and washed. I am currently working on weaving the third towel and I love how the pattern is turning out. I’m not going to post a picture of the first towel because the warp was not accurate and there are a bunch of weird floats. I swear it took me almost halfway through the second towel to get the warps completely correct but I love how it looks now.
Yesterday I had a lovely phone call from a friend of mine that is on a very long drive back home, so we spent a wonderful six hours chatting. Since I am in capable of keeping my hands, still while talking on the phone, I managed to begin weaving, a beaded weaving project. That is something that I’ve been telling myself that I would do this entire week that I was on staycation, but it never wound up happening until yesterday. This was woven on my mirrix loom, and I spent another three hours this morning, working on it because I had another phone call from a different friend who was having trouble. It did take me about another hour or two to get a completely finished finish off the warp ends, glue everything down and put a back on it. So this less than 10 inch woven piece took me about 11 hours. That means that if I were to put this for sale just at my time at around minimum wage, I would have to sell this less than 10 inch piece for $165. That would not be taking into account the price of the loom, the thread, and the beads. I think that it’s beautiful but I don’t actually see somebody paying 165 for it.
Well, I have not just spent my entire staycation crafting. I did manage to get some things done around the house. I finally managed to get the thorn bush cut down from my side yard so I’m now working on figuring out how to get rid of the stumps so that it does not come back again. I am so excited by how much I managed to accomplish during my staycation and well I will not have another one until early September. I think that I am prepped and ready to get through August.
I hope that everyone has a great week and remember to Live Life A Little More Abstract.
I now have my 16 shaft table loom warped up completely and I have been weaving on it this week. A couple of threads snapped and a couple are floating rather than separating so I have to figure out what is going on with them. After I finished weaving the first towel, I decided to take each shaft off of its rail and take off the extra heddles that I had on the end. This was going very well until I reached shaft 14 and then the shaft decided to snap on me, essentially the bottom came off before the top was out of the rail, and it snapped. I was able to glue it back together using gorilla glue, however, that happened just this morning so I will not be able to put it back on until tomorrow morning.
I know that the gorilla wood glue worked because after half an hour the shaft stayed together without the clamp on. I did manage to get all of the extra heddle off and shifted where the last shaft is going to be by adding the pieces onto the other heddle. Essentially now only the 16th shaft is missing the part that keeps the heddle rods in place. Do I regret doing all of this, while the loom is completely warped up, not really. Considering how much time and effort it takes to warp up the loom, loosening the warp from the back beam and allowing the heddles to shift in place seems to be the best way to do this. That being said, I have not found out where the sticky warps are nor whether anything is shifted or twisted, so wait and see if this actually works or not. Since I am having a Weaving Guild meeting on Saturday and they asked us to bring our own place setting, I’m going to wash the towel now that I’ve hemmed it and see how it works.
There is one more aspect to this saga and that is the paper that I used to wind the back warp. Since it was not exactly the same size as the back warp beam, it wound up crinkling and wrinkling. Those crinkles and wrinkles cause the warped be held at a different tension which completely messed up my front tension. I should’ve seen this coming however, I did not. I am still debating different ways to potentially resolve this issue. The back warp reel is actually quite wide, though it isn’t 36 inches wide which is what I think the paper is.
I believe taking off the extra heddles will give me room to figure out which of my warps are crossing or doing other things that cause me to not get a clean shed. I also believe that if I can find some way to wind the warp on with even tension I will solve my loose warp problem, though I do not look forward to unrolling the entire warp just to try to roll it back on the back beam with even tension. Perhaps unrolling the back beam and pulling it through the front reed and heddles will help me figure out my threading problems, then I can concentrate on the tension problems. I hope to get both of those problems solved this week, though again it will all have to wait until tomorrow morning when I can get the last shaft fixed.
As you can probably tell, this has been my all consuming project this past week. The quilt as you go project went well, not everyone finished since I had between 16-18 (I lost count) people wanting to do the project. As a result, even though Wednesday-Sunday I’m supposed to be off, I will be coming in to work for 2 hours to set up and help everyone finish their potholders. Each person will be making 1 and I have enough supplies for 12. I’m also teaching Scissor Fobs on Saturday, so I will really have Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday off. That is alright, I will use the ‘on days’ to run other errands and take care of other chores around the house.
I think that is it for this week, so until next time remember to Live Life a Little More Abstract!
Hello Everyone! The first part is information about my mental health so if you want to skip to the crafting content skip to the ****************.
My site and store have not been updated in a few weeks due to a slight adjustment in my anti-depressants (anti-anxiety for me) and the time at which I was taking them. I was taking them in the morning, this resulted in my consuming more caffeine to keep myself awake and not taking my ADHD medication (which is a stimulant). By changing my anti-depressants to evening I am able to sleep better and not spend my entire day trying to stay awake, I am also taking my ADHD daily to see the difference it makes. After half a week I have more energy and I am able to better focus on accomplishing various tasks.
I also had a friend visit to see my new house for the first time, it was so much fun to catch up with her!
My new desk has re-ignited my desire to ensure that my first floor work area is optimized, or at least I can access everything I need. This of course means that I have to move everything out into the open before I can store it away. I did find my shuttle tatting supplies about 6 weeks before I am set to teach needle tatting to a guild, so that is going to be great to demonstrate the difference between the techniques. Right now the room looks a fright, I did manage to finish weaving off the warp I had set up for coasters that I plan on giving to the guild as prizes for the EGLFC (Eastern Great Lakes Fiber Conference) in October. This allowed me to push that loom to a wall and put items that I use more frequently in front of it.
There is a cubby that I built years ago, not very well admittedly, that had been against a wall but hidden with items in front of it. That is now next to the loom against the wall, mostly accessible. There are 3 cubbies that have longer term storage items that I placed a small end table against. I then pushed my desk up against that end table to create a seamless corner of work space, where I can still access most of the cubbies, that I feel will be very functional.
These moves allowed me to better access my 16 shaft table loom, which brings me to one of the reasons why I started all of these adjustments. Mirrix Looms had a program where they invited everyone to weave every day in April. It was such a success they decided to bring it back in July. This has resulted in my spending the first three days of July finishing off the coasters, so I could put that loom away, and making my 16 shaft loom more accessible. Much earlier this year I put the warp for some towels through my reed, and found out that despite what I thought my warp is wide enough to fill the entire loom…this means that I need to go back and start at the beginning to rethread my entire reed. I thought I could ignore this and just leave the extra threads off of the warp, so I began threading the heddles, however the truth is if I do that I will always hate these towels. I checked with Mirrix and warping up my 16 shaft loom does count as ‘weaving’ toward their goal. I do understand how ridiculous all of this sounds, however I need that external motivation to get myself working on this huge project.
All of this does not mean that this is all that I have been working on! Last Monday I taught a guild how to make scissor fobs, and I will be repeating the lesson with another guild this Saturday and yet again on the 22nd. The first class was such a success I am very excited to see what creations the other guilds come up with given the supplies available! I purchased a lot of supplies for these scissor fobs and I am hopeful that I will get the supplies cost back so I can invest in teaching another class next year, though I am not sure what in yet.
If you have not gotten the gist yet, I never have just one or two projects on the go at a time. I have also been doing some work on my house, my front garden is planted with new blocks for my potted plants, they are a dye garden plus a couple of vegetables, so I look forward to seeing what hues I get out of my garden this year. I’ll try to get a good photo of my straw flowers by next post. I also went a little too far at the 70% off fabric sale at JoAnn Fabrics, though I hope to make a couple of lap quilts in the next week or so, yes I know I’m getting a bit too ambitious again!
I think that is all of the progress I have to report on for now, if I like how the workroom looks by time I’m finished I’ll try to add a photo to this post. I’ll probably have a post about organization products I use in my house in time for the Prime Sale on Amazon with affiliate links by next week. Clicking on the affiliate links will not cost you anything but I might get a small stipend.
Until Next Time Remember to Live Life a Little More Abstract!
I have always loved the look of bookcase quilts. I have decided to make a personalized spin on a bookcase quilt. It is one of my annual goals to try to read 100 books each year, I have recently started to allow rereads to count. Otherwise, I will never make that goal. What is more fun than combining those two goals? To do that I have started embroidering what will be the book spines with the titles and authors that I have read. I discovered that I can fit eight to ten spines on a fat quarter. I used a peel and stick wash away stabilizer so that the fabric was stable enough for the embroidery machine. I made sure that the stabilizer was on the far side of the fat quarter, so that there was plenty of room to cut the spines a part down the middle.
Since I do not like changing the thread, I decided to ensure that there were at least one or two other books in between each so that I will not have a huge chunk of the same color spines. There are a couple of series that I decided would be OK if they are the same color, so that is why all of my Shelly Laurenston books are on this fat quarter. I have decided to give myself about half an inch to an inch around each spine so I measured that out and cut each one out individually.
Since we have not even reached the halfway mark of the year, I am not going to worry about sewing the spines together quite yet. It’s probably going to be a couple of months before I do another batch of spines, so that I have enough titles to avoid embroidering a whole batch of titles right next to each other, on the same kind of fabric. When I do assemble the quilt, I plan on assembling the spines in the order that I actually read the books. I have trimmed the tops and bottoms of the spines, so that there is plenty of room just saw them together yet the books are not all the same height.
For a few of them, I have experimented with adding a different color to sort of look like fancy spines. Right now I have them in blocks 14 inches wide and I will eventually add a background color to the top so that the actual block is the same height. This is as far as I’ve gotten planning this quilt, it has been put on hold for right now, until I have read more books and until my Etsy shop is open. My Etsy shop will be opening June 2, 2023 and I hope to see everyone there.
Until next time, please remember to Live Life a Little More Abstract.
A Little More Abstract 