Retirement gifts

The retirement quilts were delivered during our parade today. They were a hit.

Her

Christmas Present #1 Done

Someone posted the other day that there are only 6 months until Christmas. My first thought was “how rude”! My second thought was,  I better get at it.

I found this pattern a while ago. It is simple to follow and there is a video tutorial! 

 I decided I would make these for Raivyn, Charlie, and Frankie for Christmas. I sent the girls a text, this link:

https://www.lionbrand.com/products/wool-ease-thick-and-quick-yarn

I asked them to pick out their top two colours. Charlie asked what for so I sent them the picture of the scarf. They each sent me their choices. Frankie asked for fig, Charlie asked for wheat, and Raivyn asked for the grey. 

This pattern worked up very quickly. It only took me 3 Hallmark movies!! It is stitched in the round so there is no blunt start or stop - it is all blended in. 

I think my stitches are looser than the ones shown in the pattern. One of these days, I might try to make the practice square to make sure my tension is correct!! 

I had to try it on to see if I liked it. Please ignore my hair today! 

I am going to give this a try sometime this summer. 

https://www.1millionwomen.com.au/blog/diy-crochet-plastic-bags-sleeping-mats-homeless/

There is a large box of plastic bags at school - they are collected for recycling. I figure there will be some kids that will want to learn how to crochet and this way, it won’t cost much. Just a few hooks!!



Happy Creating! 

ME

Secret Buddy Gifts

Hi ladies,
   We normally do a secret buddy thing at work the last couple of years and it's lots of fun.  I get lots of pop and chocolate and some days seeing a chocolate bar in my mailbox is what keeps me sane.  Anyway covid ( I'm not capitalizing it, it doesn't deserve capital letters) kind of messed up secret buddies.  Today I dropped off a quilted pillow , lavettes, and pot holders to be delivered by my delivery person to my buddy.  They're the perfect compliment to the colours she just painted her cabin.

They're being delivered to her cabin this weekend.   What are you ladies up to?

Her

Scrappy idea

Hi there,
  I love this quilt, it's called waffle stamp.  It's on my list for someday. Of course my little squares would probably be bigger than the 1.5 inch ones in the pic.

https://withstringsattached.blogspot.com/2020/06/friday-finish.html
 I need to find more sew jo so I can work on these ideas.  What's happening with you ladies?
Her

Self Binding Blankets

I love making these blankets. They are super easy, until they aren’t!! Here are a couple I made a while ago - hence the fold lines 🤣

So here’s where thes self bonding blankets don’t go so well!! I found these cute fat quarters at WalMart.  I don’t normally have a lot of boy material on hand. Something I need to work on. 

It turned out so cute however, I couldn’t get the self binding concept to work. 



It didn’t matter what I did, the binding would not lay flat. So, I started to google ideas to fix it. While doing this, I came across a bow tie corner. Looked cute and pretty easy. So I gave it a go - once! How does that look like a bow tie? 

I ended up folding over the binding and stitching it down. It turned out alright! 



I love the zigzag stitch. It just added to the edge!! 



I will try to do this again because it has worked in the past. I’ve used it about 10 times with great success. I’m not sure what happened this time. 

Happy Creating ladies! 

ME

PS The baby blanket is going to a brand new baby boy!! 

Quilts for Gifts

I have finished the two quilts I was asked to make for year end gifts from staffs. 

This one is for a principal who is moving schools. Each summer, she would write a Play for the next school year. She gave me all the t-shirts she collected - one for each play. She wanted the front and the back of the shirts to line up. The art work on the front of each shirt was created and designed by a student in the school. The back of the shirt has the name of the play, the actors and their roles and the director (Mrs H)! I added some nice fuzzy fleece to the sides! I do love rag quilts but I’m not a fan of making them. 

This was the original layout. 

This is one of the reasons why tag quilts are so challenging - seams out instead of in!! I did this twice 🤦🏼‍♀️😳


Here’s the finished version. If you check out my original layout, you’ll notice they aren’t the same. 

I’m very disappointed in the batting I used. I bought a giant roll again, and it is awful. It’s not soft and it is very thin. I’ve left a review and shared my disappointment. 

Here is gift number 2!!

This is a retirement gift from the staff! Both quilts are going to the same school!! 

This is how it arrived at my home - a great blue jean top!! 

I like how these corners are on an angle. 

I added a few items to the top, added a green border, some batting and a fuzzy back to finish this quilt. 

 

I didn’t do much quilting on the one, just a few squares!! 

Happy Wednesday!

Me

Dish cloth

I really like the texture of the cloth using this pattern. It is dense but flexible! 

For some reason this cloth is going to be wavy! Probably because I didn’t really count each row. I added a border just for fun!!

Happy Tuesday

ME

Cucho Scarf

It seams as if I’ve become a knitter!! Next up is the Cucho Scarf from We Are Knitters! I bought the kit, which included 3 balls of yarn, a pattern, a set of round needles, large sewing needles and a We Are Knitters label. 

I had to use the flash so you could see the great sea foam like green!! 

Happy Monday

ME

Halfway there

The first diamond painting is half done.

These are very much the same as a paint by number, time consuming.

The Shawl Is Done!!

Well ladies, I actually completed a large knitting project! It took me a lot longer than I wanted it to. I guess that’s what happened when you make a bunch of mistakes. Mr Me figures I ripped it out enough that I could have made 2 of them. 

I love the border it had on it. It has a great weight to it and I love the length. I think it will stretch as I use it, which I won’t mind. 

I hope the width will grow so that it’s a little longer. This shawl will be great when my upper back gets cold. 


I’m sure you are both wondering, what am I going to make next?!?!? I am taking in another knitting project - one more shawl! This is a picture from the pattern. I love the orange strip! 

When we were down in Arizona, we went to a yarn shop called Tempe Yarn. The yarn in the shop comes from local producers and from around the world. The ones that I purchased came from Cascade Yarns. These were made from 100% pure baby alpaca wool. 

They asked me if I wanted them to wind the yarn. I didn’t take them up on the offer. I really should have. Look at the mess in the bag. I’ll keep at it. 


This pattern doesn’t go by rows. It uses width measurements instead. I’m kind of excited about that. Each row is done the same, which makes it easy. I had to keep track of what row I was on for the last pattern, which was a bit challenging.  This is how much I’ve got started so far!! 



I’m thinking I’ll have this one done by next summer!! 

Happy Saturday 

ME

P.S. I hope you guys aren’t getting blown away by this 💨!! 

54 km/h, gusting to 81 km/h here right now. 

26*C feels like 29*C

The possibility of getting a wind burn, heat stroke and a sun burn all in one day!!

Idea for Me

Hi there,
Saw this and love how the negative space made a heart. It could be a great baby quilt or throw in any colour pathways. https://www.modernhandcraft.com/blog/2014/01/big-love-quilt-tutorial-at-dear-stella

What are you ladies up to?

Her

Quilting without a plan

Good gusty evening ladies,
   So shockingly I'm creating as I go again.  When my colleague Myrna retired a few years ago she brought me a box of jeans that she had cut up into strips.  We were going to make a quilt together but her husband developed Lewis Body Dementia and she's been taking care of him.  When we went to the storage unit the other day I saw the box with the strips and knew I needed to just make her the quilt.  I was going to do strips but somehow decided to do a giant star with strips around ? Itsomehow.  Not quite sure yet.  Here's the star medallion part.

The blocks were 9 inches before sewing them together.   I'm going to try and figure out what to do next tomorrow.
Her

Tic Tac Toe

Today is a friend’s birthday so I whipped up a little tic tac toe game! 

I headed over to good old Pinterest for ideas and inspiration! Got lost there for a while.  

Next up, was to check for supplies. I had some old fence posts and a scrap piece of wood. 

I cut, painted and stained 10 pieces of fence post! I opted to not put actual X or O on the playing pieces. 

A little painters tape helped me create a checkerboard pattern for the game board. A nice bright red colour for the top. I thought about staining the area under the painters tape but decided to leave it be. 

Here is the finished project:

Hope they enjoy playing it. We have been using our yard Yahtzee game a lot this spring. I’m going to have to make us a tic tac toe board too. It will be another game for me to lose to Mr. Me!! 

We found a new pool for Jager. I made the top so we can fill it up and keep him out of it. The initial use was a success!! 

While I was filling it up, he laid right down. 

This is the aftermath of the first use! Lots of splashing!! 

Happy Friday

ME

They have finally arrived.

I finally got my diamond paintings that I ordered back in April.

This is something new for me, it might even be more time consuming then my stitching projects.

The first challenge was finding enough containers for all the gems.

I was actually able to find enough with lids.

This took me about 90 mins and it is only a 4 by 2 space.