A Little Bird

We visited the One of a Kind Show with the intent of purchasing something for the house.  We wandered and took in the whole show, then circled back and debated the merits of various pieces of photography and art.  We ended up with this little guy, who is now perched on the armoire where we can look at him every day.  He's perched on a croquet ball, if that gives you a sense of scale.  You can see other works by the artists here.

Christmas Treats

While Christmas is quickly approaching, I haven't really gotten in the spirit of Christmas.  We have our tree up.  I've shopped some.  We sent off two big packages for the Letters to Santa project.  I've got my mom's gift and a few things for LBK and the niece and nephew.  Not even a lovely Christmas party this weekend really got me into the mood.  I hoped baking would, and I am quite pleased with how these packages of biscotti came out.  (I've edited my full name out of the stamped label.)  I'm trying to plan a cookie date with a couple of friends and am thinking about what to make.

Birthday T shirt

Emma's birthday is coming up. Last year, I made her a shirt with a branch, two little birds and the number 2.  Here's last year's shirt:

This year, I stayed with the bird theme with these little owls, but dropped the number.  It's hard to get good pics at night, but I want to mail this tomorrow.

Lap Quilt Swap - 2 More

Two more squares for the swap.  I had a 3rd done, but realized when uploading the pic that I have two corners facing the wrong way.  I have a 4th almost finished.  Only two more to go after that!

Lap Quilt Swap continues. . .

Quilt Swap block 2

This block is called Antique Tile Block and is from  Quilters' Cache.

Quilt Swap block 1

This is the first block of 12 that I completed for the Craftster Lap Quilt 5 swap. It's for chinarockfish, our organizer. There were a few reasons I signed up for the swap.

I wanted to release control of a project. This was also my goal in doing the half square triangle quilt. I hold too tightly to control sometimes. I'm trying to get myself to release some of that in small ways here and there. Hopefully it will start to work on the big things, too.

I wanted to be challenged to complete more complicated blocks. Doing only one seems so much more manageable than doing 12 or more for a whole quilt.

I wanted to be inspired within the constraints of other's expectations. What would I do given the parameters of fabric type, quantity, and directions of others.

I wanted to work with fabrics I might not choose myself to learn to see with a different vision.

I knew the previous swaps resulted in beautiful, creative, well made blocks.

China's fabrics meet this last criteria for sure. Not ones I ever would choose for myself. Here they are individually, from Anna Marie Horner's Garden Party collection.

I used the far right fabric for the center, then built out from there.  I made a couple of sketches in colored pencil to try to figure out color placement, then labeled each piece with cutting instructions to make sure I had enough fabric.  I was nervous about combining such large scale, diverse patterns.  I shifted my focus from the patterns to the colors, refocused, trying to see what the designer and the person who had chosen these saw in them.  I think I was successful.  I love the finished block, and can't wait to see how it works with the other blocks created by other swappers. 

One down, eleven more to go.