Time to Vote!

I have a quilt in this week's hexagon themed contest at the Quilt Gallery site. Please go and vote for my quilt named "HexFifteen". I first wrote about it here.  You may vote for two different quilts.

Thanks and have a great weekend!

Debbie

TAST Week 12

This week's TAST is the Barred chain stitch or the Alternating barred chain stitch. I mentioned a few weeks ago that the running stitch was very uninspiring for me. Well, I thought the same when I saw this stitch. I checked all my crazy quilting and embroidery books and none of them had any reference to it. I searched online and found only a few sites with tutorials, including Sharron B.'s, who hosts the TAST. 


I still don't like the stitch. In fact, I think it's ugly, excuse me! But, I managed to make something out of it. It looked so boring to me, so I had to add some beads AND some French knots.

Enjoy!

Debbie

TAST Week 11

This week's TAST is the Whipped Wheel stitch. I have no story or explanation to go with it. Just the photo.

Enjoy!

Debbie

TAST Week 10

Karen of Sew Many Ways recently posted a great piece with advice for bloggers and their readers about commenting issues. Please read her tips for making it easier for your readers to comment and for making sure that when you leave a comment on a blog, the blogger will be able to reply to you. Karen writes a ton of great tutorials on crafting and blogging. It is very worth your while to spend some time exploring her blog.


This is another lazy TAST stitching week for me. The TAST this week is the running stitch and I was very uninspired by it. While looking through my crazy quilting books, I was struck by this variation which Judith Baker Montano calls a laced running stitch. I thought about using beads to fill the half moon shapes, but I was too lazy to take them out, so made French knots instead.

Enjoy!

Debbie

TAST Week 9

Before I get to the TAST, I want to share with you the blog of an amazing Israeli needleworker. Yoola of Design with a Crochet Needle, does the most unusual crochet work with wire. Check out her blog and her Etsy shop to see that she's also having a giveaway of one of her online workshops.


Now to the TAST. The stitch this week is couching. I didn't do any stitching this week. Instead, I'm going to show you things that I've done in the past with couching. I love couching, but I only have machine couching to show you. I don't remember if I've ever done any by hand.

Here's one I made for one of the Journal Quilt projects several years ago. Those wavy things on the lower section are all couched yarns. 

I once made a bunch of these for a postcard swap.

And, a bunch of these for another postcard swap.

And, now for the big news! We've got snow! The last time there was any serious snow here was in 2008.

It's coming down even heavier now since these pictures were taken. That's one of my son's.

 Enjoy your weekend,

Debbie

Meeting Cheryl

One day last week, early in the morning, I went to a hotel in town to meet Cheryl Lynch. She was visiting from Pennsylvania, on a tour of Israel with a group from her synagogue. We had a wonderful time showing each other our work and getting to know each other. 

You must check out Cheryl's blog, Cheryl Lynch Quilts, and her website. Cheryl was once on The Quilt Show (episode #811) to teach about the Mexican tiles piecing technique that she wrote about in her book "Quilt Fiesta!".  

And, now, Cheryl has another book coming out in April called "Sew Embellished". The link will take you to Amazon where you can see examples of some of her pieces that she shows in the book. I was lucky to actually hold those very creative and adorable pieces of work in my hands last week. Everything Cheryl makes is so much fun!

Stay tuned, because the publisher and Cheryl are planning a blog tour for around the time that the book is being released.


Enjoy!

Debbie

TAST Week 8

A member of a small, private email list of quilters that I belong to had a stroke a couple of weeks ago. We and other quilter friends of hers are having a "block shower" for her and sending her blocks to cheer her up while she is going through all kinds of therapy. The rules are to make hearts and/or elephants (she collects anything elephant),  use a cream background and make the block either 6, 9, or 12 inches. I have images that I downloaded some years ago of many old and public domain embroidery patterns. I found this cute elephant. Isn't it adorable? The block is 9 inches.
 
When Sharon announced the TAST Week 8 a few days ago, I had just finished the flowers, which, incidentally, use last week's lazy daisy/detached chain stitch. So, when I saw that this week's TAST is chain stitch, I decided to stitch the elephant with it, rather than a plain stem stitch. The background is unbleached muslin.

Enjoy!

Debbie

TAST Week 7

Really quick and short post just to report in with a photo of the TAST 7 stitching that I did this week. The stitch is the detached chain stitch, sometimes known as the lazy dazy stitch.

Have a good weekend.

Debbie

TAST Week 6

This week's TAST 6 stitch is the chevron stitch. I decided to spend less time on it this week and make just a short experiment. Here's what I tried this week. It came from the Embeadery book in my list below.

I've been going through my crazy quilting books to see different things done with the stitches in the TAST. I was surprised to find that I have nine different books on the subject! Here's a list:

Crazy Quilt Stitches(1981) by Dorothy Bond
The Crazy Quilt Handbook (1986) by Judith Montano
Elegant Stitches (1995) by Judith Baker Montano
The Magic of Crazy Quilting (1998) by J. Marsha Michler
Crazy Quilting (1998) by Christine Dabbs
Treasury of Crazy Quilt Stitches (1999) by Carol Samples
Motifs for Crazy Quilting (2002) by J. Marsha Michler
Embeadery-Using classic embroidery stitches in beadwork (2005) by Margaret Ball
Embellishing Crazy Quilts (2011) Kathy Seaman Shaw

I have a good number of other embroidery and beading books, but these are the ones that focus on crazy quilting. 


Enjoy!


Debbie

TAST Week 5

Here's my version of the herringbone stitch for TAST Week 5. 

This time I used a template from Kathy Shaw's book, Embellishing Crazy Quilts. First I drew the zig zag line and then added the dots on either side for the stitching from the template. Actually, I printed the template from images that I had saved of templates that Kathy shares on her yahoogroup, Shawkl Blog Files.

When the TAST began, I started to look through some of my crazy quilting stitches books. I was surprised to find (so far) that I have seven books on the subject! I will make a list of them to post with next week's TAST.


Debbie

TAST Week 4

Here's my piece for this week's TAST. I paged through Judith Baker Montano's Elegant Stitches book to find a stitch combination using the cretan stitch.

Here's a leaf shaped motif, using the cretan stitch, on a crazy quilting project I made maybe fifteen years ago.

Got some questions for my fellow TAST participants. This is my first Take a Stitch that I'm participating in. So far, I've been keeping up. Yay! If you don't have a chance to do a week, do you just skip it? Or do you just keep continuing when you can and catch up? Do you have an idea what you'll be doing with these little samples yet? If you participated in previous years, I'd love it if you would send me a link to see something you made from your stitching then.


Have a good weekend,


Debbie

TAST Week 3

I'm ahead of the game, finishing my TAST piece for Week 3 on Wednesday! Yay! I started with a piece of batik that was sitting on my sewing table for a while. I marked dots on the fabric before doing the feather stitch. On the purple I made gold French knots on the tips. My instinct is to use beads for that, but since I'll be putting it in the little book for the Sketchbook project, it's better not to use beads.

Here are two of the twenty fans that are on the family chuppah (Jewish wedding canopy) I made, finished about six years ago. Each fan is different, with each section of the fan using the feather stitch as the basis of the embroidery and beading.   

Enjoy!

Debbie  

TAST Week 2

Well, I got the second week of TAST done before the Week 3 was posted! This time it was the buttonhole stitch. I chose a print black and white fabric and just fooled around with the print and the stitch.

Enjoy!

Debbie

TAST Week 1

I decided to join Sharon B.'s TAST (Take a Stitch Tuesday) this year. Yesterday, I finished a little piece that I made using last week's stitch. In the same piece, I used a portion of Jenny of Elefantz's January BOM. 

I also signed up for the the Sketchbook Project a few months ago. The little book is still empty. I'm hoping to get enough done for the book to make the January 31 postmark deadline. Not looking good, but I will try. I especially made the Week 1 TAST to be able to fit it in the book. I'm going to do that with Week 2 also. I'll need to look around my sewing room for some other things that I can use in the book. I don't draw or sketch, but I can glue pieces of fabric into the little book. One of the rules is that the book cannot be more than one inch thick. 

Enjoy!


Debbie

And the winners are...

First, the statistics. After deleting all spam, there were 78 comments. Five of those comments were noreply commenters who had absolutely no way of being contacted by email or by commenting on a blog of theirs. That means their profile does not have their email address in it, nor do they have a blog listed, and they did not leave their email address in the comment.

I left those comments and skipped them when I counted down to find the winners. Those people may wonder why they never get replies to any comments that they leave and why they never get an email saying "You won!" They may want to rectify the situation for the next time they leave a comment on a blog or enter a giveaway. They were "Judith Bense", "Jill", "janie", "Anita", and "Maria Kievit". That left 73 comments.


Now to the winners. The Random.org guy chose the following:


For the six month subscription to The Quilt Show, the winner is #31 "Joanie Quilts"!

For the One Past Online Series to The Quilt Show, the winner is #69 Cathy Byrd !

For the Shnibbles pattern, the Bean Bag Critter kit and the bunch of five inch squares from my batik stash, the winner is #50 "Desi @ Wee Share"!

Congratulations to Joanie, Cathy, and Desi. I've sent you all emails. Please confirm receipt asap so that I may send Joanie and Cathy the certificate numbers and I'll need Desi's snail mail address.

Thanks everyone for all your very interesting comments! This was fun!

Enjoy!

Debbie

Blog Hop Party and Giveaway

This giveaway is now closed. Winners will be announce later today.

 

I'm thinking that this is just the thing I need to help get me back into blogging on a more regular basis. Who doesn't love a giveaway? We all like to win, but really, it's even more fun to host a giveaway. It's so great having all of you stopping by to visit my blog.

The Quilting Gallery is helping out a lot by organizing a list of those of us quilting bloggers who like to give away things. The giveaways on the list of Blog Hop Party participants will be open through midnight of December 17. So, get hopping!

This is the fourth year in a row that I am lucky to have this great prize to offer you. When a member of The Quilt Show subscribes for another year of great shows and fun, they also get gift certificates to give to their friends. 

I'll be giving away three prizes: 
1. A gift certificate for $24.95 good for a six month membership to The Quilt Show. You must not currently be a Star (paid) member of The Quilt Show to qualify for this certificate.

2. A gift certificate for $19.95 for The Quilt Show. You can use this Gift Certificate to choose 1 Past Online Series for FREE (Not the DVD). This gift certificate can only be used for purchasing a Past Series. 

3. I am giving away two items that I received as part of giveaways that I won from other people. One is a Shnibbles pattern that was included in a whole bunch of goodies in a giveaway that I won from Gerry of GerryART. The other is a little kit of a Bean Bag Critter. I received several of these kits in a giveaway from Mary Ann of Sewing and Beyond. I'm also going to add in a bunch of five inch charms from my batik stash. No picture of charms yet, though. 

The Blog Hop Party giveaways are running until December 17th. Please leave a comment with something interesting for me to read! No 'I wanna win' or 'Great giveaway', etc. I want this to be fun! :)

I will be choosing the three winners from the comments left through midnight at the end of December 17th. That is, all comments except for the ones that have no way of being reached. If you are a no-reply blogger, please leave your email address within your comment. If you'd like to check if you are a no-reply blogger or change that, and you have a google account, Karen has good instructions at Sew Many Ways.

Have fun and Good luck!

Debbie

  

Why I've been too busy to blog

The main reason:

A few weeks ago my son and I spent one very rainy morning in the Wall Street area of downtown Manhattan. We got a very foggy glimpse of the new World Trade Center.

And we each have photo proof with a famous Wall Street resident.

I've been in Miami Beach with the two little ones for over three weeks now. For the past week one cannot say "Sunny Miami Beach" at all!


I did manage to get a little relaxing sewing in and made a block for the Block Lotto blog.

Enjoy!

Debbie

Seen at a new mall

Whew, that was a long break! Let's begin again.

One of the things that I've been busy with this summer is a copyediting/proofreading course. I did the informal test yesterday and next week is the optional review lesson, so the pressure is off.

In keeping with that theme...

...first, I have to share this. We were up north for a few days last week and went to check out the brand new mall in Akko with the grandkids. It had been open for a day and a half already and we were the first ones to point out this 'typo' to the people in this store! Don't you just love it!

And, just to keep this fiber related, here's a photo update on that blanket I've been knitting. I do have some quilty type things to show. That will come eventually.

BTW, for those of you who use blogger, I wrote this post in the new interface. Had no trouble at all, but didn't notice anything too different about it, except for the layout. So, unless something goes wrong that I didn't notice, I guess I'll keep it.

Enjoy!

Debbie

Filet Crochet - Something from the past

 
On an international quilt mailing list that I belong to, for Jewish quilters, someone brought up filet crochet yesterday. Someone else sent an attachment with a photo of a challah cover she made with filet crochet. That prompted me to dig out my filet crochet challah cover that I made almost 30 years ago. We have several challah covers and sort of rotate using them.

Sometime during the year after we were married, we were visiting friends. I was very attracted to the challah cover that she was using and asked her about it. She said that her mother in law made several of them for the children and there's no pattern for it. After some begging, she allowed me to take it home to copy. I sat and charted the whole thing on graph paper.  It is backed with a piece of brown fabric. I don't remember when the wine stains are from and I never tried to get them out. It's probably too late now, they're probably set from being in the drawer for so many years. If I would want to bleach it, I'd have to take off the backing. Too lazy.

(Still no quilting?!?!) (LOL!)


Enjoy!

Debbie

What to do with this yarn!

 
So, I started knitting something else with the rainbow yarn. It's called the Ten Stitch Twist and I got the pattern on Ravelry after seeing Henya of Chicken Stitches post photos of the one she's making. 


I am not sure if I am happy with it. The color repeats are way too short and the stockinette looks so uneven because of it. I just don't know if there's anything that will look good with this yarn. And, it is an expensive yarn (in my opinion, anyway.) So, please, if anyone has any good ideas, help! As I said last time, I don't want to make socks.

It might just be time to switch back to quilting.

Happy Monday,

Debbie