Oooooo, I Love Red Tag Fabric!

Found the most beautiful brocade back in the red tag discount section of the fabric store. I'm going to make it part of the bustle of my Halloween dress. I'm not even thinking about historical acuracy, not enough time or money. I think I've almost figured out how to make this work. I'm going to take a basic pattern I already had (top C and skirt F) out of the light blue and then use the gold and the brocade to fashion the bustle as a separate piece so I can wear the dress again. Life would be so much easier if I had a dressmaker's dummy, but I should be able to make it work. It looks great in my head, at least.

The pattern for the dress I liked wasn't available in my size to begin with and then the store only had the smaller size. I bought the smaller size to give me some ideas of how to make this work, if nothing else. If anyone has suggestions to make this project easier, let me know. Hopefully there will be work in project pictures coming.

Pins and Needles

My wrist is a little bit better. I still have a tendency to aggravate it when I forget about it. I've had to change the way I lean on my leg to stand up and the way I hold the railing to get up the front steps. Of course, with the cold weather, the stairs are already more difficult. I've decided not to try to leave and have to tackle the stairs more than once a day.

The good news is that I've found that needle tatting, at least small projects like my tatted flowers, doesn't hurt my wrist at all! Hooray! And I've finally organized my tatting threads so that I can actually find what I'm looking for and see what I have. I decided to offer a couple of specific color assortments of tatted flowers in my shop. It just feels kind of weird to make them without just using scrap thread. It's been a long time since that was the project I set out to work on straight from the balls of thread.

I've got a stack of fabrics for sewing projects sitting around. I should really do something about that. I'm just trying to wait until I'm sure I'm done making cards for a while since I'm using the same table the sewing machine lives on. I should really work on my apron. Since I've decided to offer a class in about a month on how to make the project that's currently only an idea in my head. I should stop doing that. It's going to catch up to me some day.

Far too much to do. Can someone add a few more hours to the day for me, please?

As usual . . .

I'm drowning in projects!

I just finished a special order afghan. Pictures will be posted when I get a chance to take them. I'm unravelling a thrift store sweater to recycle the yarn and I have another waiting in the wings, I've got at least a dozen "I Spy" bags to sew, working on a wedding afghan for a friend, helping sew puppets when the pieces are brought to me, etc, etc, etc!

Too little time, too many projects!

Oh, and let's not forget the two multi-week classes I'm teaching.

At least I'm making some money!

Little Triangles Everywhere!

Apparently I have lost my mind! I don't know what possessed me to decide to start a quilt pieced entirely by hand when it's only my second quilt top. Needless to say, my fingers are as sore as can be from being pricked and stabbed every few minutes. Of course, this is also going to take forever and is much less accurate than the top I pieced on the sewing machine. The greatest irony is that I'm pricking my fingers sitting in my chair two feet away from my sewing machine. I think I'm going back to machine piecing after this if only because I'm far better on the machine than I am ever likely to be by hand. I know that on the horizon lies a great sense of accomplishment, but it's kind of hard to see at the moment.