Flickr Favorites Friday 11.19.2010

This week is all about pencil rolls. Nice, bright, colorful, full-of-rainbows pencil rolls. I plan on making one of these for my daughter for Christmas, and where else would I turn but Flickr and maybe Etsy for inspiration :)

Oh, Fransson!

1. Untitled, 2. Colored Pencils roll, 3. colored pencil roll, 4. colored pencil roll, 5. colored pencil roll, 6. Colored Pencil Roll, 7. Colored Pencil Roll, 8. Buntstiftrolle, 9. 20PencilRoll1

Three Peas

heatherfish on Etsy

littlestitchesbylisa on Etsy

WIP Wednesday/My Creative Space

I found this adorable owl magnet on Etsy a few weeks back and realized it would make for a very cute embroidery project.


I'm having a whole lot of fun working on this and can't wait till its finished!

Flickr Favorites Friday 11.12.2010

1. Funfair Rainbow, 2. GRAFFITI_CHIPPENDALE_1005 - 6, 3. toy blocks in rainbow colors, 4. Colored Succulent, 5. 5/365,i love trees! :), 6. 水面彩虹, 7. Rainbow Lazy Daisy 004, 8. Rainbow Afghan, 9. Light Harp Rainbow, 10. my colors, 11. Stitched Color Pallette, 12. Rainbow Trout?, 13. Rainbow Cake - Wizard of Oz farmhouse cake cut, 14. Seventeen, 15. snowed in, 16. Rainbow Hurl

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It has been too long since I've done one of these, which is too bad, because they are so fun! A few things on my mind:

1. I've had Photoshop Elements for almost two years and have barely used it until recently. That is completely unacceptable. I've started to realize how a little photoediting can really perk up a photograph, and I'm going to start this more regularly. It's also fun to take a picture and take a little artistic license with it. That's what drew me to the succulent picture.
2. Now that cooler weather is upon is I've gotten the crochet bug again. I haven't done any since last winter and was worried that I wouldn't remember. Luckily once I got started my hands took care of the rest. I hope to crank out some stuff soon.
   
3. And that rainbow afghan above? To.die.for. So colorful and cozy.
   
4. I can't wait to start my crazy quilt, but unfortunately I don't want to start till I've got the stash I feel I need to work on it. Must buy fabric. And ribbon. And lace. And other pretty things :)
5. I'm soon to start a fun embroidery project. I found the most adorable button on Etsy and felt it would make a cute embroidery hoop artwork. Pictures to follow!
   

Flickr Favorites Friday 10.8.2010

I had intended to post one of these last week, but I've been so busily embroidering that most everything else I'd like to do for fun has been getting pushed aside. I fully expect blistered (or at least heavily calloused) fingers by the time I've finished this quilt.

Here is my weekly dose of rainbow love.


1. toy, 2. DSC03041, 3. Colors of play, 4. Paintbox Quilt :: Hand Quilted... and finished!, 5. In Rainbows, 6. Elaine's Rainbow, 7. DQS8 # 2 quiltie - 'Rainbow Girl', 8. Rainbow, 9. pencil roll, 10. doll quilt swap - round 9, 11. Fat Quarterly Quilt along- final layout, 12. Slow growth, 13. Tęczowy deszcz, 14. I heart 'Glee'!, 15. Orbit Brooch (rainbow), 16. Organized embroidery floss

So many creative rainbows this week. I'm looking for new projects to explore once this quilt is finished, and these certainly are getting my mind going. With the return of cooler weather I'm getting the crocheting itch again, so it might be time to start practicing my granny squares. :) Also, even though I've been embroidering until my fingers hurt and my joints are achy, I'm really loving it and am looking forward to beginning a project for myself rather than for someone else. Christmas is also just around the corner, so I have to start working on the present ideas I have going through my head. Too many ideas!

Flickr Favorites Friday 9.24.2010

Noticing a theme? :) It wouldn't be Tales from the Rainbow Room without a few rainbows. I do love them so...


1. Rainbow-bobbins, 2. Group shot, 3. window4, 4. Mosaic, 5. Rainbows...nearly there now, 6. Rainbow Mosaic - Mosaique Arc en Ciel, 7. rainbow petals brooch, 8. somewhere under the rainbow, 9. colors, 10. Rainbow Button Necklace, 11. WHOLESALE ORDER - OVER THE RAINBOW FELT BROOCHES, 12. Tufted Tweets New Wave Quilt, 13. rainbow dress 1, 14. rainbow dress, 15. the rainbow twirly dress, 16. Untitled

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I am loving felt art recently and am dying to give it a go. I particularly love it when it is embellished with beads and beautiful embroidery. You would think I'd had my fill of embroidery after working on the Nightingale Lap Quilt for so long, but I think it's left me wanting to learn more than to put it down. Though the split stitch is getting old :)

How lovely are those rainbow dresses, too? I have a picture from an old fashion magazine of the rainbow dress in the bottom right. It's an Alexander McQueen, and I think I'm going to have to do something with it involving paint, canvas, and a lot of Modge Podge.

Flickr Favorites Friday

1. Pequeña Obsesión Multicolor, 2. Spectrum, 3. Colour Wheel of Leaves., 4. A Rainbow of Light, 5. cubic crayons, 6. Rainbow Cake 2010, 7. all the colors of the rainbow, and brown, 8. Amritium Spectral Lines, 9. Spectrum, 10. stack of bags, 11. Rainbow clock, 12. colour wheel, 13. Creativity, 14. Thats where you'll find me..., 15. rainbow fingers. III, 16. Rainbow Tree


These are just a few of the images that have inspired me or have just plain made me happy this week. I am dying to make the Rainbow Mosaic Mandala and am soon to start adding to my collection of doodads that I would want on my own. Like my Rainbow String Quilt I'm sure that this would be a long range project, because collecting all of the small things that would be glued to this piece might take forever. I'm up to the challenge :)

And who wouldn't want to have a Christmas Tree like that? Seriously, take a closer look. :)

My Creative Space

Lots of embroidery going on this week. I'm working on the "Nightingale Lap Quilt" from Doodle Stitching as a baby shower present for my sister-in-law, and it is very embroidery-intensive. I'm excited to get to work on embroidery. It's a skill I want to develop and this quilt is perfect for getting practice with basic stitches--chain stitch, split stitch, straight stitch, long and short stitch.

The quilt in the book uses pinks and reds, and I'm going with a purple color scheme because her nursery colors are lavender and lime green. My daughter is adamant that this quilt is for her. Hope she gets that out of her head soon :)

Completed Rainbow String Quilt

It's been well over two months since I finished my Rainbow String Quilt, but I won't feel like it's truly complete until I post about it. I started working on this quilt in March and it only took around four months to complete. I think that feeling so passionate about it and the fact that I was making it for myself after almost two years of planning, collecting fabrics, and debating on the exact type of quilt I wanted to make allowed me to finish it relatively quickly.

The quilt began like this:


This is the plan I created before I started so I could visualize the finished product as I was working. I originally intended that each color would have a different number of fabrics, but I realized as I was working that the decidedly wonky effect that it would create would make the quilt look less polished. This meant that I would have to buy more fabrics for certain colors, even though I already had well over 125 different ones to begin with. The most common number of fabrics that I had for each color was around 16, so I decided I'd go with that many fabrics for each color. Getting the color gradations to flow correctly from one to another was very difficult at times. I had very specific ideas for fabrics I needed to get colors to flow from one to another, and sometimes I couldn't find what I looked for. It was especially difficult with the oranges and yellows. Eventually everything seemed to work out alright.

The quilt measures 60" by 80". Each color has two rows of 12 5" blocks, so each color is made of 24 blocks. It consists of 8 individual colors, so the quilt is made of 192 blocks. I chose to paper piece the blocks with computer paper, which worked out just fine but when it came time to take all of the paper off at the end it felt like it took forever. The next time I make a string quilt I might choose to use a light-weight fabric to sew the blocks to; it would eliminate the need to tear off the paper at the end and would give it an extra bit of heaviness that might feel nice.

While I was working on the blocks I thought I might do a more decorative back with leftover fabrics or perhaps a nice patterned fabric, but while at my local quilt store I found the most wonderful fabric for the back. It's a black sateen Kona cotton, and it feel so soft and luxurious. I wish that all Kona cotton were sateen, but I've only found a few of them that are.

When I assembled all of the blocks into rows, inevitably some didn't line up correctly. Fortunately there are very few places where it is glaringly obvious and you have to be very close to notice them. It does show up on the back when you see the quilting. Speaking of which, I quilted the quilt by sewing along either side of the black fabric using black thread. I cannot offhand remember the type of thread (Konfeti, maybe), but I do know that I'll be using it much more frequently in my sewing. It's very soft and doesn't fuzz up when you sew.


The binding was hand-sewn using the the same black sateen Kona cotton and black thread I had used for the back. I wanted to use the same so as not to detract from the colors in the quilt and to highlight the black fabric within the quilt. It also makes it very soft to hold next to your face. With the exception of the first quilt I've ever made I have always tried to sew mitered corners. It makes the quilt look very polished. This is the best job that I've done yet.


I wish I had the wall space in my craft room to hang my quilt. It's so lovely to look at and I worked so hard on it that I'm afraid to use it! I have entered it in my state's fair and maybe after it has been shown (and must stay in tip-top shape) I'll start using it. I'm debating making individual blocks of each color to hang on my wall in lieu of the entire quilt. I also love the color red a whole lot, and I felt the red portion turned out so nicely that I might make a small red string quilt as a wall hanging in my den. There was also a ton of fabric leftover from this quilt and I want to make a couple of scrappy quilts utilizing it: a color wheel quilt like that featured on Purl Bee and a crazy quilt.

1. (1) Red Close-up, 2. (2) Orange Close-up, 3. (3) Yellow Close-up, 4. (4) Yellow-Green Close-up, 5. (5) Green Close-up, 6. (6) Aqua Close-up, 7. (7) Blue Close-up, 8. (8) Purple Close-up

My Creative Space

I find it unfortunate that I'm just now getting around to blogging about my current project, as it has been in my mind for so long and I've been actively working on it for quite a few weeks now.

I am nearing the halfway point of piecing my Rainbow String quilt. I started refining the greens in the quilt today, purchasing a few more fat quarters to make sure that the transition from yellow to yellow-green and from yellow-green to green is smooth and to make sure that the colors blend nicely with each other as you move throughout each color. I hope tomorrow morning to make the final decision, because I should be finished piecing all of my yellow blocks and I'll be able to cut the fabric for the yellow-greens and start piecing them.



I'm beyond excited with how this is going and can't wait to complete it. Hopefully I'll post more often so I can see the progress I'm making, and I need to go back and catalog the work I've already done.

A few blocks of each color.

King-sized Checkerboard Quilt...Complete!

This quilt is so massive I feel like I should give it a name...

I finally finished the king-sized quilt on Monday after a long seven months. It didn't really take that long in total, but it was quite the monstrosity to complete. I don't think I want to undertake something quite this huge for awhile. (I say this now...)

The quilt's final measurements are roughly 104 x 112 inches. I forgot to take note of the five fabrics my mom chose for the top, but I know that one of them is a Civil War reproduction print. The backing is a simple cream flannel, and the binding is Kona cotton in Espresso.

I had a few snafus along the way. It had been awhile since I had quilted, so I forgot that you trim up the quilt sandwich AFTER you finish quilting. I ended up having to remove a few rows because the packing pulled up too much, and some parts wrinkled during the quilting. Overall the quilting turned out much better than I had expected, and the binding helped to conceal the mistakes.

It was definitely a learning experience. (And because quilts this size are so heavy, quite a workout!) I'm looking forward to starting my next one really soon.

Favorites in Embroidery

I have developed quite the love for embroidery. It never ceases to amaze me the things people can come up with using a needle, some thread, and fabric. My own personal embroidery skills are OK, but they are a work in progress. I can only hope that I can one day create things like some of the people below have.

I hope in the future to combine my love of quilting with my love of embroidery by making a crazy quilt. I've seen some pretty amazing ones before, and I love how they are like giant fabric collages.


1. Dragon, 2. earth-globe1, 3. Blue texture, 4. Color Wheel Project, 5. peacock embrodiery , 6. #32 hibiscus , 7. Detail of hand embroidery, 8. Kirby and Opal's garden 3 2009, 9. Embroideriey medallion on white linen, 10. Not available, 11. Jacobean Cuff Green, 12. Richelieu (2), 13. on her 35th day, 14. Itty Bitty Hello Kitty Coat of Many Colours Christmas Commission Committee..., 15. Shisha, 16. fox patch, 17. 4 Hens n Teeth... for HensTeeth!, 18. Allium Flora journal cover design, 19. daisy-on-crackle-detail1, 20. Party Dots ATC, 21. hanging-cd-indian-inspired, 22. Floral Fantasy Eco Tote, 23. orange bag design, 24. Portuguese heart - Coração de Viana, 25. Flower circles

For the Love of Mochi

Oh, how I do love this yarn: Mochi Plus in Intense Rainbow.


I've been working on a scarf with it the past few weeks. It's going slow, because I didn't realize just how much yarn comes per (very small) skein, so I keep having to reorder. I also forgot to compensate for differences in dye lots, which means lots of matching yarns and, unfortunately, wasted yarn.




An odd thing about this yarn is that its thickness varies in the skein, which means that certain parts of the scarf have ended up crocheted a bit more tightly than I would like. I think it will look great, imperfections and all, once finished.

Project 365 - Days 1-4

Day 1:


Day 2:
Day 3:


Day 4:

2010 - Crafty Goals, Resolutions, Aspirations

Even though we are already five (FIVE!) days into 2010, I want to outline my goals for myself for the next year. Some will get done, some likely will not, but I want to have something to look back at on December 31 to see how far I have come.

• Participate in Project 365
• Finish my mom's quilt
• Finally start (AND finish) my humongous rainbow collage
• A rainbow string quilt
• Learn to crochet granny squares
• Make artwork for around the house
• Learn to make clothes for Livers
• Work my way around my D-SLR well
• Make more jewelry for myself
• Sell things on Etsy
• Learn to digitally scrapbook well
  
• FINALLY start and finish Livers' baby scrapbook
• Learn to crochet and knit more things than scarves
• Crochet a blanket
• Knit a pair of socks
• Regularly organize the gazillion photos I take
• Teach Livers a new craft
• Make more things for my kid(s?)
• Be less craftily lazy
• Keep the blog more updated

I could probably add tons more here if I tried, but this is gracious plenty :)