Erica's Stitches

The clouds yesterday afternoon/evening were beautiful.  I was out for a walk and had to go back for my camera. I love seeing something beautiful and being able to go crazy taking pictures.  My first camera used film with 12 pictures to the roll.  On vacations I would get about a roll a week so I was limited to a picture or two a day.  Many times the photos would not get developed for months.  What a disappointment to learn that a picture didn't turn out after all that time had passed.  I had to manually set the exposure and focus the picture (bright sun? F16, really bright sun? F22).  Ah, the good old days.  I wasn't always right. Now I just snap away and delete what doesn't turn out.  36 sky pictures yielded maybe 15 good pictures.  I don't know if I'll even print any of them.  But I enjoy the whole accelerated process:  photographing, downloading, reviewing and sharing. All those spectacular clouds and still no rain!

Tomorrow I go Quilt Shop Hopping!  To get ready I've made myself some shopping bags.  The first its a rather large tote bag with a pocket on the inside for maps and lots of room for anything I might find while shopping. The flowers are silk flowers that have been fused down to fabric and embellished.  A technique I first saw years ago and it took me this long to try it. I went a little wild with beads and they really catch the light.  The bag is fully reversible, but with the beading on the outside, I don't think it will get reversed too often. This is the 3rd or 4th pattern that I 've tried from Lexie Barnes "Sew What! Bags" and like all the others it went together quickly and easily. Next I made a little bag from the book "Little Birds". As I went through the book I found a lot of patterns that I'd like to do someday.  This was a pattern that I wanted to do NOW.  I don't do that very often, but I put everything aside and made the bag u

The colors of the Blossoms Sewing Kit were accidental. If I were going to stitch it again I would not use the white ground fabric.  I would use a darker antique linen that was almost brown.  That way both the white stitching and the pink would show up better.  The two blossom bands would also be the same (not be the reverse of each other). But, it's really, really pink.  Way too pink for my tastes so I would probably use other colors.  I don't have the time to stitch it over, but I have the next best thing ... software. My first alternative color scheme is the colors of the sunflower.   A dark bright yellow and oranges and browns for the center. The next color scheme is a forget-me-not.  Blue petals with a yellow and white center. And finally, a darker red with the same yellow and white center that resemble no flower that I can think of. Once I got started changing colors I wanted to keep going - there are so many possibilities.  But my favorite is the the first so I'

Wild roses are blooming!  Just in time for the reveal of my latest design inspired by the wild roses. It's a Blossom sewing kit. This design started out as experimentation .  I was thinking of a pink and white bracelet made of seed beads using the square stitch.  Don't ask why - that's an even longer story.  My eyes are not as agreeable to beading so I tried it as a cross stitch design, reversing the colors to see which I liked better. One day I was looking at the scrap and decided it would fit on a tin.  All the sudden it became an official project.  I made up a leaf pattern that fit between the rows of flowers and repeated the two main motifs to become a scissors fob and a mini pincushion. I did bring the seed beads along.  It's much easier to stitch them to cloth then to stitch them together.  A little twisted cord and a lot of glue and I have a travel sewing kit. Everything fits perfectly in the tin with some extra room for a needle threader and floss.  I li

It was a quiet Saturday at the park.  The sun was shining.  Crocheted daffodils were blooming? I was there with a bunch of other ladies sewing yarn to trees.  Look at the light blue cables under the word "yarn".  Look familiar?  I was working on that a few weeks ago. There's my name. And there's a sleeve I'm attempting to sew onto a branch.  It's difficult sewing something above you.  It takes extra upper arm strength.  There were about 7 of us around this tree each doing the same thing and trying to avoid needling each other in the eyes.  Or step on photographers. The results are surprisingly beautiful and worth the effort, I think.

I'm between quilting projects - tidying up the quilt room, doing some smaller projects and getting ready for the next big one. I found these blocks years ago at an antique store in, I think, Wyoming.  I think they deserve to be made into something nice and will be going into my next project.  I've been mentally putting it together for years. This is a style of blocks I would never make myself.  I'm more into straight lines.  The blocks seem to be huge.  There are 17 sections in each block.  That doesn't make any sense.  Why divide a circle into 17 sections?  But it may explain why the blocks don't lay flat.  I have a plan for dealing with that. Look at these great fabrics!  I'm sure they lived long useful lives until scraps were cut up for a quilt.  Can you imagine the stories they could tell? Hopefully there will be at least one more story to tell.

I tried something different this week - knitting cables. What fun! I wonder what it was like the first time somebody figured out how to make cables. I can imagine a group of woman sitting around a long time ago oohing and ahhing about the latest development and getting excited about all the possibilities just like I am.