Happy May 2019!

Well Happy May Friends!

“Make a Beautiful Garden out of Life”

My calendar this year is exquisite… a splurge I found on Amazon but a brand and style I will splurge on again next year I am sure… this month is NO EXCEPTION!  Make a Beautiful Garden out of Life is the quote this month… and how you choose to view life is a choice for sure… so Make it beautiful is awesome I think!

My sewing room this morning from the viewpoint of the doorway looking at Cleo (My Singer 319W) who is mainly working on a bag I was commissioned to make…

My sewing room from this angle is a bit disheveled as I lost a couple screws in process of fixing an error on the clasp I installed on this bag and me and my honey tore the room apart… this is it now back together enough for me to finish the bag… which is mainly on the hexi ironing board right now.. in the last steps of putting it all together… I may spend a bit of time there today but more likely tomorrow and the next day as I wait for the replacement screws in the mail from Hawaii… the person I bought the clasp from is kindly replacing the lost screws at no expense to me… Check her out at Ningbags.com or if you don’t need to buy in bulk but need bag supplies look on Etsy for smaller quantities… I have purchased from her before and she has excellent products and fast shipping too as well as excellent customer service 😀

Baby Elliana is due THIS MONTH so I best get focused on my projects for her for sure!!!

Mainly my focus this week will be making progress on the quilt I am making for her…

 The deer above is quite endearing I think… and here below is the part of that row that is done…

 As you can see from this photo…

I have just one more block and this quilt can be rolled to Elliana’s name.

Linking this slow stitching progress to Kathy’s Slow Stitching Sunday post where she is sharing some wonderful hand embroideries this week HERE!

Also linking to Wendy’s Peacock Party where she is focusing on finishing a project to start a new one HERE!

How should I quilt that row???  Any tips from anyone???

I plan to outline each shape and add highlights where they will look best as I do this outlining of the flowers, bird, birdhouse and name… but I am thinking about keeping with the same wide crosshatch I used on the deer background… maybe a bit wider or a bit narrower… I am unsure!  If you have ideas for this area please leave me a reply below or email me directly using the info under my sidebar 🙂

The flower is from a plant we trimmed back and harvested the first bloom of the year from… and the photo was taken this week to update my facebook profile pic. 🙂

Molly celebrates 11 months old this week… so I made this photo collage to share on Facebook this month… she is a joy at this point.. and is settling down nicely … most of the time! lol

We gave her a trim this week and she did a good job standing still while we both worked on her for almost an hour !!  Then we followed that by a thorough bath and drying session… she is less tolerant of drying her face with the dryer but okay for her body… she loves being clean though!  We are glad for that!!!  She refuses to let us clip her nails so off to a vet she will go this week for that 😀

This week I plan to get proper pics of this elephant themed bag I am making & plan to share that next week with  you.  I hope to have a good amount of the next row done on Elliana’s quilt if not be on the last row… My cuticle on my right middle finger that I rest my thimble on has been sore this weekend so I trimmed away the sore stuff and have been not so patiently waiting for it to heal as we do yard work and I work on the bag while I long to make more headway on this quilt… I am afraid baby Elliana may arrive before it is complete!

For now keep Elliana and her parents in your thoughts as her mom is quite uncomfortable now and dad is anxious for this time to be over end of the month himself.

Send me your ideas for background fill on Elliana’s name for the quilt please!  Much appreciated in advance for both requests!!!

Advertisement

Monday, Monday!

Happy Monday after Mother’s Day!  Are you still flying high or did you fall back into the reality of being a full time maid 🙂 lol

This bloom opened just this morning about 9 am and I was delighted to see some clouded sunlight coming in the sunroof of the living room and shining so nicely on these lilys 🙂  There are several of them in the arrangement… and not all of them are open yet! … I arranged and played with them after this pic to get them organized for peeks throughout the day 🙂

I have been dutifully working on THE MAN quilt… and happy to report I have finished over half of this block…

And as you can see I am almost 2/3 done with the block and feather combo… my friend asked me if I could see the end of this quilt yet.. my response was that I can see the light to binding… as that will be next up after I finish the 3 other blocks in this center section of the quilt.

More quilting to do after the binding though… but that should go faster for me 🙂  Mostly straight line stuff.. not intricate swirls and swirly feathers ! lol

My honey just finished rehabbing this machine… he fashioned the cabinet himself.. it is all wood and for sale here on eBay if you are interested in sewing vintage and want a cherry of a machine!

I call it Firecracker.. because it is tan and blue with a reddish case!  And I am a 4th of July baby so this one is near and dear to me… 🙂  My daughter named it String Bean! lol  I don’t know why at all 🙂

Here is a self portrait my daughter made me along with a darling note in her beautiful cursive handwriting for Mother’s Day 🙂

She has a knit cap on in the picture 🙂

I love this pencil drawing so much!

And here is a brownie with coconut creme icing on it..

Yummy… made by my son Mike for me!

Hope you enjoyed this post!  Now on to goal setting..

My goal is to finish this block by the end of the day and send you all a report tomorrow! 🙂
Do you have a goal for the week.. or the day… or the month even?? 

Would you play in a linky that you post goals and show progress in a special post once a month??  Just wondering!

Have a blessed day!

Monochromatic Challenge Card!

Welcome from the Paper Cabana… if you didn’t start there and want to check them out click here!

This weeks challenge is making something monochromatic.  So I did!!!  Lucky me my bff Brandy needed a birthday card for her sister… so she came over and we got creative… here she is with my Daisy Mae!

And here is the card we made!

First we picked the color… PURPLE … it is her sisters fave color.  I pulled out my purple colored paper bin and we chose colors of cs that we liked and that coordinated with each other.

Next we played in my stamp stash and picked some CTMH and HOTP stamp sets.  Then it was over to the gypsy to design our card …

Using the CTMH Art Philosophy cart we picked out the base that she liked… I “hide contour” on the hash line it cuts at the fold line… that is why it is light gray.. it doesn’t cut if you hide it.  The we made 3 flowers in the upper left hand corner that coordinate with CTMH stamp set that comes with the Art Philosophy cart.  Each layer of the flower has a different pattern stamped on to the electronically die cut image!  Isn’t that cool!!!!  Okay back to designing the card now .. hehe… In the upper right hand corner is a place for our sentiment.  This gets changed later and I will explain why…

So now it is time to cut… get the mat ready and fire up the Cricut.  Look at the beautiful purple and lavendar tones…

So here is the story… the sentiment stamp we wanted to use to wish her sister a Happy Birthday was too large for the size we cut out of the upper right lavender glitter paper.  Then the stamp smudged on the glitter cardstock so we finally cut one the size that a)fit the stamp b) that we liked with the card and c) was still in a lavender shade!

We put it all together after stamping the flowers with SU’s Lavender Lace and the sentiment in Megan Elizabeth’s Lush deep purple.  Then she added “May this be your grandest year yet” inside and whaalaaah!

But how to put it together… what layout with these elements looks best… we decided on this loosely…

then thanks to some zots glue dots and my handy dandy ATG gun we got the elements in place in their permanent home!

Love the button on the front with the hemp tied through it too!  What do you think?

Do you like playing with monochromatic projects?  Hope you play along with us this week at The Paper Cabana!

Craft on and have a blessed day!

Kathi