Another Three Weeks-!

"Jungle Babies" is a collaboration of Lydia's fine embroidery, and my piecing.

This is a wall hanging for Lydia's good friend and Matron of Honor Jessica. Jess wanted a jungle theme, and Lydia has been hand embroidering these little animals for a month now! 

She drew her own figures, but did get the monkey and the elephant off the internet. She put them on white cotton, and began stitching! 

I told her I'd put them together, but we really did not have a certain direction. I had purchased a few animal prints, but they seemed to detract from all these sweetly stitched characters. 

 

I wanted to do something that framed each piece, and saw this little bag of tidbits I purchased for a buck. The Quiet Mouse Quilt Shop in Calimesa cuts 2 1/2" strips for their customers, (also from their quilt kits) and sometimes has little scraps that they bag and sell as tidbits. I sewed the tiny strips into blocks, and then cut my own 2 1/2" strips 

 

to surround Lydia's handsome blocks. This was an idea that grew as it progressed, and I loved the creative process!

Lydia still plans to stitch the Bible verse so we asked for it back to complete it.

 

 

I'm glad Jessica liked it!

~ Lydia spent about 15-20 hours on each character, a labor of love for her friend ~

Ready or not, time marches on! School + Mammograms + ultrasound + report cards + mandatory parent teacher conferences + severe food poisoning (ugh!) + drs. +  meds + kids + teaching + another sleep apnea test + sewing projects + now I need to schedule a "lower GI" (you know what that means, huh P.?) + jury duty this coming week + I'm helping host an I-Spy swap in our quilting class, well....

I guess you get the picture. Oh, and my Second Graders cook for our Thanksgiving Party. I am trying not to complain (much) but it's just kinda busy. I know you folks are, too, so thanks for poppin' in !

 






"Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!" Romans 11:33

Did I Tell You I LOVE Red?

Ginny B. and I crawled into the car for a 120 mile ride, and we sure enjoyed the eye candy at the Temecula Quilt Company! For the month of October, red and white quilts are on display ~

 These two photos were borrowed from the Temecula Quilt Company blog ~

 As always, they have other fun projects, too ~

 

 ~and these came home with me ~

All those pretty reds make me want to pull these out again

Happy Friday, ya'll!

This Week in October~

The Second Graders went to Riley's Farm in Oak Glen, California. We are doing a historical studies of the colonists of early America.

We participated in activities such as loom weaving, grinding apples for cider,



 

churning butter, dipping candles,














writing with quills and ink,















 

and trying to stay cool in the 95 degree heat wave we had this week (it was over 100 at home). I felt bad for the folks in their heavy costumes ~

 We had toast with apple butter and sorghum molasses as a treat at school the next day!




 

 I finished this rug for a friend, better not say too much as she might figure it out, ahem, but it's done in time, yippee! With a few of you asking about the how to's on these rugs, I'm sharing the simplicity of their construction.

On the blue and green rugs I used cotton yarn, the weight that you use to make the little washcloths or dish cloths, three threads at a time.

I used one skein of yarn from start to finish to keep the unity of color in it, but I was using up scraps of yarns for the most part.

It's all single crochet.






This multi colored rug is all acrylic, and I used 4 threads. The full skein I used was a variegated one that went from burgundy to hot pink, and I was using a beige to try to tone it down a bit-!



 The hook is a size P.  It came packaged with a larger Q hook, the size I use in rag rugs.

I chained 20 to 30 loose chains, and single crocheted around both sides. I added 3 or 4 stitches to the ends each time around, unless I felt it was looking ripply, and then I'd go around once and not add any stitches at all!



I would also put the added stitches at different intervals on the ends, never just in the center of the end, so that the holes didn't show up in a pattern.

Edited to add:

1.                                                     2.                                                 3.

I was asked how I tied on the color/yarn changes. 

1. I knot about a 3 inch tail from both the leader and the ender thread.
2. add the next stitch
3. and pull so the knot is tucked inside the stitch (it doesn't always work out perfectly!) The tails are laying along the edge of the rug-
4. and are covered over with your stitches as you go   
5. until you don't see them any more! By leaving the tails long, they are well  anchored.

       

4.                                                    5.

See? not a tough "THIS IS HOW YOU MUST DO IT" set of rules.

Here are three of Mom's rugs. 

This one is mostly white acrylic 

with a chocolate brown 

cotton crochet thread 

(what I call doily weight), 

I think she used 4 threads.

( I'm sorry I didn't wash before pictures, they're getting washed now!!!)

Can you see the variety of thread weights in this rug?

These first two were gifts 

Mom recently made,

on our trip home this summer.

 This is one of my favorites, it is all doily weight, 8 threads at once! This rug is about 8 years old, before Mom lost so much of her vision...

And seriously, Mom uses Anything and mixes Everything, including the smaller doily threads in with acrylics, and they turn out kinda cute.


Hope you all are having a good weekend! I still need to get to my studies, and next time, I'll share what Ginny and I did today...! Here's the hint ~

 

"This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it." Psalm 118:24

Hi~

 

Hi, friends, just popping in with a hello. I've had my typical end-of-September bronchitis which slowed me down a bit, and I picked up the crochet needle for some evening rug hooking. I've finished 3 rugs, and want to make a few more for Christmas. When we went back to Nebraska, Larry's mom Barb was rug making like crazy, with whatever she puts her hands on! With her vision loss, her fine crochet doilies are no more. It's hard to see that, as she was always, ALWAYS crocheting in her spare time. We all have pretty doilies around our houses because of her! So, her inspiration continues in these yarn rugs.

The blue one I made for my Larry, and it's mostly cotton. Lydia gave me a bag full of colorful cotton yarn scraps, and I bought the big cones of blue yarn, I think they were around 12 ounces? for $8 from Walmart. I stitched with 3 threads at once using a hook smaller than Q (the Q is the one I used for rag rugs). From these 2 cones, I have enough left to make another one!

The green one is for Ginny for Christmas (it's her favorite color),

 and this funky, bright one is for Beth (sh! Don't tell!). 

I used all scraps on this one, and 4 colors of thread going. Larry said I ought to add the purple at the end, and I love it! We'll see if I can keep them a secret. More likely, I'll poke them away and not remember where. lol




This school year has me teaching 2 new curriculums, one for Bible and one for science. I mentioned to Dora that one (Bible) I'm having to make weekly quizzes for, and I'm hitting the books like a college kid! I've just finished the quiz and study sheet for next week...don't you know I'll be glad to just pull out the lessons next year! It's always good to grow, right? It's just stealing from my sewing time. . . .

No sewing right now, but helping Ginny with another granddaughter's quilt, this one from a kit using hydrangeas in purples, greens and cream, oh, so pretty! 

I'm working on 3 memory quilts for the wife and daughters of our fallen friend. I was inspired by Nifty Quilts post that she called "Sacred Work". Her quilts are really cool! I really appreciated the idea behind adding a shirt pocket. The girls have only asked for squares, but each kinda told me what colors they liked of Daddy's shirts. Larry has been helping me cut the seams and remove buttons. I'll share more as I go along. 

Please remember to pray for our little friend Jake. His leg is getting quite painful, keeping him awake at night, and the MRI's have given no answers.



 Thanks for visiting ~

Philippians 4:19:  "My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus."