Buttons

I love love love buttons! One time while I was home (Denver-at my parents home.) I found a magazine of my sisters, Threads Oct/Nov 2008. On page 30 it has an article about buttons, very interesting and informative. It contains the web info for the NationalButtonSociety.org where I found an article about Norman Engler who did button mosaics. I copied two for you below, but if you are interested at all go to the site and look under Special topics and it shows them up close and give a lot of details. These pictures are LARGE and have thousands of buttons all sewn on.

I love love love mosaics and have given some thought to the idea of making a picture with buttons, but it has been done much better than I had envisioned. I really enjoyed these 'paintings'.

Talk about vintage fabrics!

As I said I have been going through ALL my fabrics. I came across this "vintage" fabric. It was probably added to my stash through a yard sale purchase. Not that I bought it because I loved it and couldn't go home without it, BUT because it was in a bag of other very useful pieces and the seller would NOT let me just take out what I did want to purchase, I HAD to take them all and this gem was among the rest. Now I'm sure it initially was purchased by someone to make curtains out of-- there are three yards of this choice stuff. My question is, now that someone came to their senses and got rid of it WHAT should I do with it? I could fussy-cut the pumpkins for an I SPY QUILT!

I could cut narrow strips and forget how unique it is. I COULD slip it carefully into a package and sneak-opps-ship it quietly to someone else and see if they have more creativity than I do and make something wonderful out of it! I am open to all ideas and if you secretly crave olive-gold-red fabrics covered with wine bottles and green filled wine glasses PLEASE ask for this remarkably....incredibly unique "vintage" piece. And if one day you go to your mailbox and find a package without a return address, don't be surprised if you open it and find......?

On hold and ...

This is an experiment my quilting sister told me about using the very small pieces to make a piece of fabric. What do you think? It was fun and I can see where I could improve on it. I have no idea how I will use it. But doesn't it look like a mosaic? Sort-of? I'm not clever enough to make it actually look like a picture or anything specific, but it is a novel idea and it satisfies my urge to never throw out the small bits and pieces and to make something productive out of them.

I'm thinking about another quilt. Already! Likely this one above. I'm a little stymied on the striped one, so I am organizing my fabrics. Talk about time consuming. First they are all stored in the crate, in different boxes and tubs depending on when I routed them out of my too crowded kitchen/craft space. I found some, but not all, in my forrays to find. But I found enough to satisfy my need to gather together. I made an appalling discovery...I habitually added to my pile without preshrinking when I got them home. OH NO. I have many (I mean MANY) to shrink and press before I can procede into any kind of production. Well that is probably good as I do not want to have two projects going at the same time. I really want to finish the stripes before I begin the next quilt. And it is getting warm enough to spend time in the crate doing my mosaics...

Riley Who?

We have a dog. Yes we said we would NEVER have an indoor dog. Well gobble, gobble, gobble...more words to eat. She is an indoor dog and we are crazy about her. Riley is her name (well, actually Riley Poo) and she is a miniature poodle. White and fluffy after her bath. Soft and patient while we brush her. Mad and distant when you finally finish and release her. She is the laziest dog I have ever seen. Thus the pictures of her sleeping ALL the time. she still hates her Kennel, which we insist she sleep in at night and stay in when we are not home. We have had her about 7 weeks now, after being on "the list" for 6 months. She loves to go in the car. The boys pass her around and Adam trained her at "school", which she tollerated, but did not love.

I sound like a quilter!

It seems like that is all I talk about, but... I took the blocks that had the Aspen tree trunks as the black and white and ripped them apart and put a REAL black and white stripes in the middle and like them much better. So the aspen tree trunks are relegated to the brown stripes pile.

My sister and I were talking about putting the blocks a different way so I arranged some in the way we discussed and took a picture ...

I don't like them as well, but it's do-able.

I am so anxious to put my blocks together, but I still have 18 to do and I still need fabric to make the last 11 black and white stripes. My quilting sister says to wait till I have them all done and can lay them ALL out to decide what order to sew them together. Soo... patience!