Pictures below…Joyce, don’t look!

I finally figured out what to do for Janome-America in exchange for being part of their artists loaner program (I’m currently using a 6600 which I love love love!)….a totebag pattern for their magazine! With customizable pockets. I wanted to do something that wasn’t necessarily quilty this time (last time I did an applique pattern using Bali Fabrics’ “Flanneltiks”, the Balinese Garden one, pattern available here — scroll down).

I saw the Japanese-inspired cranes fabric on eQuilter (although it looks like this colorway is already sold out), and knew my Mom would probably like it, so I ordered that up to maker her for Mother’s Day, then realized SIL’s b-day is at the end of May (speaking of which, Joyce, if you are reading this…please STOP reading ).

Please scroll down…. want the pics and next comment below the first screen….

keep going

thanks…..

So, made one for her, and as long as I was at it made two more. I’ll keep one of the tropical ones so Joyce and I have “twins”, and will have the extra cranes bag to send to Janome for photography.

Here’s a picture of the insides of the bag (or did I already share that?)…. I added a “key leash”…. about 18 inches of grosgrain ribbon with a ring at the end. You can clip your keychain to it. When you need to find the keys, just pull up the “leash” and there they are. If you have an armload of groceries or whatever, you can just drop the leash inside or outside the bag, and deal with them after you are through the door and have set down your load. As you can see, I’ve got two zippered pockets (the bottom one “bellows”), a water bottle holster, pen and cell phone spots, sunglasses and the (not in this picture) leash.

If everything goes as currently anticipated, the pattern will first be published in the Fall/Winter 2006 International Janome Digest magazine!

And maybe I shouldn’t have? This fabric had stripes running from selvedge to selvedge. I didn’t want pants with horizontal stripes, so I laid the pattern pieces out on the cross grain, so the stripes would run up and down. Hmmmm….

I definitely won’t be wearing this vest and top with the pants (which are summery weight). I think if I wear a top that comes over the top of the pants, they’ll be OK…maybe even tunic length. I aligned the strip carefully with the grainline on the pattern, but they just don’t want to hang straight.

The fabric is a rayon-blend I think, almost crepe-y, kinda crinkly so that if I were to iron out the crinkles, the legs would be siginificantly longer. I’m wondering again if laying out the pattern on the cross-grain was such a good idea. Oh well…that’s what happens when you buy fabric on the internet and can’t actually unroll a length and drape it to see what you’re going to do with it! (original idea was for a jumper or skirt, but since I never wear the jumpers and skirts I have, I nixed that idea after I ordered the fabric……) At least I remembered to pre-shrink the fabric!

Well…after some serious procrastination last week when the boys were home for spring break, I finally resumed work on Tableau, and made a nice leap forward. I gave Joseph a cloak (which helps him stand out against the stable), got the interfacing / foundation for the shepherds cut, ditto for the animals. Here’s a shot from yesterday evening:

I also “foiled” for the first time, to make the halos for the angel (just head and halo at the moment), Mary, Joseph and the baby, and used an extra small halo as a stand-in for the comet / bright star (along with some gold sheer).

I’m testing overlays for the mountains to tone down the white. Will also play with a wash of paint, but of all things think I like the camo mesh from (shudder….) Wal-Mart on the right!

By the way…that’s a cat in the front, bottom /center….I figure if Mary picked up the baby from the warm manger, it’s probably like my house with a cat wanting to move right into the warm spot (there will be a manger in a few days….).

I’ll update with the “colored in” animals (goat, sheep, mule, cow, cat) anon…hopefully before I head to California next week to see Ma.

And a tease: see the lower right corner of the photo? …that’s a box with the other thing I did last week…totebags! I’m going to do a pattern for Janome America (my part of being on the Artists’ loaner program) so developed this tote bag, complete with cell phone pocket and water bottle holster.

Hi all….been very busy here, hence the quiet on the blog. Downloaded photos today…65! And that’s just in the past few days….herewith:

Easter eggs. Asked Paul to buy eggs to color for Easter—Eli asked special. So Paul returns….with brown eggs. How am I supposed to color brown eggs, I said, at nearly 5 pm Saturday? So, we made them after the fact…..when *I* went to the store and bought white eggs.

Here’s Eli in progress (and a can of peaches in progress, too….does anyone else besides me, and now my kids, love them? My dad fed them to me when I was a kid, and it turns out my father in law loved ’em too….as did his dad (who was the same age as my dad…my dad was OLD), so we wondered if it was something with folks who grew up circa 1900-1920?).

Here’s the finished display:

Then, Joshua had been pestering me to dye his hair red. Well….I convinced him to do a wash-in, wash-out color instead. Then, of course, Eli wanted scarlet hair, too. Actually, if they had had turquoise, I would’ve joined them….. where DOES one get a selection of more than two colors (red or blue) for this sort of thing? Anyway, hereis Joshua, with the “mom you are not going to take a picture” look, sporting the team color for the Camden-Rockport Middle School:

Then, there is the daily wrestling match in our kitchen (which all too often migrates to the living room and back) and all too often also includes dad, giving pointers…sigh….. it’s that Defective Chromosome with the Missing Leg (aka the Y chromosome, versus the intact X…..):

And last but not least, Joshua with his trophy for being on the CRMS wrestling team this year at the banquet last night:

Next: fiber and / or fur content….perhaps fur……

Just wanted to add a new button to my blog, and let you know what it’s all about if you didn’t already know. Last year, Virginia Spiegel had a brainstorm that has taken on a life of its own: using fabric postcards to support cancer research. Karey Bresenhan, one of the founders and president of Quilts, Inc., and godmother to quilters everywhere who know of the annual Festival in Houston as “Mecca”, became the honorary chairperson and donated space at Festival to help Virginia’s efforts, and again at Spring Festival in Chicago. Virginia has raised over FIFTY THOUSAND (!!!!!!! yep, I’m shouting!) dollars through the generosity of the artists who donated the cards and the many, many purchasers.

Here’s the button:

If you click on the button in the side-bar area, to the right of this post, it will take you to Virginia’s site. There you can get a sneak peek at some of the postcards and, currently, of the items in the reverse auction, all to benefit cancer research (and we hope, cures!). Thanks to DebR for creating this button and sharing her computer expertise!