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Showing posts from June, 2016

Word Art Wednesday

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It has been some time, but I have made a little space to make cards and this one will be going to my Sweet Daughter in Law. This is one of my favorite verses!   I also love the freebie on the W ord Art Wednesday blog !  It is a wonderful stop in your day for a beautiful devotion by Karen Letchworth Here is my card Thanks for stopping by! Ginny M

Birthday Challenge

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Yesterday was my 56th Birthday, and I had a lovely day!  Lots of cards and phone calls , I felt very loved! One of the  things I like to do every year is challenge myself to accomplish something new.  This has become more important and fun since the kids have grown up and I have more time. This year I am going to do something pretty radical: I'm not going to purchase any of my clothes, I am going to make all of them.  I have the skill, I have the machines and I have the time.  My tastes  and life style are simple so I won't need any ball gowns or lame suits.  I need cool and comfortable for this HOT climate I live in.  I need what I have a very hard time finding, 3/4 sleeves, higher necklines and long skirts.   Steve also wants me to start making his dress shirts.  I can do this, I have 2 sergers and 4 really good sewing machines. I have been altering  everything from cammo jackets to wedding gowns for the last 14 years, I can do this. In years past I have

WOYWW#369

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I think the last WOYWW I participated in was 341ish , not sure but it has bee a long time!!  No cards on my desk for the last few months, I am sure they will be back when I can eek out some space and time.  But for right now My Work desk is occupied by mostly work: This would be desk#1  and I am making 300 Zipper pouches.  I Am using my hobby machine right now, my work machine needed a new part, actually it fell through it's cabinet and when it landed the plug got crushed. So I have a new plug and new cabinet hinges coming in.  The machine is a tank of a singer 201. Lovely for work sewing.  Lesson learned: don't Micky mouse cabinet hinges! Work Desk #2 Ahh Embroidery station and also where I prepare work sewing and then # 3 work desk maybe I can find some room to stamp here, I just put this larger table here yesterday: That crazy picture on my screen is my sweet crazy husband who is always making me laugh.  I was trying to take a picture of horses b

One of those nights

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Last night I had one of those  nights. you know you go to bed and your menopausal endocrine system says, 'and just why do you think you need to sleep?  Get up and enjoy those hot flashes and get something done!!   Oh Well,   I did and had a lovely time. I got up at 1 am and made some raisin toast from the fresh bread I made during the day Pulled out my hoop , pushed start on a Colin Frith movie and finished my section of my yellow color study: It will be off to the next stitcher  tomorrow and then on to 4 more!!  Due back sometime around the beginning of 2017!  In the mean time I will start the wall hanging this will be the center of. It has been a very hot 100+ day here in South west Texas and now a lovely storm is blowing in. it dropped 10 degrees in about 5 minutes  ahhhh Hope you are having a great day!  Thanks for stopping by Ginny M

Lack of funds and power tools is a mother of invention

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Lack of funds and power tools is a mother of invention, I say that not because I can't afford to shell out $150 for a sewing platform, I just refuse too! I also have a garage full of power tools, only that garage is 2,000 miles away!  So this is a real hack job at creating a platform for my sewing machine. I purchased this beautiful Vigorelli sewing machine on Ebay for 80.00 included shipping.  The machine sewed perfectly right out of the box.  The stitch system is a little different than the average sewing machine so I did need to find a manual on line ($1.00). The reason I wanted this machine was the high powered motor and it's reputation for perfect stitching, it also has the super sized L bobbin- a very important attribute for commercial sewing.  I hope to  someday put this in an industrial table with a servo motor.  These Italian made machines are basically the same machine as the Swiss made Pfaff machines.  Same metal camstack, cleated drive belt and a two belt motor sy

Blankets of Love

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I received a wonderful box yesterday form my Heart Strings (yahoo group) Friend Nikki.  This is actually the second box of "strings Nikki has sent me.  Her kind heart is helping me to help others. This box weighed a Ton!!  Beautiful Clean fabrics waiting to go into a quilt! Most of these pieces were already cut in to strips - to make a string quilt! there were also many other shapes and random fabric bits. I have a system to keep these and help me quilt them up. Odd shape pieces go into a "Bits Bib" large pieces go into my "To be Cut Bin"  The string get sorted in color order and theses stay on a shelf until I am ready to quilt. to give you an idea what a heart string quilt looks like, here is one I made a few years ago: This is one of my first ones.  It isn't perfect but I'm not sure the guy at the Springfield rescue mission that received it cared much.  It was pretty, made with Love and Warm!! After 30 minute

An effort of peace in your corner of the world.

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I was reading in proverbs 25 today.  There is a very intriguing verse; 25:11     A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.  (some translations use the word settings like place settings)         A picture something like this comes to mind: But what does it mean?  With out going into a diatribe long enough to send you into a coma. It means a sincere word of encouragement is rare and beautiful and precious to the person who receives it.     Regardless of the fact that man does not record every word spoken God does and I want to speak the mercy he has so freely given me, to someone who needs it.  We all know who that person is. It the persons that we live with, work with, bump into.  It is the spouse that is having a bad day, the child that didn't get that nap., the teenager who feels the worlds colliding, the parent that can't keep up.  It is even you, look in the mirror and tell your self to breath. Tell your self , tell your family

Building a house

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I spent most of my day doing work sewing yesterday, re-arranging my work stations lugging boxes of paper into storage (under the bed). That under the bed space is really terrific, this bed is a little higher than the ones I have had in the past.  A case of paper slides right under!  I also got bit by some Texas critter, I have no idea what. I didn't see anything  - but I felt something like a paper cut in that fleshy section between my thumb and index finger on my left hand.  It swelled up, turned bright red and I had shooting burning pain in my hand for the next 14 hours.  It still hurts today and there is swelling but no mark. Benadryl insured a lovely night sleep and a groggy morning. I think a microscopic one of these attacked me: While Steve was checking the scores last night I pulled out my Yellow CQ study.  This needs to be in the mail in a few days so I need to finish up my section.  I look forward to receiving my first partners block - you just never know what it

Texas Mornings and a humming bird

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One thing I have seen in abundance here in San Antonio is Humming Birds!  I have never seen so many, it is not unusual to see 20 of them at one flowering bush!!  Because of all the rain we have had here in the last month, the country side is bursting with flowers!! I love to watch these sweet little birds!  I have Incorporated that into my CQ Yellow color study ; here is a little bit I have done this week:   It is a little hard to translate this into needle work of this kind.  If I were doing Japaneses Silk embroidery  using traditional silk on silk (Think Helen Stevens) I would have a stunning smooth image Here is one of Helen's' beautiful creations: But for my CQ block I am taking lots of artistic license with this humming bird: I've used a rubber stamp  to stamps  my image. I used 2 strand Floche, 2 strand DMS variegated  and 2 strand metallic Looking at the bird after the fact, I probably should have chosen

Strawberry moon and my family

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Although a lot of friends and family  read my blog, my main group of readers are overseas. I try to keep the blog informative and fun.  Unfortunately I have someone reading my blog that has a great deal of ill will toward me and my family. In an effort to protect my family I will not be posting about my kids or grand kids. I love them and they are much more important to me than any of the things I am involved in and if anyone that wants to have a relationship with any of us, they need to do so and not troll my blog and then send things in a mysterious manner - this is not the day and age to do that.  So if you and I are friends you will be in the know and will not need to keep up with the personal details on my blog.   I hope this is clear enough.  Enough said . On to more pleasant things!  Tonight I am working on a new to me embroidery tool:, the punch needle, I am planning on doing a humming bird body  for my Yellow Color study. And snapping a few pictures of the Strawberry moo

A Happy Surprise!

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 Saturdays are a great kick back and relax day for us, today we did some tag sailing - nothing like the tag sales back East.  After about an hour I got car sick and we decided to go downtown to a fun little shop called yarn barn. We had a lovely conversation with an owner and I picked up a few yummy things for my CQ in Yellow Project Beautiful Tapestry wool! After that Steve brought me to a discount fabric warehouse called Fabrictopia, What a happy surprise- a discount fabric house!!!  The is a pretty amazing place 7 miles from my house! Then lunch at a great local restaurant called Barrio Bistro, wonderful Artsy Organic  food  plus the owner chef stops by the table to chat! All that and it was 101 here today!! I hope you are having a great weekend! Thanks for stopping by, Ginny M

Crazy

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Quilting, I think I love Crazy quilting  Art quilts, Contemporary quilts and type of quilting that does not require perfect piecing!  My sister Robin is a master quilter, and her skills are amazing! When I try to do a traditional quilt I get very frustrated!  I knew how to sew, I am a contract sewer and have do all kinds of things from very simple to very complicated.  I think Robin got all the DNA coding for traditional quilting! I'm at the very beginning of a "Round Robin" crazy quilt color study (Yellow) with the group CQforNewbies on Yahoo!  I will turn this finished block into the center of a wall hanging for my bedroom which is gray and yellow. Crazy quilting is a wonderful media to use up bits of fabrics, I'm assembling yellows to make my patch work block.  I will have 4-6 partners in this round robin, each will sew their bit and mail it on, in the end I will have a very beautiful and unique block I also have to gather yellows for my work on my pa