true up

So I'm a perfectionist. This can make life as a whole challenging at times, and it can be especially frustrating while creating handmade, imperfect things. I want to love everything I make. I want everything I make to be perfect. And it just isn't.

I'm trying to finish this imperfect quilt, which has been a challenge from beginning to end. It's been one of those projects, kind of like "one of those days," kind of project. Bumpy process. Slow process. The bumpier the process got, the longer it got because it was easy to put it aside and work on something more gratifying.

I was just truing it up and it has a stripe on the back and what I thought was a perfectly straight cut on the front is off on the back. But only in one corner. I'm pouting. Considering trimming just a little more...to see if I can make it perfect.

Now I'm from the old skool. I was taught that you don't badmouth the boss (but the concept was explained to me with an axiom that is very vulgar, and so I won't share it).

So I have an Etsy shop. It's been mightily neglected, mostly because I've been disheartened to hear repeatedly that it is difficult to find me and my stuff there. Probably because there is a TON of shtuff on Etsy. Some amazing. Some good. And a lot of bad.

I just checked out regretsy and laughed so hard I almost cried. Enjoy.

put a bird on it

I had just finished this appliqued pillow and mailed it off to my niece for her birthday when a friend of mine posted a link to one of the skits from Portlandia on Facebook. Essentially, it spoofs our affinity for putting birds on things to make them beautiful. I have to admit I have been sucked into the bird thing in my crafting; how could I avoid the vortex when there's all this bird vibe everywhere? (I also just picked up some great fabric designed by the talented Valori Wells with--you guessed it--birds on it.)

I really enjoyed making this pillow because I started with a big piece of white Kona cotton and played with shapes to come up with a rough design. I used Wonder Under to fuse the basic shapes onto the background and then machine stitched around them. I added hand stitching with embroidery floss (grass, sun) and thread (sky lines), which I really enjoyed doing. I felt like the hand stitching added dimension and character to the pillow.

The back of the pillow is a simple envelope closure with two coordinating fabrics. I fused interfacing to the insides of the backing pieces before construction to add more structure to them.

By the way, I am using up my Wonder Under on projects like this (that won't be worn) as I tried Steam-A-Seam Lite and like it much better.

new blog

testing a new blog