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The newest little one to join our family is Lauren Grace, born 14 May. Brothers Elijah 2 1/2 on the left and Josh 4 1/2 just love her to bits! She's the calm in the storm.
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And it's hard to believe, but little Emily is one. The years fly by.
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| Ooooh! |
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It took her a while, but she did get a little bit messy.
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I tried Martha Stewart's Italian Meringue Buttercream and it was delicious. This is a 12" diameter cake and those "Funky Letters" set fill it perfectly.
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| These backpack style bags have kept me busy for the past week or so. The pattern was a thank-you gift, and I had in mind to make a crazy quilted bag. But that changed when I began to play with the vintage lacey pieces. Size is about 15" x 15" with a large pocket with velcro closure. |
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| This is my favourite with battenburg lace and the appliqued hanky on the pocket. |
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| The hanky is attached with little pearls rather than seeing stitches. it I added some ric rac too. |
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| The inside is lined with pink roses and lots of pockets to hold stuff upright. The bags are listed in my Etsy shop. |
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| These are cast on stitches with a small pearl bead tucked in. |
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| And this is the sketch in Miss Carole Samples book "Crazy Quilt Stitches" that I used as inspiration. (I have permission to use the sketches.) |
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| Lazy daisy and beaded flowers.......... |
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| ..... from this sketch in the book. |
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| Another row, but I wandered a bit from the original, below. |
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| This is the centre part of the bottom section. There's quite a lot of space to fill in on the bottom part of these blocks. The lace motif was cut from a tablecloth and embellished. The golden swirls were from a image search on Google: "swirly patterns free". Hundreds turn up! |
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| This is the top corner and a button cluster. Some of the buttons are stacked, an idea from a friend. CQJP2012 is a challenge for participants to complete one block a month for a year and make something at the end of it. We each submit photographs of our blocks to the CQJP2012 blog. You can check out all the amazing selection of finished blocks, here is the link: CQJP |
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| This is June's CQJP 2012 block and the 9th block in the fan design series. It's all silk and the patterned pieces are from silk ties. |
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| This is a close up from my block above. I've been using the designs from Carole Samples book "Treasury of Crazy Quilt Stitches" as inspiration, and below is the sketch from the book. This is called a holbein stitch design. |
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| This is my version of the long-armed feather stitch. Below is the sketch from Carole's book. |
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| This is from the stem stitch design page. |
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| A row of whipped circle flowers. |
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| The top corner |
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| The bottom section. Lovely lace with tiny gold beads. |
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| Next it is spread onto special textured teflon mats and left to dry for about two hours. This is the "dry" stage: dry to the touch, but still pliable and not sticky. The "set" stage is when the piece is dry and brittle. |
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| While it is still pliable, Glenys cuts out a motifs from the larger piece. |
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| This is another design that stretches out like a hammock. |
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| It can also be piped into designs or letters ...... |
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| butterfly or dragonfly wings |
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This and the photo below show how it can be cut to fashion a bride's gown or a dress for an old fashioned belle.
Thanks, Glenys for a really interesting demo.
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| SugarVeil is available at Flour Confections in Pickering. May's meeting is the Annual Cake Competition The criteria is as follows:
Cover a board (not a cake or stryo dummy) with fondant and decorate it with spring flowers. Advanced members are required to use gum paste. The board can be displayed flat on the table or placed on a stand. There is a fee of $5.00 per entry in this category.
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Me and my friends Brenda (centre) and Suzanne (right) at our Seniors' Club Mothers' Day Luncheon.
Previously Brenda organized a "Fascinator Workshop". Thirty or so of our members made their own cute little toppers, all different.
In the background you can see the quilt that Suzanne and I are working on. This single quilt-as-you-go is in all the pastel shades with a few darker purple. It will be sashed in dark purple.
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| This is my 96 year old mother with her birthday gifts from the family this past weekend. I weighed the bars and bags - 7 lbs! |
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| And here she's making a wish! |
Well, it's completed. Thank you Anita from Artistic Fingers who guided us through eight weeks of Chikan embroidery. The finished motif is very nice.
I'm going to admit that I had a very difficult time with filling the centre upside down heart. The sample numbered pattern instructs we go down one column and then up the next. My brain just could not fathom that out, so when I reached the bottom of the first column I wove my thread up through the stitches at the back to the top of the next column and began embroidering down again.
A week or so ago she showed on her blog some more potential stitch-alongs. I'm looking forward to doing another.
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| At the top is a branch of beaded wisteria. On the left, simple beaded flowers and on the right blackberries and raspberries. The half circle seam and the bottom seam are my interpretation of seams from the book. |
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| A second block for May. The left beaded section is a spray of beaded fantasy flowers. The seam on the right and the seam along the curved edge at the bottom were inspired by the Crazy Quilt book. |
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| I have Miss Samples kind permission to use diagrams from her book. |
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| It's fun to adapt old quilting designs and use beads instead. |
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| My embroidery is a mixture of both of these designs. |
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| I actually didn't have room for the cross stitch star. This is a nice design and would fill a large space. I'll use this again I'm sure. I have the templates to go along with the book and I'm using them for spacing. |
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