Our First Monarch of this year

We have our first Monarch Butterfly! OK, it emerged on Monday and I'm just writing about it now. We have since released it yesterday. It was so pretty! Within the next couple of days, we will probably have about 3+ more Monarchs.

This isn't the greatest photo of it but look at it's wing span how pretty. This was when he took the container outside to let it go.


It climbed up on my finger when I was letting it out of the netting while I was trying not to disturb the other chrysalises. It stayed there for about a minute, open/closing its wings and then flew off.




This video was taken about a day after it emerged. It climbed up the to the top of the container and hung on the safety pin suspending the lid that the chrysalises are attached to. It was drying it's wings. You can barely see the clear chrysalis in the bottom right area (maybe too blurry) and then a full green chrysalis beside it.

This weekend, my goal is to either create all the binding necessary for the breast cancer quilts or to quilt at least two of the four quilts.

Thanks for stopping by!
~*~Trish~*~

Quilt Sandwiches, Coupons and Chrysalises

Quilt Sandwiches

The Breast Cancer Warrior quilts have all been staged into quilt sandwiches. I'm so glad I was able to complete all of the quilt sandwiches over the weekend! That's a lot of pins!
If it weren't for my little Kwik Klip gadget and curved safety pins, I'd have myself some sore little fingers. I had to go the route of pinning the quilts since there are so many baubles on the quilts that I am not going to be able to do any design quilting on them. In addition, I would not want any thread design to detract from the written text in each block. So, over the next couple of weeks it will be stitching in the ditch. This should go pretty quick though.

Coupons

During a trip to Joann's this weekend for more curved pins, I came across the new edition of Fashion Fusion magazine in their pattern section. It has 30+ Simplicity designs to view but the best part is that there are 6 coupons on the back of the magazine. Two 50% off coupons and Four 40% coupons good until December 26th 2009. I'm so glad I caught them early this time. I buy a couple of these magazine and then use the coupons whenever I want. I Place a couple in my purse and I'm set for anything I need to pick up at Joanns or Michaels. I've saved a lot of money with these coupons!

Chrysalises

So, we had the caterpillars in the little plastic container and then they started going into Chrysalises. We had to wait until all four larger caterpillars became chrysalises before we could transfer them to the netting container. Do you know how hard it is to come up with a way to hang a solid lid. Thanks to some craft supplies, I was able to come up with a way. Nothing a few curved safety pins and ribbons can't achieve. So, we are patiently awaiting our first round of monarch butterflies! It's not the best photo but since they are already in the netting, it's hard to take a great photo inside it.





Thanks for stopping by!
~*~Trish~*~

Combining Craft Hobbies - Archiving your Quilting

As the title goes, I love all things crafty. There are not many craft areas I have not tried. When I have an opportunity to combine crafts, it's even better. I love working with digital photos and I am usually pretty good at taking photos of all the quilts I've assembled along the way. I'm terrible with keeping track of finish dates so the photos allow me to keep my date archive as well.

In the past couple of years, the hard back photo books have become such a rage. Upload your photos to a snapfish.com, shutterfly.com or artscow.com and you can create a hard back digital photo book to share with friends! Here's an example of a photo book I created of random quilts completed.

This was completed when Oprah provided a coupon for a free photo book and I did not have a lot of time to complete it. So, I forgot to add important information such as dates to the photos! However, I can add those back in with the labeler machine. You can also place as much text as you want. This was so easy since I used pre-made template pages. Just drop your photos in, add some text and you are a done.

Below are the front cover, 3 random pages and the back cover.

Thanks for stopping by!
~*~Trish~*~

Corner Block Borders Completed and Snakes

I was able to complete all 4 Breast Cancer Quilt tops with corner block borders this weekend. Now all that's left to do is to square up the tops again and then on to quilt sandwich assembly and quilting. Hopefully, each upcoming weekend I'll finish one quilt! I snapped photos of each quilt and merged them for a quick look. I was too lazy and kept each other quilt on the banister below each photo'd quilt and it caused it not to lay straight. So, they are cattywompus.

I took each corner block and removed the stabilizer. The outside of the heart was really easy to remove the stabilizer but I could not get a grip of the inside stabilizer to get it started. Once it was started, it was easily removed. Finally came up with starting it with my seam ripper. Worked like a charm, but be careful. One time not paying attention and you have both the stabilizer and the fabric in one rip. Happened to me and I had to go back to the embroidery machine and make one more puffy heart corner block.


It's Still Here..

DH was out cutting grass and put the riding lawnmower away in the shed. Of course he's always a little more cautious since we saw the snake on the shed. Well yesterday he saw something out of the corner of his eye. He found evidence that the intruder has taken a liking to our shed and has taken up residence. I may have to serve an eviction notice somehow. Of course in a humane way, maybe someone can catch it and release it elsewhere. The photo isn't the whole skin. The ends seem to be broken off as well. Can you say gross!! To be continued...




Thanks for stopping by!
~*~Trish~*~

88' of Border & Puffy Applique

I'm happy to say I made some real progress this weekend on the breast cancer quilts. It's amazing what a rainy weekend will do for a crafter :-) I started thinking about my heart corner blocks. I created an applique heart in the embroidery software to sew out.

Puffy Applique

I experimented to see what it would be like if the heart were puffy applique using Pellon fleece as stuffing. I layered the Pellon fleece and top fabric on top of the sewn outline and trimmed after the second sewn tracing. I found it extremely difficult to trim the Pellon fleece and fabric in the applique.

So.. I printed out the embroidery design and taped to some cardboard to make a template. I precut my Pellon fleece and top fabric before I went to the embroidery machine and it was so much more faster and cleaner. I have 7 of the 12 blocks needed completed. It's hard to see the dimension of these blocks. You can see it best in the right photo, top left corner. I know I'll be revisiting this process around Valentine's Day!!

88' of Border

I was also able to cut both border fabrics strips, sew the strips together and iron all of them. I figured out that this was 1056" or 88' of sewing and ironing!! Once I finish all the corner squares, it should be fast sewing for adding the borders.


Thanks for stopping by!
~*~Trish~*~