This & That-Found Fabrics and Blue Jean Quilt

   Good evening,

  Hoping those of you that celebrated Father's Day enjoyed a good day today.  I can relate to some of the things my Mother had said (years ago now) that as we get older we lose special family and friends especially our parents.

 We both have lost our parents years ago now, so I do think of them but no longer celebrate the day.

  Last night I decided to work on my slow mail cards to celebrate our nation's 250th birthday.  My craft room is on the side of the house close to one of our neighbors that seemed to have lots of family visiting for several days now. They partied loudly til after 11 pm including very loud fireworks that just make those loud booms nothing else. Also not like them-very loud music as well.  So turned out to be a good day for that project. Ha Ha.  We have a couple neighbors that do not fire off pretty fireworks only those that are loud  that go boom-that's it  don't like those at all  Oh well there will be total craziness here at the lake on the July 4th weekend for sure.  I do enjoy fireworks just not those.

  I didn't sleep well last night at all-but ended up getting lots accomplished today-lots of laundry caught up especially.

 This afternoon, I decided to go through some books that I had bought but never got around to reading. I saved out some of those and started boxing up the rest to take to the animal shelter's resale shop this week.  I also discovered a big tub under a cabinet in my craft room-opening it up-Wow big surprise-full of quilting fabrics and at least 90% of it is more civil war era reproduction prints.  I knew that I had collected those over a few years planning to make a quilt or two-I may just make a simple quilt design with these-something I would enjoy as I love this period of fabrics-very earthy.

 The reproduction fabrics are mostly upper left and in the middle-there is a lot of yardage here

  I also took a photo of my huge patriotic rag quilt 

     Larry never liked this one as it is Very heavy. There is batting  inside each square and the backing squares are flannel.  I also had hand embroidered some of these squares as well, the stars are more jean material sewn on.  This ended up being huge around a king I think-I have it draped over the back of the couch to enjoy.  I t was quite the challenge at the time to get this heaviness into the sewing machine.

   We did get a bunch of rain during the morning hours but no storms thankfully.  I am off to refill the nectar feeders. We still have orioles here the one pair of hummingbirds and several other birds that are enjoying the nectar as well.

  Oh and I wanted to share a jam I found that is soooo delicious. 

     I am not a jam or jelly person at all, but I look for nicer preserves-jams for Larry as he likes it in his Greek yogurt or with peanut butter sandwiches on cinnamon raison toast.  When I went shopping last week at the family grocery store I found this Jam. This is soooo delicious and Not sweet like most are. I will be buying more for sure.

Found this photo on Amazon   

Happy new week

Slow Stitch Bag Progress

   Good evening, According to the weather people this weekend was supposed to be a wash out with rain and storms. Here at the lake today it was humid and hot-no rain.  A bit too humid for me to be mowing grass-I will see what tomorrow morning is like as I need to tackle that again soon-ugh. 

  One of our neighbors here had a big family gathering-which I thought was odd as they only come out on the big summer holidays and then I remembered this was Father's Day weekend. The lake has been crazy busy with lots of boats all day, and will be out there til dark tonight

 Late afternoon today, while watching a movie I worked on another section on the third slow mail bag. This bag has taken me longer as for some reason most of it was tiny stitches. When I was hand quilting years ago I always had tiny stitches, so I need to think about larger ones for these bags. I am liking this bag but is has so many sewing hours already. On the next one I will keep track of the hours for an idea. I  am enjoying these bags, but I am wishing now I did not cut out for so many of them.

  I recently bought  a few stencils to try so grabbed one with a flower. and used it in that green block.

I really like how this green block turned out. I have been having trouble getting a pattern marked, I have used chalk and tailors chalk too which is ages old from sewing days and both made too large markings. I bought a couple pens too for this purpose and those were not working either. I finally found a set that had good reviews included several colors and was perfect for marking through the stencil with fine lines. then when finished you just iron off-magic haha.  That will open up to using different stencils now.

Here is what I found-the set even included refills  (amazon) I wanted to share this product as so far only one with fine lines and works.

    Before Larry's bad fall over the wall going on 3 years ago now, we were at the woods house to gather some more items we wanted. I spotted Larry's  wood working table-I have shared it before I think-I love it-gorgeous wood and it is narrow and very long-perfect for sewing projects. I had fabrics stacked up on this for the slow stitch bags, and also lots of Kantha fabrics. 

    I had been gifted a good pile of those fabrics, loved them so bought more-I seperated those out according to sizes (vintage cuts of kantha cloth)  and had a bag to fit it all in-so now I have a tidy space again smiles.

    I am thinking of sewing  many of these kantha pieces into a quilt-it will be light weight for summer. These pieces are three layers of thin fabrics-so the backing is already there. I will sew the rows together with the seam facing out to the front-those are then clipped-I had made a lot of "raggy" quilts with this method from jeans in the past. I made a Huge all blue jean quilt with this method that I had added hearts and stars to each block.

I found this photo online if you are not familiar with this method for an easy quilt.  The kantha fabrics are already hand sewn together so that part is done already-should be a fast project-all the pieces are different sizes though so will need to play around with a layout

  Looking at my craft room I may just need to take a good look at things and consider downsizing a bit-taking some of it to the animal shelters' thrift shop. I never know what I may want in this room as this is collections of mine since the '60's and also sewing supplies from both of my late Grandmas, late sister, and late Mom's  So I may not be quite ready for that but I do have a bunch of books that can go to the resale shop. I will need to think about that.

  I guess I am rambling on smiles-Happy weekend