More Pineapple towels

I was asked again this year to embroider towels with pineapples. There was a bath mat and a set of washcloths as well. The pineapple design is from Embroidery Library and the writing is font 5 in Embird. This is not my favorite design to stitch due to all of the jump stitches that need to be trimmed in the dark brown spots on the pineapple. I am hoping that I won't be asked to do this again next year. 8-)

Currently I'm working on free-standing lace snowflakes to give as Christmas gifts. I'll post those as soon as I have pictures. FSL is absolutely my favorite form of machine embroidery!

Some of my latest projects

Time has flown and I hadn't realized that my latest projects haven't been posted. These pictures were sitting in my camera all this time!

For our last Project Linus Q-Bee, I finished up a few fleece blankets to take along. Since these blankets are fairly large, they usually go to older kids. With that in mind, I tried choosing designs aimed at this age group.

The R-W-B sailboat is one that was done for the first time. Our chapter has been very supportive of organizations that reach out to the children of our fallen and wounded warriors, so I like to do blankets sometimes with those children in mind. The design is from Embroidery Library. The dog design is from Stitch It Cheap, the Girls Rule is from SewTerrific, and I am not sure where I got the I Heart Music.

I also embroidered a cookie from Stitch It Cheap when our young friend Bruce was here. He found some dish towels I had in stock and wanted me to embroider something for him on one. Since he likes making chocolate chip cookies, we thought that was appropriate. It was the first time embroidering on microfiber for me. It turned out pretty nice, I think.

That's all for now. When I take pictures of some other things I finished, I'll upload them. This old brain forgot to grab the camera after the napkins I embroidered were finished. UGH!

A new venture--paper piecing!

While in my current slump, I decided to try getting some joy and interest in life back by signing up for Portuguese classes on Rosetta Stone and also to learn to do foundation piecing, a.k.a. paper piecing, with a Craftsy class. This old brain is trying desperately to absorb these new things, but it is taking a while for everything to click.

One would never know that I once taught an arthritis self-help course by the way I overdid it on Tuesday. I spent most of a morning ironing, which I HATE to do--too hard on the back and legs, and then worked for a few hours on top of that shredding zucchini & carrots and slicing up cucumbers and onions. Our little garden is supplying us with abundant produce! My body has been paying for that stupid mistake ever since. Why can't I remember what I taught others: PACE YOURSELF!!!

Here is a picture of my first attempt at paper piecing; it's not perfect, but I am satisfied.

Now it is on to finish up my next blocks--Sunflower, which I am hoping to hang on my kitchen wall. We'll see how that goes. 8-D

Baby Buddies Chucky Butty

I am way overdue with doing a gift for the little guy next door. Jackson is about six months old now and I just found this little cutie at All Stitch. I hope Jackson will love the little monkey as much as I do. 8-D

We have desperately tried to stay cool these past many hot and humid days with heat indices at 100 to 105 degrees and the dew point in the mid-70s. I haven't been stitching much, but I have been studying my Portuguese with Rosetta Stone. I'd truly like to be able to converse more freely with my friends in Brazil when I visit them the next time. Stay cool and safe, girlfriends!

More Hoodie Towels for Hannah

Here are two more towels for Hannah. It seems that all of her friends are becoming grandmothers and this seems to be her favorite gift. I plan to hand them off to her when we get together on Wednesday. It will be cheaper than shipping them. 8-) The design for Chase I adapted from a freebie I got on the Sew Forum from Hollypops.  I digitized Graham's name in Embird from a font called BaaBookHmKBold.

I have been going back and forth to doctors' appointments and having tests done in order to determine what is causing my ongoing headache and jaw pain of almost four months and the swelling and pain in my left wrist and hand. So far I have managed to stump three doctors! I have a CT scan scheduled for Monday morning, so perhaps we will get the head pain figured out after that. I can only hope and pray. Maybe then I can get back to being busy here in my sewing room again.

Finished quilt tops for Project Linus

I forgot to post pictures of the two quilt tops I finished recently for Project Linus. Since I will miss the next PL quilting bee, they will have to wait for the June bee.

The first one is just squares sewn together with a narrow border. The second one is called Toddler Picture Window from AZ Blankets 4 Kids.

Back to creativity

Life has really gotten in the way of my creativity the past several months. From my knee replacement in October to my sister-in-law's diagnosis of brain cancer and then her homegoing to our furbaby's death, it has been a real brain-drain. Here are a some of the things I made in between all of life's other adventures.

The beginning of December our amazing nephew married the love of his life. His mother asked me to help finish a stocking she designed for the wedding to hold the gift cards from those attending. She is so very creative and I was happy to help her with it. The sneakers in the toe represent how James proposed to Brittney.

This past Christmas we even got to baked some pfeffernuesse and a couple of other favorites. There were no cookies the year before because we only got our countertops installed on December 23. Here is a picture of some of the traditional family cookies.

For Christmas, I made some of Sonia Showalter's alphabet Christmas angels for family and friends. The turned out so pretty, I think.

Of course, I love to make free-standing lace angels to send to people, especially those who are undergoing some sort of trauma in their lives. After the shooting at Sandy Hook, Nathenia at The Country Needle (TCN) designed some angels especially for that cause. I also made bunches of angels to send to others as well. The designs for these angels were from TCN, C-Some Stitches, and Marie Osmond. I usually prefer using plain white thread, but I ventured out and used some colored thread for some of them, too.  Here are several of both types.

In the midst of running back and forth to western Pennsylvania during Clara's battle with cancer, I also embroidered a couple more animal towels for my SIL Hannah. This time I embroidered the boys' names on the bands that held the towels. It was the first time I tried embroidering on ribbon and it turned out nicely, especially since they were the same kind of towel. I used an alphabet in my Embird software for the names.

Last week I also embroidered a vintage-style design from Sew Weird on a sheet set and blanket for a friend to give to her foster granddaughter for her birthday. It was a lot of work changing colors and trimming all of the jump stitches as they occurred, but I loved the end result. I was a bit impatient to take the pictures and didn't wait long enough for the water to evaporate from removing the water-soluble stabilizer, so some wet spots show up on the blanket. 8-)

Finally, we had to have our furbaby Dingo put to sleep last week. It was a heart-wrenching decision, but he had developed a growth on his colon and surgery would have been about $1,500, with no guarantee that he would survive or not have other tumors. He was miserable feeling like he had to go outside all the time. It was our last act of kindness we could do for him. He was ten years old on April 1, so we left him have as nice a birthday as he possibly could first.

A family at church also lost their beloved pup on Dingo's birthday and another friend had to have her old furbaby put to sleep last month, so I made doggy angels for them, since we were undergoing the same pain. These angels are also from TCN. The bear angels were just to have on hand for such a time as they may be needed to bring some cheer to a child.

 

Farewell old friend. Our household will never be the same again. You brought so much life and love into our lives.

Well, I think I'm pretty well caught up now. Hopefully I will be able to get on to some of of my UFOs and other projects in the near future.