A Ginormous Thanks!
Goes out to Ann from Belgium who sent me the following package of goodies! What a nice surprise and a great big cheer up it was. :D Ann doesn't have a blog so I can't link to her, but she tells me that she is a great blog follower. :D
Look at all the loot! And they were all wrapped as Christmas presents, which made it more fun. :D Ann stitched me that fantastic yellow hand towel not knowing that in my very own bathroom I had almost identical ones. LOL
See how great it will look in there. :D Thanks again it really made my day!
Here is a pic of Greg's finished Summer Snapper.
It's so adorable, wait till you see what he has planned for it. LOL
Also, here is a update on Greg's Evangeline, he's making good progress on her!
And lastly here is my coffee project! It's going very fast and it's a joy to work on. I really love, love, love the fabric for this one.
I noticed in the comments on "Dying with Food" that a lot of you are interested in trying food dying yourself because you find it less intimidating than chemical dying. I can totally see why. Let's face it food is something we all handle every day and won't turn our hands dark purple or green (unless it's food coloring) if we forgot our plastic gloves. I can honestly say that the experience of dying with tea and curry was quite successful. I also tried paprika, but without much success. If you want to try dying with food products my biggest suggestion is to go for those foods that naturally cause the biggest and most hard to remove stains. Also remember to use boiling hot water and in the case of coffee dying
Vonna's suggestion of baking and basting will definately give fantastic results.
That being said I would still encourage you to give chemical dying a try, it's not difficult and the cold dying process is very easy. It just requires a bit of patience and eye for color, a lot of water and rubber gloves. LOL I can honestly confess that I never thought that I would be able to make my own hand dyed fabrics, but I saw it as a challenge and went for it and was amazed at what I could create all on my own. I hope I see some new hand dyed creations on all of your blogs sometime soon. :D
Fresh Coffee!
So in case you were wondering if I had dropped off the face of the planet, the answer is yes...sort of. I had a bad case of the flu all last week and a holiday on Monday and have been swamped since then. LOL
But I'm feeling better, which is great, but still swamped which is not so great...but surviving. SO I just wanted to do a quick post to show you what I've been up too. :)
I finished my butterfly project and got it framed. It looks pretty good, although I had some trouble with the fabric. It was very crooked and I had a hard time pressing it straight. But after fighting it a bit I did get it set the way I wanted. I am a bit disappointed with the colors. They aren't as light as in the package model and you can't see under the Eiffel tower the way you are supposed to. And I know that I got all the stitches right in this area, so obviously the threads weren't exactly the colors they should've been. But overall it looks pretty great. I did leave off a couple of effects that I didn't think were necessary (french knots) and I love how the backstitchng turned out. So here is the finished project:
The mat I found for this was just want I wanted! It was a fun and challenging project, but not sure if I would buy a Dimensions kit again.
I also started on my next project. Hinzeit's Fresh Ground Coffee. I changed some of the colors and tea dyed my own fabric. So far I am LOVING this one. I always seem to love Hinzeit patterns they are so crisp and clean. And they go fast, as of now I have almost all the "Fresh" lettering done, although I don't have a pic yet to share.
Greg has been working on Summer Snapperland and finished it last night. This is just a progress pic as I didn't have a chance to snap the finished project:
This is such a cute project, I love the little crab in the corner.
Yuko, if you are reading this, thanks again for the tips on tea dying. I tried it again this weekend and got FANTASTIC results. When I need a tan colored fabric in the future this is how I'm going to get it. Unfortunately some of my other food dying experiments didn't go as well as the curry, but no matter it was fun trying. :)
Hope everyone has had a great week!
Dying with Food!
No people, NOT dying FOR food, although right now a snack would be nice. LOL
Yes I wrote, dying WITH food. As you know I like to dye my own fabric and usually I use Dylon brand cold dye to accomplish the task. It's not extremely color fast, but since I don't wash and re-wash my projects it's never been an issue. That said I am always interested to try new techniques for color dying fabric and I found one I hadn't thought of before on
Yuko's site. Yuko left me a nice comment on my frame fiasco so I went to have a look at her blog and BEHOLD she was dying fabric with food products. In this case she was using curry powder, onion skins and tea. Not necessarily all at the same time, although it might create some interesting colors, not to mention smells. LOL, LOL
Now of course I had heard of tea dying and I had even tried it in the past with weak results, but never had I thought of using any other types of foods to dye with, least of all curry powder. I don't even eat curry. LOL But lo and behold I had some curry powder in my cupboards thanks to Greg. He bought it during one of his adventurous eating phases. And of course I had tea bags so I thought here's my chance to give it a try. So I did. And these are the results:
I LOVE the results! The tea dye is a beautiful antique brown and the curry came out a bright vibrant yellow. This color is perfect for a spring project! The trick to getting a nice bright yellow I found is HOT, SUPER HOT water. Same for the tea, the hotter the water the darker the color will be. That said I am now intrigued as to what other spices/foods would make nice vibrant colors. Next, I'm thinking PAPRIKA. LOL, LOL I'll let you know how it turns out. ;)
Now onto HOHRH. Hobby Lobby (the crafters mecca) was having a 50% off sale on open back frames so we went to check it out and here is what we found.
After checking out numerous frames and finally deciding that it would be best to scale down the project quite a bit, we went with an 18X24 frame. Greg recommended that I go with this one and I have to agree that it does make the colors of the project pop out. So this is it unless sometime down the road I find another "perfect" frame. Here is what it looks like on my wall:
Thanks to everyone who commented about the other frame I am glad that I wasn't the only one that thought "great frame" but not great with this project. Ya, know I think my mom is going to LOVE that frame. LOL, LOL
Here's the latest progress on my travel project.
You can almost see the Eiffel Tower so it's getting close. Have to confess I am sick of stitching the same color in one and then two threads, not so easy on the eyes. But I'm almost done with that part and it looks great so it was worth it. :D
Hope everyone had a great weekend!
Framed!
I finally finished up the frame for the HOHRH project, the one that I've been keeping a secret. Well....I highly debated whether to continue keeping it forever. I hate to admit it, but I'm just not happy with how this one turned out. First off it's HUGE, nearly 3feet tall and secondly I think that it detracts from the project. Now keep in mind these are my opinions and everyone I've shown this too thinks it looks great. BUT I'm not satisified and so though the project rests in this frame for now I am on the hunt for something that will make me happy and hopefully do the project justice. ;)
It's perfectly fine if you disagree with me and think that this looks great...or even if you think it sucks. But I just wanted to share this because sometimes the best idea, just isn't. ;)
I Made That!
I was trying to think of something witty to write about rather than just plaster up my latest photo and say see here it is. LOL
And as I was looking at the picture that I was about to paste up, I got to thinking about how I really like it and think it looks pretty cool. And then (logically) my inner child puffed up and went "Yeah, I made that!" AND I thought, I wonder how many times we all do that or if we don't then why not? It's quite the accomplishment to sit for hours on end and create something from just a bunch of thread and a blank piece of fabric, something that we will display or lovingly give to a friend or family member. So if you haven't given yourself a pat on the back lately, then do it. Cuz all of you out there create some of the most beautiful and creative pieces I have ever seen and you do it in spite of jobs, kids and many, many other commitments. From me to you I applaud you.
Now here's my latest in progress:
I am basically half way finished, with the stitching that is. There will be a lot of work on the backstitching. But I am surprised at how quickly this one is moving along. Once I got the hang of just doing half stitches it moved right along. It's challenging but fun. :D
Hope you have a great weekend out there, me I'm going to try to keep from becoming a popcicle. LOL
