Crotcheted rag rug

I have been working on a rag rug. One of our quilt group members taught us how to do this last week at our work day. This is a great way to repurpose those old worn out sheets. I wish I knew how to do this about 6 months ago when my favorite purple sheet ripped from being so old. I chucked that beauty. It would have made a great rug. Oh well, no need to cry for that one when I have plenty others in my closet or that can be gotten cheaply at the Goodwill Stores. Here is what I have been able to do so far.

How about that. It is about 3 feet in diameter right now and I have several more colors to add to it. It does take quite a bit of fabric to make one of these, obviously depending on the size you want. I think I read that a 4 ft rug takes about 9 yards of fabric. To do this you rip your fabric into strips about 3/4"-1" widths, attach the strips into one long one, roll up into a ball. That is the prep work. Make as many balls of different fabrics as you want to use and then you can begin to crochet the rug. I am not going into how to crochet but it is a single crochet stitch. You can find tutorials online or get some good book on how to do this. You can make the rug round or oval or rectangular or I suppose you could even make it square. It has been fun working on. You can do this while watching TV at night and not have to concentrate on what you are doing too much. BTW, this will be a Christmas present for my BFF. Hope you try to make one sometime.

Tote? or Not

I am working on several things right now. I just made several backpack/tote bags from practice quilt sandwiches. They turned out cute and they used up something that very easily could have ended up in the trash years done the line when I got tired of trying to find a place to store them. This is what I started with

It took 3 of these quilted pieces that are 9x21" to make one bag. This is what the bag looks like.

And another one.

Sorry they are sideways. I will have to work on my computer skills some more. It took about 1 hour to make a bag. They can be worn as a backback or push the straps through the handle on top and you can use it as a shoulder bag. They have a deconstructed look due to the raw edges. They will make great Christmas gifts. Hope you enjoyed and I plan to be back every day M-F to share other things I am working on.

Coming together

Things are moving along rather quickly today. I was beginning to feel like I wouldn't have much of anything done to take home and show off but everything just pulled together today and I am really pleased with how my piece is coming along. I finished fusing the sky diamond tiled sunset background section then moved on to creating the foreground section with painted rock formations, hand dyed fabrics for the water and sand. After fusing everything down where it needed to be then I began to add shadows and reflections in the water. I even got to the point of spray basting the quilt top onto the backing and batting using a technique that one of the women shared. This is the tip of the year. When you are ready to spray baste your quilt together lay out your batting and spray it with the adhesive, take your backing piece of fabric and roll it onto a paper tube slightly longer than your backing right side in. Take that to your batting lie it down and slowly roll it out smoothing gently as you unroll your backing. Now flip your backing/batting piece over, spray the top of the batting, roll your quilt top up on the paper tube with the right side in on the tube. Unroll your top onto your backing. This made the basting process so quick and easy. I will be using this process for just about every quilt that I don't plan on quilting on the longarm. Poor Lola, my longarm, she hasn't been used for nearly 2 weeks now. I then started to machine quilt my piece too. I got a fair amount of my sky quilted. Tina got her piece basted together and started quilting too. She has such a realistic scene. We had a wonderful sweet potato soup for dinner, followed by a Jamacian lamb stew with chocolate ice cream for dessert. After dinner we had a presentation of next years classes here at Greenville Arms Inn, followed by a slide presentation by Gloria. This week has been a lot of hard work but we have learned so much and have enjoyed the company of all the women in the class. This has been a great experience. I certainly will consider doing something like this again.

Today I am going to blog about the food that we have had here at the Greenville Inn. First of all it has been fantastic. You can tell from the first meal that Mark, the chef, loves what he does. He is also very accommodating if you have any special food allergies or dietary restrictions. Breakfast always has a special that changes everyday but you also have a small menu of choices that you can choose from. I tried the French toast the first morning which was very good, only topped by the special one day of French toast made with raisin bread. Wonderful. Lunch is on our own but you can order a lunch of a salad or sandwich if you don't want to leave the inn and go somewhere. Tina and I brought sandwich fixings, chips, salsa, and grapes so we were set for lunch. We have a small fridge in the room which makes that possible. Supper is always a 3 course meal, soup or salad, main course and dessert. Wonderful. This salad was topped with a wonderful raspberry vinegrette dressing.

Here was the chefs special jamacian chicken. Wonderful. The vegetables every night were prepared to perfection.

Dessert was always the grand finale of the meal. Sometimes homemade ice cream, carrot cake, or bread pudding. Oh and I forgot the cookie break at 2:30 every afternoon of fresh baked, warm out of the oven cookies the size of your face. Melt in your mouth delicious. If you are hungry around here it is your own fault. Many of the women have been here before and attest to the delicousness of the meals from year to year.

Today started very early, at least for Tina and me. I woke up at 1:45 AM and tossed and turned for 45 minutes beforeTina woke up also and we decided to go to the studio and work on our projects. We had the studio all to ourselves. I decided that I needed to paint another piece of fabric to use for my sky work. While it was drying I started to put together a small piece with diamond tiles. I have the background piece done and waiting to learn how to add a tree to the piece. The pieces that I trimmed away from that I used to start another pieced background. When all is said and done I should have 4 to 5 pieces pretty well completed by the end of the week.

By 6:00 AM I was ready to take a short nap so that I could be ready when class officially started again. Slept till 7:30, got up for breakfast, had a wonderful poached eggs on english muffins with and artichoke cheese sauce. So good. Class, work, lunch, work, afternoon nap, supper and now blogging. Will go back to the studio tonight to work a short while longer before heading to bed. I will also get some pictures of my works in progress. A post without pictures is pretty boring.

Tina is heading to bed now but she worked straight through without any nap so I will cut her some slack. She is working on a beautiful and very realistic piece and is doing quite well also.

Quilting at Greenville Arms 1889 Inn

Today started our class with Gloria Loughman at the Hudson River Valley Art Workshops held at the Greenville Arms 1889 Inn. We are having a wonderful time getting immersed in learning how to create a landscape quilt. So far we have had a lesson in achieving a painted fabric to enhance our designs. We also have had a color theory lesson. Very informative. We have been busy creating our backgrounds today. Here is a shot of the studio with us busily at work.

This is just before dinner so some of us were beginning to get a little weary and took a break. We have a great space to spread out and work in and everyone is so generous with their help and encouragement.

Here is a quick shot of what I have gotten done today. I am cutting out my background diamonds for my sky background. I have approximately 50 cut out or so but have about 500 to go. It will take some time to get them all cut out and placed onto my background but I am hoping that it will be stunning when it is all done. I am working on a sunset over Tobacco Bay in Bermuda from my own idea of what the sunset would look like there so it may not be exactly true to a real sunset there but since I am the artist I can create what I want, right?!? I will try to post something everyday to document all the great fun that we are having here. By the way the food has been absolutely fabulous so far and from the reports that others who have been here before we will not lack for good food. Chef Mark LaPolla has amazed us with his Tilapia Almondine, chocolate creations, wonderful pancakes with cranberries for breakfast, and fresh baked still warm out of the oven chocolate chip cookies for an afternoon snack. Everything is so wonderful.

Quilting updates

October has been a month of lots of quilting outings. Actually it all started at the end of September when the IQ quilt club had their annual quilt show. It is always the last Saturday of September. We had a beautiful show. Many beautiful quilts to display and a good crowd attended the show.
I quilted the raffle quilt which was a beautiful appliqued and pieced garden flower quilt.

I didn't get a photo of it hanging up on the stage but here is one of it after I finished quilting it.

Here is a detail shot.

At the quilt show I was invited to join some quilting friends at the local state park the following week for 4 days. It was a wonderful time with family and friends. Our last night there we had a scavenger hunt reveal that the list given to us early in the week so that we could come up with some creative things on the list. We laughed so hard. It was a really good time with good friends. We also got lots of projects started or done and needless to say the food was good and very plentiful.

I will add some more of the fun activities in a future post as this is beginning to get a little too long already.

Lots of exciting things in the making so I will be posting on those also.

Remember that you are God's masterpiece and so be kind to yourself and love yourself and others.