It snowed in southern Ontario yesterday. So what else is a girl to do after cleaning her craft room than to grab a couple of silk scarves, a handful of koolaid and a bucket of snow.

This was way easier and way less messy than some other attempts at dyeing. Close ups.
this was pina-pineapple, ghoul aid scary blackberry and iceblue lemonade.

This one is black cherry, cherry and berry blue


After i added the dye to the snow pack i sprinkled just a bit of grape over both.  I loved this project.


And now i have to go. Im sure i need more scarves to play with.

For the HoHoHo swap the theme i selected to craft for my partner was stars.

I decided to learn how to paper piece. And i wanted to sort of make it abstractly scrappy colour blocky. Most of the stars are done in star fabric.  I was trying for a christmassy look that you could leave out all year round.

This is the picture my partner fancybutch took. My completed one seems to be missing.
http://www.craftster.org/pictures/data/500/medium/284437_03Dec12_H_quilt.jpg
(thumbs up cat approved)
Heres a close up.



And it laid on the dining room floor like this.
for almost a week.  Hubs and i would walk past. Stare at it. Move a piece here. Move a piece there. Walk away and rearrange again.

The grey scale colour blocking really had to grow on me.  I wasnt sure. But bybthe time it was time to mail.  I love it.

my summer time labour of love. this was made for the end of Summer Random swap. And i almost didn’t let it go.

it was intended to be a lap size quilt.  sadly tho.  math is hard. and it KEPT GROWING! my kiddo is standing on a chair to hold it up.

the colours ombre’d according to my partners wedding colours. i really love this quilt and will likely.  once the memory is less fresh. make more. i have friends lined up for one.

i made this for the End of Summer Random swap.

and when i posted it to my non crafty friends i had a hugely positive response.  guess what almost everyone is getting for Christmas.



but seriously, i wouldn’t mind if Nine, Ten or Eleven showed up to take me for a spin...

this year something got into the water supply at hubby’s work. it feels like every other week he’s sending me a BBM. “hey i need a boy/girl quilt . so and so (who i have never and likely will never meet) had a baby boy/girl yesterday”

this one is the latest.  and i was able to use hockey flannel on the back!    sort of a mom side/dad side...

oh d9p.  how i love you~ you look so complicated but are so simple!

for the hoopla round 5 i created this hoop for my partners hubby.

she asked for something related to this robot from the movie forbidden planet. i sketched out a few (failed) ideas then bounced on the idea of embellishing a print out. ( i will freezer paper print on fabric all the time now.  what a great way to transfer details)
i lost track of the number of greys, whites and blacks i used.


my hubs decided it needed something a bit more and dug about in his electronics stash and whipped up a light/battery/switch combo.  if i hadn’t been fighting the timeline imposed by the canada post mail strike i would have pushed for sounds too. 

i broke out my glass crafting equipment.  i needed to come up with something Awesome for the “be Awesome again” swap...

my partner and i share an admiration for Dr Who and what is more iconic than the tardis.

i made a small simple panel to fit inside a shadowbox.  hubby helped out with this one by making the electronics and programming the chip for the light effect.  the soldering isn’t perfect.  but i did electrocute myself when i realized my soldering iron has a fray in the wire (part of the reason the last few lines weren’t smoothed over better)
picture...
it’s hard to take pictures of glass behind glass. 
one minute or so video of the light working away.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv-rkHcIS_Q

for all of you lovely women who organize swaps i have a question.

would you rather have someone sign up for international shipping  (even knowing some countries are notoriously awful and slow, i’m looking at you canada post) or sign up limited to within their own country?

i can only assume that a lot of people only want to ship within their own country (and that can be difficult if you have a limited number of international shippers)  but a long ship time keeps the swap open a long time.  seems both options have downsides but what is your opinion?

aka. 'sorry van gogh'.


i made this for the mini art quilt swap 4 that is currently going on.  (link to the gallery http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=376317.0 ) partner megstar had on her list of ‘inspiration’ themes, starry nights/celestial and dragonflies.

i got this idea to replicate (steal) the starry night basic lay out and instead of churches and villages i would make swamps and  bulrushes and a dragonfly. i used a faux suede for the bulrushes, and the dragon fly is silk duponi covered in tulle and lined with seed beads... oh how i have newfound respect for beaders...the wings are only attached via the body for some extra dimension. some of the stars have beads sewn on for extra glittery-ness and some embroidery was done to emphasis the circle-y effect from the original painting.

as it was coming together hubby took a look.  i asked if we could...  bump it up a notch?  combining his electronics hobby and my quilting hobby.

there is this awesome product that allowed me to sew on the led lights (conductive thread rules) and the arduino is programmed to randomly ‘twinkle’ the 5 lights in the stars/moon. as well as shut off after 5 minutes to conserve battery life.

i loved making this art quilt (my first) and i loved being able to craft with my man. already there are plans underway for the next collaborative project.

i haven’t decided which.
 let me start by saying i have never made clothes. ever. not even in grade 7 home ec when i was supposed to.

so in preparation for a personal swap i decided to bust out a little girl version of something i will try to make full sized later. unfortunately i don’t have a little girl to measure or model. 



but i do have my bot’s stuffed rabbit.
now imagine a  3 year old twirling on a nice summery day

here it is without the rabbit... i think it will be huge on the wee one i made it for.  her momma makes tiny kids. but she’ll grow.



and i learned some stuff along the way... like take more time when pinning and wait for the promised tutorial before barging away...

so... insane... or awesome?