Where has needle felting been hiding all these years? I never knew it existed before, but it's out there and it's actually super trendy right now. Since I am totally a cool person and always follow the trends I figured I had no choice but to try my hand at it.

I went to Joanne's fabric and craft store, so that I might find felting needles. They don't sell just felting needles by themselves, but luckily I found a kit by Feltworks in the clearance section, that was made up of a purse (already made), roving (unspun wool), and two felting needles. It also had a pattern and some beads and instructions on how to follow the pattern. Since I do not follow instructions well, I gave the beads to a friend, and tossed the instructions and pattern away after a brief glance. In the instructions it warned me not to stick myself with the needles, I of course did the opposite; I haven't had my tetanus shot since 96, I hope I don't die.

Here is the end product, sorry for the fuzzy pictures.

Side one: Dragon with one leg, one wing, and no arms.


Side 2: Dragonflies, not anatomically correct.


I have also been having fun with hair clips and felt. When I get the pictures from my sister I'll share, these are also trendy, which once again makes me totally cool for making them.

This quilt is done, and ready for spit up.

In hind sight, there are few things I'd have done different with this quilt. I probably wouldn't have used the printable fabric, because it's so stiff. And I would have used a better piece of fabric for the quilt top. If you can't tell, it is pink, but it is way too light and washed out, so it looks like an ugly white plus it wasn't the best quality of fabric, I realized this after I had already started and that was too late. It would have killed my momentum to stop and get a different cut of fabric.

Ever see a cute picture of adorable kids feet on a beautiful quilt...

This is my version.







I quilted the whole thing with an organic asymmetrical design and all the corners are different, this is one of them.

After I had quilted the whole thing, I decided that it needed something more, so I added all the pink and brown dots. My son asked what they were and I told him they were eggs, for strawberry eating dragons. He then pointed out that it looked like the dragon had a strawberry body. "Well," I said, "you are what you eat."

Great Binding Tip

I saw this tip the other day on some random blog, just in time for me to use it as I am binding Julianna's quilt. I can't find the blog again, so I can't give credit to the great tipster, just let it be known that I am not so great as to come up with this idea on my own.

When you are binding a quilt by hand, instead of using pins to hold the binding in place, use your daughters cute little hair clips. This prevents the thread from catching on the head of the pin, and un-threading your needle or making knots and tangles.

Don't worry about your little girls hair being out of place while you are doing this, we all know that little girls won't leave those hair clips in for more than a few minutes anyway, might as well put them to good use.

This Picture is Not Going to Hang on My Wall.


I've been wanting to get out the paints for a few weeks now, and finally today I did. I think I'll pack them up again for a few more months. Or maybe I'll force myself to paint everyday and learn something.

My son has been coloring on this box for the past few days, and every once in a while the rest of us join in. He left it out in the sun and a bunch of the crayons melted on the bottom, he was afraid that he would get in trouble so he snook one of my dishtowels outside to try to clean it up himself, but it didn't work, so he came in screaming his head off all panicked about this tragedy. I of course couldn't care less about the crayons, but I was a bit sad about the towel. The little girls love being trapped inside it so they can't get into trouble and they can't escape the camera, my son on the other hand didn't want his picture taken.

This post is for all of you out there who enjoy children's art: their uninhibited freedom of expression, pure design, their simple unadulterated technique, and reckless abandon of the house rules.

As I told you in the last post, we refer to this artistic child as "The Funny Funny." And funny she is. She doesn't wait to be entertained, she makes up her own fun, and loves to make her older brother laugh.

Well this is a direct quote from her older brother upon seeing what she had done to the wall...


I had just gone through the house and cleaned up all the stray pens, to prevent exactly just this from happening. I missed one. I am tempted to have my children grow up in a house with absolutely no writing utensils. That will show them!

In cleaning out my closet, with the intent of getting rid of the clothes I don't wear, I came across four pink shirts. I decided I am done wearing pink shirts for now. Maybe I'll keep the one that Lesli gave me in case of any pink shirt emergencies, but the rest are done for. Please take note that I am not swearing off pink forever, I am not denouncing it, nor am I saying that I don't like pink.

Well, instead of giving these pink shirts to the DI, I decided I could quickly remake them into clothing for my little girl. Snip, snip, snip, a few seams, a little elastic, and now The Funny Funny (as we like to call her) has a new outfit.

Whew...back in my own house again. Dan just got a new job up here, with benefits! I'm going to miss seeing my mom and dad everyday. And my dad is going to have to eat everything from his garden all himself. I haven't gotten much of anything done in the last many weeks, or at least not any of my own projects. I have kept the kids fed and alive and we have been having some fun. Most of my brothers and sisters have been around for the past few weeks for a reunion with my moms side of the family in Roosevelt. We also have done trips to the Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point, This is The Place, and Mt Timpanogas cave (in 100 degree weather). We have also canoed, went skeet shooting, target shooting, there is a swimming trip planned for this afternoon and right now all the nieces and nephews are in the backyard shooting bows and arrows at straw bales. Good times.

One thing I have done is finished appliqueing the dragon and the strawberry for Danna's baby, now I just have to put the quilt together and quilt it that should take a few months, I'll keep you posted.

Just messing around with the blog look some more, and I know it looks horrible. Some day I swear I'm going to learn html so I won't be held back by those boring old blogger templates, or someday blogger will make it even more dummy friendly.

To make up for it here's a dragon.

So my blog has changed it's clothing. I know the white makes it look like it didn't quite put enough clothing back on. I'm just messing around with it. I'll probably change it a few more times in the coming weeks until I settle on something. It's almost as fun as having a Barbie fashion show...

Here is what I've really been up to:



That is the quilt I am working on for my sisters baby. What you see there in my dark and blurry photo is bits and pieces of a dragon and a strawberry that I printed out on fabric, and now I'm appliqueing it all together. This is my first foray into printing on fabric and I have to say that I'm not too happy with the pre-made fabric sheets. They are very stiff. I think I'll make my own next time with my own choice of fabric on wax paper (you iron the fabric onto the waxy side of the wax paper, so that it will go through the printer, then you peel it off.)

I also finished, sold, and shipped this basket.

And I drew this picture and made this frame and listed it on Etsy:




You might think I'm on a roll, but if you realize how long it's been since I last posted you will also realize that this isn't much to show for all that time. Oh well, I'll just keep trudging along.

I haven't been able to get too much done lately, but I'm trying. I am almost finished with a custom basket that someone asked me for from Etsy. It is larger than the Easter baskets I had made previously, so it is has been a lot harder to get it to stand up presentably. I've also started a quilt for my sisters new daughter that is ready to arrive any minute now. I'm not in a hurry because it's summer and I don't think she'll be needing a quilt anytime soon. I've also put in some time trying to design a website for myself. My husband is now a computer programmer so I figured I should have my own website, but in reality, he is way too busy to make it for me, so don't expect it anytime soon. Here's some ideas I had for it...



So far I really only like the top one, the other two are too strong for me, maybe if I just toned down the colors... Which one do you vote for? In the end I'll probably come up with something like none of the above, so you can vote for that too.

Also Kim blogged about a little munchkin (who would be pouting, indignantly, right now if he knew I had called him a munchkin), and just happened to use a picture that showed a monster puppet (the one on the left) that I made for him for his birthday, back when I was going through my puppet making phase. That phase only lasted through 3 puppets, a monster, a dragon, and monkey. When I started on the monster I thought I'd make a cute little monster, that wouldn't get in the way, but as I made it, it got bigger and bigger and bigger until it was the size of a small child...oops. The monster on the left in the picture was made by his mother, it had a hole in it's belly with another smaller monster in it, in that monsters belly was yet another smaller monster. It was really awesome. The funny thing was that we both independently, not knowing what the other was doing, made him monsters for his birthday, and they were both blue and brown. I guess some things are just meant to be.

I drew this dragon here in a canoe for my father while he was in the hospital for a few days. It wasn't supposed to have any correlation to his situation. I was just drawing a dragon, and my father likes canoes, I threw in the sharks just for good measure. If you really think about it , the dragon can just fly away, so he isn't in any danger (he even has two wings!)


And a picture by my son for Grandpa. If you look closely you can see the yellow pencil marks. My son calls them "invisible", if you can see them you must have superpowers or something. I didn't ask him what the rest of the picture was about, it should be self explanatory anyway. Can't you tell?




In any case my father is home and is doing well, as long as he doesn't cough or sneeze. I'm sure he doesn't want me blogging about him, so hopefully he doesn't read my blog.

My son and I broke out the pastels yesterday, and this is what came of it, at least on my part. He drew two black waterfalls, subsequently making a very creative black mess all over his hands and the inside of one nostril.

I have a hard time drawing things with much dimension to them especially dragons, so although I only got one wing on there, I am proud of myself that I gave him two arms and his tail comes toward the front of the picture. Hooray for me, and down with anything that this guy has to say.

Here is a sketch I did, of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemene, while I watched Conference. When I keep my hands busy I usually listen better. This time however my mind kept wandering to the fact that I would like to take some drawing classes, especially so I can learn to draw human figures. And when I finished and showed Dan he reaffirmed it by telling me I drew girly features. Maybe I can find a class down near my parents house...

Due to circumstances, I will be spending a lot of time at my Mom and Dads house for the next while. This means that my ability to work on "projects" will be limited. So my postings may be few and far between...I mean fewer and farther between. We'll see. The good thing is that I will get to do more crosswords. Don't worry, I won't bore you with those details.

I am not a bag toting kinda gal. I like to stick my wallet and keys in my pocket and run free without all the baggage. But I am also a mom, so I do need a bag every now and then because diapers and wipes don't fit in my pockets. I've been using the bag on the left for a long time. My mom made it for my son to take his crayons and paper, and a few small toys to church with him, but now I am the one who gets to carry this around, and it's really cramping my style. So I made a new bag. I don't think it's quite my thing either. I need something inconspicuous and much more bland, maybe I'll make this same pattern in a plain brown or black.

It has been many years since I have sewn clothes. I can only recall one skirt that I have made since high school. I almost sewed my wedding dress, but decided I didn't really want to and ended up buying one from a display at a fabric store. For some reason, I have the clothes sewing itch right now. Maybe it's because I have a little baby girl, and I've been looking at other peoples blogs who make really cute little girl clothing, also spring-like weather is very inspiring. What ever the reason, every time I go into a fabric store I tend to find something that I want to make into an outfit for my baby.

This first outfit I made turned out too big, so she'll have to wait a few months to wear it. I made the pattern up myself, gauging it against clothes that fit her right now. I guess I was lenient with the sizing because I didn't want to make it too small. I tried to try it on her, but playing dress ups with an almost one year old isn't as easy as it sounds. After the first time I put it on her she had figured things out and knew that when I approached her it was time to squeal and laugh and run, she is so silly.




This is an up-close picture of the print on the fabric. I am a sucker for thistles. I grew up playing in them. I would recommend a yard of thistles, before a lawn with rose bushes, any day.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, you're stinkin heavy, please don't fall.

My big brother made this mirror for me a long long time ago, back when he worked for Ironies. It is super heavy, being made out of cement and glass. Unfortunately, he initially forgot to put the hook on the back. Fortunately, before the cement had hardened too much he remembered. Unfortunately, he didn't have the time to center it correctly. Thus it hangs a wee bit askew, okay, it is crazy crooked. One of these days I'll figure out a way to hold it straight, right now I'm just too much in shock over the 84 holes I had to try before I gave up finding a stud. I ended up using a special picture hanging device found at the hardware store that says I don't need a stud.

11 more to go.

It is rare that I am ready for a holiday on time. I actually don't even like holidays, but for some reason here I am doing Easter things before St. Patricks day. I've been making cloth Easter baskets.

I was pretty happy with the first one I made, and I thought it would be cute to see my little girl walking around with it. So as she wandered into the kitchen whining a little I handed it to her. 2 seconds later she had filled it with barf. Not just baby spit up, but genuine stomach flu bile. She's got great aim. Thus began an absolutely non-productive week of simply holding the baby. We are now back on track, and I have completed 3 more baskets. I'm trying to sell them on Etsy. We'll see how it goes. If they don't sell, well then, I have 3 gift bags ready for Easter. (Don't worry the one the baby barfed in is not being sold)

Two Quilts

The green one on the left is the quilt I made for a little nephew of mine a while back, the other one is the quilt that I just finished for my little niece Harmonica (my son is convinced that is her real name.)

Here is Harmonica's quilt opened up. It's a fairy and a dragon having a little tiff. I think the dragon must have said something unkind about the fairy's mother and she rightly challenged him to a duel.




And here is the other quilt. It's a dragon attacking a helicopter, over a city, or maybe the other way around. In any case, I'm pulling for the dragon.