A W.I.P. and one finished!

First, the finished project.  Just finished sewing the appliques on these t-shirts this morning.  This is a custom project for a friend -- for her son and his cousins who are... you guessed it... ages 1 through 5.  I gave her a bunch of fabric options and she chose each specific fabric for each specific number.  And she did a fabulous job.  I love the range of colors -- they all work well together without being too matchy-matchy.

I've done plenty of applique before, but not too often do I applique on knits, and, for that reason, I've never felt a need to use stabilizer.  With this project, I was a little worried about the two different types of fabrics stretching unevenly, so I decided this was the time to try out stabilizer behind the appliques.  I used the simple tear-off kind and it worked like a charm!

The work-in-progress is this quilt top that will eventually (hopefully soon!) be a table runner.  I couldn't figure out how to photograph the whole thing in one shot without it being distorted -- I'll have to work on that -- so I spliced two photos together, as you can probably tell.  Anyway, I've never made a quilt before now.  I designed this one and cut the fabric probably four years ago and then finally sat down to finish piecing it last week!  I still need to made the back, then I plan to quilt it on my machine.   Just straight lines... in the short direction.  Due to its size, that shouldn't be too hard.  Right?!  {Feel free to give me some encouragement here...} 

Back to Blogland

Have I really not posted since the beginning of June?!  Geez.  I guess I've been on a bit of an unplanned summer hiatus.  I didn't plan to stop posting -- it just kind of happened.  I also lost my camera (!) and had to purchase a new laptop (after my daughter accidentally spilled an entire glass of water on the old one!!).  That might have something to do with it... Other than that, I've been hanging out with my kids and trying to stay cool, mostly.  Then we went on a real vacation last week... to a family lake house.  It was a relaxing week full of cousin-bonding, lake swimming, fishing, catching frogs and other wildlife, more hot and humid weather, yummy late dinners of fresh local food, and even later bedtimes.

It was fun and refreshing.  And now I'm getting back to work.  I've got new stuff to work on and old stuff to tell you about.  For one, near the end of June I sent off my hand-printed fat quarters for the Maze and Vale fabric swap -- and received some really awesome ones in return.  More on that soon.  These are my prints, pictured below.

A few days later, my kids and I watched a crazy storm roll in.  There was this amazing dark cloud that looked like a giant ocean wave in the sky -- and it was moving fast.  In just a matter of minutes, we watched it roll over us and then out of view.  My son said it looked like a horizontal tornado.  None of us had ever seen anything like it.  I can't even remember now if it actually rained or not.  If it did, it only lasted for a few minutes.  Have you seen this type of cloud formation before?  Or a similarly wild one?  Do you know if it has a name?