One of my latest doilies

Amazing...
 what 13 hours of sleep will do for a girl...

Shew!  I was that tired.  Feeling a whole lot better, today.  I despise running.  Going here, then there, and back to hither and yon.  I just wanna stay home and do laundry, cook, sweep floors and sew!!  Busy like that doesn't wear me out like the running does. Well, yeah, by the look of these pictures, it may seem like I've been sewing. But this is the sum total of over a month of sewing and that's just not near enough!

January, February, and March

every bit of fabric I had left over

Redwork:  I'm making these words to go around my redwork quilt which has two little children from each of the twelve months for a total of 24 clocks.  Now, I know I have a picture of that quilt here, somewhere.  oh, yes, I know...

12 months of redwork

 The words represent each month.  It takes me longer than it should because so much time elapses between making each word and I forget how I did the last so it's like starting from scratch. I ran out of white with red fabrics to make the background of the words. I squeezed every inch of life out of the ones that I had. I was piecing the smallest bits of fabric you can imagine just to make it work- crawling under the sewing table to retrieve clippings. Sandy to the rescue and now I have enough for the last five months.

basin fabric from West Africa

ironing board cover of shame

Crown of Thorns

African Basin Fabric...

Our friend, Phil, came back from a trip to Sierra Leone with two yards of fabric, hand-dyed and batiked. It was a gift to him from a mother whose children he had befriended.  I imagine that this was a very valuable gift. I'm making him a throw-size quilt of it. It was as stiff as cardboard when I first got it and since I was expecting a large amount of dye to be released when washing it, I put it in the washer- hoping for the best. But not a drop came out.  Amazing for such a saturated color. The fabric, itself, is very thin- rather like working with gauze.  So I starched it heavily and I'm having to take great care when pressing and sewing- the amount of bias stretch is epic.  I mighta-shoulda picked a pattern with less bias... but I liked this one for Phil, so...  I slowly and carefully march on.  I've drawn a 3" and a 12.5" square on my ironing board to help me block as I go along- very helpful.  Yes, the ironing board is a disaster- don't judge me- but it alleviates the guilt of drawing on a perfectly nice ironing board cover with a permanent marker.  

And a set of zippy bags I made for a friend for her Nook and sundries.  She's a big fan of butterflies.