Best pre birthday gift ever!

So this is a little out of date order, but I still wanted t/o share.  At Christmas I told my husband the best gift would be a subscription to craftsy.  He did that and more!  I would have been happy with just the subscription.  Anyhow, it is like a present every month it shows up in my mailbox.  May's box is not an exception!  Who would have thought Friday the 13th, the day before my birthday, could be so exciting?!?!?!

I got my craftsy box that day!  What a cool box.  It had the most beautiful fabric in it. Did I mention the patterns!  I'm not sure which one I want to make first =)

Here is what came in my box.

I can't wait to get some other projects finished so I can play!!!!

Surprise, surprise, surprise

I can't believe I got another post in!!!  This may break a record.

I've been really trying to pick up hand work when I'm sitting in my chair.  Since the first star, I read the directions and have modified my diamond points.  I've now have 9 1/2 stars complete!  Half way there!

I can't believe how fast this has been going.  Hand sewing isn't my thing.  They are pretty addictive.  You can string them along and sew the star as you go.  In the beginning they are spinning every which way, but now they consistantly spin right or left... I'm slowly getting the hang of it!

Here is my little travel box I keep everything in.  Of course it is from Ikea.

 I've also worked on my knitting project and used my yarn bowl =).  Hopefully I post a pic or two of that!

MD S&W Festival

The first weekend in May is the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival at the Howard County Fairgrounds.  This year Donna (my quilty friend) and I went on Sunday. It was a beautiful day and there was so much to see! There are vendors from all over the world!  One I talked to was from Sweden.

One of the first stops was the Woolbuddy booth.  I ended up getting the variety pack with book. The guy behind Woolbuddy is an animator from Lucas Films.

Here are a few of the animals we made so far.... Since I also spin, I have a ton of wool to make more.

We also checked out the the cute animals around the festival.

Day old baby lamb! So cute!

Adorable alpacas!

 Must see the sheep dogs do their thing!

You'll also see Angora Rabbits around the festival.  Even people spinning directly from them!

Lots and lots of vendors to see and yarn to touch!  There is also handmade soap, pottery, and for the men in your lives - knife makers to name a few. Almost saw them all, we really tried. There is always next year! Check them out!  Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival!

Attemps at EPP

Well I've decided to give English Paper Piecing, EPP, a try.  Here is another tool for my tool box so to speak.

One  of my craftsy boxes came with a EPP project Stars in the Night.  I thought I would give it a try.

I've cut my fabric pieces with my birthday gift, a Brother ScanNCut.  Got my little take along kit with thread, papers and my fabric pieces, thread and .....needle, or so I thought.  I forgot the needle the first time I took it along with me! I have now added the needle...

I gave it a try, here are a few pictures of my progress.  The fronts only, not too sure about the backs being very pretty.  I do think hexagons would have prettier back.  Maybe after I've made a few stars I'll show the back...

Not too bad for a first try.  Hand sewing isn't my favorite type of sewing....

My goal is going to try a star a day.  I realized I didn't cut all the fabric I need for this project.  I need to find the black fabric I want to use.

Hi again!

It's been a while and you know what they say about good intentions....

So it was my birthday this past weekend.  We were both sick, but managed to go out for a little birthday dinner at a fancy place with a water view! That made me feel a little better. Meanwhile back home I opened a really cool present, but it took a few day of getting to feel better before I got to play with it.

I got a scanNcut2! So I decided to give it a try.  While recovering, I did watch some youtube videos to see how it works. For Christmas I got a subscription to Crafty box.  One of the month's boxes was an english paper piecing projects, so I thought that would be the perfect project to try.

I traced the template on paper and got 6 pcs in a square. I scanned it in the ScanNCut2. Then I put my fabric on the sheet and scanned that it so I could line up what I wanted cut. I used up every bit of the 5" square! I was able to cut 4 square at a time.  In the future I could also cut the epp pieces for another project. The craftsy box came with the papers I needed.

Here's a picture:

It was a lot of fun and I can't wait to use it for other things =)

Illustrated faith

Our LWML group had a special speaker at the women's prayer breakfast this past Saturday. The workshop was on Bible journaling and visual prayer. Connie Denninger presented how to illustrate your faith using color pencils, stickers and a pottery barn catalog to name a few things! It's all things I love! I'm inspired by the things in Cloth Paper Scissor, scrapbooking, journaling, etc. For the last few years I've been doing online Bible studies through Good Morning Girls (now called Women Living Well) and Love God Greatly. In these studies I use a basic spiral bound journal. There is a daily scripture you read, then you write it out and then finish up the SOAP method by writing down your observations, applications and a prayer. I would try to make the letters interesting for each section to dress it up. I love writing out the Bible verse and try to make it artsy. I have since added writing scripture by the month from the sweet blessings blog. There is a scripture passage for each day. I use the same journal. I just turn it over and the back becomes the front for this portion. So Saturday's workshop came at the perfect time! Instead of journaling in my Bible, I'm incorporating the journaling in my devotional journals. Here are two examples from the writing scripture by the month.

I spent a little more time, but it helps with driving the point home for this passage of scripture.

I also was keeping a 1000 gifts journal using Ann Voskamp's handout, which is based on her book of the same title. I love her blog too, it's called A holy Experience. She is so eloquent in her writing, what a blessing in the craziness of life. She also has a freebie page that has cool printable you could use in your journaling. Since the workshop on Saturday and using some of the great ideas Connie shared, I'm motivated to pick back up on my 1000 gifts journal too!

There were just so many ideas. Don't try everything at once, start out small so you don't get burned out. Pick one thing. For ideas you can follow Connie on her blog Vintage Grace, join the DC metro Bible journaling and Ann Arbor Bible Journaling on fb. Do a search for illustrated faith or Bible Journaling and you'll find a bunch more ideas.

For those of you who are looking for a journaling Bible, I did find an ESV journaling Bible on amazon for 19.24.

Happy journaling,
L

PS: if you're new to blogs, it helps to organize them by using a blog reader like Feedly or Bloglovin. To save ideas for future reference I use Evermore or Pocket. I've just started using pocket and it seems to work better with Feedly. Another one to try is One Note. The key is to pick one or two and stick with them. You can organize them by tags or note books. This topic could be a whole other blog post!

Zentangles

I know I haven't been really consistent in posting.  I really want to be.  I have been working on the Bonnie Hunter Grand Illusion Mystery Quilt.  It is on the long arm.  I was a little over halfway done and I messed up the hopper foot.  Now the machine is a little out of timing since it happened.  I've completed one row of the panto since "the incident"....  It will be slow going and then hopefully I'll be able to get my long arm to the repair shop.

On to happier things.  I've been really interested in the Zentangle books I've seen.  I've just never bought one. I've read about them on Cloth, Paper, Scissor's blogs and saved the ebook that was offered.  Then this weekend I saw all the books that were out there at the Hampton Roads Quilt Show.  There were so many books, I didn't know which one to get.  So I moved on.  This prompted me to Google it when I got home.

That's when I found tanglepatterns.com  This is a pretty cool site. You can subscribe for daily or weekly emails or add to your blog reader for new ideas and new strings. I really wanted to draw this digitally so I could play with it where I was and not to have to worry about having special paper and pens with me.  I always have my kindle or phone with me. I downloaded one of the strings to get my drawing started onto my Kindle. It would also work on an iPad, smart phone or touchscreen laptop too.  I have a Notier stylus for my touch screen.  It has a finer point to draw with than the usual touch screen stylus that are out there. I bought it on Amazon for $15.00.  I then loaded Autodesk's Sketchbook which can be downloaded for free on android, Microsoft, and Apple.  I opened the app and imported my string to get started.  In sketchbook you can use layers, so I selected another layer to put my drawing on. It was so much fun and so relaxing. You can save your finished drawing and you can later find it on your device under the photos. Here is my take on string 146 from tangle patterns.

I think this could be a really good tool to practice your quilting on too!  You can treat it like your free motion quilting (FMQ) and come up with really cool fills, etc.  You can also use Sketchbook without the Zentangle string to practice FMQ ideas.  You could import a picture of your quilt and then use a new layer to practice the possible design options.  There are enough features in the free version to allow you to use it for these purposes.  You don't need to buy the subscription version.  You can also get an account on autodesk for free without having to pay for the subscription.

After playing with all of this, I was catching up on the blogs I read and I came across Quilt Shop Gal's blog post and she has more on it here.  She reviews one of the books that is out there. If this interests you, check it out. It's a nice diversion when you need one!  There was a giveaway, but it is over :(  I should have kept up with my blogs....

Well, I just wanted to share.

Happy Quilting!