Non-quilting projects

I guess my previous post was too long; Blogger wouldn't let me add more :-). A few months ago, in this post, I mentioned that GameBoy had selected some Eric Carle fabric while we were checking out a quilt shop in Berlin, Ohio. To the left it is hanging on his wall, finally. All I did was find some artist canvasses--I wanted the stretcher bars actually, but the canvasses from JoAnn's worked--and staple the fabric to it. You can see that the stretcher bars for the middle fabric were a titch too long, but GameBoy didn't care. And then I hung them on his wall. He is a sunny boy and so his room is painted yellow and orange.

Our bathroom is teeny-tiny, and for months now, I've wanted to hang hooks and sew loops to color-coded towels, to save room and also encourage people to hang their towels back up. This week I was able to do that:



And I took my first tiny steps into making altered books. Clearly, this is an inexpensive lined notebook, bought at a back-to-school sale:

First I stapled groups of pages together:
And then I painted (applied?) gesso to the pages:
And that's as far as I got. The next step is to glue pretty papers to the cover, and I am stripping magazines to make a collage for my first entry.

A close-up: The lines show through but I think I like that

I am also working on this year's Christmas angel, a small tatting project, and a small wooden Christmas ornament project. If those work out, they will be presents, so no pix until they're distributed.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that the instructions for the towel loops were from Martha Stewart's website, here. They're very easy.

My first quilt is nearly done

I have been working on several different projects--in fact, I am a little amazed at how much I've been able to do. For the past year and a half, approximately, I've felt guilty about any time I've spent working on my stitching. Because I enjoy stitching, I suppose, I've felt like I should be spending time on service and other more "spiritual" activities instead.

Through some of my reading, including The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron and Simple Abundance by Sarah ban Breathnach, as well as the talk Happiness, Your Heritage by Pres. Dieter F. Uchtdorf, I've come to realize that, as the daughter of a Creative Being, I'm allowed and even expected to be creative myself.

Above is a completed quilt block--my first one! I made four in total.

All facing the same direction
Another layout
And another

I went with the third layout--very Palladian. I liked it the way it was, but because I wanted to learn to add sashing, I bought another fabric to coordinate.

Sashing added
Sashing and the short side of the border
Jazzboy (or is it Kilroy?) holding up the finished quilt top

I actually don't care for the sashing fabric too much. I feel like it's too close to the main dark color. I do have trouble mixing colors and prints. I was always taught never to mix patterns. Oh, well, I also learned to "flip" the tatting knot, and then had to unlearn it, so I suppose I can learn to do this as well. However, I just *love* the backing fabric:

A close-up; below is all the thread I had left