Belated Christmas

I know, Christmas is already over and I'm just now getting around to the Merry Christmas post. oops... Better late than never, I present my wall of small Christmas quilts. And Pokey:

Going clockwise from the left: I made the red and purple christmas tree quilt in 1994 from a pattern by my beloved Gwen Marston. I did Joyeux Noel during my time in Paris. I've never shown HoHoHo before on the blog - I made it for the book but the chapter got cut due to page limitations.

Skip the next two and you hit my Noel sampler which IS in the book and then the Joy banner my mom made by hand in the 1970's.

These two are crusties:

Crusty is the name I've given to a technique I learned from Susan Shie. The Better Not Pout girl was made by my incredibly talented friend Rachael. There is a lot of work in it - seed beads and french knots etc. I made the red Christmas tree crusty.

Despite the decor, it hasn't felt like Christmas here. You know the song lyrics "It won't be Christmas without You?" Well, turns out they're true. My husband is away for work so we won't be celebrating until February. I intend to leave the decorations up until then, but I might get sick of them.

So besides having my sweetie home for Faux Christmas in February, I'll also get to "unwrap" my present then. A two-day class with Gwen Marston. Woohoo! It's taking place on the other side of Florida and should be fantastic. Speaking of Gwen, part two of her hand quilting tutorial is up on her homepage.

Another reason it hasn't been Christmas? It's Florida. Palm trees just don't have the right vibe, although I enjoy the kitchy element.  My new flamingo ornament:

Not that I'm complaining about Florida or the weather. Believe me, I prefer this to snow, especially blizzards. I'm so happy to not be in an airport right now... It's finally gotten colder. I actually had to wear a denim jacket out. Here are all four cats getting the first sunlight of the morning: that's Lily on the big box (my new crockpot), Pokey, Howler and Habibi.

Howler had his annual visit to the vet. Woohoo, clean bill of health this year although he has managed to gain an additional three pounds. Yes, Howler now weighs 25 pounds. In the last month he's had a much harder time getting out of the cat tree - and not even the top bit but the round bed. He has to get over onto the window sill and then down...

Hmm, just what is that on the design wall???? Here's another hint, because I just think this pic is a hoot:

Baby Pokey had great news from the vet as well. Her blood work came back the best it's been since we discovered she had kidney problems. Woohoo, she continues to improve just by bitty bits, but improve all the same.

Hope that all of you who celebrate it had a great Christmas. In case I'm a bad blogger again, best wishes, health and happiness in the New Year.

Dr Seuss Christmas Quilt

My favorite color combination for Christmas is red, green, and purple. It gives my husband-- Mr Traditional--fits. You can see a better picture of the Merry crusty pictured in the upper right and another red christmas tree quilt here.

This is our Christmas tree. It's up on a table so that we can see it, and the table is crammed with other things so that the kitties won't jump up. The three Santas were made in Egypt.

I have been searching for French Noel decorations, but it's pretty skimpy. Lots of imported Chinese santas that you can find anywhere. Very little Father Christmas or things with french words. The exception is the ornament that says "J'aime le Pere Noel".

This is my Dr Seuss Christmas Quilt. I made it a few years back. I have my usual assessment of my earlier work: needs more quilting!

Still working on making Christmas, particularly name tags.
One of my family's traditions was to open one present for each kid on Christmas Eve. My parents always chose it and when we were younger it was a game we could all play together. When we were older it was always a book. My husband and I have continued the tradition of opening one gift, but it's pretty hit or miss. My husband can never remember what gift could be where. This year I made special tags and told him in particular that a quilt book would be a great choice.

I make these tags the same way I make a crusty (follow the Susan Shie link in my sidebar). The batting and backing are a quarter inch smaller than the top and I just fold the top back over and use embroidery floss to hold it down. I have no idea what stitch that would be. Then I stem stitch or quilt the words in.

For my tag I used a silvery Madeira thread along with white perle cotton to stem stitch the words. I like how it looks although it's lumpy. But all that fraying is a pain in the ass. Certainly wouldn't do a big project like this.

Here's the back of it. You can even see where I've sewn on the safety pin.

For my husband's tag, I used 3 strands of embroidery floss to stem stitch the word "open." I quilted "24 Dec" with white perle cotton thread and then wrapped the green floss through to get this great candy cane effect:

On Sunday we watched Christmas in Connecticut, a Barbara Stanwick movie about a Martha Stewart character who's actually a fraud. It's fun, but I got hung up this year on what a goober the sailor is. bleck, didn't like that character at all. I definitely choked on the spending 6 months worth of salary for a mink coat. Aiyee. No kind of clothing item is worth that. Never. That's a car or house remodeling.

We finished up Jonathon Creek Season One as well. Jonathon is a brilliant Englishman who creates magic tricks (for a stage magician played with a horrible american accent by Giles, sorry Anthony Stewart Head) and uses his skills to help solve murders. It's along the lines of Columbo or Monk, none of the grisly CSI stuff. The puzzles are always great and I have a thing for British crime shows. And nerds. 4.5 out of 5.

I can also recommend Jenny Bowker's blog Postcards from Cairo if you're not already reading it. Jenny is currently posting pics of her desert trek to see cave paintings. She's far more adventurous than I am, although that doesn't take much. No toilets or showers? I'm out.

I have to go now and wrap presents that are too oddly shaped to go in bags. They're for me of course. Now I'm not only choosing my own presents but wrapping them.

Rachael's Crusty Halloween

Today I'm posting some pics from my very talented friend Rachael, who remains determinedly blogless. I've posted three of these before, but that was almost two years ago. Back in 2003, Rachael saw me working on a crusty at guild so I showed her the basics (and the tutorial by Susan Shie) and she was off and running.

This first one shows the star-crossed love between a witch and vampire, with the lyrics of That Old Black Magic running in the background. I absolutely LOVE the faces Rachael makes - they have so much character.

This devil is creepier. The stitching is fabulous:

A Merry Hallowe'en to you:

I love That Old Black Magic, I do, but I think this one is my favorite. Happy Boo Day:

Clowns ARE scary. I love the teeth - Rachael broke up an old piece of jewelry to get the beads.

I have been in a funk lately. Just unable to focus or work on anything. I did a few minutes on three different projects yesterday and of course got nothing much accomplished. Yesterday was rain rain rain and I was so cold. And whiny.

Today has been much better. I got a new Feel Bright Light visor that is supposed to help with the depression that comes with SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder, which I definitely have). Very weird shooting blue light into my eyes.

So today I started with bright light, plus we've had peeks of sunshine and not had rain. My sweetie and I took a metro ride out to a mall in the 'burbs to buy a space heater. Darty (the closest equivalent I can think of is Best Buy) had an array of them on display, but when my husband approached a salesperson he was told they are not selling them now. What???? At least today is warmer and the radiators will be turned on soon(ish).

While we were at the hypermarche I meant to look and see if I could find any kale, collard or swiss chard. I have been unable to find any near me at the street market, supermarket or the frozen food store. All that is available is many varieties of lettuce, spinach, cabbage, and even bok choy. No dark leafy greens for soup. Do the french not eat them?

Your Halloween link for the day: Kathy York's marvelous quilt Martha's Pumpkin Men.

Danger

What's the difference between a crusty and a thready? Holly asked me ages ago and I've been waiting for a day with enough sunlight to get some decent pics.

A thready is a piece of fabric or canvas that I completely (or almost completely) cover in threads of some kind. This is Halloween Thready. I finished it right as we were packing up our belongings to leave Cairo almost exactly a year ago. It measures 5.25" x 6"

I started with a piece of this printed fabric. I used it as a guide to keep areas of light and of dark. I've made some threadies that look so cool close up but when you get back from them a couple of feet they just blur into a big mess. This fabric doesn't look much like the final thready, but sometimes they do.

A close up. I began by couched all the yarn and then and stitched with embroidery floss and thick rayon thread to fill in all the gaps until the entire base fabric was covered.

The back of the piece. If I hadn't done so much couching there would be even more thread here. I don't use any knots, just thread the ends through the stitching.

A thready only has one layer of fabric which is then covered. It's an embroidery (I guess), not a quilt.

Now here's a crusty I made ages ago in 2002. It was the third or fourth one I made. This is Danger. It measures 11" x 12" at its widest points.

It's a typical crusty [the technique is based on the methods of Susan Shie - there's a link in the sidebar] which consists of a backing fabric, batting and a top fabric (a real quilt sandwich) which is first bound, then appliqued, stitched and embellished. Lots of encrustation = crusty.

Here's a closeup. You can see the holes I cut through all three layers, used floss stitches to "bind" the three layers again, and then added a Halloween spider web organza behind them. I added plastic spiders as well and that's a glow-in-the-dark ant caught in the web.

A view of the back:

The terms threadies and crusties are mine (as is beadies). 3 Jacks was a true mutant creation in that it was threaded like crazy, but onto a crusty quilt sandwich, and then embellished. More of a threcrusty. Cruthready? Neither term sounds attractive.

I make threadies differently every time I do them. So the only "rules" as far as I'm concerned is that it has a fabric base and is covered with lots and lots of thread. There can even be some snippets of fabric too.

On a danger theme, I just had to include these Parisian photos from the rail station:

I have really been struggling with the overcast weather. It rained a bunch yesterday and I even went out for a bit anyway, but then we were lucky enough to have an hour of sun.

I'm slowly working on another tutorial but all the photos I took yesterday turned out abysmally. I may end up using the diagrams I did on the computer when I first started working on "the book" several years ago.

I've been making steady progress on Blooming Horrors while listening to podcasts and watching Rescue Me Season 3 (watched Zombie last night - what an excellent episode with an homage to Shaun of the Dead) and rewatching the first season of Bones. I tried - twice - to watch the Sandra Bullock movie Premonition, but gack. Dull. I'm gonna skip it.

And now some links:

Tanya is in my class and is working on a quilt about Home. She improvisationally pieced the words for cat and dog - in Japanese. They are remarkable. And her blog is always marvelous about her life in Japan, go visit if you haven't before.

ComicBookLady is also in my class and free-pieced not only letters but black cats. She made it extra complicated with the tails forming parts of the letters. Very fun quilt in progress and I love looking at the fabrics she's used. Black cats to make black cats and eyeballs staring out.

The Halloween link is for ceramicist Sharon Bloom. I love the black cats and jack'o'lanterns, the candy corn and skull flowers. Wonderful. I get all sorts of inspiration looking at her pieces.

Cross-Eyed Spider

Here's an older crusty of mine called Cross-Eyed Spider. I don't know the exact size of the piece, but it's probably about 6". The little spiders are all plastic and if I were making this today I would bead all of the interior of the spider, not just the hourglass.

Speaking of spiders, I'm having a hard time knowing when to quit on Blooming Horrors. I'm making the spiders with perle cotton size 8, using a stem stitch through all the layers of the quilt. It's embroidery and quilting all at one go.

ooh, a quilt is out, must be time to pose for the camera. The regal Lily:

This is the enamel sign I bought the other day. I like its goofy humor, plus I was pretty sure how to translated it:

Toilets. Usage limited to 5 minutes. Reading is tolerated.

That was one of the reasons for taking the picture of all the signs. Didn't know what they said, but sitting at home with my dictionary I can get a better idea if my chat is lunatique, bizarre, gourmand, or mechant. Does mechant really mean nasty or wicked? Or is it the more playful naughty?

Got bunches of links for you all. More of my fabulous students' work can be found here, here, and here. And wait, here and while you're visiting Hedgehog, look at this wonderful Vote quilt she made.

Meanwhile, friend Finn also has spiders on her mind.

I've recently discovered the blog of Ming, who is Taiwanese (blogging in both Chinese and English), living in Australia, and a wonderfully gifted quilter. The Chinese zodiac quilt she is working on right now is incredible and I love the freehand quilting she's doing.

A while back I received an email from Lori, asking about the fabric stores there in Montmartre since she would be visiting Paris. We struck up a correspondence and Lori and her mother came over to the apartment on Friday so that I could bore them silly with quilts. I had a wonderful time chatting with them. Lori primarily uses her sewing machine to make clothes, but I'm hoping to coerce, uh, convince her to make more quilts. Isn't it wonderful how blogs can bring us closer together?

The weather forecast for today is 77 degrees, but unfortunately cloudy. Still, gotta soak in the heat while I can. Cheers.

Fabric Stores in Monmartre

Looking for fabric in Paris? There are plenty in Montmartre. Get off the metro at the Anvers stop, walk towards the Sacre Couer Basilica and then west towards the Halle St-Pierre (where the naive art museum is - highly recommended) and you will come across many of them. I didn't take very many pics, sorry.

This is the silk that I bought at Tissus Moline at 1, Place Saint Pierre and at a shop a couple doors down. I really needed some lighter shades of blue and the bluish green (second from right) is absolutely gorgeous.

The silks, which were on sale, were less than the astronomically priced cottons (mixed up, crazy world but fortunate for me since I'm in a silk mood). Sales in France only occur in January and July and are called the Soldes.

The next two pics reminded me of Cairo: belly dancer scarves and costumes:

I'm still headachy from allergies and doing my best to not constantly whine about it. As a result I'm staying away from cutting fabric (which releases something up in the air that makes me nuts). I picked up a crusty that I'd abandoned a couple of years ago when I couldn't decide whether or not to expand the color selection to include orange? Habibi should actually be orange but I'd wimped out using it. I told you I used to be very strict about what colors I'd use in my artwork. I was battling myself with this piece.

Habibi's eyes are orange as well so yesterday I embroidered his eyes and cut out a new moon.

I'm thinking what's really not working is the bottom bit with the kitties. I went too dull with the colors. Maybe I should just work on the pyramid section to my satisfaction and then see. When I drew my cats' faces, the girls were probably about 6 months old. Lily had a very sharp, triangular foxy face and Pokey's was a diamond shape with puffy cheeks.

Long time readers may think this looks familiar. It's similar in design to my crusty Queen of the Nile and to my Purple Cat on the Nile embroidery. Since that embroidery was a gift, I had started remaking the purple cat for myself way back when and I may just dig that back out. Meanwhile I've started back to work on my Color Thready II.

I'm very slowly rereading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I don't remember much from this one or the next. Our copy of the latest book just went in the mail, so it will be interesting to see how long it takes to get here.

Independence Day

A closer look at my wall display. I use what's available (the hanging rod plus a nail the flag beady is perched on) and then hang everything else up with 3M Command hooks. They work great and are temporary, so I don't have to worry about leaving holes in the wall.

Happy 4th of July. I made this quilt with scraps left over from yesterday's quilt Celebrate Liberty as well as the one orphan firework block. It's freehand fan quilted in white perle cotton size 8. This is one of my favorites. I was able to loosen up, play and not worry about the edges of the quilt being straight.

Liberty Blooms. I wrote about making it here.

Patriotic Crazy. I wrote about making it and showed details here.

In the upper left is my flag beady. It's completely covered in beads and buttons. I barely finished it up and got it framed before leaving Cairo last fall and this is the first year I've been able to display it. I think it really helps to have it framed--although the color was supposed to be bright red, not maroon--makes it look like a work of art and stand out against the wall.

Crusty is short for encrusted. That's just the term I use. I learned the techniques from Susan Shie's Lucky School of Quilting. I'm not sure if you can read this well. It says "big cup of liberty tea."

I've been doing some hand quilting and have made a lot of progress on the Blue With Stars. Hopefully I'll have something to show you soon.

I just rewatched Shaun of the Dead. That show is such a hoot. A British Romantic Comedy Zombie film - the perfect movie for me. My husband on the other hand won't even try it.

Celebrate Liberty

It's looking patriotic around here.

This crusty used to have the word USA embroidered in the middle. This year I decided that the buttons around the edge were too heavy for that, so I unstitched the floss and added more buttons instead.

I've never posted a photo of this quilt, Celebrate Liberty, before. I pieced it, Bonnie Hunter did the machine quilting.

That does say 4th of July 2001. I boobooed making the f and did it backwards, but left it that way. I like booboos, just wish it didn't look like an "07" with the European bar across the 7.

It has rained and rained today, but now the sun is out.

Have you all seen Kristin's Knit One Quilt Too? She posted pics of several of her quilts in progress, including a great liberated stars in red, white, and blue.

JMBMommy is appliqueing a marvelous flock of chickens in red, white and black. Loads of personality.

ScreamingLulu is a hoot. She's recently been sewing images and words using her machine with the feed dogs down. I guess that would be called machine embroidery. Anyway, you can never be sure what to expect when you visit, her current post being a prime example. I think this is my favorite.

Forgot About This One

I found a crusty (the name I've given to work in the style of Susan Shie's Lucky School of Quilting) while I was sorting through boxes that have been in storage. I completely forgot I'd made this one. It wasn't successful - not enough contrast. I love the moon though - I'm tempted to cut this thing apart and just do a section of the moon. Then I could salvage all the bugle beads and buttons and be done with it.

Book Recommendation: Tamara Siler Jones' latest novel Valley of the Soul. Actually I highly recommend all three of her books, but this is the best one yet. They're mystery novels set in a sword and sorcery mileu, using forensic science to solve crime. I'm terrible at describing books because I never want to give anything away. Here's an excerpt from her first Dubric novel Ghosts in the Snow. If you like fantasy novels and CSI you can't go wrong. Plus the author is a quilter and you've got to love that.

Movie Recommendation: Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain aka Amelie. I love this movie and had to rewatch it after visiting Monmartre, esp since Will made a point of taking me to the cafe where the movie filmed. Not that there would be any doubt about that - big huge pictures of Audrey Tautou up on the walls. I even got my husband to watch it with me by convincing him he could work on his French language skills. If you haven't seen the movie it is a lovely and sweet romantic comedy with a bit of a dark side.

Darn This Heat

This is the name tag I made when I belonged to the Pieceful Heart Quilters. It's a crusty (heavily encrusted) and measures 4.5" across.

This is a quickie post - our air conditioning has been on the fritz for the last day and a half. Again. Since the computer is in the heat zone, I'm not spending much time on it.

I was actually fairly productive sewing and ironing yesterday - over in the cool side of the apartment. Not stunning amounts done, but progress.

Found out just how skittish the cats still are when I put the boys' canned cat food (a relatively rare treat) down in front of their cages and they hightailed it under the dining room table. I eventually moved it into the kitchen and Bibi finally skulked in and ate both his portion and Howler's.

Back to the previous post about quilting knots on the back of the quilt. No one ever taught me to do it that way, believe me. I was told the "right" way to do it was to pull the knot in through the top but the first real quilt I made (the poly-cotton blend fabrics with polyester batting) ended up with all these little holes that the batting oozes out of from where the knot broke through the surface. That, combined with the snags and runs you can get in fabric convinced me that was a bad way to do it.

Plus I hate being told what to do. If I don't see a good reason to do it, I don't bother. Have to learn some lessons on my own. Anyway, I quite like QuiltPixie's idea of leaving a long tail of thread in the batting and then quilting back over it. I'll have to try that.

Karen, we've lived in Egypt almost 3 years.

Eye Adore Finn

Happy Bloggiversary, Finn. I can't even begin to tell you how glad I am that you came to blogland to play with us.

I made Finn a crusty (short for "encrusted" - a little quilt with lots on it) a while back when she was having eye troubles. Since she finally got it in the mail, I can now post a pic.

This probably has too much on it. I decided Finn has a great sense of fun, so I might as well go on over the top. I think if I were keeping this for myself I might take all those buttons off (except for that groovy pupil - the background has swirlies in it that match, but it's hard to see that now with all the stitches on). If this hurts her eyes to look at she can close them and feel it - a braille quilt.

The eyeball is actually made from Egyptian fabric that friends got me back in the mid 90's when they came for a Nile cruise.

Sorry, don't know how large this is - I forgot to measure. 6" x 6" at a complete guess. Oh, and Laura asked how big American Houses is. That's another guess, but it's about 55" across and longer than that going down.

Tour de France update: My hubby is convinced the Discovery Channel really do have a new strategy - it's called losing. Hard to believe the boys in blue can do it, since they are sucking so badly right now. At least Floyd Landis, currently ahead, is a former teammate of Lance's so that gives him bonus points. At least I got a bunch more quilting done while watching, as well as kitty loving. Lily has been jumping up into the crook of my arm for belly rubbings and sleeping.

I'm going to spend the afternoon hanging out with friend L. since she's leaving far too soon so we gotta have fun while we can. A trip to the Khan al Khalili souq is out. There's a big mosque and public square right beside it that is used for protests. Expect there may be a turnout with what's going on in Israel and Lebanon right now. Sigh.

Queen of the Nile

Here's a crusty I made shortly after moving to Cairo. It was a gift for a crazy wonderful woman who loves flamingoes and helped us out tremendously in getting settled. I had purchased a set of flamingo and palm tree buttons shortly before moving here. How fortuitous was that?

One of our air conditioners went out the night before last. It's the one that cools down the bedrooms. The night before last was bearable, but last night a misery. I slept on the couch where there was still a/c while sweetie slept in the bedroom with two different fans going full blast. And since the computer is in one of the bedrooms, it's a sauna in here. It's 8:00am and 88 degrees in here. Not much fun so I'm going to make this another short post.

At least we have a/c. Poor Clare, expat British quilter living in France, doesn't. Hope the summer doesn't get too hot there. I now have Clare seeking Gwen Marston books out. Woohoo. And speaking of GM, I've heard on the rumor mill that her new book is now available. I've got my copy ordered.