Faux Amazonite Necklace

Finished stringing my faux amazonite into a three strand necklace.  Looks great with a brown top.

A Dress for Daughter

A new dress for my daughter.  She picked out the fabric for the skirt and I made the dress around it.  She wore it for her school picture last week. 

A Quilt for Mom

 

I purchased this kit from my neighborhood quilt store, Cotton and Chocolate.  The pattern is 19th Century Reds.  I made this as a gift for my mom, who is so very dear to me.   The batting is wool.  I am lucky to live near Andrea Gillingham, whose work has been featured on the cover of Quilt Sampler Magazine (Spring/Summer 2012).  She's a very talented machine quilter.  She uses a Gammill long arm, but her work is hand guided, and anyone who has ever used a long arm machine knows that this is hard work and not easy to do.  She has done several quilts for me and they are all spectacular.

Pattern:   Joanie Holton and Melanie Greseth for Windham

Fabric Collection:  19th Century Reds, c. 1875  Windham Fabrics              

Quilting:  Machine quilted by Andrea Gillingham

Binding:  Patti Adams

58" x 74"

Simi Valley, CA - April 2013

A Girl and her DeWalt Drill

No crafts for me this past weekend.  I spent over eight hours installing new Elfa shelving from The Container Store.  If only it would stay this way....

The 'before' photo from the closet incident three weeks ago....

Faux Amazonite from Polymer Clay

Amazonite is a green variety of micro-line feldspar, and it's a nice semi-precious stone for jewelry.  I recently saw a necklace I wanted to copy, but when I found some Peruvian amazonite beads, they were a little out of my price range.  So I came up with faux amazonite using polymer clay.  Here is a picture of my first batch of beads.
You can see that my beads are a little darker, and a little more turquoise in color.  They were lighter before I baked them, but I like the deeper color.  I also experimented with some rust colored inclusions, which I like.

Below are some photos of real Amazonite

New Outfit for Daughter

This weekend, I worked on a new outfit for my daughter.  These are my first successful projects since I switched back to garments after a decade of quilting.  I used my new serger and several techniques I've never tried before like a double needle for hem finishes, and a rolled edge on the knit skirt.  I had to try several samples before I found a way to keep the rolled egdge from curing up.  The solution was to cut thin strips of fusible stabalizer and fuse them to the edge, then I serged the rolled edge.  This is also the first time I've used my embroidery machine to embellish a garment.  The skirt is not quite finished.  I have to add shorts to make it a skort and finish off the waistband.

Class Quilt -