Stash Stack Club - October

I got some lovely greens and yellows for October. My favourite this month is (surprisingly enough to myself, didn't think I'd like the color at all!)  Honeycomb in Sunglow - Modern Meadow by Joel Dewberry. The second farthest to the right in my photo. I think it will look lovely mixed with some greys and blacks.

And since Christmas is just around the corner I thought I'd show you a couple of the lovely Fancy Folded Stars I've had sent to me during my "downtime".

A lovely solid version by Simple Living and Giving. Have to make one in solids myself one day, love the look!

A fresh and flowery version by Jane, who only has been quilting for 3 months! Amazing job!

And another beautiful blue by Aceroni:

I'm alive!

Haven't written anything in a long time, haven't really had much to write about nor any time to write. Things have just been piling up the way they usually do so I've been working, eating, sleeping. Now we're also doing some home improvement so we've been plastering, painting etc in our "spare" time.

Anyhow, we did have quite a lovely Halloween, went to a fabulous party as Pyramid Head and one of the  Nurses from Silent Hill. Our friend is an Enderman from Minecraft. We made our costumes ourselves and had a ton of fun doing so =)

Making of Nurse Costume

I bought a much too large, white dress which I sewed in to fit me, and at the same time get some spare fabric for a nurses collar from as all store brought nurse costumes  where ridiculously expensive to just ruin. 

I tea dyed the dress (what an awesome way to dye stuff!) with some cotton fabric to get that old, rotting skin color that their dresses have.

From the leftover parts of the sewn in skirt, I made a collar - to make it look more like a nurses dress.

Dress sewn in, and finished with it's collar:

I made a nurses cap out of a pattern I found online here and the cotton fabric I previously tea dyed and Fast2Fuse heavyweight interfacing. I left the edges raw and cut them up a bit to make them look worn.

Coloured it in spots with a tea bag to make it look a little gross and more stained. I smelled like forest fruit tea all night ^^

Painted my shoes to make it look like I walked in blood with Pyramid Head =)

In the end I stained it all with some more tea stains and some paint with a rusty red color to give a it a little drops of blood feeling. The nurses aren't really covered in blood like you see in many costumes but I thought a few spatters couldn't hurt to increase the scary factor. I stained bandages with tea too to get a worn look and wrapped them all around my head and then colored them in places to get really creepy feel.  It took me about 4 hours to color my legs/arms/chest with white/grey and the veins and dead body bruises.

Pyramid Head

The Pyramid Head costume was the real challenge. Sooo much fun to make and sooo much hot glue used! *lol* First we cut out cardboard triangles which we tried for size. 

Then made the vision holes.

Added side triangles and some more pieces for depth and a more in game feel.

Trying on the base.

Adding more details and bottom edges.

Packed the whole things in painters tape, glueed on the carpet slip covers we used to hide his eyes but still allow him to see. Glued on some plastic pipes and the caps of some medicinal bottles for the screws and then spray painted all of it silver and black.

We made the oversized sword from and old broom handle rescued from the garbage room, cardboard and lots of silver tape.

Made his "butchers skirt thingy" from an old sheet which I tea stained and then painted with  non toxic face paint (in case you're wondering why Diana is allowed to help with the job ^^).

Tada! Silent Hill Pyramid Head and Nurse:

Me and our lovely host at the party who LCHF blogs over here: http://www.lchfmalta.com/

I really hope I can get back to sewing soon or I'll loose my mind. 

I think I love fall, and I know I love my mom!

Cut to Pieces was having a giveaway and she only asked us to tell her what we like about fall. And as I was preparing to write that I hate fall (I used to have what I can only call fall time depressions when I lived in Sweden), I realised that nowadays, here in Malta I think LOVE the fall!

A bit of rain falls from time to time giving me reason to stay inside and sew a bit more while the island is slowly turning from burnt out brown to a healthy green. I love that I can walk outside without getting drenched in sweat and I love that I don't have to shower after a walk to the store =) I love that I get to wear a bit more clothes, while "as little as humanely possible and still somewhat decent" is fun for a few months it get's boring after a while.  I love that the quilts on the couch soon no longer will be purely for decoration purposes but soon will be used to snuggle up under. I love lighting candles, making stews and actually feeling like cooking. Don't get me wrong, I still love summer more then anything but I think I've found there's enough  room in my heart to love fall too =)

The image has nothing to do with anything other then that I came to think about this photo session a number of years back with our much loved goddaughter Alma so I thought the image would be appropriate =)

But what I do know I do love is my mother! And no, not because she sends me lovely things, that just makes her even more awesome. A while back this little packet came with the most adorable fabric and a bunch of equally cute buttons and notions! <3 And Anki who is just as sweet as my mother had ordered an awl for me. I've been looking for the really thin clover awls which I haven't been able to find anywhere so she ordered it for me! Thanks mom and Anki, you are the best!

Stash Stack Club - September

I just received my September Stash Stack from Pink Castle Fabrics! Like with the July one, I couldn't possibly be more pleased with the fabrics or the fast shipping! Sadly my August stack has gotten lost in transit somewhere... But I haven't given up hope yet! =)

The fabrics are lovely, the variations of the color is really wide and the fabrics are so modern and fresh feeling! My favorite this time around is the Kiss Dot in Aqua (Michael Miller Fabrics) for sure tightly followed by the Clown Stripe in Aqua (Michael Miller Fabrics), but all are truly gorgeous! =)

The stash stack club is so much fun, it's like Christmas once a month and since the kind people over at Pink Castle packs mine so flat, I can pick it up directly in my mailbox with no hassle from customs! <3

A Little Froggy Heart

Remember this post about the cellphone case for a friend? The package arrived so I can finally share the little froggy coin purse I made for her with a little of the fabrics I received from lovely Anki, possibly the only person in the world as frog crazy as Tracy =D

Had a tricky time with the heart shape, it got all wonky when I added the zipper and it took me some time to figure out how to draw the heart pieces to make it work, but it was a really fun learning experience. =)

Color Wheel Quilt - It Has Finally Begun!

This is a project I've wanted to do for YEARS. I've always loved all those gorgeous color wheel quilts out there! I've been planning this in my head for soo long and I knew I wanted to do something unexpected and new. There's a lot of stunning ones out there and I didn't want to risk replicating a design already out there. So I ended up going with something a bit more unusual (I hope! I haven't seen anything similar at least ^^). The reason I chose this version of the color wheel was because I not only intend to use it for decoration but for actual color picker help in my sewing area. So here's the beginning, the center of my color wheel quilt.

I used this tutorial from Sew Mama Sew to make my pattern. As you can see I used my Tonga Treats, Strip Treat - Hard Candy strips for this so I had to sew them together to fill the space I need them to fill. Now I'm terrified that I've missed some step in this whole piecing curves thing that will make my center or outer ring unusable... But we'll just have to wait and see =)

I'm still waiting for my white fabric to arrive so this is actually at a bit of a standstill right now, which might be good as I'm currently considering what I want to do in terms of border for it. If I had the background fabric here now, knowing myself I'd probably already be quilting it! Any suggestions are most welcome.

I've picked out all the colors I want for the actual wheel part of the quilt too, that was sooo much fun!

The only ones I'm not perfectly happy with are the greens, but they will do =)

Simply Solids Under New Ownership!

Simply Solids have changed hands! You can read all about it here over at Justines Blog Sew Justine Sew. As a quilter I'm always happy and excited about great fabric stores and Simply Solids truly is one. And Justines plan is to make it even bigger and better!

Why not hop over to Justine's blog to to show your support for her in her new venture? =)

To celebrate this new beginning for Simply Solids, until midnight on Saturday 22nd you get a free Fat Quarter with every order.

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On a more personal note the queen of the house received a shower and thorough cleaning and is now all daisy fresh. Luckily she likes taking showers and getting blow dried, just not all the "washing" she has to do herself after the blow dry nor when I take embarrassing photos of her all wet. =)