One woman's UFO is another woman's treasure! And another giveaway!

First of all my apologies for this publishing before it was ready. I hope those of you who got it come back to see the finished version. My finger slipped and hit the space bar that published the whole stupid thing!!!

27 blocks!!! Jackpot!

my friends at bee brought some items to giveaway, and I had to leave with a few myself. Such as these hand pieced from feed sack fabrics blocks and setting fabric.
I am attracted to these in a big way, and so different from anything I would likely make. They came home with me.

Here's my theory. We start a project, learn what we want from it, and then it goes into the UFO pile. We have a hard time letting it go because :
1. we spent a lot of money on it
2. it's perfectly good/well made/ fine/useful
3. we mean to finish it some day
4. It will make a great quilt when finished
5. we feel terrible abut not finishing things we start
6. we hate wasting anything we make

yardage given along with the blocks!

We store these sometimes in very elaborate containers. We put aside yardage to finish them, yardage that is now out of the running for other projects. We stack UFO's neatly in closets, sometimes moving them around to find something we want.
They mock us.
They take up space and we all need space.
We sometimes feel guilty about them...

For Quilt's Sake Y'all, this is a Hobby!
 It's supposed to be fun!

 What if we just admit we are just no longer excited enough to finish them??

I wonder, isn't loss of interest a valid  reason to let it go?

My friend Cindy let these blocks go.
She let them go to another person who is excited anew about making the project.
She has more space, and I have another project I am jazzed to make. No reason to make it, no burning desire to express myself in it. I just thought it would be fun and teach me something.

I asked her why she was giving it up. She said she wanted to learn to hand piece. She did that and is now done. She also gave up some other quilt tops, books and fabrics. She's happy.

 I said, "You now have more space, and I'm leaving with your UFO!!!"
She said, "Well, my work here is done!"

Another friend brought a bag of notions. Did we all look through them? Yep.  Of course we did.

I left with some zippers, and other stuff I thought I could use. I have a lot of zippers waiting for projects like totes and dog leash carriers but zippers never go bad in their packaging. I took them happily.

extra feed sack fabric to make more blocks

I've been happy to share lately, even ideas and patterns and techniques on the blog. I love other bloggers who also openly share their bounty of ideas and supplies with others.
I'm also happy to receive from others.
I would love to fight the current trend to make a profit at any expense going on  right now.
Let's get out there and share so another quilter carries on.
Which brings me to your gift. A scissor keeper made with American flag fabric.
It has a few flaws, like me. The tension went off a wee bit with the quilting because my metallic gold thread was too loose. Still works and it cute!
I used the pattern going around here The Scissor Cozy!
I didn't follow the pattern. I made it much easier for me, a bit larger, and all in an hour. 

 Want to win? Entertain me somehow. I need a boost. If you leave a comment to win, make sure I know it's an entry and I can reach you. I want to have a giggle so try to entertain me. Good luck with that. I love you all. LeeAnna
 

Painting PLUS snow: an experiment

 There are several ways to add color to fabric.

 This is an experiment to see how paint moves on fabric through snow. I've done snow dyeing and like the effect but not the cleaning up. I hoped paint would behave in a similar way but it didn't.
that does not mean it was a failure... just different.

Here is a short video of the drip painting process... I'll learn how to do videos better as I go along I hope!
(if it doesn't  show for you here, this is the link .youtube.

For some reason the fabric seemed to repel the paint rather than absorb it as usual. I dampened the fabric before putting it on the little hanger and diluted the paint as well.

I took an old box lid, lined it with freezer paper, placed another wet muslin fat quarter in, then a thin layer of snow on top. I poured the diluted paint onto the hanging fabric and let it drip onto the snow.

It was above freezing that day, so I put this in the sun to melt. My hope was the paint would leave a crystalline pattern on the fabric as it does in snow dyeing.

I let the drip painted cloth hang here while it air dried.
The results surprised me, and I'll show you what came of it tomorrow.

You'll come back tomorrow and see won't you? Although it didn't work as expected, the finished piece might be one of my very favorite painted fabrics...ever!
Learned:
1. Just try it!
2. Really wet the fabric, making sure all chemicals were washed from it first so it doesn't repel the paint
3. Paint is a surface treatment even though it absorbs into muslin showing on the back. Dye becomes bonded to the fibers through a reaction, paint coats the fibers adhering with acrylic adhesive. They look similar but are different processes.
4. Both are permanent when heat set but paint is faster and less toxic

Remember: Results tomorrow! or follow this link... http://lapaylor.blogspot.com/2016/03/watching-paint-dry.html

Got it done by Christmas, well kind of...

I knew I wanted to make pillow cases for we three for Christmas, and look at that pink poodle fabric I found at Joann's. Hee-hee! OOoo La La! Perfect  for me! And black and white dots! More please.
No really. More please. The workers at Joann's cut to the quarter inch. I hope to leave with the two yards I buy! Well since I prewash and dry, of course it shrunk a lot and I had to finagle all the cases.
Luckily I know how to sew, heh heh.

This is for Drew, our resident guitarist. When I bought it I thought it had guitars on it.
Oh well.
At the store, I looked and looked for companion fabric to make the cuff, but none worked. They were out of white flannel.
 I thought, with such a stash surely I have something to match! Did I ??

No.
It repelled matching. It shook it's flannel head in derision. It said, "you'll find no match mortal"

So I cannibalized the yardage and inserted a piece of white flannel ( I had to piece to make long enough).
We have king sized pillows.
I made it work then turned to my regular stash of dog fabrics to make one for Not Afraid of Color Poodle.

Cole loves a black lab. He has pestered us on every birthday and holiday to buy him a black lab.
I too love a black lab, and had a girl for 10 short years named Chelsea. I miss her so much. Anyway, I thought this would help Cole dream of running with black labs.
Doesn't your dog sleep with a pillow??
I finished his pillow case this evening listening to a book on tape and the rain hitting the window.

We are waiting on the turkey breast for dinner. We made some gingerbread and some pumpkin muffins this morning, some cranberry sauce and some citrus salad traditional in our house. We opened our gifts to each other and Drew played Christmas carols on his guitar from last Christmas! He's improved and learned a lot from last year.

It's raining and getting chilled off a bit.
I sketched or tried to sketch Drew playing the guitar. I'll call it Family, as that's my next prompt.

 Cole played with his three new balls and is done with them. He  broke the squeaker in one already. Luckily a kind blogger told me I can buy new ones at Amazon, so I did and now I just have to repair a few toys.

 Drew asked for a chef's coat for Christmas and he wore it while helping chop vegetables for the pan.

It's been raining for four days now. We can still watch a movie while having a late dinner.
 Soon it will be time to take down the colored lights...

But the really big one in the sky right now, will stay on.

I am starting to write down some of the fabulous connections I made this year. I count you all as blessings.
I almost have next year's word chosen. I will bring along Connections though, as I feel there is more to be learned.