The Annual Pig Photo Shoot

Traditionally (for the last six years), I spend Black Friday taking photos that eventually end up as my Christmas cards.  I love sending cards that make people laugh and a photo of a bunch of dopey guinea pigs is pretty much guaranteed to do that. 

We didn't have good daylight yesterday, so the photo shoot was today, and took most of the afternoon.  It starts with setup and checking that we like the scenery.  Then its wrangle pigs, bribe pigs, shoot photos and review photos.  And repeat, repeat, repeat. 

Usually we get a few decent photos in the first batch or two, and then do the last photo shoot(s) for minor adjustments to get just the right photos.  But this year, with three pigs (two that have never been through this), it was just impossible to get one good shot.  Plus, the first two sets of photos were a loss, because the "snow" covering messed with the lighting.

I videoed the fourth and final shoot:

What a bunch of dopey pigs!

Let the project marathon begin!

Its after Thanksgiving, which means my Christmas projects have begun:  ornaments and small sewing projects I give as gifts.

My kick-off project isn't, technically, for Christmas.  Its for an annual fund raiser at the Scout House in February.  I've been requested to make some more shoe bags for the raffle.   Whenever I'm buying material, I keep the shoe bags in mind.  I try to find something bright and/or outrageous.  A hot-pepper bag I did a couple of years ago was a big hit.  So at some point this year I found some more pepper material, as well as some whimsical stuff.

Musical mice!  That's about as whimsical as it gets!

Fall Frolic

I frolicked, and it was fun!

We went to the annual Fall Frolic at the Greenfield Grange on Sunday.  Its a fundraiser dance that goes from 2pm-10pm.  We lasted until about 7pm.  My aching feet, flagging energy and thoughts of the two hour drive home got me to admit it was time to go.

I hope it was a successful fundraiser.  It was certainly a fun dance!



For more photos of the dance on Facebook, check out the Fall Frolic 2010 album.  Roger takes wonderful photos.

The proper way to spend a Sunday afternoon

Ah, a chilly, yet sunny, Sunday afternoon.  And the guinea pigs are doing one of the things that they do best: napping.

Yup.  Its a rough life.

Any of these three would tell you that.

I'm thinking they may have the right idea.....

Sailboat Sweatshirt

My sewing room disaster area wasn't just from my quilt.  I also worked on a child's sweatshirt:
 

Wow, that red is bright in the photo! 

The little flags on the top of the sail actually stick out, because they were just too small to try and piece.  Which actually made a really neat effect.  I originally thought of putting a mast, but I was having hard enough time, I ended up simplifying it a lot!  My mother pointed out I could have used freezer paper to make piecing together the tiny pieces easier.  I may have to learn how to do this, if I attempt to do something like this again.

I debated about folding under a seam allowance, and attach the block with iron-on adhesive and hand stitching, but I opted, in the end, for iron-on adhesive and zig-zag on the sewing machine.  Guaranteed not to come off that shirt!

The Aftermath

Just in case anyone was wondering.... I sew pretty much the same way as I cook.  I leave a disaster in my wake.  My kitchen, more often than not, appears to be self-cleaning.  Or at least when I come back later, its all clean!  Unfortunately, in the case of sewing projects, it doesn't seem to work the same way: 

<sigh> Maybe I can face it this weekend....

Spring Log Cabin at the Beach

Several days of vacation gave me a chance to finish the quilt.  Huzzah!  Most evenings this week were spent hand-stitching the binding.  I'm getting old... I needed glasses to work on it. 


I finally found some backing material I liked at the Franklin Mills store.  Not what I had expected, but it spoke to me:

Beach gear?  For a fall baby?  Well, I heard about her birth at the Cape, so I suspect that's why I latched onto the seaside theme.


I wasn't too sure about the color scheme at some point, but now that its done, I'm rather liking it.  I hope Mallory likes it, too.  Its certainly a lot brighter than my last baby quilt.

My last fun step:  The label.  I love Printed Treasures for making quilt labels.  So much easier than trying to write it all by hand.  And I don't have to worry about scrawling print or having to start all over again when I misspell something.  I love that I can pull in one of the background colors or material and work from that.  The only drawback is, its tough to sew through by hand. 

Welcome to the world, Mallory.  I hope you have a wonderful life.

New Sewing Project: Log Cabin Quilt

After a long dry spell of no sewing, I have such a backlog of projects that I've needed to dust off my sewing machine and get to work.

I have never done a log cabin quilt before.  Not that I've done a ton of quilts, but they've almost all been some variation of 9-patch.   I figured a baby quilt would be a perfect place to start.  Something small and simple.

I went through my scraps, and green kept speaking to me.  I originally thought green and yellow, but for whatever reason when I went to buy the rest of the material, I latched onto pink.  Bright pink, at that.  Not what I expected.  But that's the way it usually is with me: the quilts take on a life of their own.  I've learned to go with the flow.

The day after buying the material, I finally realized *why* I had this affinity for the color combo of bright pink and green:

Hmmm... something familiar about that top table runner....


I discovered, after I had cut all the material and sewed up the blocks that the blocks are predominantly what the second color is.  Hadn't really thought about that when I arbitrarily chose which color was "first."  So, this is a green quilt with pink, instead of the other way around.  Or evenly (which is what I thought it would be).  I mean, duh.  That should have been obvious when I was calculating yardage -- I needed more green than pink.  I realize now, I could have sewn the log cabins a little differently, and the colors would have been more even.

This has been an up-and-down project.  I despaired when I ran out of old material because I miscalculated (which I *always* do, even when I calculate twice), and managed to luck out and found a bolt of it in the discontinued shelves. Woot!  Then as I started cutting the material I feared that the colors were so eye-poppingly strong that people would run screaming from the quilt.  It has taken me forever to get this far.  But now that I've got the main portion sewn together, its not that bad!

Now if I can only find some backing and hope I didn't mis-measure the binding length!