Consumed by bittes and other fun stuff...

 Alice in Wonderland bitty blocks, only this time I went a little bigger- 3.5" x 5.5", to accommodate her height, so I wouldn't be cutting out even tinier pieces of fabric. 

 

 It was hard enough as it was!  First I had to trace each piece of  her onto the paper side of Soft-Fuse by Shades,  this is the BEST fusible out there, IMO.  The paper always peels off easily and it never mangles the piece of fabric.  It's a delight to use. 

Then I ironed the fusibles onto fabric and then I spent several evenings while watching TV, cutting all the pieces out.  There are 18 pieces in each Alice.  Times 12 Alices.  Oy.  Phew.

 Several hours at the ironing board to get this- because so many pieces are overlaying the other pieces, I couldn't do this my normal way which is from the bottom layer up, no- this is a big jumble of layers and it's going to be a nightmare to stitch them all down using matching thread.

First I sewed all the pink colored pieces down, using newsprint paper (plain, no ink, from the craft shop art dept) as my stabilizer- no backstitching, I pulled all the thread to the back and tied them off using knots that were at least quadruple knots, because the thread was slippery.  That took an entire evening.  Then I did the flesh colored bits- another entire evening tying knots and pulling off new newspaper.  Then the blue, another evening.  Finally the white, the 4th evening.  

By the time I got to the hair and beak, I was pretty sick of Alice and her croquet mallet friend!  LOL

I had asked my fellow swappers what color hair they preferred, most of them wanted a dirty blonde as opposed to a brunette, so only Kandra and I get the cool dark-haired Alices.  :)

 I managed to get my 2nd set of Alice bitty blocks done a lot faster- psychedelic mushrooms!  I had some great Red Rooster fabric called "Oodles of Doodles" that was perfect for these.  All those different large mushrooms came from ONE piece of fabric!  The small ones came from one piece of coordinating fabric in the same line. 

 I love how they turned out!  I auditioned everything I had for the background, that dark blue won because it was so dramatic and eye-catching.  And using the checkerboard for the photo worked well, too, as it really set them off.  I gotta say, this is one my better photographs- the blocks look even better in the photo than they seem to in person!  Ha! 

 I made a little grass shack block just for fun- I whipped this up really fast, which is odd for me, I usually dither and waste a lot of time making decisions, but this one just came to me.  It's a normal size- 12.5" with the white border.  My husband used to scuba dive a lot, so there's a dive float in it.

 And here's a fun little spoofy bitty- can you figure out what it is?

If you guessed "a ham radio", you are correct!  My dad is a ham radio operator, he drove my poor mother insane on their travels by spending every evening trying to raise someone to talk to, by repeating over and over "C.Q, C.Q", like- 100's of times a night.  She couldn't block him out or get away, so after a few trips like that, she said "NO MORE!" and refused to go anymore.  So he got a smaller trailer and went alone!  They do like their apart time, but now that she's 91, that's coming to an end.  Every time he goes away, he's 88, she has some kind of an issue, health-wise, and it worries me sick, so I'm trying to get him to stay the heck home.  It's just not safe for her to be alone at night and even during the day, sometimes.  

Anyhoo, I'm about caught up on my projects but we just started a new pincushion swap so I'll be busy designing and making one of those pretty soon.  I have an idea, we'll see if I can pull it off.

Have a great weekend, everybody!  Do something FUN.  It's cold here this morning, we have a fire in the woodstove, it was 38º when I got up at 7.  My best friend is in Maui right now, I think I hate her guts!

Timmmmmberrrrrrrrr! And some bitties, of course!

 We've been having some timber taken off our property and as kind of a favor, they agreed to take an old, messy sycamore down that was too big for my husband to handle alone.  If it fell the wrong way, it could damage our fence so we left it in their capable hands.  Ahem. 

 Click on this 3rd photo for a close-up.  LOL  Poor wood pile!  It could have been worse, but I know they were embarrassed because I picked THIS tree to photograph the removal of, instead of any other tree that I'm sure fell right where they wanted it to.  :)

 The bitty block theme was black/white/and a bit of a bright.  I picked orange.  The only orange in these blocks is the 3D tea bag tag.  Orange Pekoe, anyone?  :)  These blocks measure 3.5" square.  I paper pieced these from this pattern I found on the internet, by Piece By Number,  and reduced it to a tiny 2.25" or so. 

 The other theme was birdhouses.  I made a little leaning birdhouse, bright fun colors.  This one is raw-edged applique which I find much faster for me to do than paper-piecing!  I waste less fabric, too.   I also just found out that using a size 60 needle in the machine leaves cleaner edges on the fabric that is being appliqued!  Tiny needle, tiny holes, no raggedy bits!

 And for the bitty bee swap that I'm in, that has bees for the theme this month, this is the 2nd block I made- a skep on a platform.  I had to use this cute lime green bee fabric that I've been hoarding forever. 

That's it from here, Jim is outside cutting up the remains of that sycamore and getting his wood pile back to order.  I'm going upstairs to sew!  Everybody have a great day, spring is just the BEST time of year, pollen be darned!