Thanks so much, everyone.... and I'm ready to move forward, to quote a friend...

I very much appreciated all the kind comments from you all, I hope you can understand why it's taken me so long to get back to you and say thank you.  Honestly, I spent so much time here bragging on my Nosey Parker, I feel like this blog was more about her than anything else.  But I'm going to try to get back to doing things like I did, even though it won't ever be the same, not even close.  

OK.  

I've been a little busy these days with helping with my mother, but I've also had some time to sew.  I've made a few bitties and a lunch bag and a couple of mug totes.  Let me show you.  Bitty Block Committee is on hiatus for the summer, so I don't have as many as usual to show you.  

We did another go-round of the beach/underwater theme- I think this one fits quite well, since it's half underwater.  The message is their last will and testament and leaves ME all their fabric and quilting supplies.  Heh!

We also did a Farmer's Market theme and I made zucchini- you know how you get so many that you can't hardly give them away?  LOL  And I made one block to commemorate a funny occurrence I had with my mother at the store once when the clerk had spelled cucumbers as "cucmumbers" on the sign.  The laughter from my mother could be heard throughout the entire store.  ;)

 We also did a side swap called "Bitter Bitties" and I made a "You are the spinach in my teeth" block....

 and another one- "You are the gum on my shoe."  I did this one especially because Kimmie and Ruthie love the Wizard of Oz so much, and I thought it was pretty funny that Dorothy would step in it, even more than she already had.  LOL

 I made a couple of mug totes, for someone who goes to classes or work and wants to bring her own favorite mug with her.  This one turned out really well.... from this tutorial- by {me} and my thoughts....  I added the inside pocket.

 And this one is just adorable, from this tutorial- by Red Brolly, but honestly I think it would be better as a little purse for a kid, it seems awkward for a mug, too cube-like. The butterfly wasn't on the flap once a mug was inside, it covered part of the top of the bag.  I guess the flap could be made longer, but it would still be very deep at the top, not tapered like it is in this photo. 

I sent the first one to my partner in FLiRTS, she wanted  a mug tote or a lunch bag... So I made her a lunch bag, too, using this cute Edgy Veggy material that I had.  I found this pattern on Etsy. 

And I included a matching condiment wallet... I've sold tons of them in my own Etsy shop.

 

 I also made myself a new bag out of selvages.  I had worn my old one out, it was threadbare and shabby.  It has pockets on the outside but it's plain inside, since I use a purse organizer that fits right in it. I did this in a "quilt-as-you-go" style so I wouldn't have to make a lining.  I covered the inside seams with binding.

Thank you all again for understanding our loss and sympathizing with us.  We do appreciate you all very much.  Bizbee and Gravey have been getting a tremendous amount of attention lately and we really are treasuring them even more than ever.  A smooch/rub/head-butt from a cat is a gift, one we need and really enjoy.  

Bunches o' Bitties! And a great swap all finished up!

Lots of bitties to show off, since it's been so long....

This is for my friend in Brazil, Sil, she chose doors and windows for her month in the bee swap- I made her a little tree trunk gnome house, the doors open up to reveal the occupant.

And her other one is a taller block, a screen door that opens on to a nice beach.

In the bitty block swap, we did chickens one month- these are mine, everyone got to choose their color. 

 And one month, we did bees- this is my bee. 

 And in the interest of keeping it real and showing what a dumb butt I can be- I give you this- a perfect example of how reliant I have become on spell-check!  I made this block for the Sept banner for my perpetual calendar and after making it and writing the words on the test and giving myself a big fat red A+, I realized the next DAY that I had spelled "committee" incorrectly!  I showed this to my husband and we both
had the best laugh we'd had in a while!

 I ended up remaking the tiny notebook so no one would be able to rub my nose in it forever.  And then, I ended up putting the tiny pencil right over where the mistake would have been, anyway.  Geez.  I hope you're laughing at me, I know I would be if it was YOU!

Then, Ruthie picked Harry Potter for her bee month- I made her Luna Lovegood's SpectreSpecs....

 ...and Harry's cupboard room, under the stairs.  This pattern is from fandom in stitches, a great site full of fun free paper-piecing quilt patterns.  I shrunk it down to fit a 3.5" block.

 And I made the door 3D.

 And I received this wonderful package of goodies in our swap- FLiRTS- a quilted tote bag made by Julie, jgmehlin at Flickr.  She went crazy making me the most wonderful things in the whole swap!  Tote bag, sketch book with quilted cover, tissue holder, a piece of manatee fabric, just so much great stuff!  Thanks, Julie!

I love both sides of the bag!  Little cats are all over the place!

 The top zips shut.

 Inside, my initials!  No, I'm not into S & M!   And pockets, 4 of them!

 Sketchbook with pencil!

 The bag hadn't been out of the package for 10 seconds when Bizbee jumped into it!

 And this is what I made for the same swap, for my friend Kimmie.  She wanted a sewing machine cover really badly, and loves Wizard of Oz.  So my friend Jennifer thought I should adapt the Sew Out Loud block by badskirt amy block and make it a ruby slipper instead of a boot, a brilliant idea on her part, and that's what I did.  And I love how it turned out.  We had found some great pin fabric in TX in January and we knew that this would be the perfect use for it. 

 Pockets on both sides- in the rainbow spectrum.

 And the little electrical cord attaches to scissors and they store in the purple pocket. 

Kimmie really likes it and it fits her machine so all is right with the world of quilting and swapping.  :)

Thank you all for the nice words about my mother.  I was over there this morning and gave her a shower, she now has a really cool sliding chair/bench that sits half in the tub and half in the bathroom, making bathing so much safer, it even has a seatbelt.  My brother and her caregiver Nancy were both there, too, so we all had a nice visit after the shower, while Mum napped.  We kind of wore her out.  

Sorry for the marathon post and million photos! I think I'm caught up now, so I won't put you thru this again!

Bitties, Mug Rugs and a Fab Little Quilt to Swap...

 The themes for August were cats and Halloween- So I made everyone in my group a miniature Nosey Parker.  :)  This is a 3.5" take-off from a mug rug I made a while back, in the spring.  I can't believe I forgot to add whiskers to them, though!  They've all been mailed out whisker-less.  Dumb butt! Oh, well, I guess everyone can add their own if they want them.  I spent a long time on the handstitching on these, I watched a lot of Olympics while I worked on them. 

 For my Halloween blocks, I made some mini Amy Bradley vampires!  I love how they turned out, and I only had to embroider his mouth, yay.  :)  The fangs are white paint.

 My 2nd group got these- I saw something like this in a new magazine and loved it- a couple of people didn't get it, until it was explained to them.  YOU get it, right?

The summer mug rug swap- my partner likes beach/ocean things and I found a cute clipart drawing of a turtle.  He translated nicely to fabric.  A little seaweed, some sand and water and he's good to go.  I hate to send him away, because I have a special place in my heart for sea turtles.  They struggle from the moment they hatch to survive and only one in 5000 makes it to adulthood, they say.
Those are horrible odds!

And I just recently sent off an angel mug rug to the UK- a lady that was in our spring swap never received her mug rug so I made her this using a birdhouse bitty I had, and some Kaffe Fassett fabrics.  I hope she likes it. Better late than never, and better than getting nothing!  :)

And speaking of Kaffe Fassett, I am using his fabrics to make a mini doll quilt for my partner in FLiQS, Fab Little Quilt Swap.  It's a kaleidoscope quilt, paper pieced, and gives great illusions of light and dark large circles, which you can see beginning to happen if you squint at this.  Here's a small sample of it, this is 6 blocks, there will be either 25 or 30 in the quilt.  Each block finishes at about 3.25", so it'll only be 16" x 20", roughly, without a border.  But I'll add a border to try to tone it down a little.  It's going to be wildly busy.  I've got 18 blocks done now, only 7 or 12 to go!

 

So that's I've been working on, while Bizbee continues to grow.  He's getting his adult teeth now, currently he has 2 fangs on each side, and he's so rambunctious, almost crazy.  He gets neutered next week, maybe that'll calm him down a tiny bit.   Or maybe it's the teething making him nutsy, whatever.  I just hope he doesn't stay like this, he's a real handful right now!  Cute when he's sleeping, though!

 

Have a great weekend!  Jim's at an all-day firefighter class, so I've got the house to myself, I'm going to go knock out some more little blocks for my quilt!  What are YOU doing today?

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!

Finished Swap Quilt, Swap Til You Drop, or STUD, as it's known...

 This is what I was talking about yesterday- I made a small quilt for my parter, Cindy, who made that fab Nosey Parker pirate quilt for me.  Cindy's favorite things were - 

So I made her this-

 The label rolls up and goes into the little rum bottle and hangs from a small hook on the back of the binding. 

 Since one of her favorite things is her cat, Took, I incorporated him (slightly tanner than his usual color) and his favorite things into the quilt, too....

 He's snoozing in the sunshine, dreaming of canned cat food, his litter box, his favorite scratching post and his MOM...  Most of which he has, right there on his island, the biggest litter box in the world, but all he really wants is his Mom... 

 So he's floating her off a message for her to send the boat to come and get him, 

that he's ready to go home now.  The boat is on the way, Cindy was missing her littlest of boys!

And I added a few little things to her package.  It's been delivered and well received, apparently the whole family likes it.  :)  And that makes me really happy!

 

 This was a fun swap and a challenging quilt.  It measures 9" x 12" and it was a bit fiddly to work on.  I messed up the first cat I did, so the whole thing nearly went into the trash after 2 days of working on it, but my husband convinced me it could be saved, so I spent about 3 hours picking out 5000 little stitches and I redid the cat and added the towel and it made a huge difference in this quilt.  There are a couple of things I would do differently if I was doing another one like this, like I'd leave off the seagull because I don't think it's adding much to it, but otherwise, I'm pretty happy overall.