Happy Halloween From A Fairy Princess!

Happy Halloween!  As a child my mother was never one for Halloween, though in her defense when she was a child, kids in her community died from razor blades in the candy which is a pure and real horror, so growing up Halloween was more a holiday to advance you closer to Christmas than anything else.

That aside DD loves Halloween.  I have no idea how it happened but it is her favorite holiday.  DD loves Halloween even more than Christmas.   She isn't into the super scary and in fact there is a commercial about some Halloween candy maker that always has her hollering "We don't have to buy that!!!!"  Instead she has more of a Happy Witches in black and purple cheer.

In response, I've be able to enjoy a bit of Halloween Magic myself lately.  Did you know I have a great daughter? No kidding.  When I asked her earlier this month what she wanted to be for Halloween, she told me she wanted to be a fairy princess and she proceeded to tell me she had the wings (poor ripped and torn cheap green Nylon ones from Walmart from last year) and then she showed me the dress she would wear with it.  One of her pretty yet faded dresses.

My mind started running a mile a minute but I wisely said nothing.  Instead I went about compiling items for her to be a fairy princess.  I shopped for a crown when she wasn't with me.  I went online back to the shop I'd purchased the faded gown from (before it was faded of course) looking at numerous dresses and I began to shop for wings.  I didn't want any more cheap-wish-I'd-just-flushed-$10-down-the-toilet-Wally-World-wings again. So I hunted and I hunted.  I looked for DIY wings, and How To's as well as anything I could think of.  After a few days I stumbled upon a "way to big" dance costume.  The wings anchored on the dancers back and pretty elastic attached the wings to the dancer's wrists like bracelets, that was when I knew I was on to something.

First I found the perfect dress, then I bought the crown shopped for tulle, and eventually found the shoes on clearance.  With a minute at the sewing machine the wings were ready.  We already had hair ties, makeup and glitter. The glitter tulle came from Joann's as well as the pretty elastic.  Together with the dress and the crown I think I paid about $25.50 all totaled. The sheer joy and wonderful happiness my daughter has been radiating since her dress arrived on Friday has truly been like Christmas morning for me.  I love that I took my time and efforts and made everything as wonderful as I could for her.

Dusting Girl

This morning my daughter told me she wanted to dust something, so I have to show this photo I took of her dusting.  She looks so grown up, at least to me.  Her school is having a pumpkin decorating contest and even though I tried hard to convince her to use other mediums she stood stoutly by her markers.  That is until I suggested using glitter for the inside of the mouth.  Yes those are my beloved PeeWee Glitters.  I think next time I'm at the store I get some of the "kindergarten kind", so I don't panic quite so much over the sheer volume it's taking.

Pebbles

I myself have been busy.  I mentioned a while back about buying a darning foot for the Elna because it's such a good little machine and the brother is clearly the rebelling teenage sister.  I found a great deal on Ebay for a Big Foot to fit Elna and it arrived a couple of days ago.  I quickly caught up with the quilt-a-long by doing zigzags, these ribbon candy wiggles, and I did pebbles because I've done loops before, as you can see I struggled the most with those.

Ribbon Candy Loops

ZigZags

Then I still wanted to quilt and as the machine was loaded and ready to go, (the spirls hadn't posted yet) I went on to sew over the lines the the butterfly.  I'm having a bit of trouble with getting the tension just right as I've never freemotioned on the little Elna before, and I feel like my stitches are way small but these by far were my best tracings in the history of my attempting to trace.  I just love how it lifts the butterflies.  Connecting them I have use alternating loops as though the butterflies are flying to each other.  I'm not certain how much the quilting should be filled in.  What do you think?

Butterfly freemotion trace

My Christmas kittens are all done!

I finished up my little Christmas Kitties last night, you know the ones with the crazy button eyes?  I only added one loop at the corner for hanging to allow them to keep their bit of whimsy.  They make me smile every time I look at them.  The pieces are cut and machine sewn.  They they are flipped and ironed.  I hand stitched the faces.  I hand stitched down the white sock patches.  At my DH's suggestion I ran a thickness of four cotton threads through the needle, then I made the big obvious stitches both in green and the a line of gold which is more subtle at the bottom of the top white ruff. When I had the kittens attached to their stockings I felt the desire to machine sew the stockings down to the background fabric, but I resisted and hand stitched those down too.  So if you don't see the stitches they simply aren't there to see.  I love these two little cats, but I have to admit I crumbled up the template pieces I used and threw them away.  I can't imagine willing myself to do so much handwork, it's lucky my tendonitis didn't flare up.

I've of course been working on my knitting, not to much as I don't want my DH to ask me what I'm doing but I did start another little dish cloth.  I've used this type of yarn before but never on a straight edged project so it's interesting to see it progress.  I did spend a minute dreaming of those knitting machines, but then my mind drifted to other things as often happens with knitting.

Dish Cloth Progress 3 of 4

Sunny has taken to sleeping here in the living room since we had those two or three pretty days when the windows could be open.  I think he's dreaming with his eye open about the thrill of the wind in his face.

Sunny in the window

Pretty in there Somewhere

A crazy thing happened. When DD and I were going outside, I asked her to put her flip-flops on but her foot wouldn't fit into the shoe. With flip flops I'm used to the foot hanging off the shoe a bit when it's time for new flops. But not my girl, she wanted a full stepsisters scene from Cinderella, complete with trying to cram the shoe on the foot. I don't know how it happened, certainly she wore them the day before...

So we were on a mission to find new shoes. Flip flops are cheap so after going to to many stores looking for comfortable ones (instead of the ones with the plastic tongue) we found them and we also found these plain white sandals. They were on super sale only $10 and no wonder, they screamed that they needed color, glitter even.

So I gathered up Jessica, her new flip flops and those sad little shoes.  Just look at them now.  No more wedding plain now.

Tips for adding glitter to your shoes: I used my peewee glitters and their brand of fabric glue. I covered the rubber treads with tin foil to protect them from the heat, and stuck them in my cool stoneware pan. Then into a 350-degree oven (heat it up and turn it off completely) allow to "cook" for 30 minutes. When time was up I pulled them out and unwrapped them. I highly recommend it.

The Nitty Gritty

Yesterday was sweltering. It was so nasty sticky hot. That being said, allow me to continue. That means it's not a good day to try and glitter something. But I'm one of those people that when I put my mind to doing something... Not to mention it's Florida and when it it ever going to "not be hot"? I think I would like to add a second layer of the white to make the snow on the rooftops pop a bit more. This stuff is amazingly flexible. You look at it and think wow that must be crusted on, right? Nope I keep poking it because it blows my mind too. When I'm certain I'm done there is a heat set process in the oven and I will type up my final review then.

That glittered Winter Wonderland land theme is for Lori's quilt top, which I have for the Row Robin this month. I also made the scarf you see below. When I looked all that beautiful quilt I thought, everything is here, the snow cap, the mittens, the ice skates, but no scarf. I googled Applique Quilt Block Scarf and all other combinations, but didn't find what I was looking for, so I did a sketch which turned out fine, so I free form-drew right onto the fabric. Two layers of flannel later... The dark purple creases are hand stitched - when I couldn't make the sewing machine behave I just did what Serena would do. The tassels are a technique called couching, which Shelly told me she thought I'd like doing the last time I did detail work. Couching is where you take a thick (thicker than your thread) thread, embroidery floss, yarn, or cording, and you zigzag stitch with the machine right over the cord. In my case I used embroidery floss at full hank thickness. Honestly I think it looks nearly as cool on the underside of the piece as the top and will be keeping it in mind for future projects. I have sent out all but one of the invitations for the Mum's the Word Party and the end of the month. I'm holding back on the last one just so my co-hostess can see what they looked like before I mailed them all away.

It should be a great time, we're planning on having Tacos and Sangria's complete with Corn Chips and a variation on my friend Heather's Cheese Dip Sauce. Mom and I can't eat peppers (I know how awful is that?!?!) so I do things a little differently. For those of you who started reading in the middle of this party planning we're also going to be painting Ceramics, the proprietor is wonderful to work with, and I'll be giving her a huge shout out after the party.

Today is the day a huge 24" X 24" X 24", yes 8 cubic feet of baby stuff is supposed to arrive to Mary, a friend I had send two boxes of Jessica's baby things prior. I didn't mail it sooner because there has been so much sadness around my house over the past couple of months I didn't feel up to hauling what turned out to be 55 pounds of baby things off to mail. I told her it was on the way a couple of days ago and so far haven't heard anything, I hope no news is fine news.

Sometimes computer loves to share photos with you, and sometimes it's selfish, after all it had friends who knew dinosaurs, and how many pc's can say that? The past couple of days that was the rut mine was in. So I hope you enjoyed all the photos today. I'll leave you with a photo of second side of the purple quilt (yes I'm quilting them together in one quilt). The lighting did stupid things, and the fabric calculator lied so I ended up changing things which lost the ribbon look a bit, okay completely. As always anything you'd like to see closer up go ahead and click on it to see the nitty gritty details.
Jessica woke up shortly before I was finished with the wonderland village, so she did a bit of glittering on her own.

Lights Camera GLITTER!

The day did a funny sort of flip flop on me. I started out at the big red Bulls eye store (since their return policy sucks I only buy personal and paper goods there, aka stuff I know I wont need to return). Ahhh but later my sister and I would cruise off to Dunedin, a cute little town complete with perfect green grass, friendly people, and most important small town charm.

What else do they have? Well they have Raspberries, a Platinum Vera Bradley Store, which is how I convinced my sister to take me... As well as Rainbow's End, a huge quilt store that touts itself as being the biggest fabric store in all of Florida, and I believe them.

I was destined for the, yep you guessed it, Glitter! Come on now, you had to know that I really wanted to find the $30 so I can glitter up Lori's Row Robin this month. You can see from the photo what I bought. Pee Wee Glitter LB Colors I, Sea Shell 100, a pristine white which will be my snow, the special fabric glue. The woman who presides over the cash register there is so knowledgeable, just like I remember, and was more than happy to show me how to paint with the glue, and which techniques I should use to get the look I want. For now I'm waiting to get my hands on the three paint brushes she suggested, but as soon as I do not only will you see what I've been planning, but I will also right a review. Oh and this pile is so small not only am I glad I went to the store to buy it because of the wisdom I gained that way, but also because it can be disappointing to receive a much awaited box, that doesn't weight more than 5 oz or so.