Doggie Do Doo, Baggie Holder

The other day in my online shopping travels I encountered an adorable dog bone.  The purpose of the dog bone is to be carried  along with your dog leash when you take Fido out for his walkies.  This way you always have a baggie for any little (or huge) dookie piles left behind by your best friend.  Well you know I just had to make one.  Mine is quilted, made with french seams and has no form of Velcro or other closer for you to catch yourself on when you really just need the bag out now.  I made it big enough that it will hold the rolls of bags you can buy at your local pet store for this purpose or you can just re-purposed grocery sacks.

Personally I think it's cute enough to make a change purse as well.  To bad I'm not into all that fussy crafty stuff.

To Spite Sore Arms

Well now I have learned a very important lesson, never show off the corner of a quilt when you can show off the entire thing.  

Mandala Back so far

This new picture of the back of the Mandala quilt shows off the deep rich blue very nicely, where as the other image seemed to show the blue as lighter and more vibrant than it is.  I'm not sure what should come next?  Perhaps green?  I have two deep greens, one a batik and one a print that might work.  I also wondered if perhaps I should do something with pieced blocks?  I have more spirographs from the front of the quilt 6 big ones and 14 little ones if someone was thinking I should add a hint from the front on the back.  Though I'd like to save one or two of the big ones for a pillow...  At your suggestions I think the answer here is to use only deep rich tones, vs. bold bright ones that would detract from the Kaleidoscope blocks.

Mandala Front Complete, Backing grows.

Last night I worked on my Mandala quilt.  Working on Mandala's is said to be a healing process for the creator.  I don't know about that but I do know I dread each new step with this quilt only to do it and discover oh that wasn't so bad.  This quilt now measures 96" and it's plenty heavy so I only took pictures of the corner.  In this first image it is a corner using a small kaleidoscope block, as well as those zillion half square triangles for the last HST border.  The red folded border looks wonderful over the whole of the quilt.

 Then I began working on the back of the quilt.  I bordered out the back Kaleidoscopes with the black as I'd planned, and then added the water batik all around.  The trouble is right after I finished sewing on the blue border I found 2 yards of the blue in the picture above, that turquoise and royal, clearly I'd intended to use that on the back.  It doesn't play well with the blue batik I added though.  Any thoughts?

Tie Purses

I just finished up these for a friend.  The purple one is my favorite, though the brown is a close second.  I have this vision of using two matching ties one for the gentleman to wear and one to make a ladies evening bag with.  What do you think?  I selected lining fabrics and cording to match and all purses have interfacing within.

If all else fails, ignore it.

I haven't been at my sewing machine lately, hence the blog silence.  The last time I sat at my machine it was skipping stitches horribly and my both my scissors and my sips needed sharpened, so I set everything aside and figured I would take care of sending the scissors in while DH fixes the machine.

Well then yesterday I read an article about digging in and dealing with what we've been putting off.  So forgetting my sewing studio woes I cleaned it and started sewing the final folded border on the front of the Mandala quilt.  That's funny, the machine purred like a kitten.  With not a single skipped stitch.  Everything was perfect.  Hmm, I think to myself, okay perhaps DH fixed it and didn't tell me.

When he got home later in the day I asked him about it.  Nope he never got to it.  So neglect fixed my sewing machine.  Funny, I wonder if it was lonely or just wanted a little vacation???