I stand corrected

Don’t bother listening to me in my last post!  I was premature in my decision to move to Blogger and have since moved back to WordPress, but under a different name.  My blog has moved to:

http://needleworker.wordpress.com

All of my content from this blog has bee moved over to the new location.  I will eventually remove this blog…probably in a few months to ensure those who have stayed with me know about the change.

Goodbye WordPress, Hello Blogger

Well, I’ve decided to abandon “Pumpkin Patches” and start anew.  You can visit me in my new blog location at http://aneedleworker.blogspot.com .  You can read more there about why I’ve decided to change.  So, updated your link if you have one for me

Pumpkin Collection

Some years ago, I saw a beautiful hand blown glass pumpkin in the window of a store and just had to have it.  That one pumpkin has since multiplied into a sizable collection, some I’ve bought myself, others given to me as gifts.  I display them all year long in a curio in my living room (pardon the glare):

 
Top half shelf

Second shelf

Some day, I’d like to have a garden window to put them in so the light can shine through them and show off their colors more.

A few years back, my husband discovered an annual glass pumpkin exhibit in Palo Alto, where artists and students of the Bay Area Glass Institute sell their creations.  Thousands of pumpkins are displayed and available for purchase.  Each year we’ve bought a few to add to my collection and this year was no exception.  Here are the newest additions: 

In the beginning, I stuck mainly to the traditional orange color, but have since become fond of pumpkins in all sorts of colors.

Last month, my husband gave me these glass oil lamps for my birthday:

They are really pretty at night, when the lights are off.  

Learning Peyote Beading

I have always wanted to learn how to make those beaded amulet bags, especially when I saw this one:

 

I finally ordered the kit to make this bag last weekend, but I still didn’t have any experience peyote beading.  So, out of curiosity, I did a search for “peyote beading” on YouTube and found several How-To videos (what a great resource).  So after viewing a few videos I decided I should start off with something simpler and found a free snowflake bag pattern on Bella Online (see pattern here) using only two colors.  I’ve worked on it a over the weekend and here’s my progress:

 

You work the pattern in the round.  To keep the tension and shape even, you place the piece around something as you bead, a bottle of acrylic paint in this case.  Once I’m done with the pattern, I’ll slip it off the bottle to close up the bottom, then add a fringe and strap to complete it.  You can also use this technique to cover up items, like a wood needle case or a bottle.  I might have to try that sometime.

I think the toughest part of peyote beading is reading the pattern.  Unlike a cross stitch pattern, where each stitch is right next to the others, the peyote is a brick pattern where every other bead is set a 1/2 bead length from the adjacent bead (you can see this in the pattern in my picture above).  So when you work a row of beads, you’re sort of skipping a bead in between.  I finally had to align a ruler on my pattern so I could follow it across as I worked on the piece.  If you’ve ever done peyote, you  know what I mean.  I’m happy with how my first peyote project is turning out.  I think after this, I will be ready to tackle the Santa project.

Bear’s Paw Finished

Just a quick post to show another  piece I finished last month:
 

This was the last (out of 3) Cross My Heart “Amish Quilt” kits I had bought some time ago and they are all now complete and hanging on the wall in my craft room:

Tiramisu is Done!

Now that I took the pressure off myself, I thought I’d post something a little more interesting.  One thing I was doing during my 3 month hiatus was finishing up my first EGA GCC called “Tiramisu” by Dakota Rogers.  I had signed up for this GCC over a year ago and was getting down to the wire in August to get it done by the due date.  Thankfully, Dakota gave me an extension and I was able to complete the entire piece last month and get it to her for evaluation and it was returned to me this week.  So, without further ado, here is how mine turned out:

front –>   <–back

And so, I received my first EGA certificate….woohoo!

It’s kind of funny that the certificate matches the piece.  I used Soie d’alger # 4912,4913, 4914, 4916 and 1414 (5 shades of a periwinkle blue), but I’m not exactly sure what kind of linen I used.  It was in my stash of linen.  Now all I need to do is get it framed.  I plan on framing it with the back visible.

Learning reversible blackwork was a challenge, but it was fun.  I started off slow, but the technique became easier and I became faster at it.  I received many compliments from Dakota and happy to say the only thing I need to work on is getting the threads anchored a little better on the back.  So I am satisfied with how it went for my first time.  I’m now moving on to my second GCC, “Fantasy Remembered” by Luan Callery, to learn stumpwork!

B.W.O.

Oh where, oh where have I been?  Well, thinking back on the past three months, I guess my lack of posting has been due to a cumulation of things, but too many to recap now.  And then recently, in the past month, I had thought about giving up blogging altogether because I wasn’t being as diligent as I intended and the longer I went in between posts, the more I started avoiding it.   It was beginning to feel like an obligation and the enjoyment was fading away.  But then today, I stumbled across “Blogging Without Obligation” and realized I wasn’t the only one out there feeling this way and that I needed to take the pressure off myself and just blog when I felt inspired to do so.  So going forward, when I start putting pressure on myself about blogging, I’ll remind myself that I’m doing this for fun by revisiting Tiffini’s page.

Blooms for a Basket Quilt

I have been slowly working on an applique BOM (block of the month) pattern called “Blooms for a Basket”.  This was designed by Marianne Machado and distributed by the quilt shop she owned in Modesto California called “Horsefeathers Quilt & Yarn Shop”, which sadly is no longer open.  I don’t usually sign up for BOMs, but when I saw this quilt hung up in her booth at a local quilt show in 2005, I immediately signed up.  But my progress has been slow.  Three years later, I have only recently finished the 3rd of four panels:

Here’s a picture of the model:

As you can see, I have a bunch more applique to do.  I have the final four baskets done for the lower right corner.  I just need to assemble them to get the center flower block done and then I can put all four subpanels together and get the very center flower block done.  Then it’s onto the borders.
Marianne has designed some wonderful things in the past, especially this quilt, and had closed her shop so that she could focus on designing.  However, she closed the shop back in 2006 and the website that was to host her designs has yet to go live and at this point, I don’t think it will.  I hope her design business never left the ground for happy reasons and nothing bad has happened in her life.   Luckily I have purchased a few of her designs, two of them you can see on my WIPs page (”Lady Liberty” (redwork) and “Favorite Flowers – Tulips” (punch needle)) which were under her other design label “Needle Traditions”.  Hope to see Marianne resurface and design again.

Reindeer Sampler Done

Another finish I completed a few days ago was this tri-fold:

It’s called “Reindeer Sampler” by Heart in Hand.  This is my first tri-fold and I think it turned out nice.  I brought it to my local EGA meeting on Thursday night and received several compliments.  Some asked where I got the idea or if I came up with it on my own and honestly, I don’t recall if I ever saw something finished this way but I’m not 100% sure.  I had previously finished a couple projects into flat-folds and I had thought about making this piece into one, but then I got the idea to do it this way.

You can untie it (in the back) so that it can be stored flat.  When I made the cording for the ties, I put a small jingle bell in the middle, twisted the thread and then folded the thread in the middle, where I placed the jingle bell and let it twist into the cord.  This way, it was enclosed in the cord and I didn’t need to tie a bulky knot at the end.  I think I’ll have to finish something else this way.

French Braid Runner Completed

After the quilting retreat I went to this past January (see post), I put the french braid tablerunner I had pieced together during the retreat away. A couple nights ago, I decided to dig it out to finally quilt and finished it. I just stitched on the last part of the binding about an hour ago:

And you can’t lay out a quilt on the floor without the cat having to come by and sit on it:

I still haven’t come up with a name for this quilt and therefore have not put a label on it. I think it looks like fire, but others have thought the colors reminded them of a sunset. Maybe a name will eventually come to me or someone might suggest a fitting name for it. For now, it will be placed on the credenza I made it for and I can cross one more UFO off my list…yay!