Porch Transformation

Our crooked porch has been transformed to a lovely welcome.

New Mailbox, and cute old doorbell ringer to be added.

Also refinishing my park bench! woohoo. Life is good.

Before & After:

Large Scale Cookie House

Here's the gingerbread fan at the top of my 1890's victorian house. It's been rebuilt and primed and is ready for paint. What a huge project.





It took my husband all last summer and most of this summer to get the major repairs done. He replaced rotten siding, rebuilt the victorian trimwork that adorns 3 gable ends. He made siding and gingerbread for the back of the house which was a 2 story blank wall. He's jacked up the house to get rooms level, dug out a pile of rubble to find there was a floor in the cellar. I can't list it all here because It's a book!


It took a year to pick colors. We painted big patches on the house and left them for months. There is a high level of detail on this little old victorian house!! We looked at so many houses that we liked. The final result is 6 colors of paint.

In order to come up with the colors for the gingerbread on the gable, I painted a dozen or more samples with the actual house paints.





I climbed up the scaffold with my little bag of paints. I felt shakey at first but you get used to it after a few minutes.

Six colors!!!

JoJo's Island Nightfall

This is quilt is made from denim batik. Who ever heard of such a thing? It was 60" wide and wonderful. I made this with Ricky Tim's convergence method, only about twice as big.

It's about 80" square

Cooter Lives!!

click the pics to see a bigger view.










August 2007. I spent a couple of weeks in Hilo, HI visiting my niece who was having a baby. While I was there, I did a bunch of sewing projects. We were going to recover the couch even!!! One of the fun projects was creating a doll for Levi. He's not really interested in dolls (not remotely) but I had fun doing it anyway. (not remotely means: he can tell you every kind of truck and heavy equipment- garbage truck, container truck, excavator etc. but he never hugged his doll like a girl would)

I sketched a pattern on paper, cut the torso & limbs out of flannel, and stuffed the parts.

When I would show Levi the doll parts, he wouldn't touch it, but run away. I guess the stray arm or leg gave him the creeps. I showed this picture to my husband and he said, "No wonder he was scared, that looks like a freak doll!!"

Anyway I got his arms & legs sewn on and started embroidering his face. After the face was on Levi was fine with the doll. Next I put on hair. I stitched in a piece of yarn about 6" long, then knotted it several times.


I decided on some Farmer Johns for pants. We toyed with the idea of tying the hair in lots of knots and making it kind of a Rasta Kid. Finally I just thought he should be a free spirit, no shirt, no shoes. I used the legs from an old pair of jeans and put together some overalls. I had red buttons, but Levi lost them.

I wanted to name him something silly. I thought he was kind of a Napoleon Dynamite baby only cuter and possibly cuddly. So I called him Scooter. But guess what? Yup. Now he is officially Cooter.


Here we are making Cooter's pants. Notice the pudgy little hand ready on the back-up button! so cute.

Laura's Jacket

Here's my daughter Laura and the story of her Jacket.



Last Summer my daughter Laura turned 21. She had purchased a corduroy "hoodie" at the Okanagan Barter Faire. It wasn't very well made, and she told me she knew I could make them much better. So for her birthday she requested a patchwork jacket with a Tree.
I started working on that idea, but it definitely had a different idea of where it was going!
I began with the back. I was going to make patchwork with corduroy, but I didn't like the colors I had available so I went with jeans. I had these 2 long pieces and put them together. Then I made the Tree. When Laura was little I used to tell her that I found her in a Magical tree with a little door. So that was the theme for the tree. There are gold buttons for leaves and a tiny gold button for a door knob.

At this point I realized that I was not going to make a jean jacket, but make an altered sweatshirt instead. I took apart a black large Hoody and appliquéd Spring on one sleeve, and Autumn on the other. I saved Summer for the jean vest front.

The vest fronts are more jeans, batik flowers growing out of the pockets. I finished up with a sun/moon face on the front of the sweatshirt. There was such an expanse of unadorned black at the top, I thought it needed a necklace or brooch. :)

I am an Iris

ere's my iris piece so far.

It started with fusing some batiks together on a backgound. Then I added stitching, fusible ribbon, stitched some more. Now I am adding trapunto and will quilt & bind. I have been working on a vase/urn series so this was already in the works before the flower power challenge came up.

click the images for details
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Kiddo Quilting

2 grandkids were over last week and we made little quilts. I had some fusible stuff with a grid printed on. They picked out a fabric theme and we cut out 4" squares and fused them on. Then they sewed. Next time we'll put on a backing and make a finished quilt

at 8 you can iron

and sew

When you are only 5

you have to let Grandma Help

Purple frogs and snakes!

Here's the finished products on the wall waiting till next time Mom works late.

we had fun!! (most important part)

Grandbaby Halter Tops

Sidetracked Once again! My daughter came by and wanted to make summer tops for my granddaughter so we raided my fabric stash, I was roped into creating a pattern and sewing for 1/2 the evening. My daughter & grand-niece raided the button bin (read "big mess") and we put cute buttons on as well. Reversible !

5 Women

Okay I used a pattern. I saw it made up in a shop and thought since we have 5 daughters, it might represent something . I gave it to my oldest daughter and I dont think she likes that the faces are like old women.. she must have stashed it away somewhere because I havent seen it since.

10 talents 1000 thoughts

My guild had a self portrait challenge so I made this pixel portrait. I had no idea how to get the tones right, but it was fun and possibly looks like me. I used a photo and my son explained how to pixelize it in photoshop, using only 10 colors. The title is because its 10 colors and 1000 pieces.

A few months later my genius niece came by (age 13) and said oh, you can get the tones right by scanning the fabrics in b&w, and then turn your photo into a b&w , then you can see if the tones are right or not. HA! where are the genuis children when you need them?