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. :)