April Morning

I am up early today. I keep waking up at 3 or 4 in the morning, usually I can go back to sleep but today I am having some acid reflux so I got up to take medicine and am sitting up. I figured it was a good time to post on my blog. I have to get ready for work in about an hour. I think I will leave a little early this morning and stop and get some bagels to take to work. The Airmen are always looking for food, LOL. I would be too if I had to eat in the chow hall everyday. Since our Amish country trip, Clarinda and I have been getting together on the weekends to sew. She has come over Friday after work and we have stayed up sewing into the next day on a couple of occasions. We both made some of the stuffed animals for Easter. She made some for her dad, stepmom, daughter-in-laws, and grandchildren. I made a tiger (like a bengal tiger) for Jack and a blue bunny for his girlfriend Aubrey. Seems weird to say Jack has a girlfriend, this seems to be the first serious one. I also made Jack another Bengals pillowcase. We didn't really celebrate Easter, just gave Jack his and Aubrey's gifts and had steak for dinner. We are supposed to go out to dinner with Jack and her tonight, I think to Olive Garden. So, other than the Easter things, I spent some time making a door hanger for our front door. I am taking a couple ideas and putting in to this project. I have seen patterns for putting quilts on stretched painters canvas. To make this door hanger I used one of the patterns from my Anita Goodesign "Home Tweet Home." It has really cute bird houses to embroider. I picked one I like and got it going on the machine, it was fun to watch it take shape. It had a bit of applique to eat so I had to put down a piece of fabric for the birdhouse and sign and the machine sewed around the piece with a taking stitch and I would then trim the material up to the tacking stitch and then the machine would add the thicker boarder around each piece of material. Once I had the embroidery done, I put it on top of a stretched painters canvas that I had stapled a piece of material to. That is as far as I got but I am going to probably put another piece of material behind the embroidered piece to make it stand out a little more. The idea was to make a quilt from the embroidered piece and to put loops in all four corners that would attach to buttons sewn on to the canvas (I saw this in another pattern and thought it was a cute idea). However, I think I like just attaching the embroidered piece to the canvas and embellishing with the buttons (lord knows I have plenty of buttons!). I will then just change out the canvas for each season or holiday with another canvas. I thought this way I can have the canvas backgrounds to match the embroidery otherwise the background would always be the same and would need to be neutral. Here are some pictures of the embroidery machine in action and how the project looks at the moment. This is the beginning of the project. A lot of the stitching went in to the pole and the flowers. You can see the design on the screen of my machine, it tells me which step the design is on and counts down the stitches left to be stitched. It is really pretty awesome! Here you can see that I added the material for the house, roof and sign. The machine has sewn around each shape and I have cut off the excess fabric. Here the machine is making the thicker stitches around the applique pieces. Here the machine is making the chain loops that holds the birdhouse to the pole. Here is the completed design in the frame. Here is the design resting on top of the stretched canvas frame, It definitely needs an extra background. I am really happy with it and can't wait to get it hung on the door. We had quite a little hen party here last Saturday, Clarinda, Dr Ann and I had a sewing party. Dave had to work so we figured what the heck. We were supposed to sew most of the day but you know how things go when Clarinda and I get together and we just had to run to one quilt shop that lead to two shops that lead to eating dinner out that lead to going to Waynesille. We finally got home around 6, not much sooner than Dave did! LOL. But we had a good time and Dr. Ann hadn't been to any of the local quilt shops so she enjoyed it. Dr. Ann worked on a baby quilt she has been working on for some time now. She has most of the top complete now and will hopefully finish up next time we get together. I owe her a strip with the birth date embroidered on it. I already did one with the name. All right, time for me to get ready for work, of course I am ready to go back to bed now! LOL.