Fall Festivals

I love Fall Festival time of year!  There is a festival almost every weekend or craft show almost every weekend.  Last week was the annual Fall Festival at the John C. Campbell Folk School, it is a wonderful festival.  This year the weather was absolutely beautiful, which lead to extremely large crowds.  We arrived shortly after 10:00, the festival opened at 10:00 and parking was already at a premium.  This is one of my favorite festivals, it supports the folk school and is in a beautiful setting.  Most of the vendors are people who have either taken classes a the school or are instructors.  The arts and crafts are definitely worth the money.  The only thing I make a point of buying every year is yarn.  I love alpaca yarn and at the festival I get to meet the alpaca's and pet them.  This year I found a gorgeous purple yarn that I plan on using for a scarf. 

Every year I look forward to petting the alpaca's and buying some of their yarn.

Not sure who this guy was maybe "The Fall Fairy".

Of course there were pigs.

Salvation Army shopping

A couple of weeks ago I wandered into the Salvation Army store down the street from the school where I work.  I had never been in there, for no other reason that I had simply not taken the time to go in.  It was a Wednesday afternoon, and lucky for me, it was 1/2 price clothing day.  I bought 4 wool skirts to use for wool applique. 

I took them room, cut them apart and felted them.  Three of the skirts came out really nice, one just ok.  (the red plaid one didn't do too well).  I am so excited over the way they turned out.  Now I just need to find a wool applique project to use them in. If anyone has a great suggestion for a cute fall applique pattern that uses wool I would love to hear about it.    I am also thinking about dyeing some of the wool. Can't wait to see how that would turn out.

Organizing, again!!!

I wish the organizing fairy would  come to my house.  I try really hard to keep everything organized but no matter how hard I try, I still have a  mess.  I discovered that my thread was in just too much of a mess, I had no idea what thread I had and how  much.  This is a photo of the drawer where I had thrown all of my thread, and I do mean thrown. 

After seeing the neat thread organizers that my friend Becky had purchased, I decided that this was something that I definitely needed.  I ordered two of these thread cases from Connecting Threads.  They are wonderful, there is space on both sides of the container for thread.  I organized it by color, one cases has all neutral threads the other one has all of my different colors.  I still have some spools that wouldn't fit but for the most part all of my thread is now wonderfully organized.

After the thread came working on patterns.  I admit that I am a pattern alcoholic.  I have so  many patterns, some I have used others I just hope to use one day!  I had been keeping them in the original plastic bag they were purchased in a unfortunately had just been throwing them in plastic tubs.  Anytime I wanted a pattern I had to look through all of the tubs.  Not easy, which also lead to purchasing duplicates of several patterns.  I am in the process of putting all of my patterns in plastic sleeves and placing them in binders.  I have some already done, and thought that I had a photo, it must be out there in blog land somewhere.  Now if I can just keep everything organized and get to sewing.

Seam Stick

Earlier in the summer several people in my quilt group were talking about a new notion, a seam stick.  I try to keep up with all of the new notions but this was one that I had never heard of.  What did you do with a seam stick and what was it?  Finally, my friend, Becky, compared it to a tailor's ham and I knew what it was.  I could definitely see the advantage to having one of these, now that a lot of patterns recommend you press the seams open.  After looking up online to see how much they were I decided that there was no way I was going to pay 20.00 for one.  Plus more for the neat little fabric cover. 

 

I went to Home Depot with DH one day, we bought a dowel for 3.00.  DH came home cut it in half.  I sanded the cut edges and had two seam sticks for 3.00.  I dug through my stash and found some flannel to make a cute little cover for it and tah-da!!  My very own seam stick for only $1.50. 

Finished seam stick with cover.

Less is More

It has been a while since I have done any blogging or sewing of any kind recently, and I do mean a while.  (since school started, 6 weeks ago).  It has taken me this long to get back in the swing of things.  The first few weeks of school I was so exhausted when I came home that after cooking dinner I went to sleep on the sofa every night.  DH had to wake me up to go to bed!!  I finally feel like I am adjusted and can start doing some sewing in the evenings.  Last week I got on  a cleaning kick and decided that "less is more"  especially when it comes to closets.  I have four large garbage bags of clothes and other stuff that I haven't worn in ages that will be making the trip to Good Will later this week, or next week.  ( I want to do  some more closet cleaning).  I tried the trick where you turn your hangers the "wrong" way and if you haven't changed them in 6 months you should get rid of it.  I hated to get rid of some things, but if I havent' worn them in almost a year, I am probably not going to wear them now.  These four bags were just out of one closed and a dresser, I have another closet and dresser to go.  Wish me luck!!!

Never Forget

Another BOM

While surfing blogs earlier this week, I came across this new BOM that I just had to share.  The first instructions have just come out.  I have printed them and hope to get started on it.  I never make small quilts and have decided that I need to start working on some smaller pieces.  This BOM is from Sew Into The Fabric.  Check it out.