Sewing In The Dark

Remember that lovely "red sunrise in morning" picture I showed you a couple of days ago? Well, it was "sailor take warning" for sure. DH and I have just gotten our power back after nearly 30 hours without and it is nasty around here. Yesterday I was able to sit in my window in the sewing room and cut out a new plaid bag, no mat,  no rotary cutter, and no pattern placement. I was able to place the pattern on the plaid lines and use them as the cutting guide and actually use real scissors to cut out the pattern. Oh, the plaid wadder, you say? Yup, I am not giving up as I think this will be a really cute bag when done. A few design changes have been made. There will be no patent leather but a really nice black suede instead. The topstitching will be simple straight stitch, not the triple stitch that nearly put my machine in the shop. Hey, what do you expect when there are 6-8 layers of fabric/interfacing, heavy thread, faux leather and a "I will not let this get the best of me" attitude?  Now that the power is back I hope to hit this bigtime. I am using Timtex on this bag and hope that doesn't put the project under either. This is the first time I have used this product for the entire bag. Oh, please, let it work!

About five years ago I went on an ice skate painting binge. I had seen large wreaths with ice skates on them going for about 100 dollars and just knew I could do it. Finding the skates was a different matter and not as easy as you think. Our daughters had long traded off their old skates and sure weren't going to give Momma new ones to paint. Thrift stores yielded nothing. Eventually a friend of a friend came through. I still love this wreath. The skates are really much prettier in person. The eyelets and their dots are crusty with opalescent sparkles and the ribbon is very sparkly and opalescent as well. The glitter on the blades looks a lot prettier too, being very chunky and sparkly. If you want to do this, paint the skate with two or three coats of black acrylic paint. Make sure they are good and clean and dry before you start. Then spray with a coat of urethane. Paint away your details. Put gobs of glitter wherever you can with a glue that won't wash out. I may have used Sobo. I used that chunky glitter you can get at Michael's and some glittery fabric paint, the stuff in the little bottles. Put on another coat or two of urethane spray. Find a big bushy wreath and a fat fluffy bow and you are good to go. Oh, and don't hang these in 70 MPH winds! Those blades can do some damage! I hope to get a pic of the wreath up once I fresh it up with a new big red bow.

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Time to clean up around here, self included, and hopefully hit the SR.....Bunny

Chairs, about 20 feet from where they sat proudly!