The Beached Librarian

Quilting fabric swatch book

Written by admin on May 18th, 2012

One of the problems with quilting is needing to find matching fabrics for borders, binding, or the back. The easy route is to use all fabrics from a fabric collection (like I did for the quilt I made for my niece), but sometimes you need a solid (colour or white) to match for a particular pattern or an extra few bits to add more colour to a fabric collection. If I could find a list of what fabrics (solids and such) matched the collections I was using, I’d gladly be lazy and just buy what I need online, but one can never be sure and I’d rather pick such things by hand. So, I need samples when I head out to the fabric store. I started cutting some swatches to carry around with me in my wallet, but it occurred to me that it might be neater, easier, and more fun to have a small notebook to put swatches of pieces I’m working on, have planned, or already did. I do have a few projects that won’t make it in the book because I don’t have fabric to spare (I’m using charm packs and need every square inch to make my planned patterns work).

Here are a few pages:

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Grout

Written by admin on May 15th, 2012

I’m a renter, but I still love reading about home decor and renovation. One of today’s Apartment Therapy’s articles was Pros & Cons: Dark Grout in the Bathroom. If you’d asked me before I read the article, I would have scoffed at the idea of anything but light grout with white tile, but the pictures they used to show the contrast between light or dark grout with white tile intrigued me, so I did a image search and saw a lot of really great examples of dark grout done well. I like how the dark grout breaks up and white and adds a little je ne sais quoi.

Click image for source

Of course, lots of people will be familiar with the traditional dark grout with honey comb or hexagonal tiles (a classic and a favourite, I don’t know why I never noticed how much better it looks with dark grout).

Click image for source

Sometimes the grout colour can really make or break a tile job. Like in the image below. The light grout distracts you from the lovely pattern.

Click image for source

And, sometimes the preferred grout colour will depend on your personal taste and the effect you’re looking for. In the image below, I prefer the light grout because it makes the tiles really pop and shows off the pattern.

Click on image for source (an article about picking the right grout colour)

Of course, sometimes it’s all about the tile. When I win the lottery I want a shower lined in an amazing mosaic of tiles like the one below (incidentally, they used lighter grout, but then used enhancer around the darker bits to make the grout darker in those areas).

Click on image for source

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Tulips

Written by admin on May 14th, 2012

I went to check out the tulips while in Ottawa. It was a lovely summery feeling day and the tulips were beautiful.

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Outfoxed quilt

Written by admin on May 8th, 2012

I made a quilt. It’s just a wee baby quilt, but it’s my first complete quilt (previously, I have only dabbled in practising making quilt tops). I even embroidered a label on the back.

Fabric is Outfoxed by Lizzy House. The pattern is just something I made up, but it’s based on a bunch of similar patterns I’ve seen online and in quilting magazines.

The quilt:

A close-up:

The back:

The label:

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The glow of the morning sun

Written by admin on April 26th, 2012

A particularly lovely sunrise. Almost makes me think Edmonton can be pretty :P

Posted in Pictures, World of wonder | No Responses »
Tags: sunrise

It was a felty weekend

Written by admin on April 24th, 2012

I recently won a giveaway on Aimee Ray’s blog, little dear tracks. I won a copy of Heart-felt Holidays (by Kathy Sheldon and Amanda Carestio)and a banner that Aimee made (the banner is one of the projects in the book). Needless to say, I was pretty excited when it arrived on Friday and I spent a significant part of the weekend browsing the book and working on two small pieces based on projects in the book.

The first piece I did was a mini version of the pattern for a Mother’s Day pillow. I decided to go with vibrant colours and matching threads (though, in the book they use other colours of thread and it looks great).

The second piece is very loosely based on an Autumn themed table runner (which I love, so I will probably do the full sized project eventually). In the book, they describe how you can make the leaves look a little bit ruffled, but I didn’t feel that it translated well on these tiny leaves (they’re about half an inch long). I might add a few more leaves …

I still haven’t decided where the hang the banner.

Posted in Creative Stuff, Embroidery | No Responses »

Video: Celestial Lights

Written by admin on April 19th, 2012

The music feels a bit over the top to me (very dramatic), but holy smokes the footage in this video is amazing. It’s done by Ole C. Salomonsen (check out his website for more amazing work).

Posted in World of wonder | No Responses »
Tags: norther lights, video

Zombie voodoo doll

Written by admin on April 17th, 2012

A few weeks ago I bought a felt doll pattern from Gingermelon thinking that it would be a great way to start learning a bit about making stuffed toys and soft scultures. Around the same time, a friend of mine was lamenting about the people she works with (both her useless coworkers and her entitled clients). I decided to make my friend a voodoo doll that she could take her frustration out on the next time someone made her want to scream (which is often, as she works for a public library and has many “problem” patrons and co-workers).

I found a lovely pale green piece of felt in my stash and some contrasting dark green thread (I wanted the stitching to be a bit messy and to show), and I decided to make it zombie/dead thing style (because, let’s face it, there are many days when co-workers and clients can seem like the living dead). I winged the design and in the end it turned into dead thing as opposed to zombie, but I can’t seem to stop calling it the zombie voodoo doll.

As you can see, I haven’t sewn the head on yet, but otherwise, it’s pretty much done and I love it!

Posted in Creative Stuff, Sewing & quilting | No Responses »
Tags: dolls, toys

Moonlite landscape

Written by admin on April 17th, 2012

This is a piece that I did back in high school (almost 20 years ago … now I feel old) as part of an bigger, year long project.

At the beginning of the school year, our art teacher read us a passage from a book describing some scenery. The part that resonated with me was a full (?) moon shinning on to a field (or possibly the bank of a river). Originally, we just had to do one piece (a painting) relating to the scenery, but I was really drawn to the initial image and ended up doing several pieces:

I did a couple of different paintings providing different interpretations or using different styles
I painted on some plain unbleached cotton and used the pieces to create a patchwork piece for a quilt top (which was never completed, but still impressed the teacher)
I designed and made a small “line” if decorative pieces or jewelry out of fimo and random beads (I wore one of the pieces often and another piece was on my key chain for years – I still have the fimo beads/pendants I made)

This is one of the decorative pieces. I made the pendant and used beads (the large pale ones used to be a dark mottled green) and fishing line to make something inspired by dream catchers. The large beads and green glass beads represented the tall grasses that the moon shone over and the small glass beads were either the sky or the moonlight reflecting off the water, I can’t remember which.

I love this piece and was really disappointed when the large beads faded (they were cheap, so this happened almost immediately). I entertained the idea of getting new beads and redoing the piece, but eventually decided to move on and just relish in the memory of how awesome the piece was originally (and how the whole collection earned me one of the highest grades in the class … makes me wonder why I didn’t continue my pursuit of art beyond high school).

Anyway, after years of treasuring this piece, I finally decided that it was time to dismantle it. I’m keeping the pendant, but not the rest. It was a little sad dismantling it, but I have plenty more creativity in me.

The Beached Librarian

Musings of an ocean-loving, cross stitching disseminator of useless information

Quilting fabric swatch book

Grout

Tulips

Outfoxed quilt

The glow of the morning sun

It was a felty weekend

Video: Celestial Lights

Zombie voodoo doll

Moonlite landscape

Video: Salton Sea