Chenille

After looking through almost all off my old quilt magazine I came over an article that described how to make Chenille. And I just had to try it out. It is EASY as it can be.

I grabbed some of my homespun scraps. Flanell works, too, as any other lightly woven fabric, but my preference for rag quilts and chenille is homespun. With several layers of fabric flanell gets very heavy while homespuns still keep it light especially in a bigger size.

For my little try out sample I cut five squares of fabric, stacked them on top of each other and sewed a diagonal from one corner to the other. I kept sewing seams with 1/2 inches of the the previous one on each side of the diagonal all the way out to each corner.



After that step you cut in between all seams through the four top layers, just not the bottom one.
I used the Clover Slash Cutter instead of scissors for that step.

After all the cutting it went in the washing machine and dryer to fray and this step added all the softness to the fabric --------- chenille.

Just Yummy

On our second trip to Austin this month, I could not resist buying fabric - my sewing machine is dusted off by now, too - the deals were just to sweet and the fabric just gorgeous. I love it, so much that I can't cut in it yet and it is nicely stack up next to me to look at.

It is so hard to resist buying just all of it, so I had to ideas in my head and pick them out for it. One or two more slipped in the stack, but I can't wait to see how those ideas turn out.

Soren loves all the buttons on my sewing machine, too, and the wheel, and the foot and, ......

CAN'T KEEP HIS HANDS OFF IT!

AWESOME

That is one of Bella's favorite words lately! She doesn't have it from me. But from Holly, a little friend in school and I get to hear ALL the time. And she does use it well.

Sundays turn out to be our roadtrip days during Oma's vacation time here. The week before it got shortened after Soren puked in the restaurant and Oma didn't feel well neither on the way back, so we decided to go back south to Austin again.

We admit, JoAnns also had sweet deals in fabric we could hardly resist. So we left bright and early, this time the shopping plaza was already saved in the GPS - by the way we named him/her Luigi - and found our way there easily, if we ignore the wrong not turn we did once on the toll road in Austin. We were chatting too much and the road was just empty. LOL.

We took our time there - it is perhabs good that this store is not next to my grocery store anymore as it used to be in Massachusetts - you can imagine why grocery shopping took forever in Ludlow. lol.

Here are our $10 additions to next year's Christmas decoration. Aren't they cute?

Can you imagine spending over $125 on those? NOT ME.

Here are more goodies from JoAnns.

You could say awesome to that, but that's not what Bella used it for. She and Chiara, too, are talking about the Inner Space Cavern in Georgetown. The kids never have been in a cavern before so the adventure tour there was a truly an adventure for them.

Chiara was not the slightest bit scared, beside the time when it was pitch black dark, because the guide turned of ALL the light. Fantastic idea when you have a squirmy 18 month old on your arm and a 6 year old holding your hand. Bella was afraid Chiara would get lost because she was always at the head of the group sticking close to the guide and ended up getting her own flashlight to shine and point on the way back to the cable car to travel back up the 40 feet to the surface.



P.S.
I know that I am always a week late lately, but eventually I will catch up and be right uptodate again. Some day.

Aubrey - I use a CANON XSI camera since this summer. I still have a lot to learn, but I am working on it.

and a little thing out of felt again

Every year when my mom comes visiting we dig through almost all of my quilting magazines and books and just as it goes even we have seen them all before we do find something new one of us is interested in or we just want to try out. And with my sewing machine still collecting dust, working with felt just needs scissors, a needle and thread and a comfy spot on the couch.

Something makes PEEP

Perhabs it's the new year, perhabs not, but on the first Sunday in January we (Bella, Chiara, Soren, my mom and me) made a roadtrip to Austin and spent lots of time at JoAnns. I haven't been there in months because I do have a stash of fabric and my sewing machine was collecting a little bit dust. But we my mom's visit we had the perfect excuse to go and I didn't buy any fabric - just felt and a few knickknacks. Soren had a blast just exploring the entire store and the girls were helping picking fabrics for themselves and for Oma.

A evening later the first of these three little birds was done and soon got more company.



Who would have thought that such an itty bitty bird would take so much work to be done. LOL.

Sometime last week was a sick day!

Yes, this goofy big kid was not allowed to go to school and was sooooooo sick. Nada. She was perfectly fine after a night's sleep and we had to run in town to get replacement parts to fix the burn outs from the dryer cord and outlet. So we stopped at Cici"s, one of Chiara's favorite places with an awesome manager. One that really goes out of her way to have HAPPY customers. Take my word.

Who can resist the yummy brownies there everybody was eating? - Me, I take the applepie.

We stopped at a store on the same plaza - isn't it nice to be able to walk to the next place without putting everybody in the car and Soren found something that would have been PERFECT for his godmother!

Guck Mal, Karin! - Wir haben wenigstens ein Foto gemacht. Oder zwei.

After all the food and shopping of course there were two who enjoyed last week's nice weather outside with puzzling on the front step.

Peek - A - Boo

Penguins - one, two, three, ..... many more

These adorable little penguins were our New Year's craft and one of the first out of felt.

They are so easy to make with brads for eyes and cheeks and my girls even changed them up easily. Now we just need to find some snow for them to stay cold here in warm Texas.

She is here! - OMA

It was a busy week with all kinds of errands, shopping, crafting, disasters, sicknesses, breakdowns, burnouts - so pretty much AS ALWAYS.

But on 01.01.2009 at 17:09 we picked up Oma at the airport. She is finally visiting from Germany again after 15 months and the kids are crazy about her. Of course, she is up for everything including jumping on the trampoline, ...

... playing lots of games, reading stories, bringing the girls to the bus, sewing a horse pillow cover for Chiara's bed, treating us for lunch, ...

Soren is usually in a good mood, silly and goofy, but a big mama's boy. After a few days he now does love just to go to Oma, too, even when I am close by. Yeah.

How do you clean house with a monkey?

I am typing here with a little monkey on my back. Dressed in a red pyjama top with a moose. Monkey is clinging on my back and squealing everytime my fingers touch the keyboard instead of pulling him up.

Is New Year's Eve not the time of digging out old memories of the past? It happens to me today not yesterday. While cleaning house. Usually when it was time to clean while I was college, I poured me a glass of wine, turned the music on and danced through the house cleaning and scrubbing. It didn't take too long. How big of a mess can one person make in a one room apartment including kitchen make? So one to two hours later everything was sparkling clean and clean. Yeah. That were times.

Now, the present and the future, there are more as ONE person in this house making a disarray of it and truly a mess or two or three. One to two hours of cleaning gets you NOWHERE. But you can save the wine and the music because you get your entertainment LIVE. Right here and there.

While cleaning the monkey is following you every step if their is no sisterly or kitty distraction. In between the shoes of mama monkey are spread throughout he whole hallway even they were all lined up nicely in the bedroom, two by two in pairs. Okay the could use a scrubbing, too, the gravel outside always leaves something behind, but you do not need to throw them, monkey.

#1. In the bathroom some ingenious builder put two big sliding mirror doors in the closet plus the glass doors of the shower and the big mirrors covering the rest of the bathroom walls. So to show the best intentions mama monkey is polishing off all the monkey fingerprints of the doors while playing PEEKA BOO. It is a fascinating game for little monkey so it just doesn't want to find an end.

#2. Leaving the bathroom after new monkey prints were spread all over the mirror doors we switch to the kitchen and had to do dishes with a big chair right next to mama monkey, sleeves pushed back and water splashes. Giggles are fine. Helpers wanted. Double scrubbing of all the plastic and supposed to be unbreakables. Fantastic. Sipping on the alreadr washed put second set of dish water. Yummy.

#3. Change of scenery because no mater how much we do in the kitchen it is always coming back to me. Monkey is tripping of shoes on the hallway on the way to the bedroom. Monkey sees a nicely made bed and thinks it's time to use its climbing and jumping skills to make a new design of disarray of sheets and covers.

#4. Laundry. Monkey is now staying out of the laundry room. Usually he is always in first row slamming the doors of the washing machine and dryer closed WHILE mama monkey is putting clothes in and out. It stinks in the laundry room. The only machine running is the dryer. We all have a bad feeling about the existence of the dryer. Please stay with us a little bit longer BUT get rid of that smell.

#5. It is NAP TIME.

By the way taking a peek not peeka boo on the clock more as 3 hours are already gone. And a sister walked by picking up a pair of shoes of mine and set it nicely behind the front door.

Wonders do happen.

the ONE perfect shot ...

..

... is IMPOSSIBLE. With my kids NO possible matter.

But no matter what,

GoOd BYe 2008.

hEllO 2009.

HaPPy NeW yEAr.