Projects: Beaded sewing kit and Scrap Crazy Quilt Block

This a rainy, cold day. A good day for working on my two projects, but first I'll show my progress so far.

I finished a pinkeep or radial pincushion for the beaded sewing kit. I followed the pattern in Volume 07, Issue 4 of CQMagOnline by Cindy Thury Smith: http://cqmagonline.com/vol07iss04/articles/860/index.shtml. The keep is 3 inches in diameter.

I've finished three embroidered motifs on the crazy quilted scrap block. I'm remembering how much I enjoy doing them after concentrating on beading for a few months.

Now to walk Glenna. She's bugging me to go.

Yellow and green teddy bear

My friend Ken got my laptop working, so I transferred the picture of my yellow and green teddy bear to my pc, and here it is! It was a gift for my great-grand nephew, Alex.

This is one of the projects I completed during my cross country train trip last summer. I made several kits to work on while traveling. The others were Christmas ornaments.

My trip started in Washington, DC, went through Chicago to Los Angeles with a stop to tour the Grand Canyon. This was my first visit there and was breathtaking no matter how many photos I'd seen of the place. But the biggest thrill was seeing California condors flying wild in the canyon. I remember my dismay when they took the last condor out of the wild in the 1980s for captive breeding. It worked! The 60 in the canyon are about half those now flying free.

Then I visited a friend near San Diego, another in Portland, Oregon and back across country to Portland, Maine for my granddaughter's fifth birthday party. I was gone a month and 4 days. What a pleasure!

Here are pictures of two of the ornaments. The other one was for the gift exchange in my crazy quilt group and was drawn by Susan Elliott, who posted about it on her blog: http://plays-with-needles.blogspot.com/2008/12/bear-hugs-for-christmas.html

Two current projects

I'm working on two projects, one beading and one crazy quilt.

The beading project is a cover for a needle book. Mary Tod introduced this book to our crazy quilt group. It describes and provides size guides for various types of needles and has a piece of wool felt adjoining to keep your examples of the type. The pages are 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 inches, comb bound. The title is The Needle Index, published by Valley Quail Chapter, EGA (ValleyQuail@comcast.net.) Our group was so taken with the book we made a multiple order to supply most of us. I'm planning to make the book part of a new carry-along sewing kit.

I'm using as base fabric a piece of muslin that I indigo dyed last summer during a festival at the National Textile Museum in Washington, DC. I trust I'll have enough to decorate some additional pieces for the kit.

The crazy quilt project is a result of my joining the crazyquiltinternational Yahoo group at Susan Elliott's suggestion. She's also in our crazy quilt group. Someone on the group reported they had made a block from the little scraps of fabric left over from other projects. I was inspired to make one of my own and make a challenge to the group to do the same. Here is the 12 inch block I made. It's posted in the group gallery and several people said it looks old fashioned. So, I've decided to embellish it totally in thread embroidery to keep it old-fashioned looking.

See my purple teddy bear.

Yes, I'm happy to be showing off the second teddy bear I've made from this pattern. It's for my great-grand neice, Isabel.

The first one I made last summer for Isabel's cousin Alex. Photo to follow.