Livin' La Needle Loca

...wherein the finishing work continues. I have no photos of it at the moment, but take my word for it, it's in progress. I have done the preliminary sewing together of stitched item to baking. Some pieces are larger and rewuire more trimming and more sewing, but I'm inching towards done. The project getting the most play right now is Barbara Ana's Starwoman. There are a lot of colors in here that I don't typically use (or like)—oranges and yellows—so the stitching is sometimes challenging for me. I don't know about you, but I don't enjoy stitching in a color that I dislike. :-p Oh, well. WIPs Roll Call Worked On: Starwoman (cross stitch) Finished the upper border; working down the sides towards the arms. Finishing work (sewing) August 1997 Hat-of-the-Month (cross stitch) Bring Us Good Cheer CATrina (cross stitch) Cherub Garden (cross stitch) Collector's Heart 2026 (cross stitch) E...

 ...I was consumed with finishing something and forgot to post yesterday. I finished the beading and final stitches on Morgana, my 10th Mirabilia mermaid. I'm still trying to figure the photo setup in the studio, so this photo is not as good as I'd like. Specs: Morgana Started 1/21/2026 Finished 10/21/2026 Pattern by Mirabilia Modifications: replaced Waterlilies Fir color with 1 strand of DMC 523 (Light Fern Green) and 1 strand DMC 3813 (Light Blue Green); DMC 928 with 1 strand DMC 927 and 1 strand 928; replaced DMC 3747 with DMC 341 WIPs Roll Call Worked On: Starwoman (cross stitch) Working on the upper border Finishing work (sewing) August 1997 Hat-of-the-Month (cross stitch) Bring Us Good Cheer CATrina (cross stitch) Cherub Garden (cross stitch) Collector's Heart 2026 (cross stitch) Ewe Can Build a Snowman pincushion (cross stitch) Happy Pumpkin needleroll (cross stitch) Horrified!...

 and a finished object. Before we left on a short vacation to Seattle, I finished the La Cat-trina quilt: Specs : Started 5/5/2025 Top completed 5/13/2025 Finished 10/5/2026  Fabrics from the Day of the Dead line by Timeless Treasures and a raspberry batik fabric for border WIPs Roll Call Worked On: Starwoman (cross stitch) Working on the upper border No Work This Week: Another Catnip mouse (knitting) California Red Poppy Handspun (spinning) [ Ravelry ]   Gypsy Rose Lee Handspun (spinning) [ Ravelry ]  Illusion Cube Blanket (knitting) [ Ravelry ]   Morgana (cross stitch) My Recipes (cooking)  Room Divider/quilt wall. Starwoman (cross stitch) Studio  Website (other)  Queued for Starting Moon Lets Sun Shine (or Luna y Sol) quilt (quilting) Summer Typography (cross stitch)  Ready for Finishing: Finishing work for some...

...and a couple of finished objects for the end of the month. I can only show one of them now. The other I will post about when it arrives in its new home. My friend Jane asked for a replacement catnip mousie because her cat loved the last one so much it was falling apart. So here's the new one: Specs: Started and finished 9/29/2026 Pattern: Catnip Friends by Barbara Albright Yarn: Soft Classic in Primrose  from Loops & Threads Modifications: Used modified bobble stitches for ears instead of knitting them separately The stealth project is a cross stitch piece. More on this later. WIPs Roll Call Worked On: La Cat-trina quilt (quilting) Nearly done machine-quilting the flower motifs. I'm researching how to fill in the corners of the panel that don't have flowers and are plain black. Working on burying the threads. Another Catnip mouse (knitting) Knitting the body. Studio Ordered the blinds for the slider. No Work...

 ...and the quilting continues! I am still machine-quilting La Cat-trina. I'm using regular thread for this one after struggling with invisible thread on the Herding Cats quilt. However, invisible thread is a little more forgiving. I'm still learning my Bernina sewing machine and have discovered that sometimes I get an extra stitch when I step off the pedal and the quilt does not turn as smoothly as I'm used to on the Pfaff, even with the dual feed engaged.  I started working on a design for a double-size bedspread. The bedspread in The Husband's room wore out and we needed a new one. The problem is that we dislike most of the pre-made bedspreads that are available or they are too long even in the "right" size. I found a panel with a waterfall in colors that we liked. Since The Husband likes to hike and be out in nature, we decided to build a bedspread around the panel. I finished laying it out on paper. Next I need to decide which fabrics to u...

...Happy Mexican Independence Day! ¡Viva Mexico! I've been craving oatmeal cookies, not the soft cookies that bakeries and grocery store sell, but the crisp ones we used to bake at home. This morning, I baked a batch using our recipe from the 60s. They are yummy! I finished all of the back stitching on Morgana. I wasn't happy how the Kreinik braid back-stitching looked around the mermaid, but I powered through to get it done. It me longer than usual to finish the back-stitching. Ugh! Next is the beading. I'm going to do more quilting first. WIPs Roll Call Worked On: Herding Cats (quilting) Burying threads.  La Cat-trina quilt (quilting) Started quilting the motifs. Morgana (cross stitch) Back-stitching done. Pressed the iece and it's ready for beading. Starwoman (cross stitch) Working on the hair.  No Work This Week: California Red Poppy Handspun (spinning) [ Ravelry ]   Gypsy Rose Lee Hand...

...still quilting away. I'm on the last steps of the Herding Cats quilt. I finished machine quilting the blocks and the border. I added the binding and picked the fabric for the label. All that's left is burying all of the threads and adding the label. WIPs Roll Call Worked On: Herding Cats (quilting) Finished quilting blocks and added binding.  Morgana (cross stitch) Finished the cross stitches. Working on the back-stitching. Room Divider/quilt wall. Tested the new clips; they will work. Need to do all of the panels. Starwoman (cross stitch) Still working on the face.  No Work This Week: California Red Poppy Handspun (spinning) [ Ravelry ]   Gypsy Rose Lee Handspun (spinning) [ Ravelry ]  Illusion Cube Blanket (knitting) [ Ravelry ]   La Cat-trina quilt (quilting)   My Recipes (cooking)  Studio  Website (oth...

...Happy September! I finished a quilt! Burying the threads took a while, but I finally go them done. This is the Road to Chaos quilt. Specs: Started 2/10/2025 Top completed 6/11/2025 Finished 8/29/2026 Pattern: Yellow Brick Road by Atkinson Designs with some modifications Fabric: Happy Hour March 2020 Fat Quarter pack from The Granary; Grunge Basics in Blue Steel from Moda WIPs Roll Call Worked On: Herding Cats (quilting) Switched to using invisible thread for the top and black thread for the bottom. I'm much happier with how it looks! Morgana (cross stitch) Finished the hair. Working on the final fin. Room Divider/quilt wall. Worked on how to attach the felt and ordered some clips.  Starwoman (cross stitch) Still working on the face.  Studio Cleaned up the fabric scrap container No Work This Week: California Red Poppy Handspun (spinning) [ Ravelry ]   Gypsy Rose Lee Handspun...

 ...yeah, my brain is still one day off of reality. The Husband is back from his week-long camping trip. While he was gone, I enjoyed uninterrupted crafting time (if you don't count the cats whining at me) and just being with myself for a while. Before he left, he'd bought some fruit, much more than I could eat by myself. There was a container of blueberries that turned into coffee cake. Yum! Other than that little baking task, I concentrated on quilting. The Road to Chaos quilt is now in the final burying thread stages. The quilting and binding is done. I need to make a label and finish with the threads before I can declare it "done." WIPs Roll Call Worked On: Herding Cats (quilting) Started quilting the block motifs. I'm not having fun with this yet. Morgana (cross stitch) Still working on the hair. It goes on for days... Road to Chaos (quilting) Finished quilting the squares and added binding. In the proces...

 ...and the quilting continues. With 3 quilts and two cross stitch projects in process at the same time, the time just flies. In the middle of all of this, I'm reorganizing the way I handle finished projects and other things. I have a lot of pins that I have collected over the years. I had them in a display case but there wasn't enough space to display the box and I soon had too many pins to fit in the case. I looked for alternatives and found a pin collector holder.  I'm using 5 of the 6 pages that come with this holder. I have separate pages for Ravelry, Stitches West, Pacific International Quilt Festival, and the many stitching festivals that I attended. I used another page for  some miscellaneous pins along the way. As recommended by someone in the product reviews, I changed out their ring clasps with binder rings that were slightly larger. This holder doesn't take up too much space and works well for me. The only thing I need to figur...

 ...because somehow I'm a day behind this week. Sigh. I've spent a lot of the week quilting. I started with Road to Chaos. I thought it would be straight-forward, like most of my Yellow Brick Road quilts, but Chaos decided to be something else. Instead of my standard method of straight-line quilting from end to end, Chaos wanted different quilting in each section of each block. That's what happens when you put "chaos" in the quilt's name. WIPs Roll Call Worked On: Herding Cats (quilting) Completed sashing quilting. Morgana (cross stitch) Still working on the hair. Road to Chaos (quilting) Finished the quilting the sashing. Working on quilting the squares. Starwoman (cross stitch) Working on the face.  Studio Ordered and installed chair mat. No Work This Week: California Red Poppy Handspun (spinning) [ Ravelry ]   Gypsy Rose Lee Handspun (spinning) [ Ravelry ]  Illusion Cube Blanket (knit...

 ...so many projects, it's hard to pick just one to work on! I finished the Alphabet Afghan. I'm letting it hang up to hopefully get some wrinkles out before I take photos. I'm tweaking things in the studio. One thing that I needed to address was ordering a chair mat. Having to roll my chair between the computer and the sewing machine will tear up the area rug over time. It took a bit to figure out what size and type to order, but it's on its way. I'm starting to work on some of the outstanding WIPs, but there are other things that also need to happen. For example, I need to get some dust covers on the Baby Wolf loom and both spinning wheels. For the moment, the loom is covered with a decorative flat sheet, clipped in a couple of places. I'll eventually sew the corners into it, but it's good for now. As for the spinning wheel covers, I've cut out the pieces and need to sewing. Our garden path looked great in this morning...

...we now return to our regularly scheduled posts (I hope!). I have declared the studio "Done" for now. Here are a few photos. You can see the whole set in my Flickr album . Here is the view of the room as you enter through the courtyard: My worktable: My fabric and supplies stored in IKEA Expedit and Kallax bookcases: My exterior entryway: View from my work area to the courtyard: And I know talk talk about the courtyard frequently. Here's what it looks like now that the remodel is done: WIPs Roll Call Worked On: Alphabet Afghan (cross stitch) Finished the letters. Last thing to do is hem stitch around the perimeter. Studio Took the beauty photos. Need to sew covers for the spinning wheels and loom. No Work This Week: California Red Poppy Handspun (spinning) [ Ravelry ]   Gypsy Rose Lee Handspun (spinning) [ Ravelry ]  Herding Cats quilt (quilting)  Illusion Cube Blanket (knitti...

 ...the studio has drawn my attention away from many things, including posting. Yesterday, The Husband and I took a trip to IKEA to buy some replacement drawer units for my old cube storage. I bought two Alex units, which give me a file drawer for the remaining files that I have to keep and several drawers to store the remaining supplies that I can't find space for. I put them together yesterday and today I will get them in place. The last piece of furniture (for now) that I need has been ordered and will arrive tomorrow. It is a coffee bar cabinet that will house a refrigerator, glasses, cups, and utensils. On top will be my electric teapot and a one-cup coffee maker. The refrigerator will arrive next week. In the meantime, I am arranging my books on the bookshelves on the Murphy bed, using bookends to keep the books in place and museum putty to hold photo frames and small items TdF 2026, Day 8, 7/11 Continued chain-plying Gypsy Rose Lee [ R...

 ...and the Murphy bed is being installed in the studio today! The Murphy bed is the last big piece of furniture to install in the studio. With this installation, I can remove the final boxes from the POD and we can send it on it's way! I'm so ready for the POD to be gone.  The Husband did a stellar job of getting rid of the big box of melt-and-pour soap supplies. He posted them on Nextdoor and a woman came by yesterday and took them all. Hooray!  The last things I need for the studio are the folding room divider that will double as my quilt wall, a coffee/tea station with a mini-fridge, and blinds for the slider. The room divider is in my Amazon wish list, as are a couple of options for the coffee station. On my to-do list is a call to the samr company that did the blinds for my kitchen. Getting closer and closer to done! TdF 2026, Day 4, 7/7 I finished spinning the singles for Gypsy Rose Lee [ Ravelry ]. I'm going to hold off the plying becau...

...Happy July! I'm spending part of my day photographing the fiber that I want to spin for Tour de Fleece and getting it loaded into Ravelry. TdF starts July 4th and runs through July 26th. My goal is to spin down my Yarn Wench stash, but I might throw in a Greenwood Fiberworks braid if I get tired of spinning Falkland or art yarns. One thing I haven't talked about yet is the old project that surfaced during my unpacking the studio. In 2001, a co-worker and I started a cross-stitch baby afghan. We used the Alphabet Mania Charts from Heart in Hand. We each did two or three letters at a time. The charts originally called for Weeks Dyeworks threads, but that's not the best choice for a baby afghan because the threads tend to run when washed. We switched to standard and variegated DMC colors, which are more colorfast. In addition, we weren't happy with some of the letters. We changed J from jingle bells to jack-o-lantern and K from key to to ki...

...yeah, it's been a minute. And there's been a lot going on. My life has been consumed by trying to shove stuff from a 480 sq. ft. room that was very stuffed into a room with 40 sq. ft. less. Ack! Each time I open a box, I have to look at each item and make a choice whether to keep it or donate it. I ran into more handspun along the way. I got another under-the-bed bin and rearranged the bins under there to fit the additional one in. Whew! The two storage benches are crammed full of my fiber stash. Thankfully there is no overflow. We discovered that our plan to add casters to my worktable was not going to work. It would make the table too tall for short me (5'2") and the bookcase bases would not support the casters without reinforcing them with more wood. Scratch that. Instead, we found an 8-Compartment Mobile Backpack Storage Cabinet from ECR4kids, a school room product provider. The cubicles are the perfect size for 11x11 bins. ...

 ...no photos, sorry! I've been busy trying to get my room set up so I can sandwich the 3 quilt tops that have been waiting since September. The biggest problem I have is that I can't find my thread. Before I packed up everything for the remodel, I kept a couple of spools of thread in two shades of gray. Gray works for many things, but not for black fabric. Two of the quilt tops are primarily black and other colors.  I went on a quest in the POD for my thread. I opened all the boxes except the ones marked "books." I can't find it. 😱 Today, I pulled out all of the boxes that are handspun and fiber. With the loss of 5' x 8' of the studio, I need to come up with some alternate storage places. I am purging as much as I can, but I am not purging handspun yet. There's a lot. For now, I've stored the handspun in the under-bed storage containers that I had been using for some of my office stuff when I had my computer in the bedroom. I'm in the process...

...I've been a little busy in the studio! First, some eye candy. There are dahlias blooming: Hydrangeas: and the Blenheim apricots are almost ready! Hope we get some before the squirrels completely strip the tree! In studio news, we received our new IKEA Kallax bookcase and assembled it. We moved it and the Expedit bookcase together and I was able to load my fabric. Hooray! I also was able to move the photo boxes containing small tools, craft supplies, and office items into the room. The space above the bookcases are perfect for them. Yesterday, we built the new cabinet that will house the cat litter box in the studio. It has a door that will hide the box from view when they are not in there. It also has an odor control feature. The studio is my biggest WIP right now, but here's the WIP update that I missed posting on Wednesday. WIPs Roll Call Worked On: Morgana (cross stitch) Working up the torso to the upper body. Studio Star...

 ...and an updated WIP photo. My current mermaid, Morgana by Mirabilia, is coming along well. I finally finished the tail and was able to turn the project. I'm now working upside-down, which is not as hard as you would think. I'm one of those people who doesn't look at the picture when I do a jigsaw puzzle. I approach each connection by shape and color, but not necessarily by what the thing is. I do the same with cross stitch. I look at each section of color and how it relates to the other colors in the area, and whether I can move from one color to the other without crossing any open areas. This approach allows me to focus on that section and not be distracted by other design elements.  This approach also allows me to easily work upside-down. The only thing I have to worry about are the symbols. When I work on a mermaid. I photocopy the color chart. I trim it down and tape it to another piece of paper for thickness. I then place it in a memo...