A quick click and it can be yours...

Don`t miss the chance!

There is SOMEONE putting together an annyversary Give Away.

Winner to be picked on Thursday, Jan. 7th.

Wish you the best of luck ...
(...since I`m out, sniff, sniff, sniff...)

Just a question

Do your pieces of fabric take time playing hide and seek,

 like eye glasses usually do,

or just the ones I´ve brought home?

What can I do out of these two?

I´ve grabbed two pieces of cross stitch I've had for quite some time and decided to make use of them. I don´t even remember what I'd got them started for.

The problem is I´m not up to sewing another pillow right now. I can´t figure what to do out of them.

Take a look at them!

I guess I wouldn´t like to make this first one square. Maybe a banner of some kind... to hang from my future new home wall... I love birds and keep a lot of greens inside.

My daughter thinks this next emboidery looks awful.

I´ve learned not to take teenagers very seriously in issues that don't particularlly concern them .

 I suppose I´m going ahead with it.

Do you think I should ... or ... I´d better I listen to her?

The very first pillow

I´ve tried working with patches once in a while over the past, say, 30 years or more. Not regularlly but in fits of courage that never lasted long. Poor results are discouraging.

I didn´t know how challenging patchwork really is until a very short time ago, when I saw a pretty set of pillows displayed in a shop. It made me feel like trying to sew something similar. The result wasn´t totally bad but it was far from what I had imagined. I blamed on the different colors, but I just knew I had been caught and wouldn´t stop easily!

I looked up for some information in the web and found out there is much more to patchwork that one can guess at first.

I fell in love with this craft, or art, as you wish, and I have learned it from bloggers. I´m in it now. Or... it´s in me. It has taken hold of me, made my days more colorful, more creative, and hopefully it will bring me new friends.

See ya!

Getting started

I have decided to concentrate on easy and quick projects to start with. Pillows and place mats seemed a good choice. I´d like to share them with you.

Of course I had to get started with the Ohio Star, but later realized I didn´t get it quite right...

This project also showed me how difficult it is to put colors together for a nice effect! Too much pink, I think. There is no visual balance.

Now, the pillow I´ve made to Clara, a little baby girl coming up in January.

I seem to insist on pink and blue!

And these were the place mats I´ve got done, based on Art to Heart´s angels patterns.

All right! I have a lot to learn from you, so, be nice to me and say a word or two of encouragement (or not - it will do me good anyways) as you stop by...

I mean to go on learning how to quilt.  I´ll need help and support to make me feel part of a group of people with a passion in common.

Tks in advance!

Just need it!

As I have said before... it does get chilly in Rio!

Same view, different weather conditions.

I have been living in South Brazil now, where it is cold. Not a snowy country but, relatively to Rio,
it is very very cold.

Take a look! Not just chilly! It is icy cold.

This is a picture taken in a city park in Curitiba, where I have been living.

Yes, we do need bed warmers in this damp and cold place! I´ve bought a few comforters made in China over the years but  I´m not happy with them. I´ll be fulfilled the day I myself put a handmade comforter together. (Ooops! I don´t sound racional, but I guess this is not my strong point anyway! )

Since English is my second language, sometimes I must make sure I´m saying what I mean to say. Decided to check.

Wikipedia teaches those in doubt, like me:

A comforter is a type of blanket. Comforters are intended to keep the user warm, especially during sleep, although they can also be used as mattress pads. Comforters are generally large and rectangular in shape, filled with natural or synthetic insulative material and encased in a shell/covering. Like quilts, comforters are generally used with a set of sheets.


 Yes! 
Seems to me there is a difference. 
I want the pretty ones. I need quilts.
  


.... can you help an unexperienced quilter (of good will, though) with any suggestions? Quick + great effect? That sure would be nice! Something I can get done with by April 2010 when it is already cold in here...


Help me pls!

From Rio to Ohio

Many many years ago I was a young exchange student living in a small town in Ohio, with a family which I´ll forever consider my own. By that time I had only lived in Rio de Janeiro, at a very special spot, facing Copacabana Beach. I lived in a post card, really. The apartment building where I used to live is the second one from right to left.

... And I was taken to a completely different environment - as beautiful as the one I had come from, but every bit of it contrasting to my home place. The US country side is beautiful and you  will certainly agree with me! Take a look at the picture! I had never seen this kind of building shown bellow, which can be easily and frequently spotted  in the Mid West. In fact had never seen a barn in my life! I had no idea how colorful the vegetation may get in beginning of Fall, either.

The Ohio landscape was a vision to me as a teen ager, ages before the Web. By the time I was granted the schoolarship, the small town I went to did not show in any, I said any, map. Not even in road maps. Yes, this was a long time ago.

I took my daughter to meet my American family when she was 4 years old.  She felt just about the same visual impact I had experienced. However, she was, at that time, already familiar with the pictures in the many North American country style decoration magazines I used to purchase and treasure for obvious reasons. She found out for hersel Enchanted Land was true and she was in it.