Spring!

Hello all!

I made my first Summer dress earlier this month, when the warm weather was getting into my bones. Not quite practical for the sun-then-snow nature of March in the High Desert, but I'm sure it will become quite useful when it is scorching in a couple of months. For now, it can be transformed into a warmer jumper with the addition of a cute blouse.

I made it using this Simplicity pattern. It was a good pattern and after I found the particular pieces for my size and cut them out, whipped up quickly. It did have an invisible zipper in it, which always complicates things, but I was satisfied with how it turned out. 

I came up with an idea for a "one piece wrap blouse" earlier this year. 

Well, alright -- it isn't quite one-piece, but it's pretty close. Here's a diagram I've drawn up:

The basic idea is a bodice that is completely one piece like the one in the picture above (minus the attached ties you see.) Technically, all that you'd have to do is hem the entire shape, attach ties and sew the shoulder fronts to their backs, and voila, you have a blouse. 

 I did add sleeves to mine, as well as Velcro at the lower neckline to keep it shut for modesty's sake. Oh yes, I added a bit of blue eyelet trim as well, for modesty's sake to say nothing of pretty accents. The blouse pictured above was my first try at this concept and holds lots of room for improvement, but it was as good start. I like the idea of making sewing simple, and especially with blouses since they tend to daunt some of us. This idea uses ties as a closure instead of buttons, clasps, or a zipper, which greatly simplifies things. 

The blouse could definitely benefit from shaping, for wearing comfort as well as for not looking like this:

Flattering, eh?

(It looks much better worn on a person than on a dressform, by the way.)

So that's a work in progress that I may return to sometime to perfect.

Aside from sewing, I made a birthday card today with the theme of wildflowers.

It was rather busy - or shall we say elaborate instead?

I had fun with all those decorative borders!

Spring is crowding out the brown around here. I LOVE it when the valley turns green. It makes me so happy!

In a few months, it will look like this. Can't chase away all the brown!

It's funny how this scenery, with its small amount of spring growth compared to many places, has grown on me over the years. Coming from a wet Oregon valley as a little girl, I sure disliked the dryness of this country, but now I love it. (With a sort of love that still appreciates it when the farmers below irrigate their pastures! Relative dryness, not Sahara please.)

Brave little souls!

to God be the glory,

Miss Humphrey

Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:

Romans 6:3-5

Crafty Projects

 Greetings!

I hope you'll enjoy looking at some crafty projects I've been doing recently. 

I water-colored this autumn tree yesterday.

One of my favorite pictures to paint this fall has been a mill house with autumn colors suggesting a hill of deciduous trees in the background. But when I add those beautiful oranges, yellows and reds to the background, all of the sudden my mill house is about to be engulfed in flames!

 It can be difficult to give the impression of autumn colors without also hinting at eminent catastrophe; especially when I'm painting a forest of trees. So I did what I should have done long before; I looked at a tutorial . After implementing some of the techniques in my own way, I am satisfied with the result and hope to make my trees more realistic in the future.

I've made some Cowboy Christmas/winter cards to sell at a local shop. I have made them in 2 sizes; the larger size has sentiments inside while the smaller cards are blank.

 I made 3 categories of "sentimental" cards: encouragement, birthday and Christmas. Each of them have western sentiments for the occasion. Here's an example of an encouragement card.

I am making progress on my quilt, which features English Paper Piecing. 

(The process I was taught and the one in the tutorial are very similar; I baste my fabric "hexies" around the paper hexies instead of gluing them.)

I have yet to applique some of my hexagon circles to quilt blocks.

I hope to add a few more colors to my quilt, but for now I have teal and bright green.

As you can see, the circles are quite large when finished. The quilt blocks are 20" squares, so I don't have to make too many of them to make a big quilt; perhaps 3 blocks across and 5 down. 

I plan to put a large border of color around the finished blocks and sashing to make the finished quilt twin or double sized.

This is a picture of one of my quilt blocks folded in quarters. I just thought that it would make a pretty block by itself with the hexagon corner embellishment. This would be neat for napkins or fan-quilt style blocks. 

To finish, here's some Autumn Morning pictures from the high desert.

to God be the glory,

Miss Humphrey