Wabi-Sabi Sewing

A couple of books I have in my library stack need to be returned because someone has requested them. Wabi-Sabi Sewing by Karen Lewis is one of them. The subtitle is 20 sewing patterns for perfectly imperfect projects. It is published by sewandso company in the U.K.

They all look pretty perfect to me. I really like the soft aesthetic of this cover quilt on the bed. I also liked the hand sewing on the jeans in the background. Just some running stitches to decorate the jeans.

I liked this applique quilt too. It uses the Hawaiian style applique, but adds extra colors and shapes.  I like the blue color too.

The yellow and grays in this quilt made me think of Sunlight in Winter blog. The colors look more orange on my computer screen, but they are yellow in the original.

I really like this page that shows all of the projects in the book.

Books like these make me feel calm and relaxed just looking at them. 

My Library Stacks

I am following Tierney's library stacks and sharing my own.  Today, I have not one, not two, but three library stacks to share with you today.

The first stack are the books I checked out this week. To highlight a couple of books from this stack,  Journal Sparks and Joyful Daily Stitching are books I have checked out before. Journal Sparks gives lots of great ideas of writing in a journal, and also has lots of beautiful visuals.  The Drawing School is one I will be following to get over my fear of drawing. It is very basic, kindergarten level drawing, which is here I need to start. It has a large variety of drawings, with step by step directions on how to draw each one.

This picture may look like last week's picture, but it shows that I haven't returned my previous books.  I have an overflow! I also have one ebook, The Forgotten Seamstress, which is an interesting historical fiction.

Lastly, this stack is books I was able to pick up for sale at the library! I didn't go to the Friends of the Library Big Book sale because it is just so dangerous, but there were quilt books for sale at my local library.

 It is making me nervous that they are selling so many of the quilting books, but it looks like they are reducing their book stacks in general. Maybe more people are reading e-books or giving up on books altogether. Some of these books are pretty skinny, so I had to lay them out for you to see the titles.  A lot of books didn't have library labels though so maybe a quilter is just clearing out her excess.

Quilts from El's Attic is by Eleanor Burns, and Quilting Those Flirty 30s seems like it has a lot of interesting patterns. The Uffizi is paintings from an art gallery. I was going to get a children's book so I could cut out pictures for a junk journal, if I ever get around to making one, but chose this one instead because it is bigger for the same price, and has more variety of paintings. It doesn't have the cutesy factor a children's book would have, so we'll have to see if I can cut it up.

Library Shelf #1

Tierney Creates gives you a view of the books she got from the library and I thought I might do the same. Let me tell you first that I find that it is risky to tell you what I have, because then you might request it from the library and I won't be able to renew it if you are waiting for it.  I thought that maybe I could show you a stack of books I am returning, and then I won't have that problem, but that would be too hard for me to keep up, so you will just have to promise me not to ask my library for the book until I am finished with it.

I will review some of these books at a future date.

I am excited about this stack because I spent the day at the library on Saturday for a genealogy conference.  They had all these genealogy books ready for us to check out, but I was more excited about the quilting books I hadn't seen and grabbed as many as I could carry. This shelf in my house is reserved for library books.

No other books are allowed here so I don't return any of my own books. No, I can't carry all the books on that shelf; some of these books were already on my book shelf. We are allowed to check out 50 books at a time. There are books on cooking, psychology, art, and of course quilting. Most of the children's books have been returned. I got them for the pictures so I could practice drawing but I didn't get around to that before the books had to be returned.

The other exciting about this shelf is the shelf underneath the one you can see.  There is half a shelf full of books I got this year at library sales, at less than $2 a book. Most of those are quilting books, which I thought was bad news because maybe they are buying fewer quilting books, but the shelves at the main library was promising.

There is a big library book sale this weekend, but I should probably avoid it.

Book Review: Mother Goose Remembers

I found this adorable children's book from the library. It's called Mother Goose Remembers by Clare Beaton.  It has the common rhymes, and some that weren't familiar to me, but that may not mean much since we didn't read them as children.



Have you noticed that the graphics are actually handwork - applique, mostly wool, with a smattering of embroidery, along with some beads and buttons?  Humpty Dumpty is looking dapper with his bow tie and suit jacket and his spectacles. The wall even has a fossil in it, and the big bunch of flowers with buttons are going to help soften his fall.

I spent a long time admiring all the details in this work. Here's Wee Willie Winkie running through the town in his night shirt.  Notice the moon and the little tiny beads in the stars. The houses have chimneys. The windows have window panes and the doors have panels. There is even a doorknob.

It even comes with a CD so you can sing along. I did not listen to the CD so I can't speak to the quality of the music. Here's the cat with his beautiful intricate fiddle complete with bow and the dog is really enjoying it and singing along. The dog even has a collar with a tag. Look at the little tufts of grass behind them.

There Was a Crooked Man is one of my favorites. The croked man goes past the crooked fence to walk his crooked mile and the cat and mouse are there to keep him company. The garden and the house fit him perfectly. He still has his crooked sixpence, so maybe he hasn't bought the cat yet. This cat would be perfect for a Halloween themed quilt. The page has a nice rickrack trim and the clouds and the birds help complete the scene.

Scrap Quilt Secrets

Scrap Quilt Secrets by Diane D. Knott gives us six secrets on how to make coherent, cohesive scrap quilts that look beautiful while using up the scraps. The secrets are coded using the first letters of the word "SCRAPS". Some of them are available on her blog, but I will leave you to find out these secrets.

There are 16 projects, according to the cover, so I am not going to go through them all, but here are my favorites. The colors in this project makes me think of OSU Buckeyes, and I love how the simple pattern can make such an interesting quilt.

I almost wanted to start digging through my stash to make this one, but I remembered I have Glitter which only has one block made, and think I should wait until I have more patience/confidence to make something like this. A four block quilt like this would be do-able though! This doesn't look much like a scrap quilt, but the backgrounds are scraps, and the orange and red are constants in this quilt.

Another simple and pretty block.  Scrap quilts don't have to be bright and colorful!

The cover quilt is also beautiful, and more in line with what I would think a scrap quilt looks like.