Greetings from Becky in Eastern Oregon!

First of all, a special thanks to Sylvie for putting this together and asking me to guest post! Her computer skills far surpass mine, and her sewing and artistic skills have been so inspiring!

I'm a stay-at-home mom with little opportunity to travel, so seeing her travel photos and reading her blog has been a real treat! We use solar power in our lives, and that's how I "met" Sylvie, on the Etsy "Solar-powered team".

Besides mothering, sewing, blogging, and harvesting the sun in Eastern Oregon, I also enjoy gardening and trying to cook as much as I can for my family naturally and from scratch. My kids have begun the teen-transition though, and it's getting harder and harder to keep up with their voracious appetites LOL! It's also harder and harder to steer them away from all of the sugar and junk food out there. I myself fall victim from time to time, but with Spring here, we've been able to start planting our garden, and hopefully soon will have a ton of fresh berries and veggies. Here's a picture of our garden.
I started my Etsy shop in an attempt to make a bit of money to make ends meet. I made a few Kindle covers for Christmas, and soon had many people asking for them. I'm "solarthreads" on Etsy, and so far I've sold more than I thought I would, but I'm hoping to sell more. I have these all ready to bind and sew together right now.
I also quilt, and have recently become addicted to fabric postcards. Here's my most recent quilt, and some postcards that I'm getting ready for a swap that I'm doing.
My personal blog is "Beckysblabber". I'd love to see you over there too! Thanks again to Sylvie, for inviting me to be part of her blog!!

A quilt with a difference!

Hello all... as you read this, I'm about to leave to cross the puddle...from Panama to the French Polynesian Islands....I scheduled the post hoping that we would have already left...ha ha
So no we are actually leaving on Sunday and really hoping for some wind because the weather for the month preceding our departure was..no wind...the more wind we get the faster we go :-) unless of course it gets to gale proportions and then......oh well you don't want to hear that....about this quilt... A few years ago I decided to try something different ...I'm not so good at sewing small squares and triangles and such but I still wanted to make something special for my boyfriend's, niece who was soon turning 21.

This is what I came up with:

Gemma's Quilt..she loved it :-D

The Mermaid (Gemma) looking dreamily into the ocean.

A section of the border.

I started the quilt when I was in the UK and worked on it  till I got to The Canary Islands. David and I were flying back to the UK for a few weeks so I took it back with me and sent it to Jenny. The quilt was quilted on a Gammill long arm machine by a lady called Jenny Spencer, who lives up in the northern section of the UK...I sent her the quilt with a note saying.."do whatever you like on here..have some fun"...she phoned me and asked me if I was for real...I told her yes.. I'd met her daughter at a quilt exhibition earlier that year and saw some of Jenny's work. That's when I decided to get her to do my quilts for me. She is amazing. Jenny, hangs the quilt up and looks at it for two or three days...and then over that time she gets inspiration as to how she'd like to quilt it...I just loved her work and phoned her the minute it arrived back in the post....! Exceptional stuff! I flew back to the Canaries and finished it there. I wanted the edging to look like rope..but I didn't do it properly..I learned a lesson there. ;-p Also the ribbon seaweed didn't work as well as I wanted it to...so I learned something there too :-) David took it back to the UK with him where it was exhibited at the Malvern Quilt exhibition...it got a mention but that was it...:-) Only after the show did Gemma finally get to see it. David tells me there were gasps of pleased surprise when it was unrolled and revealed to the family for the first time...made me go all warm inside :-)
I think I may have traced her ..there is a small picture of a quilt called 'Portholes' on this site that certainly looks like Jenny's work : -D
I've asked for a confirmation, hopefully they'll answer before I leave.. ha ha

The bottom right hand corner...

 This is the first of this kind of quilt that I'd attempted... I'm working on another one that is all hand done....I've not been concentrating on it and so it's been sitting about for a year or so...I intend to be a good girl and try and do some whilst crossing the puddle...

So it's what I've been doing while you read this..ha ha...I have finished upholstering the lounge suite  ugh....and I had made a deal with myself......lounge suite first..then quilt.....it's my reward for all the hard boring work..
:-D
Ciao my friends
Nice chatting with you....
I'll be in touch.
Sylvie.

Completed Twin Twins!

They are done! And they are sent off!! They will travel half way around the world before arriving at their new home in Australia!! I hope that the lovely girls they belong to love them as much as my little girls love their quilts ;)
These Twin twins took approx 3 weeks to finish, and I enjoyed making them a lot. This was my first sale from etsy!! super exciting!!

A photo of a Rose.

A wonderful fiend of mine from school days recently sent me some photo's of flowers in her garden. I'd been playing around with the idea of producing a new range simply called Floral Bouquet. The problem was how was I going to do it. i thought of dyeing the whole background and then painting a flower or two on top...but that's too similar to my animal blocks...and this time I wanted the white of the fabric to be incorporated into the flower...if needed...so I couldn't pre-dye the fabric...hmmmm dilemma!

Then as I said...this photo arrived and hey presto I just knew what I was going to do.....

Just look at that! Stunning it is.
So now I'm going to be painting each block ..first the back ground then one or two flowers that are crisp and clear. This is something new and for me very exciting. I'm going to be using a fine woven cloth .....100% cotton of course that I have already washed and shrunk.

I'm going to do Roses, Iris's, Pansies, Sweet peas, Lily's,  actually whatever grabs my fancy.....I'm also thinking of doing an African Wild Flower range too. :-D

Creations that inspire me.

I'm always browsing through books and magazines, looking for ideas and inspiration. Sometimes it's a photo of a hummingbird sipping from a flower or I walk past a bird who is staring intently into a puddle, seeing it's reflection. When I see these things I hopefully have my camera on hand and I take a photo. later I can look at it more closely and garner ideas.
A friend of mine had this wonderful book on manipulating ribbon to create flowers.  It immediately got my attention and I wanted to stop everything right there and then and start learning how to do this. Well of course I couldn't. The book wasn't mine and I think it's now out of print, so I can't buy it unless I pay collector prices...which I can't afford....so I live and dream. What I had done though was to take a photo of one or two photos of examples in the book that caught my eye.

Of course you can't just go ahead and twist ribbon expecting it to turn out like this! you'd have to, most certainly go and buy a book :-).

There are other examples of peoples work that have caught my eye over the years..one is of a quilt made by dyeing the background and then using different coloured thread to 'draw' the design on. brilliant idea I thought. Of course I've seen it in monochrome but this was the first one I'd seen in colour. I truly gives me a boost when I look at it.

The hours of work that went into this! I'm sure it wasn't much faster than making a traditional quilt.
Then there was another quilt I saw somewhere..can't remember when or where, but I took a photo and look at it occasionally. It holds me in awe...so beautiful, I hope that one day I can produce something somewhere close to this creation.

 I hope you enjoyed the sharing and that it gave you some inspiration too. ;-)

Welcome!! to Solar Threads !!!

Solar threads has just joined us. Becky is new to Etsy.com and has made her debut with kindle bags..they are really beautifully made. :-D

I have put an advertisement of her shop along with the us all down the right hand side of the blog. Go and have a look at them..

Once again !!! pa parah pa parah toot toot... welcome to Solar Threads...drum roll .. :-D

See ya all
Sylvie

WELCOME! to Sticks N Stones Gifts.

Welcome, welcome to Stick N Stones Gifts! This is a store run by sisters and they are making all sorts of different things. You've got to see them...Anyway they have decided to join this blog, Yay!, and post some interesting stuff for us in the near future. Wonderful!

Remember guys..you can post any time you like..just put your shop name in the Label space down at the bottom of your post and all your posts will be linked together.

Okay nuff said..have fun and lets boogie!
Cheers
Sylvie.