House's House Quilt

This is relevant under the heading of Quilt Watching. Don't you just love when quilts turn up in unexpected places?

Speaking of unexpected finds...discovered this Hugh Laurie album in Starbucks a year ago. That's right - Dr. House is a killer jazz pianist. Honest!

 

[here is the link since YouTube is refusing to show in post:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGiNa-7opKk ]

Didn't It Rain album is simply excellent. [See what I Mean!? Evenin' is my FAVE. Which one is yours?]  All superb musicians with The Copper Bottom Band.
Take time to read Mr. Laurie's liner notes!!! Equally superb writing.

So after a year of dreaming and waiting impatiently, yes stamping my little foot the entire time, HL & The Copper Bottom Band [with  Elizabeth "Trombonista" Lea -  showstopper extraordinaire!] finally came to town! We got tickets third row center!! And this is what we saw!!!

House Quilt :)

 

In the spirit of One For My Baby...and One More For the Road (which they bring to a new standard on this album, btw), here is our original favorite Hugh Laurie piano, from way back, remember Jeeves and Wooster?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnCNJD3-e7g

 

"Oh, and one for yourself...of course."

 





Sewing for Music

This was Bill from Canada's idea. Bill is tenor in our community choir. Alex and I both sing in the choir. Well, Alex sings, and I am learning :)
Choirs don't use music stands like other musicians. Sometimes it can be challenging to hold all your music. Bill made a super sewing project that solves all that. Really!
Are you ready to see it?

 

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Ta-Da!

Bills genius idea is to sew an elastic handle on your music binder!

 

 

• I used 7" of one-inch-wide plain old braided elastic. I'm wishing I would have used 9".
• Tape elastic in place 1/3 of the way from top of binder. Make sure you can close the binder without stretching the elastic.
• Machine tack ends of elastic in place. Use any old needle that you are ready to throw out. I used darning foot and covered feed dogs.
• Bill was right, you must hand turn your machine. Not that it's not strong enough to sew on the binder, but the thread keeps breaking unless you hand turn.

You never know where you'll meet new sewing friends! And I'm always pleasantly surprised when the defi de jour is solved with stitches:)  ---Mom

T Creation for BVB

Saturday was one of the BEST days of my life! I went to my first rock concert. The 4 bands there put on the most spectacular performance! Even Mom was impressed, and she's been to a lot of concerts in her days. But I knew that it was going to be awesome. In my excitement for the show, I made my own band T-shirt for the Black Veil Brides, the main band at the performance.




To make the T-shirt, I first used a white colored fabric pencil to trace out the logo of BVB on the shirt. Then I used white puffy paint to trace over the pencil marks. The next step Mom did was to paint inside the lines with her good Donna Dewberry craft paint. This was a beginners mistake.

We should have painted the inside of the pencil marks and then use puffy paint to outline the logo. There was less puffy paint on the logo then there had been when we started painting it. Either way it will still be an amazing craft if you want to try it.

This shirt needed some shine. So I decided that it would be the perfect idea to cover the BVB in sparkles! Before the paint would dry, I sprinkled sparkles over the BVB logo on the T-shirts. Needless to say, for the next few days, our whole house will be very sparkly.

After covering the shirt in sparkles, I blow dried the paint with a hairdryer on low so I could wear it sooner. The blow drying did wonders to the time it would have originally taken the paint to be dry as our desert soil.

Of course, what would a concert shirt be without a few rips and tears? I took one of Mom's good scissors (with permission!) and cut some wholes on our shirts and cut a sleeve off. I made the last few touches with rips at the bottom of the tee. Some of the wholes were too big, so Mom closed them with "Zombie" stitches in pink embroidery floss. Now this shirt is ready to be seen!

I was overjoyed to get to wear an original shirt I made to celebrate one of my favorite band's arrival. My bands and their music are special to me and I hope that Black Veil Brides knows this and that everyone of their fans feel the same way.