Crafts

"Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint you can on it." Danny KayeWe had two months to create a quilt that was inspired by this quote. We met on Thursday and here are the quilts we came up with.This is mine. I'm pretty literal so it's a basic paintbrush with lots of color. After our meeting and on the suggestions of the group, I added some metallic thread on the brush and some paint splatters on it too. I also shortened the strings and added fabric beads to the end. Janice and I shared a fat quarter pack of solid colors and this is what she made. She still has to quilt it and we gave her our thoughts on that. Next was Sara. Most, if not all, the fabrics were painted or dyed by her. Not sure if you can see the quilting. It really enhances the quilt. Barbara Sawyer made this beauty. She painted, stamped and painted with thread. Grace made this. She painted with fabric trimmings. Anna couldn't make it but made sure her quilt did. I wish I took a better picture of it but this is all I have. This is actually painted canvas. You need to check her blog (link on right--Anna-the artist within) to see about the canvas. Our next quote is from Winston Churchill. "I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals." Could be fun. I pinned the green/aqua quilt this afternoon so I better get busy quilting it. I have been goofing off all day. Thanks for looking. Posted with Blogsy

This is a very simple to build router table made from half a sheet of 3/4” plywood and a 1/4 sheet of 1/2” plywood.

Custom hand turned solid hard maple newel posts. They are 9 1/4” diameter x 48” tall Thanks for looking!

During my daily craigslist browsing I came across this saw. I have seen them before but never in this good of condition. I can not find any info on it. Is anyone familiar with it? Thanks in advance. http://losangeles.craigslist.org/sgv/tls/3805301985.html

Market has been absolutely wonderful with good people, good friends, and lots of good things to see!I took a lot of pictures with my camera that I can't wait to share...I have just a few that I took with my phone that I'm using for this post.It's always fun to see quilts I've pieced---quilted and on display. "Fireworks" by Camille is pictured above.....And "Summer," also by Camille.Here are Jodi

I made this Jewelry Box for my wife for her Birthday. Its made from Maple with Midnight Blue Velvet, the drawers are also lined with Velvet. She can hang Necklaces in the door and bracelets in the back of the cabinet and there is also a 3 inch ring bar. For a finish I used 3 coats of Tung Oil.

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Hey folks….another upgrade for the old Performax ST (22×44) drum sander. This is the original drum sander that Performax made and it bolts onto a RAS. You can see previous mods here: http://lumberjocks.com/JL7/blog/19321 http://lumberjocks.com/JL7/blog/19348 http://lumberjocks.com/JL7/blog/21269 The sander has always worked great for me, until the other day when I tried to sand a 21×36 solid Maple desk top. I don’t usually use the full width of the sander. The problem was the cheesy plastic paper holding things just didn’t keep there grip and the paper would overlap and burn... (That’s the photo after I drilled out the rivets holding them in….) I called SuperMax, which is the original company that built the early Performax stuff, before Jet bought them…...and they are still in the Twin Cities, so close to home…... The young lady was so pleasant, I called right after she shut her computer down for the day, but she processed the order anyways, from memory…...works for me. The parts showed up today in the mail. Only gripes…..no instructions….and no counter weights….I wouldn’t have even considered the counter weights until I Google’d the directions, which I found in an obscure re-scanned document not on the SuperMax site. Thankfully, it described the correct weight for the counterbalances…... Here are the new grips: The outbound: The inbound…..this one uses some heavy spring pressure to keep the paper tight and is easy to load: I didn’t take photos, but without the counterweights, the drum was a disaster…..vibrating all over the place…...Panic ensued…. Luckily, a few day ago I bought a HF scale for weighing out finishes….....$16 with coupon. Good call, because I could weigh out enough washers to balance each end of the drum…...used super glue and hot glue to attach. Runs nice and smooth now. Oh yea…... Got a perfectly smooth solid Maple top (from old gym floor) on the sander….no burn:

I filled the blue Smash Book that I wasworking in, and started a new Green EcoSmash Book. Most of the backgrounds have something to do with nature. I mainly bought it because it was on sale--a steal at $4.00!Above, a drawing in Sharpie pen withwatercolor added.Drawings of some of the vintage bottles left over from the wedding decor, alongwith some quotes and notes. I likethe pre-printed background on thesepages of the Smash Book.This page, above, includes an excerpt froma book I was reading, some doodles,painted trees, and a list of memory boosting foods- which I definitely need! I was having a good day on April 15,until I heard about the Boston bombings... More notes about how I spent a daywith my family at a Maple Syrup Festival ...a fun time,and a beautiful day.Something about Amish buggies makesme smile, though I do wonder how manyclose calls they have competing withcars for roadway space!Many times I don't put a specific date ona journal page, just my signature and the year.However, I am thinking it's time to changethat and date my pages. (Even though I don'twork on the pages in chronological order- Ioften 'skip around') Do you always dateyour pages or your art work?

I have a project that calls for making 3/4” x 3/4” edging and I’ve been wanting to make one of these jigs for the longest time so I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to finally make it. I actually bought the bearing about six months ago on eBay for something like $4 from China (yeah, whatever…) and the nylon bushings from McMaster Carr (I had a really hard time finding these anywhere else and now I have a pack of them, McM is like 30 mins away from my house so I just went and picked them up). Anyway, this was based on the Woodsmith Shop table saw ripping jig with a few modifications. I had the Rockler miter hardware kit laying around for a while now from a sale so I modified the base to use that. I cut the whole bottom piece on the bandsaw and rounded over the corners and made the holes for the knobs to go through. I somehow messed up the position of one of the holes but it really doesn’t matter in the long run. I had some leftover UHMW strip from a failed jig I had previously made so I repurposed it for the “runners” of the arm rather than using hardboard. Lastly, i purchased a 6” steel rule (a couple of them actually) from Harbor Freight and because my base differs from that of the plans I just cut roughly an inch off the steel rule and made a very shallow dado on the top piece so it doesn’t catch. I epoxied the rule to the base and it works like a charm. I zeroed the rule by first putting the bearing against the tooth of the blade and then making a mark on the base. Then i aligned the rule to that mark with epoxy on it and it worked out great. You can see the last two pictures on a test piece. The rule is set to 3/4” cut and the piece came out exactly 3/4” from two different calipers (the fractional caliper and the digital caliper whose batteries are obviously dying, which is why I just picked up the non-digital one today). All in all I’m calling this a great success. Very precise and should serve me well.