Challenge Finish & A Fond Farewell

Goodbye, Leslie William Nielsen (Feb 11, 1956 – Nov 28, 2010)

Though he is most famous for his comedic roles in films such as Airplane! & The Naked Gun, I will forever remember him as the Heart Throb, leading man type. I will remember him as Captain John J Adams from Forbidden Planet, as Peter Brent in Tammy and the Bachelor, and as Charlie Telfer in Ransom!

 

Forbidden Planet

Tammy and the Bachelor

I doubt most people my age have ever seen those, or noticed him in them. But in their younger years, I believe Leslie Nielsen was far better looking than Sean Connery, and I am sad to see him gone.
♥

On a much happier note, today is the One Week Challenge link up. This past week was busy, busy with family gatherings & work. But I was able to meet my challenge goal and complete two of my needed three mug rugs! The first one started like this, during the November FNSI.

The idea was blue & green argyle. Honestly, the more I looked at that thing, the more I hated it. I think it may be the ugliest thing I’ve ever stitched together. So I scrapped it & bought new fabric FQs, in black, blue, green & light gray. Then I redesigned the mug rug to not use applique, and it turned out like this.

Once I’d bought the fabrics I went looking for the right mug, and I LOVE the one I found! I expected I’d just find something OKAY, and settle for whatever was available.  Instead, I found this great mug with diamond shapes on it to match the argyle.  The deep brown color goes nicely with the dark colors of the mug rug, but it’s so shiny, in most lighting it really just reflects the colors it sits on anyway!

The second one actually started with the mug.  This friend loves all things pink, and I had stumbled upon this cute, pink, friendship mug depicting two sheep sitting at a cafe table. My first plan was to make the mug rug sheep shaped, with cloud like scallops, a cute sheep face and four little legs sticking out the bottom.  I knew I couldn’t bind that, so I made the sheep top, layered it inside out, stitched it up & turned it.  It was perfectly cute every step of the way… until I finished turning it right side out.  At that point, it showed puckers & bunched seams and it had short, scrawny, pitiful legs.  I was too aggrevated to photograph that version.

So… I flipped it back around, ripped a bunch of seams and started adding pink strips every-which-way I could.  That face was too cute and too much work to abandon.   I think the rectangle version turned out pretty cute when I was finished!

The “grass” around the legs is even cut up from the original “sheep-shaped” backing.  So I was able to salvage that too, which left enough in my scrap stash to still make the full backing from that same fabric.

Two down & One to go!  I’d like to get the last one finished this week.  But it’s more important that I make further progress on my “secret” proect.  It has to be done, washed, dried & wrapped by Christmas morning.  I estimate about 40 hours of work left on it.  But that’s an over-estimation (I hope) to make me keep on track and not procrastinate.  I’ve been taking photos, so I should be able to build a pretty decent post out of it, after Christmas.  Can you believe December starts on Wednesday!!??!