Next, I'll End World Hunger

The girl and I survived another week of only a napping little brother.  She's getting back into the routine of big brother off at school.  I'm even able to get some of my own sewing done now.
Saturday my husband went to play paintball and I mentioned that my goal for the week was the closet in the sewing room.  He then did a quick look to the back door.  My first thought, "oh no, are there wasps again," and then I realized he was looking at the bare curtain rod I hung a year ago in the kitchen.  Our table sits in a nook that leads to the backyard.  I had already made valances for the side windows, but the main sliding glass door was bare.  Well, if you don't count the curtain rod, that is...
And so, because I am a younger sister to three brothers, I do things just to prove I can.

One paintball excursion later: a finished valance, hung even. And a box pleat.  It was pretty satisfying to have it done; even if my little sister tendencies may have been used to my husband's advantage.

 Our living room, eating space, and kitchen are all one big room.  We've distinguished them with paint and I'm unifying them with fabric.  The curtains are all a different style (not in an obnoxious way) but all the same home dec fabric. 
I then even did some work on the closet.  When we moved into our house, four and a half years ago, I shoved some stuff in this closet.  We use it as a guest room and my sewing, so it was never really a high priority in the unpacking realm.  I mean really, it's a closet.

everytime I see a pic of this room I feel the need to paint it

But no longer.  I'm all over it.  Here are some gems I found in the closet.

• old broken suitcase of my mom's
• electric fan
• bow and arrows
• 5 pillows
• 7 comforters (that's right 7, and I totally have more in the linen closet)
• 7 water bottles
• coupon for cranberry juice expired 9/1/08
• a copy of my medical chart I took with me to have my youngest
• one flat sheet for a bed size we don't even have

 

I made some serious progress.  It's now sorted into trash and not-trash and the not trash is put away.  Here's what half of the closet looks like now.  Gotta love the mile-high bedding.  (and I'm baby stepping my way to the top shelf, just know that box isn't actually full of saltines.

If you are somehow still reading, I have a question.  Should I go for it and let my mom donate towards a craigslist sewing cabinet for moi?  It's a good price, but do I really need one?  I don't think I really do.  But my mom had some good arguments; I can't really tell you or you might think we are nuts.  My husband even said it was taking it a little far even for us.  I'll just tell you the word "bone-saw" was involved.  'Cause ya know, bone-saws and sewing cabinets. Here's a pic of its quirkiness.

The sewing surface isn't the top of the unit, but it does close up to hide the machine.  And am I the only one who thinks the pull out thread storage is awesome?  But really, I'm pretty sure I'd survive without it.  Should I hold off a few years and get a more traditional one?  Or, most realistically, keep sewing at my desk forever?

The Doll Quilt

Big Brother (and by that I mean my oldest, not a creepy Orwellian government...) headed off to first grade today.  Last year when he went off to Kindergarten, I was NOT AT ALL PREPARED for how much the girl would miss him.  Sure she had teensy man, but he takes marathon naps and wasn't really even around to play with.  I think I spent more time playing dollhouse and kitchen that week than the rest of my life. 

So this week, first grade, I was prepared.  She and I were gonna make a doll quilt.  I had visions of stretching it out the whole week. I envisioned using the time after littlest man goes to sleep but before she does.  It's tops an hour a day.  My plan was choosing fabric, choosing a block, playing on the design wall, and then finally piecing and quilting.  Ha!  Try telling that to a four year old.  Today, in about an hour, we made a doll quilt.

And by we I mean me and her "sewing hand."  Apparently she has one.

 It also comes in handing during pinning. 

 That little hand was glued to me most of the time.  And she felt the need to push down so that she could really be a help pushing the fabric through the machine.
When it came to sewing, I got some major flak about the whole right sides together thing. She insisted everytime that I was doing it inside out and needed to make it "outside right." Everytime.

My view alternated between this and this.

 She had wanted a pink binding but by the time I got to that point her attention span was working in my favor.  We opted to skip a binding.  Which worked out really nicely for me as it turns out my daughter only knows hand quilting.  Go figure.  Here I am ruing the day I became a hand quilter. 

 But we finally finished it.  Here it is in all its glory.

 It's 17" or so square.  The star in the center is an orphan block.  I had entertained the idea of making a quilt of various purple stars.  I so don't have the tedium tolerance for making the same block over and over again.  I do it for my boys quilts, but that's it.  She choose the surrounding fabric herself.  The back is pieced from various purple scraps.  We use a lot of purple around here.

 I'd say PJ Sparkles looks pretty cozy.  Sure beats her last 15 years in my mom's garage and our basement. 

Didn't See That Coming

Generally, this blog is pretty much only stuff I'm sewing, but today I have to give a little glimpse into my life for some context that totally affects my sewing.This is our last week of summer; next week, first grade.  We went camping earlier in the summer but one of our hikes was rained out.  It was the girl's favorite hike, so it was put on our summer list but hadn't gotten done.  Yesterday I took the kiddos to the mountains by myself.  Seriously, I'm not sure what I was thinking, it was pretty ambitious.  We just recently turned six, four, and two.  I tend to plan for just about every scenario so we were fine as far as the kids and everything, but we did have a total left field experience.
 My glasses broke!  Like broke.  Luckily I am far-sighted and can see well enough at distance that the two hour drive home wasn't an issue.  Reading the letterbox clues, generally processing things up close, bit of an issue.  And my hand quilting after bedtime, not so much.

Really, I maybe should have seen this coming.  Last week one of the nose pad things flew off.  Literally, it flew off.  I was actually at my machine when I happened.  All I saw was something little flying by my eye, my reflex assessment was that it was a broken needle, I was relieved that it wasn't a needle flying at my eye, but then kinda bummed as it was my glasses.   And now the ear piece.  Lamers.

phone pic, this was the last update shot my mom got



And of course I had just joined the challenge over at Amy's.    I don't have that much to do really.  I bet I can get it done anyway.  I decided to quilt the negative space in larger squares on point.  It looks super fantastic up close.  I am loving the effect.  I can't wait to get it all finished and sent off.  

Unusables

Back in the day, my sister had an Olympic themed swim party one summer.  It was a full blown event.  They made flags and had crazy races in the pool, the whole deal.  Along with that, my mom made them medals.  And really, when I say my mom, it was in actuality most likely me.  I've been my mom's stand in crafter since birth.  But "she" used this red, white, and blue ribbon and had mounds left over.  She gave it to me a few years ago.

When I was little I had a fixation with ribbons, my mom had to sew them to all my clothes.  I'm not sure I wore anything without a ribbon until I was seven or so.  At least.  Consequently, I have very formed opinions on ribbons.  I have really high standards on ribbon.  And this ribbon; it hardly qualifies as ribbon.  So I stuck it in my basement and thought I would never use the ugly wannabe ribbon. 

On one of her visits, my mom spotted some ridiculous gold fabric in my sewing/guest room closet.  When my MIL moved she gave it to me; I'm pretty sure it's leftover from a costume.  It's everything you would imagine gold fabric to be.  My mom totally made fun of me for it.  It's quite flashy.  For anything other than a costume it would be beyond over the top. 

Well, I just found a use.  Not only am I using the gold, I'm using the ribbon.

Ta-da.  Gold medals for the kiddos.  The girl went to an Olympic themed bday party last week and came home with a plastic gold medal.  Its been a hot commodity and the kids have done really well sharing.  Then today I remembered the unusable fabric and ribbon and hit the sewing machine.  A few minutes later I had three gold medalists in the family. 

The One Without a Quilt

First up, I finished my brother's pillow.  I made a simple envelope back, nothing high tech.  It's just the cover, for a 14" pillow form.  I figure my brother can procure his own pillow form and I can ship it for cheap. 

Thing is I don't have any 14" pillows in my house.  The closest I have are the zebra pillows I made for the loft.  It's a jungle theme.

We can fake it, so no worries.  Here it is, a disguised zebra pillow.

I'm just about done quilting the star part of the big star for my mom.  I'm a bit undecided on how to quilt the surround.  I don't want to quilt it within an inch of its life, I'm thinking that I may pseudotie it.  Which in Amanda speak means I'm thinking about quilting Xs every now and then to make sure the thing stays in one piece. 
When that's done, I have a plan for this little stack. 

But first, I have a twin sized bed quilt to make.  My youngest doesn't have a quilt by Mom.  He's the one without a quilt.  His sister has a purple quilt I made a couple years ago.  Big brother has a planet quilt I made last year.  And teensy man has squat.  Of course he has a baby blanket and a few strays he's adopted, but he doesn't have his official quilt from mom.  It's gonna match his brother's. Seeing as big brother's is right there on the top bunk, I need to get with the program. 
The project stalled in the cutting phase when I realized the more green I bought didn't match.  Not even well enough that I could just do it and know that I was the only one who would ever know.  So I had to make another trip to fabric mecca.  And that just didn't happen. 

But a couple weeks ago I finally did it.  It's all cut now and ready to go.  I'm hoping to get it done by this winter.  It's a lot of hand quilting.  I think the last one took a couple months.

ps I added an about me page up top, ya know, if you're curious
linking to tgiff and confessions of a fabric addict

Holy Throw Pillow, Batman!

My brother Nathan is unmarried.  Translation: he has no wife to interfere with his decorating sense.  Currently, that sense is telling him to create a miniGotham for his Batman bobbleheads on his mantel.  I've been put in charge of essentially a table runner for under the wooden buildings; I'll be making the roads and curbs and whatnot.  Seeing as this is his living room, I'm butting in and doing some decorating for him in the form of a throw pillow. 

Right now it's not sewn, it's just fused waiting for me to stop reading the 100 Cupboards series.  Rereading technically.  What can I say, my husband had a business trip.  When left to myself I either quilt or read.  This time I picked read.

I went with POW as it's pretty classic.  My personal favorite, of course, has always been BIFF.  Seriously, what's not to love about BIFF?  It's a bit dorky, just the way I like 'em.  I think for authenticity purposes the POW ought to have an exclamation mark.  Oh well.
Also, I haven't actually told my bro-dawg that I'm vicariously decorating, so I suppose we are back to Don't Tell Nathan Lindsey status.  I think it's level Orange.

Quilt Field Trip

It wasn't a very far field trip, but after dragging this little quilt around my house and finding no good lighting, I decided to take it outside.  This was a first for me; I'm allergic to grass and the idea of walking in grass and putting a quilt on grass has always been at odds with my grass avoidance instincts.  But it looks good, I may have to do this again.

I started with the throw it on the grass method.  Turns out we have high points in our grass; I totally had to smack some parts down to make it lay mostly flat.  Who'd have thought?

It caused a bit of a head-scratcher when it came to getting my robot shots.  Every single wrinkle on the "metal" shows up.  Stinkin' grass.  Maybe the throw it on the grass method has a caveat about weird fabric.

With the back, I so didn't even care if it was flat or not.  I mean really, it's the back, and in this case hardly a masterpiece.

 I got my shot of the stripes specifically, and then I started seeing what I had in my backyard.

 Doesn't it look good on a swing? I'm majorly loving this shot.  It's just cutesy.

 And I really like how it looks hanging off the fort.  You can't see too much of the quilt, so maybe the folded up hanging shots should be reserved for certain quilt patterns, but still, I'm loving hanging this quilt off things. 

This was also my first machine quilted quilt.  And honestly, probably one of not very many.  I really only see myself machine quilting again if it's some kind of timing issue.  Of course though, I couldn't let this one finish with no hand quilting.  The inside of each square is hand quilted with the third color not in the square.  Meaning I used blue on the center green and white square.  I just like hand quilting.
This quilt's off to join the others in my shop.  Next up, the big star for my mom's guest room.

linking up with tgiff and whoop whoop