A Little Do-over

Four years ago we spent Christmas with our son and family in Virginia. Amy and I had a wonderful time visiting quilt shops and although the economy was doing fine at the time, I did my best to keep it that way. One of my purchases was a Moda charm pack with unusual (for me) colors and patterns. Amy had just taken a class called Tessellations and so I used the charm pack to try it myself. I loved the result and brought my little top home and quilted it. I should have added some borders to it, but I didn't, for whatever reason, and I was never happy with how it turned out. Too small. Night before last, I decided the time had come and I ripped it all apart, down to the little pieced top.

Here is the redo with borders added:


and a closer picture of the tessellations:


I am so happy I found a fabric for the new borders in my stash. In fact, I must really like this fabric, because I found three different cuts of it on my shelves!! And now I have a new table topper for spring.

Pillowcases

In my continued attempt to do some spiffing up after the holidays, I decided to make some new pillowcases for our bed. Here's what I made today.


Our sheets and blankets, as well as our bedspread, are all cream colored, so it's fun to make seasonal pillowcases. Here're our Christmas ones which are just going back in the linen drawer today.


And here are our Valentine's ones which are going on our bed today. (Gotta get that bed made up before bedtime! I confess, I hate changing the sheets.)


We were the recipients of many sets of sheets and blankets when we got married. As it was 1972, the colors were mostly gold and green, with some pink and blue thrown in just for good measure. Our first bed was a double bed. When we bought a new queen bed some years later, it necessitated new sheets and blankets. After years of multi-colored bedding, I choose the all-cream theme we still have. It's much more restful. And it's fun to throw back the bedspread and find the colorful pillowcases.

Welcome Back, Winter

This was the view out my front door this morning.



And this is the view in my basement to the left of the stairs,


and to the right.


The good news is that I think all traces of Christmas have been removed from the main floor.

How I Came to Be a Quilter

When I was little, two to be exact, my parents moved to a duplex from their tiny one-bedroom cottage, and I got my first big bed (actually my only big bed as I used it until I was married). They bought me a double bed which could also be used as a guest bed when needed. My blankets were quilts that my paternal great-grandmothers had made. They were old and worn, well used. And they were heavy. To this day I equate warmth on a cold winter night with weight. As I grew older, I became a reader and my favorite books were by Louisa May Alcott and L.M. Montgomery. I was a dreamer and a romantic, and the "olden days" were golden in my dreams. Anything that hinted of days gone by intrigued me. And certainly no one I knew was quilting, so it seemed to be a long-lost art of the past. I made up my mind that someday I would quilt, just like my great-grandmothers whose work kept me warm.

When I got my own home and my own sewing machine, I tried to do a little patchwork, but in the '70's, cotton fabric was hard to find. And the colors, well, if you are old enough to remember the '70's, you know what I mean. I did pick up a couple of the very few quilt books published in those days, and most items were crafty: patchwork vests, placemats, etc. I fiddled, and I played, but I had no idea how to create a real quilt.

In 1985 we moved to our present town and it had a lovely fabric shop that had, be still my heart, quilt fabrics!! A whole row of cotton "calicos" actually labeled "Quilt Fabric". About the same time I met a new friend through church who quilted. Anne was about my age, and she had made several quilts. She offered to teach a class at church using Marilyn Burns' book, Log Cabin in a Day. I signed up.

About two weeks before the class, I was working up a box of peaches and was bitten on my right hand by some type of spider which had set up housekeeping among the peaches. Eventually I ended up at the emergency room and by the time I was through, we had used our extra fun money for not so fun medical expenses. How was I going to get fabric for that quilt? I dug through all my fabric and was able to find enough blue and brown to be able to go. I'm sure some of the fabric was not all cotton, having been purchased with clothing and home dec in mind, but nevertheless, it became part of my first quilt.


I actually hand-quilted this quilt; after all, that's how the great-grandmothers did it. It's not quilted well, but it's held together for all these years. I was on my way!

Charmed, I'm Sure

I picked up a charm pack of Moda's Snow Blooms by Kansas Troubles Quilters a year or so ago. I love their fabrics--the colors are just my style. I mentioned in my January Sorting post that I'd like to make a few changes around the house and that a new runner would be one of them. Then I was over at Sew Cindy's the other day and saw the runner on her hutch. It caught my eye and I thought, "Charm squares." And then I remembered the Snow Blooms and, more amazingly, found them! There were twenty-four squares in the pack, just enough to lay them out in a three by eight rectangle.


Super simple, but I love how it goes with the "Spoon Flowers" wallhanging in the breakfast nook.


Just ignore the Dustbuster on the floor. :-)

Sewing Room

Hmm, seems I'm a little behind in posting. We went to Costco yesterday and that took much of the day, not to mention the work that goes on once you get home. Where to put everything? Dan came up from our basement pantry to tell me I shouldn't worry about running out of canned chicken broth. By his calculations, with our latest purchases, we now have twenty-one cans. Guess we're set for now! :-)

But on to today's subject: my sewing room. Or as Dan refers to it, my "studio". When we purchased this house ten years ago, I designated the second main floor bedroom as my sewing room. Then several years ago, my parents went through a year when they each had both knees replaced. Yup, four new knees in one year. The non-surgery parent stayed with us and both stayed the night before the surgery. This worked out fine until Dad had his second surgery just six weeks following his first. No stairs for him, so the basement guest bedrooms were out. After some thinking, we decided to move the twin beds upstairs rather than the queen bed in the other bedroom. That way when grandsons stayed over without parents, they'd be just across the hall from us instead of a floor away. This move meant my sewing room would now be downstairs. Unintentionally this also meant it would go into a much larger room. Score!

As you know, I began my sewing on Mom's Singer, in its cabinet, in the living room of the house I grew up in. When Dan and I were first married, we lived in an 8'x35' trailer so I sewed on the little kitchen table. In our first real house, I sewed on the table in the little dining nook off the living room and then moved to the laundry room in the basement where Dan built me a wonderful sewing area. Unfortunately, it was built-in and when we moved, it stayed. We learned a valuable lesson: sewing cabinets need to be free standing. He built me a nice sewing center in our next house, and we were able to take it with us when we moved to a new town, and it's become the center of the much larger area I use now.


This is the view from the door into my sewing room. The Brother sits on my original sewing cabinet, to the right is a long table Dan built to match. It slides into the corner and holds my trusty Pfaff and my serger. While everything looks a bit scrunched in the photo, I can easily move from one machine to the other.


My 200/730 sits on a quilting table I purchased several years ago. It has the extra leaf which folds out on the back and has the lift for raising and lowering the machines. I have plexiglass surrounds for both the Brother and the Pfaff, and Dan cleverly made a wooden piece so the Bernina fits down in. Notice the little stand to the left--Dan made it to hold my embroidery threads, manuals, and extra stabilizers. It has wheels so I can move it around. It's so handy for sorting threads when I embroider, and then it's perfect to turn in place when I'm quilting or sewing on bindings to help hold the bulk of the quilt.


My Handi-Quilter fits into this same room. It wouldn't fit in the upstairs sewing room and so I was using it in the family room where it was not a happy fit. Having everything in one room is wonderful and I love it. I also love having its table for laying out fabrics.


This last picture is of a long table I use for sorting, um, piling things when I get creative. It's also the place where others can set up machines and sew. My daughter usually sets up two machines when she comes to sew and we have a blast visiting and watching chick flicks while we stitch away.

Thanks for hanging with me on this long post and visiting my sewing room!

January Sorting

Normally, taking down the Christmas decorations makes me sad. Christmas lover that I am, every room of the house gets a makeover come December and it's a rather slow process to get everything out and placed. Getting it out is fun, putting it away is not. But a strange thing happened today. I actually wanted to start the process. Maybe it was the sunshine we had that made me think of spring. Whatever, I found myself changing out table runners, pictures, and quilts. I'm not done, and we're still using the Christmas dishes, at least until tomorrow, but I'm started and it felt good.

Does this happen to anyone else? I couldn't find the picture that goes in the main upstairs bathroom. Just before Christmas I replaced it with a small Christmas quilt I had made and displayed at the shop. I must have spent half an hour looking for that picture. Where, oh where, had I stashed it? I looked in every closet, every bedroom, and finally under every bed. It was nowhere to be found. An item I had stashed last Christmas only came to light just before this one, and I was afraid I was about to have a repeat. A vague nagging in my head told me the picture was in our bedrom closet, and finally after at least my third check, I looked down just inside the door and saw it leaning up against the upright of some floor-to-ceiling shelves. The white back blended right in and made it virtually invisible. Sometimes I'm just too clever.

Below is a wall quilt I made late last summer. It's a Country Threads pattern. When Dan saw it, he said, "Those are funny looking spoons." I told him they weren't spoons, they were folk art flowers! Well, the label on the back now reads, "Spoon Flowers". It's in the primitive style, and I really like it. It goes on the wall in the breakfast nook, and it was good to get it back up.


I've been perusing a few blogs and am in the mood to continue sorting out the house and making a few changes. Perhaps a few new pillows, a new runner, and maybe a new rug for in front of the fireplace will materialize in the next few weeks. Here's hoping!