September?

Well, it looks like I've missed a few weeks here.  Things have been busy, and when I've had down time, I've been lazy.  :-)

I have my little house picture done and hanging.  I've left the frame matte-finished, but I may varnish it later. I do like it!  And it solves a bare-space dilemma for those times when my Christmas stocking and my little flag banner are out of season.

The little basket below it holds our car keys and I've made different garters for it for various seasons. I haven't been to a Longaberger party in years, but I sure love the baskets I have and use them all the time. (We'll just have to ignore the fact that the light switch isn't centered...  Bah!!)

I have finished changing out Americana decor for fall and it feels so good!  Love, love, love the fall season. And here's that Edyta Sitar runner I made earlier this year. Doesn't it look perfect with this arrangement on it?

So far I've found no bags of cute little pumpkins at Safeway, but I'll keep checking.  ♥

A Tiny Little Decorating Project

As it's about time to change seasonal decorating, I came to the realization that my little flag decoration would soon be coming down and I would again be left with a blank spot next to the front door. This was unthinkable! And so I headed down to my newly organized sewing room and began to pull books from my stash, looking for just the right new thing.  I finally found what I thought would work and was able to go right to my bin of ziplock bags full of scraps, all sorted by color!! Super yay for organization!!  

A few fabric tryouts and some tracing, cutting and ironing, and I had my little top. 

At first, I thought I'd make a small quilted hanging, but as I looked at it I realized it would just look bulky. It's quite primitive and I decided what it needed was to be framed with a simple black frame.  Hmmm, where to get a simple black frame?  I called in my Sweetie and described my dilemma, knowing full well he would volunteer to make one.  

He's made the pieces and hopefully he'll have time tomorrow to put it together.  (If you think retired people, or in his case semi-retired, have lots of spare time, I suggest you think again.)  I told him I would be glad to paint it.  ♥

And...It's Done!

That old song, "Heaven, I'm in heaven..."  probably from some musical, keeps running through my head.  It took me a few days, but I have order, lovely, blissful order in my sewing room!!  I combed through every piece of fabric I owned--yardage, fat quarters, and scraps, and I was ruthless.  I have bags and bags of things to take to the Hope Center (click here to read about) and my trusty Explorer is full of them.  

And the closet itself?  Have a look:

Now, I know must quilters would scoff at my "stash", but I can assure you that there is a lot of fabric on those shelves, and of course, there will be more to be purchased in the future.  It is so lovely to be able to walk into the closet and see exactly what's on each shelf.  I have sections for colors, sections for Christmas, one for fall, one for Kansas Troubles fabrics, and so on. I even have a section for fabrics to make more of those little Dresses for Africa (I was inspired to do them again after watching the video of the ninety-nine-year-old lady from Iowa who makes a dress a day and hopes to make her 1000th dress on her 100th birthday next May).  

Another section of the closet, which didn't need revamping, is a series of small shelves on the left side where I have books and magazines:

(Also on those shelves is the complete Magnum, P.I. series, courtesy of my Sweetie, and the complete Scarecrow and Mrs. King series, courtesy of my adorable daughter.  Love to watch them while I stitch.)

My sewing room seems even bigger and so much fresher! I even dusted now that there are cleared-off tables. (And we all know how rare that is for me!)  Now I'm ready for a new project.  ♥

A Little Organization, Please!

My longtime friend and pal, Kathy (all the way back to kindergarten!), and I email regularly as well as keep up via our blogs.  We've been discussing quilting stashes recently and mulling over purchases and possible additions.  I mentioned to her the other day that I really needed to sort out my sewing room closet, although I confess I really wasn't planning to do anything except contemplate sorting.  Until yesterday. 

For some strange reason, I found myself in my sewing room and I opened the closet doors and shockingly began to pull things out.  Dan happened along and I told him what I was up to.  He said, would more shelves help? Well, of course they would, but he has little time these days and I wanted closure on this project within a day or so.  He measured, we talked, and he said that rather than build the shelves from scratch and paint them, he could buy pre-painted boards and some brackets and get this project done that very afternoon.   Pre-painted boards? Who knew?!?  (Obviously not me.)

So, with my blessing, he headed out for the builder's supply and I attacked the closet with a vengeance. Here are some before pictures (don't judge!)

 

And how did the renovating turn out?

I so blessed to have such a wonderful, huge closet (with a light in it!) to start with, and now I have space, space, space thanks to my sweetie!  Today I have begun to put things back and it's an archeological dig.  So many wonderful fabrics that had been buried, some not so wonderful ones that will go bye-bye (I'll donate to the local Hope Center), and if you can believe it, I even found a piece of fabric I bought to make a maternity top back in the '70's!!  (Yeah, I saved it.)  

It's taking me a while to sort, and I have all kinds of plans for how to organize, but we'll see how that works in the space.  A section for Kansas Troubles, a section for Christmas, sections for colors (blue, green, red, etc.), flannels, and so on.  I'll keep you posted!  ♥

Still Here!

No photos, no real new news.  More storms but no trees down, just some limbs and another day of cleanup. We did make a quick trip to McCall last week as Dan had a talk to give.  The little over-nighter was a nice vacation and we enjoyed it immensely. I stopped at the little quilt shop there and added some Kansas Troubles fabrics to add to my stash.  Score!  

An old high school friend of Dan's was in a motorcycle accident so we drove to Spokane on Monday to visit him. He had surgery yesterday and we hope he's on the road to recovery although all estimates place that time at six months.  I'm so thankful Dan sold his motorcycle many years ago!!

The days are getting noticeably shorter.  We've enjoyed many evenings of reading on the deck, and all of a sudden, we're running out of light.  I guess it is the middle of August.  And speaking of August, I had a major birthday this month.  The one where one becomes eligible for Medicare.  How has this happened?!?  I feel no older. I remember my aunt, my dad's sister, telling me when she was in her eighties that she didn't feel any different than she did in her thirties.  I'm beginning to understand. At any rate, I have several new cards tucked into my billfold these days.  

Autumn is approaching and cooler days and nights are heralding it.  I'm looking forward to changing out my Americana decorating for fall things in a few weeks. Sure hope Safeway has those cute little pumpkins again!  ♥ 

Front Yard Update

For those of you who might have been wondering, we have grass where once the mighty shrubs grew!  It now looks like this:

Instead of this:

What an amazing transformation.  Just look at this beautiful grass!!

There are a few places that still need to seed in, but tonight marked the first cutting of this new green lawn. When Dan was done, we sat out in the old grass and admired it for quite some time.  ♥

Sewing Aerobics

One does not usually associate sewing with exercise, but with my latest project, I beg to differ.  The instructions called for eighty 2 1/2 x 5" rectangles to be sewn in a herringbone pattern to triangular bases.  

As a stickler for pressing as I go, that meant that each time I attached a rectangle, I needed to hop up, go to my iron, and press the seam.  Times eighty.  Because it was that herringbone pattern, there could be no chain piecing with a group pressing along the way.  

While my ironing board is fairly close to my machine, it does involve a few steps.

Up, over, press, back to the chair, stitch, up, over, press, back to the chair.  I think it was excellent exercise! 

The pieces are all joined and last night I trimmed them to size.  Up for today will be the assembling of the whole top.   And what will it be you ask?  A table runner from the Through the Winter Woods book.  ♥