Shopping Spree!

So the hubs and I had a little getaway this weekend. We went to Idaho Falls Friday night and stayed through Sunday. Apart from running into our ex-brother-in-law and his mistress at our hotel, it was a nice relaxing time away from the busy summer we've had.

So of course I had a little shopping to do. This collection above is the fabric I chose for my Over the River quilt. I've talked about this quilt before. It has a lot of hand embroidery on it. My paternal grandmother taught me to embroider, so this is being done in honor of her. Here is a picture of the pattern, though you can see it better in this link:

Sorry for the glare. It's hard to see but that bottom embroidered section is a picture of a farmhouse and barn, with a fence leading up to it. The layout of the farm is identical to Grandma's place, and the house is very similar to hers. I had to do this pattern! Such a perfect tribute.

Anyway, black and white didn't seem right to me. I wanted fabrics and colors that would remind me of her, so these are what I chose. These three larger prints will take the place of the black fabrics in the pattern.

Here are all the fabrics with their coordinating shades. I'm not sure there's enough contrast to pair these together in the blocks, so I think I'll put a green with a pink, etc, rather than using the two different greens in one block. Actually now that I'm looking at this, I'm a little concerned that I'll lose my block shapes in these similar colors, so I'm gonna have to think about how to put these together, and probably have to just cut a few and play with the shapes. The blue was my favorite, but they were out of the contrasting blues, so I picked out a beige with little stars on it. It's hard to see it in the picture, but it was the perfect choice sentimentally. Grandma was a teacher and at her funeral, the minister cut an apple in half horizontally and showed the star stape inside. It was a moving tribute I will never forget.

The darker blue on the left side is going to be the inner border and the binding. The dark beige next to it will be the horizontal lines separating the embroidered sections from the block sections. Or at least that was what I was thinking when I bought it. Like I said, I may have to play with this for awhile before I get it all figured out. Also, I somehow missed taking a picture of the unbleached muslin I will use for the embroidery background. It is beige with little black flecks here and there. It will coordinate well with these prints. Now, on to some fabric for my 17 year old daughter...

I spent a lot of time taking pictures of bolts of fabric with my phone and sending them to my daughter who was back home with our little guys. Since we homeschool, and I make the rules ;) she has a sewing class. I have assigned her a number of projects in different categories for credit in home ec. She has to finish her quilt, make a certain number of clothing items, household items, accessories like purses or whatever and such. She gets to pick the exact projects, so long as they fit into the given categories. She's having fun with it. I think all these prints will end up being clothing items. I told her I would supply the patterns but she has to buy her own fabrics. Well, on Saturday, Hancock Fabrics was having a big sale, so she was able to get most of these for around $2/yd. Her favorite is the purple in the picture above.

I like this one the best.

This print is so her. She had a shirt with a similar pattern in all blue shades several years ago and it was one of her favorites.

The color on this photo isn't very accurate. The print is actually bright pink, light pink, purple, and grey. Very pretty, but the picture doesn't show it.

They had Butterick patterns on sale for 97 cents, so I grabbed an assortment of those, and then picked up a few New Look patterns at Walmart.

These are all pretty much in my daughter's size, and I wasn't sure if she would like them or not, but for under a buck, I figured I could take a chance. And the Walmart ones can always be returned if she didn't like them.

Unfortunately I didn't think about the fact that all her fabrics are pretty, and would drape well, but are NOT knits and don't have any stretch to them. So I doubt she will be able to do any of these shirts with those fabrics :(

The pattern on the left actually covers both of our sizes in one package, which is unheard of. So I'm sure it will get some use from one or the other of us.

I had been looking for a very specific shade of blue shirt to match a skirt I have and have never been able to find the right blue. So I finally gave up the search and just bought this knit fabric to make my own. I don't really have a design in mind yet, but I'm sure I'll come up with something.

Here it is with the skirt. It's almost a cornflower blue - it has a lot of grey in it. I actually did buy a grey top to go with this skirt while I was at Ross, but it is kind of plain and boring so I'm hoping for something with a little more styling from this blue.

I had to stop at Target to get some more of my favorite tea towels. I've decided to embroider these using the patterns from Grandma's stash. I found the pattern for her bias tape birds tea towel, and I think these will be done that way. There are 12 towels here, so I'll probably do a couple of different styles. I love tea towels. I think they absorb way more than regular dish towels once they get broke in. They sure don't seem like they would when you see them in the store, but I wouldn't trade my used ones for anything ... even though they are stained.

I've come to the realization that I just really don't like knitting. But I promised myself I would continue until I have a finished product. So I'm going to knit a dishcloth or two and call it good. Ambitious, huh? I had started a scarf but I find working on it tedious rather than relaxing. Maybe it's the fact that I'm using a finer, softer baby weight yarn. I didn't mind knitting when I was learning with the regular stuff. Maybe this project will get me back into it and allow me to practice without stress. I like the variegated yarn and am looking forward to seeing what this will become.

And last but not least, I picked up three fat quarters from my favorite quilt shop which happens to unfortunately be going out of business. I would have bought way more, but there were slim pickins as they say. I have no plans for these, but who could resist the cute little robots and a print with blackbirds wearing red high heels? Okay, so maybe some people could resist, but clearly I could not. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some sewing to get too...

Don't They Make Machines For This?

Okay, so remember my post about the book Do Hard Things? Well, knitting was one of the things I decided I needed to do. I embroider, crochet, sew, paint, quilt, etc, but I don't knit. I had a dear friend attempt to teach me about 15 years ago, but I had just learned crochet, and the lack of a hook on the end of a knitting needle frustrated me beyond belief. So after one lesson, I quit. It didn't help that she was left handed, but that's hardly her fault ;)

So Sunday afternoon, I figured it was time to try again. I spent the afternoon watching how-to-knit videos on You Tube and found some really good explanations. I had to watch three different videos before I found one that made casting on simple. Then I felt ridiculous for not seeing how easy it was. My favorite video was from Threadbanger, which I have to say is very much not my style, but they explained it the best and had a good quality video.

At this point I was doing fairly well. The knit stitch was a simple thing to learn ....

... until I went to turn around, that is. It took me a few times before I could see where I was supposed to start on the next row. I felt like my hands were tied together, and I was wondering why on earth these needles have to be ten feet long. I imagine I will appreciate that if I ever get to making a garment or something bigger, but for learning, I was wishing for half the length - especially when I'd be doing fairly well, and my 21 month old son would grab the end of a one. Argh. (There was a lot of "arghing" and talking back to those video people, I'm afraid).

Clearly I need to work on my tension consistency, but at least it was starting to look like something.

It was when I had gotten to about this point that I realized that this didn't look like what I thought knitting would look like. I thought this was the purl stitch. I kept watching videos, trying to figure out where I went wrong. But I found from one of the videos that this is called the garter stitch - knitting every row. And I also figured out that what I considered knitting is really called the stockinette stitch - knit one row, purl one row, repeat.

By the end of the evening I had a decent little sampler. The bottom section in the picture above is the garter stitch, the middle section is the stockinette stitch and the top is knit two, purl two, repeat. I had read about that last one making a pretty pattern for a scarf so I wanted to see what it would look like. I also learned (but didn't try) that if I knit 10, purl 10, repeat for ten rows then do the opposite for ten rows, it will make a checkerboard pattern.

I really struggled with the purl stitch when I first switched to it. I can see a couple places (at least) where I dropped stitches, and I need to figure out how to pick them back up. There were a couple times (thanks especially to the little man) where my needles came out before I wanted them to, and I wasn't quite sure how to pick them back up. For the most part I got it right, but I see places in the stockinette stitch especially where something clearly isn't right, and I'm not sure what it is.

Seriously though, it's hard for me to get too excited about this when a machine can duplicate these exact stitches and nobody would know it was done by hand. I hate machine embroidery with a passion, but it doesn't mean I hate embroidery, because there is a clear difference between hand and machine embroidery. You would never mistake the two. I am also still struggling with the slick, hookless needles and my hands felt like I was a 90 year old with arthritis even while I was still on the garter stitch section. I'm guessing it's because I was tense and trying to hold on to several things at once, as well as fighting off a one year old with grabby hands :) I won't consider myself to have mastered this skill (well, mastered enough to cross it off my list) until I have a finished product, and I'm thinking a scarf will be a good place to start (especially considering my daughter borrowed mine and got too close to a woodstove and burned my favorite one). I love some of the patterns for little animals and baby items, so maybe I'll stick with it longer than I think. At least I'm working on my Do Hard Things list :)

Early Morning Productivity

My wonderful husband of 14 years ~today~ had to go to work early this morning, so we were up at 5 am. Wouldn't you know that the day I I actually had time to go back to bed and sleep a little more before all the kidlets arrive, I wasn't a bit sleepy. So rather than lay in bed for no reason I figured I'd be productive. I went out to my newly organized sewing area and enjoyed the silence :) I got two and a half more pairs of shorts made for the little man. I would have finished all three, but I think I broke my machine that does the zigzag stitch. I will have to take it to get it repaired. Anyway, at least he has these two.

I don't know what's wrong with my camera these days. I'm hoping it's the batteries. I always buy the expensive Energizer lithium camera batteries and I love them, but I'm not sure what's wrong with this package. All my pictures are grainy and faded and motions just blur since I switched batteries. Anyway, these are darker in real life. Very deep blue and black black, again made from t-shirts.

I guess the next project will have to be to dig out the serger. I was given a new serger by my dear friend Mary Beth before we moved back here, and I haven't even tried to use it. Something about all those different spools of thread and the built in cutter are very intimidating ... even though I used one a lot when I was doing alterations at a dry cleaner's. I got hooked on the blind hem machine there too :) Anyway my friend was an excellent seamstress but the serger frustrated her and she bought a fancier one that didn't give her trouble, so she gave me her other one. To my shame, I haven't had it out of the box. I would have dug it out this morning, but that would have required opening the main garage door, and it was still dark and we have a crazy man in town attacking women that the police haven't been able to find yet. So, obviously, the serger can wait until midday. I've had "learn to set up and use the serger" on my to do list for awhile now, so today seems like a good day to try it.

A Little Sunday Sewing

My little man (20 months old) only has a couple of pairs of shorts. You would think I would have noticed this earlier in the summer, but it's been so nice here that shorts weren't necessary ... until this past week when we had temperatures in the 90's all week. (I know, we're spoiled here.) I had an old t-shirt that was beyond its usefulness as a t-shirt. My oldest had cut off the sleeves and used it for work, but then moved and didn't want it anymore. Nobody else here was interested in the redneck looks, so it was sitting in a rag bag.

I turned it into shorts. I used one of the other pairs of shorts my little one had (he literally has 2, plus a romper that is shorts and a little pair of shorts overalls). I made a pattern and cut the t-shirt, sewed the seams, hemmed the legs and put elastic in the waistband. Super simple, super quick. I think it took less than 30 minutes all together.

Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get a baby to be a cooperative clothing model? He kept running away from me. Here he is trying to close a door on me.
You can kind of see how cute the t-shirt logo is on the side of these shorts. They fit really well too. Should be able to easily wear them the rest of the summer, which should be another 2-3 weeks at least :) I got these all done, then heard that our highs are supposed to be back in the 70's this week - thank goodness. Guess I missed our week of summer. Oh well. The shorts are cute anyway.

Here you can see how cooperative my model was being. I must have taken 20 pictures before getting the two above that are somewhat useful.

New and Improved Sewing Room

Welcome once again to my sewing room. You probably remember that I do my sewing in the garage ... in Wyoming ... all winter ... and the garage is not heated :) (I use a propane heater). Anyway, I've made some significant improvements to my sewing room. It's now more of a room than just an open space. Here, I'll show you ...

This is the entrance to my new sewing room. It has a narrow walkway - about the size of a regular door, but not quite. The dresser/book shelves combo is on the left, and just out of the picture on the right is a chest freezer, which I like to refer to as my cutting table ;)

Here you can just see the edge of the freezer on the right, followed by my treadmill. Beyond that are two tall white cabinets for patterns, elastic, buttons, thread, pins, fabric set aside for specific projects, etc. One of these days I'm going to sort and organize that too, but for the most part, it's in decent order ... apart from the fabric sections. I have a very large folding table stored over there, along with my ironing board, which I hate - rickety new thing. I had a wonderful, heavy, solid old ironing board, but the thing finally fell apart and I had to buy a new one. They definitely don't make 'em like they used to.

Directly in front of you as you enter the room is my Singer industrial machine. Above that is a set of shelves and if you look closely, you will see two more sewing machines on the second shelf of that. Those are my grandmothers' machines. I am lucky enough to have both grandmother's machines.

The industrial machine has it's own table, and there is a small cabinet under the edge of that for things I need to reach easily ... bobbins, threads I use all the time, denim scraps for patching jeans, scissors, seam ripper, etc. To the left of that is a little nook where I keep my dress form, which I don't use very often. I'm going to rework that to be my actual measurements someday. Then I'll probably use it more. Right now, it's more decorative than anything.

This is my treadmill. Not everyone has one of these in their sewing room :) but there was no other place for it to go, and I really wanted one so that I can get exercise daily when it's winter. It's facing a wall, so I mounted a shelf where I can put my laptop and watch tv episodes on fancast.com. We don't subscribe to television service, so the computer is our only source of shows. I usually only watch things while I walk though, which greatly helps me use my time more wisely.

Okay, so this picture takes up where the other left off. The dress form in the corner, then an antique dresser also from my grandmother's house. This goes with a bed and vanity that I currently have stored. We used to use it for our bed, but it's only a double, and we've now been spoiled with a king, so someday (there's that word again), when we have a guest bedroom, it will get that honor. I have one drawer of the dresser I need to put back together, but it will be like new (almost) when I get around to fixing it :)

Next to the dresser is my Necchi machine. I use this for anything the industrial machine can't do ... zigzag stitches, button holes, sewing stretch materials, etc. But mostly I prefer the industrial machine. It sews so much faster that the other one feels like slow motion. To the left of the Necchi is a tall shelf full of different fabrics. That is my stash (but not all of it - ha. I also have fabric in the white cabinets and in the dresser.)

Next to the fabric shelves is my newest invention. A dresser with two bookshelves on top. It definitely makes it more of a sewing "room" which you have to deliberately walk into, rather than a space where you can just drop off stuff you don't know what to do with.

Like everything else in my garage (and parts of my house for that matter), this is piled to the ceiling. The base is a solid (extremely heavy) dresser. I'm keeping my current projects in this, along with my daughter's sewing projects. It's nice to have a drawer for each separate project. On top of that are two bookshelves, which face my new library area, naturally. I hung one of my finished wall quilts on the back of one bookshelf for decoration, and I'm thinking a fabric covered corkboard like I made for my entry way will be a good thing for the back of the other shelf. The boxes on top hold more fabric :), my art supplies - mostly oil paints and things I don't want kids to have full access to, and a sewing machine cover.

It definitely makes those "sewing moments" (the extra 5 minutes you have here and there) easier, when the projects are organized and easy to get to. I feel more productive already!

Here's a closer look at my stash shelves. Disregard the bags on the floor. Those are headed to the thrift store.

Here's a close-up of my favorite machine. I use it whenever I can.

This is my Necchi - which used to be my go-to machine until I got spoiled with the industrial machine. It has a variety of stitches which I mostly never use. I have to say I am very content with the machines I have. I don't have any desire to have a computerized one or one that does embroidery. Embroidery was meant to be done by hand! ;)

I picked up this cabinet at a yard sale almost 15 years ago. The brackets to hold the machine were gone and I don't think this machine had a place to hook into anyway. So I built a shelf inside and the machine just sits on the shelf. The sewing surface is flush with the cabinet, and I have sewn this way for so long I don't think I could sew without the flat surface. I don't know how people sew - and enjoy it - with their machine on the kitchen table.

So that's the tour. I hope you like it. I certainly do, and that's really all that matters, right? Now I've got some sewing to get to ...

One of These Days

Someday (ugh - there's that word again), when I get done going through all my garage piles and boxes, I'm going to use this kit I picked up several years ago. It is called "Your Home Library" and is put out by the New York Public Library.

The kit comes with a sturdy box, which doubles as a protective sleeve for this beautiful archival quality book. The book itself is 12x9".

Included in the kit is the book "Guide to Organizing a Home Library." This is a very comprehensive book about setting up your own library. There is a little pocket inside the front cover that the back cover of this book slides into, keeping it stored neatly together with the kit.

The kit also includes software. The idea is to enter every book you own into the computer, along with where it is located. So if you need to find your copy of a book, you can look it up in the computer. You can also search to see which books you have by a certain author. I think this feature will especially be handy since I am constantly running across deals for books and wondering if I already bought that one - ha. While organizing the kids' series books, I found that I had four copies of Laura Ingalls Wilder's "The Long Winter". :) I'm sure my dad wouldn't be surprised. He has helped us move this great collection of books and thought I was nuts to have so many.

The book has spiral binding and archival quality heavy parchment paper. After entering all your information in the computer, you can then print it on this paper so you will have a written copy of what you have and where it is as well. It's a cool idea, and impressive to look at, but I really think the computerized list will be my biggest asset.

The book slides into the sleeve. It is protected and looks very nice on a shelf. Can't wait to use this, but I'm a little overwhelmed. I must have at least a thousand books. I'll be interested to see how many I actually have. This will definitely take some time ...

Why Can't I Have a Home Library?

You know how people make up their dream house plans in their heads? Well, my dream house has always included a rather elaborate library. If you've seen Disney's Beauty and the Beast you may have some idea what I mean... towering bookshelves at least two stories high with ladders on roller systems to get to the best books, which are always way up on top. Well, I'm tired of waiting for "some day" to come.

So the question is "Why can't I have a home library now?" Well, practically speaking ...
1. I live in a two bedroom, 1200 square foot duplex with three kids who all share one bedroom
2. The kids include one girl - 17 yrs old, and two boys - 20 months and a 6 year old. (My 19 year old son is out on his own, so in this instance, he doesn't count (no offense K).
3. I run a home daycare, so the house is also crammed with toys and baby equipment.
4. We do not have a den or family room.
5. There is not a single bit of extra space in the house.

So the odds of having a nice, quiet, relaxing library space are basically nil. I got to thinking that perhaps the garage was a good candidate. After all, my sewing room is out there. But the garage has gotten a little over-run with junk. It was organized last year, when we put up 6 very large industrial 6-foot-tall shelves. We managed to get most things up on the shelves. I even moved three bookshelves out there and had them together in an area. This was mostly done out of necessity, as there was nowhere else in the house to put them. They were all crammed full, with the largest one holding two rows of books on each shelf (they are deep shelves). And here's what had become of our nicely organized garage when people started carting things out and not putting them away...

The area to the left is where I hoped to put a library. The area to the right is my buried sewing room. Now keep in mind, this is my garage we're talking about. The house is much neater! But when you lack space, and you also lack organization, you end up with overwhelming piles. Nobody knows where to put things, because nothing has a specific place, so everyone just walks out and dumps.

This had gotten very out of hand. We had to climb piles of stuff if we needed one of the books on those shelves.

The sewing room was actually functional, but I have to admit that I didn't really want to spend time in there. Who would, when it looks like this? It certainly wasn't a haven.

Well, then came a dilemma. We were hoping to be able to rent the other half of our duplex to use for the daycare. Our oldest had been living over there for 5 months, ripping out carpet, repainting, etc. for the owners, who are our friends and my husband's employer. We had already sort of spread out into his garage. So when we learned that the employer's sister was going to move in over there, we knew we would have some drastic re-organizing to do in order to fit our stuff back in our own space.

It turned out to be a blessing in disguise. We sorted, donated, recycled, and threw out a bunch of stuff, and in the process of reorganizing, I was struck with the idea of creating the library I've always wanted. (Well, okay, so it's not the one I have planned out in my mind, which includes a fireplace, huge, cushy leather chairs and floor to ceiling built in shelving throughout the room, but it's as close as I'm going to get in the place we are now.)

The space now contains 6 bookshelves, a cushy leather office chair, two tall 4-drawer filing cabinets (those were already there too) and a small desk.

These two bookshelves sit on top of a dresser that our old neighbor left for us. The dresser is solid wood and very heavy - and very nice. He bought it new and had it less than 3 years. It faces my sewing area and holds a variety of sewing supplies and projects. Putting the dresser there accomplished a couple of important things. First, it divided the rooms. Now you have to walk through a small "doorway" between the dresser and chest freezer in order to "enter" my sewing room. This should cut down clutter. (That and the fact that the children have been banished from this space unless they are actually sewing.) It also provides a great place to keep my current projects separated, and has plenty of space for supplies. When I put it in, though, all I could see was the top of a dresser that would be a catch-all for piles of junk again. That's when it struck me that I could put the bookshelves on top of the dresser. (This is not an entirely new thought, as we already have two long dressers like this stacked one on top of the other in our master bedroom - one for my husband and one for the one-year-old. We were out of floor space inside too.)

I love how this provides a barrier between library and sewing area. The desk was a happy accident. It was one of the last things that had to be moved from next door and there wasn't anywhere else to put it. I backed it up to the dresser, and it makes a great study area. My six year old spends a lot of time at this desk drawing and coloring while the daycare kids nap in the afternoon.

Here's a better picture of the dividing shelves. I'll give you a tour of the new sewing space tomorrow. The shelves are somewhat organized, but I will need to go through those one of these days and edit and organize. I also have more books coming in the mail, so I will need to make space for those too.

There's quite an assortment of books in this space. Everything from classics, to homeschooling books, to hymnals and sheet music, old Taste of Home magazines, recipe books, and the big tall shelf behind the office chair is all Bible study related books. My husband is a Bible college graduate. The Bible shelf is still mostly double stacked, and I still have books in boxes out here too.

So not everyone has an exercise bike in their library, and that doesn't exactly evoke thoughts of relaxation, but then not everyone has a treadmill in their sewing room either. But I'm guessing by now you've figured out that I march to my own drum beat. Not to mention, I don't have room indoors for an exercise room either - ha.

So what's this awkward empty space? It is going to be my indoor built in bookshelves ... eventually. This is a very odd space that was left when the designer of this home couldn't figure out what to do with it - ha. No offense. We love the layout of the home, but at the end of the hallway to the bedrooms, the bedroom doors angle into the rooms - you walk toward a "v" shape at the end of the hallway, where the doors connect. But this little space is left over. It's a good amount of space - almost 20 inches wide and 30 long. I had one of the bookshelves here, along the longer wall section, but it fit so well in the garage that I moved it. I have all the materials for creating built in shelves - floor to ceiling - along the shorter section. I've just been so busy with getting the garage in order and our junk out of the neighbor's way that I haven't had a chance to put this together. Maybe this weekend ... but then that's what I've been saying for a month, lol. No rush now that I've got my garage in order. I'm going to take some time to enjoy that space! Besides, I've been thinking, maybe I'll make an "L" shaped bookshelf and extend the shelves onto the longer wall too. I'd need more supplies for that though, so I'll probably just start with what I had planned, and see where it goes from there. That's how I approach all my projects.

Anyway, hopefully I've inspired some of you to make the most of what you have and quit waiting for someday. Oh, and by the way, did you notice, I now have "floor to ceiling" bookshelves? Just like Beauty and the Beast ;)