Happy Leap Day!

No pictures today, because yesterday was lots of running around and not much making.  After (finally! successfully!) vacuuming the upstairs half of the house, I took Jazzy with me and did errands.

First was a stop at Michaels, where I turned three pieces of art over to the framing department.  One had slipped off its matting, one was matted and had a frame, but needed backing and glass, and the other was a probably 1860s Godey's illustration that someone had Scotch taped together at some point.  The tape was at the point of shattering, but sadly had left residue where it was holding the pages together.  It's now getting mounted and matted and framed properly (not cheap, but it's going to be my indulgence for the next month).

Next we went to Wilco and looked at the chicks and the blueberry bushes and I got some potting soil for repotting my succulents as well as a seed starting tray and some more seeds.  Though they were all sold out of Early Jalepeno seeds, grr.

Then came the grocery store, where Jazzy got to scan everything and put it in our bags.

And finally we stopped at Dollar Tree so I could get yet more hangers, some potting soil to start seeds, and a few solar powered flowers to mark the end of our driveway at night.

After school, Squiddle had his friend Koltin over for a playdate, and I made Swedish pancakes and sausage for dinner.  An incident occurred which has led to Squiddle not getting video game time or playdates for the next week.

My aunt, uncle, and cousin will be stopping by for a couple hours on Monday.  I'm a little stressed, but mainly it's about fluffing and polishing the house this weekend.  I would also like to finish the Double Irish Chain quilt before they show up....

An Oldie But Beauty

Three and a half motifs left to go on the Double Irish Chain quilt, and then I can press and attach the binding... and wait until my nails grow out and my fingertips heal up a bit before sewing the binding down to the back.  I have soft fingernails that I really can't grow past a quarter of an inch long before they rip.  As a couple did the other day, nearly down to the quick.  So I trimmed the rest to match, but it's coming back to bite me now.

Ah well.  It is what it is.

Since my executive dysfunction was kicking in yesterday (I need to vacuum the upstairs; I need to wash the guest room bedding; can I? nooooo~) I rerouted my daily tasks to something else: unpacking the boxes of clothing that've been hanging out in my bedroom closet for months now.  I went through two and a half boxes (the half being Wonderful Husband's; he gets to unpack his own clothes because I don't know where he'll want them) before I ran out of hangers.  Most of it is stuff I can't wear yet, summer-weight things.  But I found a few more pairs of jeans and my sweatshirts, so having those again will be nice.

I also opened a box I'd gotten a couple months ago: a quilt I bought in a Goodwill auction.  If there's one that interests me, I usually only bid the minimum.  This one, I bid a little bit more because I really wanted to take a pattern from it:

Isn't that cool?  Despite the machine quilting, I'm pretty sure it's hand-sewn.  The pieces are... not uniform, which will make pattern-taking interesting.  And I'm fairly sure it's set into the background, not appliqued on top of it.  This pattern is probably somewhere in Barbara Brackman's books but I don't have access to them at the moment, so I'm calling it the Circle Star quilt.

Most of the blocks are in pretty good condition for a quilt that (judging by some of the fabrics) probably dates to the 1930s.  The outer border, and this one block, are, however, shreddy:

Even that's a bit useful, however.  For instance, I now know that the interior is a flannel sheet, not batting.  I'll need to look at this section more closely later to tease out more details.  For now, however, I leave you with this sweet probably incidentally Christmas colored block:

Isn't that just so pretty?

Keep On Quilting On

Yesterday I kept chugging away at the Double Irish Chain quilt.  I finished the blocks I'd drawn the quilting motif on, and had to lay it out on the floor to sketch in the rest:

The colored chains have a simple cross-hatching going on.  Here's the motif I'm free-handing into the white areas:

I also went to quilt guild last night!  It was the meeting of Quilters by the Bay, where we string-pieced 10.5" half-square triangles.  I forgot to grab pictures of my group's blocks!  But we made ten, and altogether the guild churned out forty-nine blocks in a little under an hour.  I also donated some magazines and books to the guild's sewing room sale in May.  Out of my house into someone else's!

And since the guild knows I make mini quilts, the scraps from the strip piecing came home with me:

Oh dear!  Now I need to think of what to make with them.

Tuesday's Thrifted Treasures

I ran up to Port Orchard yesterday morning, both to get the lattices to block off underneath the back patio, and (since I was child-free and thus moving fast) to do my weekly surveil of the thrift stores while I was there.  And I got through Goodwill and St. Vinnie's and Lowe's in time to meet Jazzy at the bus stop, so hooray!

My haul, minus the kiddie plate that matched the others the boys eat from, which had already gone in the dishwasher, and a one-cup canning jar:

The glass jar on the left actually has a rubber seal, so it'll be useful for pantry storage.  The yellow and white brocade tablecloth needs a mend in one spot, and new hems on two sides, but it's nice and should fit the table.  I've been wanting a French curve ruler for dressmaking for a while, so I'm pleased to have one.  And the pattern is one of the Mountain Mist quilt patterns that I collect when I find them.

I'm actually the most pleased about this little tray, though:

The engravement reminds me of Little House on the Prairie books.  If you've read much about Laura's life after the series ends, you'll know that the house Almanzo built for her burned down in a prairie fire, and the only thing that survived was a glass platter with the same motto: "Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread."

However, this wooden piece was sad, and in need of love.  So I pulled out my wood polish, which I make by melting coconut oil and beeswax together.  I rubbed it on by hand and then buffed it out with a kitchen towel, and the tray now looks much happier:

(Forgive the shadows of the parsley plant.)  I've placed this the vanity in the guest room, as a catch-all tray, on top of one of the embroidered runners I found a couple weeks ago.

Tonight, quilt guild!

Give It To Me Straight

Well, a day of quilting (or, more honestly, a few hours snatched here and there between laundry and getting boys to and from school, and while Jazzy was napping), and the straight stitching in the colorful blocks of the Double Irish Chain is done!

I also figured out the design I want for the open white spaces, and drew it on a few with a water-soluble marker.  I stitched one to test it, and it'll work.  Today, I draw more motifs and hopefully stitch a few of them!

Double Irish Chain and Weekly Thrift Store Treasures

After making my decision, I laid out and basted the Double Irish Chain quilt Saturday night:

The quilt is 70"x90", so it's not as small as it looks here.  I did trim away the extra batting before I spray-basted it, and put it in my pile for either bolster pillows or rag quilt squares.  It feels like the spray baste manufacturer switched nozzles at some point.  The older cans didn't used to aerosolize nearly this much!  It's a subtle sensation on the floor, but I'm pretty sure I now need to mop around the basting area.  The excess backing I trimmed away after basting.  Such a luxury to not have to piece a backing!  I've cut and joined four 2.5" lengthwise strips from the leftover backing fabric to be the binding.

I only went to one thrift store last week, and other than a couple deconstructable toys for the boys and a big tub of sidewalk chalk that has already been broken into, these were my finds:

The picture frame was $3.75 and it is a perfect size for the couple prints I've bought from Ikea.  (The Dalarna horse unicorn here being one of them.  Celebrating my Scandinavian heritage!)  It's already hung on the wall downstairs.  I also lucked into nine old quilting magazines, a vintage crochet potholder instruction manual, and a Ball canning publication for $.25 each.

Decisions, Decisions

After finishing off the dozen log cabin blocks Friday night, I admitted to myself that I don't really feel like piecing right now.  I want to keep quilting!  I want to use up some of my massive stash and somehow decrease the excessive amount of fabric I have out in the garage.  So out I went, and dug around in a couple places where I knew I had tops and backings stashed.

First option:

A vintage Double Wedding ring quilt top which I think I got at the Zion Thrift Shop in Fullerton, California.  Some idjit washed it at some point in its history, so even though it (fortunately!) doesn't need any seams repaired, it does need to be pressed before it's basted and quilted.  This backing fabric doesn't match the vintage feel of the quilt top, but it's pretty and pale; I wouldn't have to worry about possible bleed-through.  I think I could use the walking foot to quilt the pieced arcs; I would need to free-motion something in the open spaces.  Another tick mark against it (after "needs a pressing") would be the need for a bias binding, with lots of stops and starts and angles.

Therefore, I'm slightly more inclined to go with this second option:

A Double Irish Chain quilt top I pieced last year.  I kind of like this red piece from last week's thrift store adventuring for a backing, though I would need to be very careful with color catchers in the wash.  Like the Double Wedding Ring, I could quilt most of it with the walking foot (and FMQ the open squares).  Unlike the DWR quilt, it doesn't need a careful ironing first, and the binding will be a straight-forward affair.

So I think I will go for the "easy" quilt first, and then, if I still feel like quilting after it's done, have the more complex quilt as a follow-on.

A Finish and an In-Progress

Whee, I had a busy Friday!  After the usual morning run of household chores, I took the boys to the Play to Learn session at the Civic Center, then we came home and had lunch, before going over to the Point Defiance Zoo to meet up with my sister and niece.  (And I am very proud that I remembered to bring the duck eggs my sister asked me to order from the co-op.  And remembered to give them to her.  Sometimes I can be forgetful.)  And we were in luck; almost none of the animals were hiding!

After we got back from that, I also remembered to have Wonderful Husband hold up the Cloverleaf quilt for a finished photograph:

I'm planning to show it off at guild this week, and then Wonderful Husband can ask his friend for his address, and I can get it mailed off.

In the evening, after dinner, I also sat down and finished my first dozen log cabin blocks:

They're all pressed but not yet trimmed.  I think they'll have to be checked for that later, after I've sewn more of them, as at least a couple strips were wonky.  Which I realized after I'd sewn them on....

Miscellanea

More lots of running around yesterday.  It always takes longer with two children in tow - time to slow down my steps to match theirs, time to coax them into the car, time to get them buckled, etcetera.  But we got my planned errands done and were only fifteen minutes late to their playdate next door.  (Though, grr, I forgot to get a pair of zippers at Joanns.)

Out of the mouths of babes: Wonderful Husband and Squiddle were talking about Super Mario Odyssey, and somehow the concept of a thousand moons came up (I think there are only 880 in the game) and Wonderful Husband said that would be enough to take you to a different planet.  Squiddle: "Like Australia?!"

I'm still working on these:

Two more strips to go on two of them, one more strip to go on the other ten.  Yet I'm still nowhere near finishing off that not-very-full bag of strips, alas.  I guess I'll cut out another dozen red centers and see how far that gets me.  If I want a symmetrical layout, 64 blocks would get me an 80"x80" quilt...

A Warm Wednesday

It's harder to do crafty things with both boys off school this week.  Usually I get sewing done either during the morning when they're both in school, or sometimes in the afternoon when Jazzy is napping.  Yesterday I managed to get one strip on each of the dozen Log Cabin blocks, and that's it.

Ah well.  At least I'm staying on top of the kitchen!  Which means I'm more inclined to cook.  Yesterday I made some buttermilk banana muffins from a couple bananas I'd frozen when they started to get softer than anyone here would eat.  Win!

I did take the boys to the park again in the afternoon, and it was sunny and warm for a change, so I pulled this out:

It's slow going since this is a take-along project that I really only work on when I'm sitting down somewhere that isn't home.  But one stitch at a time, it's getting done.

After the park, I stopped to pick up the co-op order, and after Wonderful Husband finished his workday, we went up to Port Orchard to pick up the order from the Kitsap co-op, which I wanted to try ordering from since they've got a wider variety of things.  Then up to Bremerton, to check out the Smart Foodservice warehouse, which is sadly more food service oriented than their sister operation, Smart'N'Final, which I really miss from California.  Still, I've found where to get gallon sun tea bags and #10 cans of tomatoes for salsa!  And we ended up having dinner at Family Pancake House, since the Dickey's Barbeque we initially wanted to eat at was closing in less than half an hour.  (And little boys can eat really slowly sometimes.)

Stuff Done, Little of It Stitching

Ugh.  I did not get much crafty done yesterday.  But I did start tackling the very-necessary pruning of the various blackberry bushes around the property.  Which is sadly complicated by Gig Harbor's policy of no blackberry vines in the yard waste bin.  (From my point of view, once they're dead and desiccated, which is the bit I'm pruning, what is the practical difference between blackberry vines and rosebush branches in the yard waste bin?)  Still, I hacked out some of the dead stuff from the biggest bramble and chopped it into 6" pieces in the trash bin, leaving enough room for our actual trash.

I took the boys to the park for a couple of hours (cold, but tolerable in the sunshine) and finally, finally got caught up on washing and putting away all the pots, pans, baking sheets, dishes, etcetera, in the kitchen.  I also remembered to bring in a couple mason jars to store all the steak knives and other pointy things in, up in a cupboard out of reach of children.  And I planned and made lunch and dinner.

So I did things.  Just, not much sewing.  I got another round of light strips put on the dozen Log Cabin blocks, but not the darks yet.  No pictures, alas.  And I'm percolating a rainbow Chinese Coins design for the baby quilt for my cousin's daughter-to-be, since I have all those 7.5"x2.5" bricks....

ISO: Next Project

After taking care of dishes and laundry and various other necessary household tasks, I went out to the garage in search of my next sewing project.  I hauled this bin in to the workroom:

Inside were a few different multi-gallon Ziploc bags.  The biggest is devoted to "ocean colors" for a quilt or three that I want to make eventually.  But I wasn't feeling that project today, so that went back in the box.

One of the other bags, however, held strings!  So back out to the garage I went.  I actually know where my stash of "suitable for string piecing" paper is.  I brought back in a Pinetree gardening catalog from three years ago, cut it up into 8.5" squares, and pulled all the green and orange strings I could find, to make Rainbow Scrap Challenge string blocks.  Three green:

And two orange:

That worked through, I sorted a bag of 1.5" strips into light and dark:

And dug through another bag of 2.5" x 7.5" bricks, pulling out all the reds:

I took four of the red bricks, cut them into three 2.5" squares, making twelve total, and started in on making log cabin blocks ala Eleanor Burns.  I got two rounds around them before bedtime, and am debating whether to stop at three rounds (for 8" blocks) or to go for four (for 10" blocks).

Cloverleaf Quilting

Another advantage of a baby or toddler quilt, beyond the "do not need to piece a backing" advantage, is how quickly they quilt up!

When I made up the label on Saturday, I decided to date it to Sunday, thinking that even with a birthday party to attend during the day, I could get the Cloverleaf quilt done.  And I did!

My Sunday:

I used a very pale green thread, which completely disappears in the setting squares, so it was really no good trying to photograph the swags I quilted onto each side of each square.  But the leaf-and-heart motif I came up with for the Disappearing Four-Patch squares turned out rather nicely, I thought:

The border just got a hills and valleys wave, with four more little hearts in the corners.  No pictures of that or the binding, I'm afraid, as it was night by the time I finished, and as soon as I did finish it, it was teeth-brushing and storytime, and then bed for two little people.

Still, a quilt done in a day!

Now I just need to decide what the next project is.

Thrift Store Treasures

So I was going to go to the Stokes Auction yesterday and bid on a few things for myself and on behalf of my sister... but given that I woke up with a tension headache which despite painkillers never really went away... yeah, that didn't happen.  I'm not too upset... the only thing I really wanted was a 1928 Singer 99 in a bentwood case, and I honestly need to play more with my other vintage machines anyway.  (But it had its knee bar with it, and I've never had one with that!  Ah well.)

Instead Wonderful Husband drove us all to Lunchbox Laboratory for lunch, and then to the Galaxy Theater to see Spirited Away.  They have these big huge individual recliner chairs with trays... and honestly I'd rather they had simpler seats where I could've raised the armrests and snuggled with a little boy on either side.  Going to a movie does not need to be a dinner experience!  Both boys were good and sat through the entire film.  (Wonderful Husband hadn't wanted to take them both on his own because he worried that Jazzy might not.)  And I'd forgotten that Zeniba is much harsher in her first appearance in the dub than she is in Japanese....

Since I have no pictures of a new-to-me 92-year-old sewing machine to show you, however, let me show you some of what I got during my three-thrift-store adventure with my sister on Friday!  (Where we saw two other vintage Singers... another 99 in a bentwood case for $99, and a 15 in neither case nor table for $75.)

I got a couple of baskets, one of them having already been utilized to organize and corral little boy toys.  A set of placemats.  Some washable finger paints.  And a couple small toys (tiny dinosaur on wheels for Jazzy, and a balance robot for Squiddle).  For mama, however, I found these:

Three new books and a back issue of Piecework (which only cost a quarter, ignore that price sticker).

Two vintage runners, hand-embroidered on linen, and a $.10 pattern for making an indoor playhouse out of a card table.

Left to right: three yards of a 90" wide red fabric, which will make a nice backing.  A yard and a quarter of the orange check, a yard and a half of the floral, which I'm hoping will make a couple bolster pillows for the family room sofa, and a gallon bag of batik scraps.  Most of which are mere strings, but some of which are sizeable enough to make me pleased at the $.75 price.  (Part of me is thinking miniature log cabin blocks with the strings.)

So that was my haul of treasure for the week!  But this morning I should work on the Cloverleaf quilt, now that it's labelled and basted, with binding prepped.  Because this afternoon is a birthday party for one of the neighbor boys at a trampoline park....

Cloverleaf Quilt, Backing and Binding

I don't make them often, so I always forget one of the glorious parts of baby quilts is not having to piece the backing!  I hauled in my newly rediscovered green fabrics, and asked Wonderful Husband's help in picking out a backing and binding.  After pressing, here are the results!

The quilt is laid out on the backing here to make sure it fits.  Though it would make a good second border if I wanted to make it bigger!  (Which I don't.)

I have a little over three yards of this Cranston Fabrics print, which must be about twenty years old at this point!  I remember I bought it to go with a bunch of green block-of-the-month kits from Joanns, which got given away at some point along the line.

And Wonderful Husband disregarded my theory that bindings should be as dark as the darkest color in the quilt, and picked this, which brings out some of the lighter greens in the blocks and the flange:

I didn't actually get to cut anything yesterday, due to gallivanting with my sister, and I can't write out the label until Wonderful Husband wakes up, as the name of the little girl this is for is in his e-mail somewhere.  So, quiet holding pattern this morning.  I shall drink tea and catch up on the Internet until other people rise.

A Finish or Two

One new car battery acquired!  And while I sat in the dealership waiting room, I just kept stitching and stitching and stitching, until this was finished just before my car was ready:

The label has been corrected, it has been washed (losing almost no color to the color catchers!), and placed on Squiddle's bed, as he requested:

Disappointingly, at Squiddle's eye appointment, his amblyopia showed no improvement.  So treatment has been stepped up from "a couple hours a day with an eyepatch" to "as soon as he gets home from school until he goes to sleep at night with an eyepatch."  He has another appointment in two and a half months - hopefully the increased and stricter regiment will have an effect.  If not, we will pursue treatment with a specialist.

On a slightly happier note, I stopped at Joann's on the way back from the dealership, where I was virtuous, and bought NO fabric!  But I did pick up the floss I needed to finish this little project:

And the backside, for honesty's sake:

Here the liner is, back in its basket.  I E-6000'd a hook onto the back of the basket a couple days ago, so the whole shebang is now ready to be hung on Jazzy's wall and filled with diapers, getting their storage up off the floor:

Next, I sew together the backing fabric for the Cloverleaf quilt and get that quilted.

Rainbows!

Yesterday was kind of a dud, as it included the conclusion that my car battery probably needs to be replaced.  Well, back to the dealership this morning to ask their opinion on it!  I'll be taking the orange nine-patch with me and using the time to push the binding toward finished.  Bright side: I no longer fear jump-starting a car, as I've now had to use our little jump box a couple times.

I did, however, get to work a bit on this little embroidery project:

I think the green is a little dark, but I'm not inclined to rip it out and replace it.  I actually don't have any red or orange floss at the moment, so hopefully on the way back from getting my battery assessed and either fixed or replaced, I will stop at JoAnn's and get what I need to finish this.

Regarding rainbows... as I was driving yesterday, through fitful spates of anemic rain, Cyndi Lauper's song "True Colors" came on.  And as the line "beautiful, like a rainbow" came into my car, I looked up at the sky and there in front of me was a rainbow.  It was gone not ten seconds later.  I love cosmic timing.

Guild Night!

Last night was the first meeting of West Sound Quilters at their new location, and though I'm not entirely enamored of the long tables setup the Elks Club has going, I think that being in a much larger room made the meeting more enjoyable (for me, at least).  The speaker was a representative from Hoffman Fabrics, who gave us a talk on how batiks are made.

I sat there through the meeting, quietly doing this:

I didn't quite get it finished, but given the binding was a quarter stitched down when I got to the meeting, and three-quarters done by the time I left, I feel that I made good progress.  I showed off that quilt, as well as the Disney Star quilt.

After I finish the binding, this is my next project:

It's the fabric liner for the basket in which I keep Jazzy's diapers.  I plan to hang the basket on the wall, and tried soaking this stain out of the liner, but OxyClean failed me.  So I thought, looks kind of like a storm cloud.  I'll just embroider on a sun and rainbow, which can faintly bee seen in blue wash-out ink on the left, and then it'll be fit to be seen.

The Orange and the Black

Wow, this post marks one whole month where I've kept up with blogging every single day!  (Some posts, admittedly, less stellar than others, but life ebbs and flows like that.)

To amuse: over the weekend, for whatever reason the topic of discussion turned to vampires.  Then I stopped, and asked Squiddle if he knew what a vampire was.  His answer: "A vampire is a scary person who lives in a haunted house.  Well, they're not really a person...."  Can't say he's wrong!

Is it Monday that's traditionally for washing?  Because regardless, yesterday I churned through four loads of laundry, filled the dishwasher twice, made dinner for five (Squiddle's friend Koltin came over to play after school), as well as muffins, and sewed the binding to the Orange Nine-Patch quilt.

The work du jour, all trimmed and awaiting its binding:

I ended up not having quite enough of the binding fabric to do my usual 2.5" binding, so I went with a 2" binding, here laid out on the ironing board, looking a bit like zebra stripes:

Now I just need to do twenty-four feet of hand-stitching the binding to the back, correct the label, and it'll be all done.  No problem, right? :)

A Finish, and Quilting Finished

Since we had a rare sunny day yesterday, I asked Wonderful Husband to hold the Disney Star quilt over the railing of our back (south-facing) patio so I could get a good photo before it's given away to Niecelet on Friday.

The quilt is bound in the darkest of the four purples, the one on the upper left.  And there's not much left of it!  And while I'm at it, here are the pair of pillowcases that are going with the quilt, one thrifted, and one made to match:

The pink fabric in the homemade pillowcase isn't in the quilt (I didn't have enough of any of the fabrics for the body of a pillowcase), but the other two fabrics are.  Given that Niecelet loves Elsa, I had to use one of the Frozen fabrics for the band, and I made sure Elsa-and-Anna (and Kristoff-and-Sven) were centered.

And my final accomplishment yesterday was quilting all twenty-four remaining nine-patches in the Orange Nine-Patch quilt:

Please note how much thread is left on the spool.  Not much!  I'll finish it up sewing the binding on.

Small Things

Ugh.  I didn't get much done yesterday other than migrating a few of the Stitch plushies onto the shelves of Wonderful Husband's office.  (I have a vision of him on video conference calls with his coworkers, with a wall of Stitches behind him.  Fortunately, he also finds this image amusing.)  Well, I also went through my bookmarks and managed to purge a couple dozen.

Wonderful Husband, on the other hand, shifted furniture around in Jazzy's room and hung the book dinosaurs print on the wall in there.  Progress in making this house look lived in!  Now I just need to fix up that bookcase I bought for Jazzy, and then I can call his room done.  (And hang up the diaper basket so it's no longer sitting on the floor.)

And if I change out the walking foot for the hopping foot on my sewing machine, I can get back to work on the orange nine-patch.  Which Squiddle has asked me if it was intended for anyone, and when I said no one in particular, asked if it could be his.  The dimensions of it make me think it was intended for a twin bed, but I can certainly put it crossways on his double bed, so, sure.

Also, a random thought: Quilters By The Bay may be farther away and across a toll bridge, but they're a good deal more organized than the West Sound Quilters.  Because if I read the website correctly, the WSQ have our next meeting this Tuesday.  Yet the website still lists last month's (cancelled) meeting as the next, and the newsletter for this month hasn't come out yet.  I suppose years of working with Sandy and Jamie from the Orange County Quilters Guild spoiled me for competency and timeliness!

Blah Saturday

Not much to post about today, really.  I finished quilting the sashing on the orange nine-patch quilt, and tied off and buried all fifty-two thread tails.  And I went out and measured where I was considering putting garden beds around the back of the house, so I have numbers to look at and chart out and use to figure out how much this project would cost.

New Day, New Project (Kinda)

After getting both boys off to school and seeing Wonderful Husband off to the dentist, I got to work and hauled all the stuff I wanted immediately outta the way out to The Barn.  Then I put that last set of shelves together out in the garage and started organizing things.  I've got most of it done now, including about half those boxes from the family room out on the shelves.  Unfortunately, I discovered why I had stacked them in front of that wall: holes and level lines from where the last set of owners had their TV mounted to the wall.  Sigh.  I need to spackle and paint....

After that spate of productivity, I finished the pillowcase to go with the Disney Star quilt and tossed it all through the wash with a couple color catchers.  Both of which came out magnificently pink!  Which is why I use 'em.

Then I started in on the next project:

I have no memory relative to acquiring this quilt top.  It's a hand-sewn nine-patch, made probably in the 1950s or 1960s, going by the fabric.  There was one place I had to patch a rip in the sashing, matching the orange as best I could.  It's already partially quilted - my label on the back indicates I expected it to be finished in July of 2018.  I'll clearly need to be making a correction to that!

Thirty of the nine-patches are FMQ'd.  Twenty-four more to go:

But for the next couple days, I'll be tackling straight stitching in the sashing.  Hooray for the walking foot!

An Honest Afternoon's Work

Yesterday afternoon I had the brilliant idea to try organizing the garage a bit further.  It was not totally unprompted - I got a reminder that my aunt and uncle are going to be visiting at the beginning of March, so I'd like, say, the stack of boxes in the family room to relocate to someplace less conspicuous.

In December, just before we left for England, I went to the monthly Stokes Auction and bought, among other things, a pair of those metal shelves you get at Costco for about 60% of the price of new ones from Costco.  Today, I was determined, I would assemble them and stack the boxes in the garage on them and get it neater and tidier than what was already relatively tidy.

Well, I got halfway.  One of the sets turned out to have been two half-sets.  So instead of a five-shelf-high platform, I had two three-shelf-high platforms.  Still better than the boxes which were stacked two tall!  We already had three full height sets: two we brought up from Cali, and one that came with the house.  We'd never put wheels on our two sets, but still had them, so I was able to add them onto the second half-height set, which is good because it means I can pull them out of the rows for better access.

After getting those two shelves built and stocked, I quit, because I could feel a warning twinge in my shoulders.  Still, accomplishment!  Especially since I also emptied a box of tools (onto the shelves we decided were for tools) and shifted fabric around a couple of half-empty tubs to make room to empty a second cardboard box of yardage into them.

There are five more boxes out in the garage, together with some pieces of furniture.  If I can get the last shelf set built, those can go there, together with some of the boxes in the family room.  But first I have to move all the flattened moving boxes out to The Barn, as they're on top of those remaining boxes!  And while I'm at that, I might as well move the doors I took off the boys' shower out there as well.  (Why on Earth did that shower have sliding doors as well as a bolted-into-the-wall curtain rod??  I opted to take the doors off because it makes using that tub for little boy baths a lot easier.)

Run-Around Wednesday

Despite it being the boys' late start morning today, it was also a hit-the-ground-running morning, if I wanted to get my appointed errands done and get back in time to meet Jazzy's bus.  I went up to the Lowe's in Port Orchard to get a replacement toilet seat for the downstairs toilet (romantic, I know), a couple different types of hooks to hang things, and to take a quick look at trellises for under the back deck, to protect the backsides of garden beds I plan on planting from the local marauding rabbits.  (Wonderful Husband: "How will you protect them from the other side?"  Me: "I'm planting a 2-3" wide border of chives.")

After I finished that errand, I had a little time to kill, so I wandered over to St. Vinnie's and came away with the following:

That plus four half-cup canning jars set me back $4.09.  The stripe is two yards and will go either into the Civil War stuff, or into the pile of striped fabric, not sure which yet.

(And, yes, I made it back in plenty of time to meet Jazzy's bus.  I took his scooter with me today, since yesterday I had to carry him the Entire. Way. Home.  Since it's mostly uphill, he tired of scooting quickly, but was happy enough to just stand on the scooter while I kept one hand on his back and pushed.  We got home a lot quicker than usual.  Win!)

Done and Done

As I sit and write, there are a few flakes of snow falling from the sky.  Pity it's going to warm up and we're due for a week of rain again.

Yesterday morning I took my car in for servicing, and while I was sitting there waiting I sewed the rest of the hanging sleeve onto the Owl and Pussycat quilt.  This morning, on the walk to the bus, I asked Squiddle where in his room he wanted it hung.  This is where he chose:

I wouldn't want something heavy hung over a bed, in case it fell, but a quilt is just fine.  And I'm very pleased with the Hang It Dang It I received for Christmas and used for this.  It made it very easy.  Of course, now I don't have it to hang any other wall quilts, but I also got an Amazon gift card for Christmas, so I might just use that to get a couple more for elsewhere in the house.

After I got back from the car dealership, I also sewed the binding onto the Disney Star quilt.  It went on nice and easy, and I realized I use a couple tricks that I'm not sure I picked up from anywhere.  I feel like I should do a Youtube video, or a photo tutorial.

And, yes, the stitching is visible on the front.  I don't care.  Durability is my keyword!  This is a quilt for a three-year-old.  I want strength of stitching, not aesthetic fineness.  And this took me thirty minutes of machine time to complete, not three evenings of hand-stitching.

Now I just need to cut and sew a pillowcase to go with this, wash 'em, and then it's ready to gift.  I might keep it an extra week, though, to show off at quilt guild first...

Some Honey, and Plenty of Money, Wrapped Up in a Five-Pound Note

Sixteen years ago yesterday, Wonderful Husband and I promised "to grow old together, but never grow up."  And I'm still as much in love with him as I was on that day.

This year, having no nearby parents to mind the boys while we went out for a nice dinner, we opted to just go to Blazing Onion, though we did get desserts (to go).  Apparently people in Gig Harbor are much more likely to go to Superbowl parties than sports bars?  When Wonderful Husband asked our waiter, he said that he knew of four separate hundred-people-plus parties.  Duly noted for next year.

I didn't get much done.  Hung a mirror in our closet.  Pulled out my jewelry fixings and reattached the chain to a tea ball.  Went through the couple boxes in Harry's Room (the room under the stairs) and separated out the frames and prints and diplomas to be hung on walls from the baby quilts that padded them during the move.  I ran out of steam before I could actually attach anything to the walls, though.

But I did find this:

My mother-in-law made it for Squiddle a couple of years ago, and it came with the accompanying book: the Owl and the Pussycat went to sea in a pea-green boat, etc.  I asked Squiddle if he would like it hanging on the wall of his bedroom, and he enthusiastically agreed, so I whipped up a couple hanging sleeves, and am in the process of attaching them.

I also got the binding for the Disney Star quilt cut, sewn together, and pressed ready to attach, so hopefully that'll also get sewn on today.