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.