Our crazy crew...

No quilting this week... but plenty of fun!

Brink of Sanity

Honest, I haven't charged over the brink of sanity and dropped off the face of New Hampshire yet :o) Although the end of the school year gives me a running start, should I decide to take leave of my senses.... Our days have been a flurry of field trips, paperwork, end-of-year celebrations, and getting ready for 8th grade graduation for kiddo #2. Whew! Sewing has definitely taken a back seat lately. Perhaps I should buckle the sewing machine into the seat in case I veer perilously close to that sanity brink?

With kiddos home for the summer beginning TOMORROW, I did take some time last week to get *organized*. Fabric is safely tucked into the drawers of that new ironing board/stackable drawers arrangement. (Ugh! You don't even want to know how long I spent ironing, folding, and attempting some semblance of order...) I also waded through stacks and piles of books, papers, magazines, kids toys, etc., to unearth my "office" space. Added a couple of book shelves and a magazine rack (with a liner to match the new ironing board!). And, gee... how many months did this little brainstorm take??? I finally moved the guinea pig hay to the *other* side of their cage. Ummm... six months of hay falling all over my quilting books and office space. Can we say I must be a bit befuddled to let it continue for so long when it took five minutes to swap the water bottles and hay feeder??? (Guinea pigs and aforementioned hay are just to the left of the "office" picture...)

Sewing has been mostly personal this week... teacher gifts! Our extra-special kiddo has two wonderful friends that work with her every day at school. These women are fantastic!!! Always happy, patient, and enthusiastic! They go to all kiddo's concerts and events so that she can participate. They have admired kiddo's lunch sacks... it was fun to make and stuff special bags for them! And I have finally jotted down the pattern in two sizes. So, I guess I have sqeezed in a bit of book-proposal work. With a little tweaking, it will be ready to add to the pile of proposal....

Well... gotta run to pick up our 8th grader and bring her to lunch! Happy sewing! And STAY TUNED!!! I'm planning my first give-away in a few days :o)

Goofy kitty bag!

Look! My buddy, Lucie, sent me photos of the goofy kitty bag. Grown up. Sort of....

I've been busy enjoying the rain this weekend! A great excuse to stay inside and play with fabric! Photos and more coming soon... yes, I *will* remember to take photos myself this time :o)

Happy sewing :o)

From this.... to this!

(Note to Don... please do not read anything in parenthesis.) (You already are, aren't you?)

Ok... my sewing space has been a disaster for months and it's time to get organized! For the past year, my sewing machine has been in our livingroom and my *fabric* has been either stuffed in a box in the closet upstairs or squashed into a big bag in the loft area above our garage. When I pulled out a new project to work on, I had to scrounge around looking for the right fabrics in various bins. Did I mention that there WAS no order to the fabric in either location? Then, after cutting the fabric, I USED TO toss the scraps into a box under the computer. Said box WAS overflowing.... Oh! I've been cutting at the kitchen table and ironing on a teenie weenie little 14" ironing board. Both cutting and ironing spaces WERE too low and I wound up with a tired back when I did much of either chore. And the ironing board WAS, well, less than inspiring to look at....

Soooo... we have this great open area in front of our window where we had our Christmas tree last year. Usually, our two rocking chairs sit in that space during the summer. But, somehow, they have spent very little time tucked into their corner since Christmas. Maybe *fabric* could live there outside of the holiday season??? I bought stackable drawers at Walmart... and they stacked up to a perfect ironing board height!

Next came the hard part... convincing my dear (sometimes cranky, ahem...) husband that we could build an ironing board. He rolled his eyes at me a bit, but came through the door the next day carrying a piece of plywood 20" by 38 1/2". He'd even carefully rounded the edges. (If any of you have the chance to see this ironing board in person, please notice the beautifully rounded edges even though they are covered up with two layers of batting and a piece of fabric. He'll secretly be glowing under the eyeball rolling...) AND he helped me use those giant, scary staples to attatch the batting and fabric. (Ok... I'm really not scared of the big stapler, but don't tell him!)

Oh! The fabric! I tried to convince myself that a nice, quiet fabric would fit the decor of our cozy, country livingroom. You know... braided rug, rocking chairs, wooden cabinets. But I *LOVE* this Kaffe Fassett print. So cheery! And I'll spend several hours some days staring at it. (Ok, ok... so I didn't try terribly hard to talk myself into a boring fabric :o)

When we finished the ironing board, I realized that my cutting mat fit beautifully on the top of it! It takes up about 2/3 of the board space, leaving plenty of room to iron small pieces on the side. When my husband (of great wisdom... this is in parenthesis so that it doesn't go to his head) heard that I was going to put the cutting board on the ironing board, he objected and said that I might nick the ironing board. I reassured him that I have never run off the edge of the cutting mat.

Yesterday, I happily spent several hours cutting fabric. (Until I nicked the edge of my new board. A tiny little 1/2" nick that has already been repaired and hardly shows.) (That was in parenthesis, Don!)

Happy sewing! I'll have some fun stuff to post soon! Just have to sew together yesterday's cutting :o)

mending...

Quilting and mending are *not* related. One I look forward to eagerly. I carefully plan my week around a block of time dedicated to bonding with scraps of fabric. I try to snag some extra moments to try new fabric combinations or sketch another design. The other, I am quite adept at avoiding. I've had this bed spread, three shirts and a pair of shorts waiting for my attention for a couple of months now. It's a good thing my daughter needed the shorts hemmed for a Memorial Day parade. My inertia has finally been overcome and the pile of mending is gone! Oh... and my mom has been waiting for me to return her bed spread from that black hole called my mending pile....

Yes! I finally did something with that fun kitty fabric I found a few months ago. But did I remember to take pictures of the darned bag before sending it off??? Nope. Aurgh!!!! Somebody save me from myself! It was only hanging on a door knob for a week waiting to be wrapped!!!

Here is a photo of the bag in progress... I paired the goofy kitties with some fun batiks in autumn hues. And added a grommet to the front flap with a large, pretty bead. In an attempt to make a grown-up bag. It still fell a bit shy of grown-up, but it is interesting. Guess you'll just have to take my word for it since I neglected my camera :o)

Ok, ok, ok... that lasted a long time....

Well... I went to take the summer off and GUESS WHAT??? Several people found this silly blog at once. And I was invited to join a fashion-blog group. Through this quilty-dorky blog. Me?!? Fashion?!? My look is, "SO-TOTALLY-DORK-I-HEAR-SNICKERING!" Well... *THAT* was a short-lived vacation :o) Sooooo... the newly appointed fashion-dork will continue to dispense trivial bits of non-information. Just got to get that sewing machine up and running again....