My Current Sewing Space

Thanks to everyone that stopped by on the Holiday Lane Blog Hop and left me such nice comments!  

I love reading what you have to say and it is the best form of encouragement!

I am in the process of moving my current sewing space from the middle of my living room 

to the recently vacated upstairs bedroom. 

 It has been an uphill battle with my hubby as he wanted to make it into a "guest" room. 

 We have not had overnight guests in the entire time we have been married, almost 30 years! 

 So I told him I didn't think that was a good plan. 

 Then there is a twin bed and 2 dressers in there.  

He wanted to keep the bed and use the dressers and the closet for rotating his clothes by season.  

Nope, not going to happen. 

 It will just become a crap hole.  

You know it will. 

 I know it will and now he knows it will. 

 So, DD1, who just recently moved out, took the bed, but left the trundle portion.  

**Sigh**

 I am going to let him keep that until after Christmas 

so that when DD2 comes home she will have a bed.  

After that it's a blow up mattress baby!  

I decided to keep the dressers, but I need to empty them out so I can use them for storage. 

 I also cleared out the closet. 

 I have steam cleaned most of the carpet

 just have one small spot to do now that one of the dressers is moved to it's new place in the room.  

I know you are dying to see my current messy room so here you go.

My sewing space in all it's messy glory!

This weekend I need to move all this stuff to it's new home and reclaim my living room!

I have sooooo much more fabric and stuff in bins in the basement too.  

 I am going to let you in on my plan for that stuff. 

 I am going to have my big, strong son carry some of the bins to the new sewing room.

 He will have to do this several times!

There are a LOT of bins.

 I will go through said bins and sort out stuff I want to keep.  

The stuff I don't want/need anymore will go through a process.  

First I will be listing it for sale here on my blog every week 

(and this will probably go on for many months).  

It's true, I am a fabric horder! 

You probably already suspected but now I am out of the basement!

 I think I will choose a day of the week and 

do it on the same day every week until I finish going through the bins.  

What doesn't sell in a week will go over to my ETSY shop for a few months. 

 Whatever doesn't sell there will get listed as destash/swap or donated.  

This way I will have what I want to work with and clear out the clutter. 

 Will you guys hold me to this plan please?  

LOL 

 I have been carrying the bolts of fabric I have upstairs first.

This is the first stack to go to the new room!

(yes there are more)

I plan to get several tall book cases to put my fabric into so I can see it. 

 I am hoping that will be a huge inspiration to my sewing too. 

 How have you organized your sewing space? 

 Any tips on things to do or probably more importantly not to do?

  I would be eternally greatful!

I have put the following (in yardage) up for sale in my ETSY shop if anyone is interested.

Oh rest assured I am keeping some too!  

I just thought I would share the wealth!!

Last but not least I want to let you know that I have joined Pinterest.   

If you are there too, stop by, follow me and let me know what you think of my "pins". 

 It is taking me a long time to learn new things but I am getting there. 

 I learned how to use Google Drive the other day and was pretty proud of myself!

Now I know how to host a PDF using it.

All this moving makes me want to take a nap.

No rest for the wicked!!! 

tee hee

OK, send me those suggestions and I will have a giveaway to the person's suggestion I like the best!

Now, aren't you glad you read all the way to the end?

Please make sure I can contact you in case you are the lucky winner.

If there are more than one suggestions I love there may be a second winner.

That one will be a surprise!

~XOP~

I'll let you know next Friday (December 7th)

Finally a Finish I Can Post About

I finished the binding on The Ugly Quilt Part Deux. 
I got it back from Liz and it was fabulous, of course.

Here is the back

This shows the amazing quilting, in teal thread!

And a close up of the front.

This quilt is now available for purchase in my ETSY if you are interested.

I have been working on some other projects too. 

 I joined a AMH charm swap and am looking forward to that. 

I went to my dad's on Friday and now I am officially paying all his bills for him. 

 YIPPEE! 

 I still need to get the POA so it is official but online doesn't ask.  

How was your weekend??

~XOP~

Sliced Apples is Finished

I have been unusually quiet lately but not because I have not been working (among other things). 

 I have the binding and labels done on two quilts.  

My friend Cori did the binding on Sliced Apples and it looks great!!  

Cori has an online shop and she is carrying one of my favorite blender lines at the moment called Running Stitches.  

Hop on over and take a look.  

I'll wait while you look. 

 It's great right?  

Her customer service is also GREAT!! 

 So I bet you want to see Sliced Apples now right?  

This is the binding and the label. 

 I'm loving it.  

Thank you so much, Cori, for doing the binding and for helping with the QAL.  

We will have to do it again sometime soon!! 

 I wanted to show you Liz's fantastic quilting too, using a hairy caterpillar pattern.  LOVE IT!

Just look at those caterpillars in all their hairy glory!

All Finished and ready for ETSY!

 

~XOP~

Inspiration Anyone?...Anyone??

That's right. I am asking for inspiration. I know I have a list of things to do but those are "things that must be done". You *know* that is not the fun list, right? Oh it begins innocently enough. The things begin as fun things you want to do and then they turn into "things that must be done". UGH!!!

I have my machine out and it is all serviced and ready to go. I have lots of "things that must be done" quilts I could work on. I just have no desire to do any of them right now. I remember feeling like this last year at this time too.

I did a lot of cleaning and laundry this past weekend, that was good. Should have freed up my Sunday for sewing. Nope, found more cleaning and laundry to do along with grocery shop. I decided I had to do a couple of things so here is what I did in the sewing room.

I found this charm pack given to me by one of my CL's that I adore (thanks RAW!!). I cut it into coins for another coin quilt. I cut the white fabric she had given me to go with it into the borders and then decided that it is too white to go well with these coins. I need to cut some snow. Of course, right? I will use the white eventually when I get something to put it with and it will be all cut and ready to use. I even cut the rest of the white into sashing strips for a second one. There was not enough to get 2 backs cut but I did cut one.


LTW and I had ordered some Kaffe and Phillip Jacobs fabrics from a place I found them on sale. We each ordered half a yard cuts so I cut them all into FQ and bagged up half for LTW. You guessed it, that was the extent of my "quilting" this weekend. How pathetic!

When I leave work today, I will have DD drop me at the gym and work out. I will meet with my team leader for the first time and that should be interesting. I am on the purple team, along with PTM. Then I will ask DD to come and get me and go to the WW meeting. Then home for the evening. DH is home and hopefully will make the turkey breast I left for him to do! He made some fabulous squash soup last night. I just wish he had made more of it! I ate the rest for lunch today. Very low points!! I am anxious to see if I have lost any weight according to the WW scales.

Is anyone else having difficulty getting motivated to quilt? I have lots of ideas. I am working on some embroidery though and have almost gotten another one finished. Will show it to you when it is complete.

I did list another little thing on my ETSY. A vintage compact. Check it out if you get the chance.

Guess What I Can Do?

Well, I am so very excited about the changes going on in my life at the moment! I have been wanting to lose weight and now I am making the changes to make it happen. My DD1 and I joined Weight Watchers on Monday. My friend, PTM, joined a gym and did a weight loss challenge and now she has convinced me to do the same. So I went with her last night and I am going to do the challenge with her again. She was the winner and lost over 25 pounds!! She looks fantastic. My hero!! So with the extra time I am off from the CL group this month I will be living at the gym. Wish me luck!

Last night after the gym PTM and I went back to her house and she showed me how to make the no exposed seam pillowcases. I am so excited about that! Here are my first 2. Notice how I forgot to pay attention to the fact that the fabric is directional!! What a dummy I am sometimes. Oh well, they are going to be donated so it is alright. I cut out 15 other ones and will get busy sewing them tonight or Friday night.

In addition, PTM is helping her mum move from a big house to a smaller one in Canada. Her mum had LOTS of these "Crown" canning jars. Many of them have the dates stamped on the bottoms and are from the 30s and 40s. She gave me 2 of them and interestingly, they have glass tops with metal screw rings. Some of the glass tops have the crown on them and some had rings. I took a big one (the one on the right) to put spools of thread in. Too cool, thanks PTM!!

Now I thought I would share a blog I just found that I LOVE!! It is Kerri and the name of the blog is Lovely Little Handmades. She has a wonderful blog and a fabulous ETSY shop Called Sew Deerly Loved. Please go and check her out and tell her you came from my blog.

Well I have to run so have a great day!

Oh relaxing Sunday!

That's right, I said RELAXING, and I am trying my best to make that happen. How do so many other things keep creeping into this day? I got up and DH made his usual Sunday breakfast of eggs, some kind of meat and his amazing hashbrowns (from scratch). I haven't ever shown those to you have I? Well, next Sunday I will take some pictures, I promise! So that was late, because we slept in until 9 and then we both got on our computers. Hey, my farm in Farmville isn't going to farm itself now is it? So I took care of my farm and did the dishes, and cleaned up from breakfast and got in some laundry. Now I can relax, right? NO, not just yet.

I got my sewing machine back to it's rightful place after the holidays, had DH adjust it so it sits flush in my cabinet (that only took me 5 years to accomplish) and then called PTM. Keep her in your prayers, she is struggling with moving her mom into a smaller place and downsizing all the "stuff" parents accumulate (and probably us too when we are our parents age!). It is difficult to do this from here when they are in Canada, eh? Anyway, we don't have quilting on Wed so I am going over to see her on Wed and we will make some pillowcases for charity. She is going to teach me the "no seam" method. This necessitates some fabric choices and washing. She told me I had to wash everything I want to use. So back to the basement to sort and wash. UGH, then dry and iron. What was I thinking??

Relax now? NO, not yet. Go change loads of laundry and then it is time to list my red coin quilt on ETSY. It takes more time than you think to get that done too. First pictures, then Photoshop, then create the listing. DONE, now relax, NO not yet. Wait, maybe it is...

Time to blog. OK so now you are up to speed with where I am in my day today. Blogging almost done. Not a chore though, this is fun. Would you like to see some pictures of the quilt? OK here goes.
I showed this before but these were cropped in Photoshop.


Here is a close up of the coins and that pinwheel? My friend, Yuki, carved a stone stamp form and this is how the stamp comes out. My name is in Japanese in the lower right corner of the stamp. I should have inked it a little more but oh well. I have decided to use this on the quilts I sell that have a light back. I bought some custom made tape for dark backgrounds. Keep reading to see it.


LTW's wonderful quilting. I love these birds and berries!



This is the tape I bought from Litta Lotta. I should have made the cat a little darker and will correct that for the next time. She does great work if you are in the market for labels for your quilts. I wanted something that said it came from me without a huge homemade label. It will be a loop sewn into the binding, like Red Pepper Quilts has done. What do you think?

Oh, I forgot to show you this. Yesterday after my hours of errands, I had to bring the church bulletin board home and update it. This is what I came up with. It needs some photos of the group and our antics but those are on my work computer so I will need to send some of them to the store for printing and then add them to the board. I think it came out quite well. I'm not nearly as good with paper. I had that quilted wrapping paper and that was all I had left of it so I thought it would be great on the board. I need to glue the edge down but I was pretty pleased with the outcome.


I have been working on my embroidery and doing some of the flower basket blocks I had begun. I will have to take some pictures later. At night the fam has been watching season one and two of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and I have been working on those then. Anyhoo. I guess that's enough for now, right?

Oh, one last thing. We have found out that our dumb dog LOVES to eat snow. Last night we took some video of her eating snow in a bowl we brought in the house. I am going to post that too. Make sure you get a chance to watch it. The second one finds Jack trying to hone in on the action only to be denyed. Funny stuff.

Ok, laundry is calling, then relaxing. Yep, I mean it, I'm really going to do it cuz work begins tomorrow.