WORKING ON MY GUEST ROOM QUILT...AND MORE...

Since J moved out of the house back in January, Dear Hubby and I have been playing musical bedrooms...fixing up J's room as my "Expansion Sewing Room" and slowly moving hubby's "house" office out of the fourth bedroom, which will become our new guest room.  Since we have moved J's old queen sized bed into the guest room, we will need bedding to match the room.  Luckily I found a set of new blue sheets in the linen closet, but the only blankets/quilts available to put on the bed are J's old black vellux blanket and his dorm room denim quilt.  Not very pretty for our new room!  Serviceable and warm, yes, but pretty?  No.  So I have begun work on a quilt for the bed.

After paying to have J's old room repainted, hubby and I certainly can't afford to change the decor of the guest room too.  Being "stuck" with the yellow (not my favorite color...the room was originally J's gender neutral nursery updated years ago with a border and curtains to make a grown up bedroom)

I picked out Sweet Shoppe Calico Candies material by Benartex as it contained all of the colors of the bedroom and retained that "cottage-y" feel (which I DO love, by the way!  It's so ME!).

I then picked out a pattern that felt "scrappy" to me (my first love in quilts) and mimicked the lattice frame on the wall.   However, since I am using 5" charms to construct this quilt, with each of my blocks finishing at 4.5", it is going to require tons and TONS of blocks and hours and Hours and HOURS of work!  Good thing I am in no rush to have the room finished (especially when I only average 12 to 18 blocks per week!), lol.  I am not even sure I have enough charm squares to finish a queen sized top.  Lol.  I tend to "wing it" when designing quilts and adapt as I go along.  While I do have quite a few similar patterned/colored fat quarters that I could cut into charms allowing me to keep it completely a 4.5" block quilt, I may consider some type of sashing to break up the pattern and speed the quilt to completion.  I'm not sure yet and will play it by ear as I move along.  

I am using Bella Solid white charms in the construction of the block.  

Each charm is cut into 2.5" squares, which are used to form the pattern of my quilt blocks.  

White squares are positioned in opposing corners and pinned in place. 

Then, using my all-time favorite quilting gadget (Quilter's Magic Wand), I draw my stitching lines. 

By moving the wand to the right of the stitching line I am able to draw another stitching line 0.5" away.  

 

Two stitching lines done.  

Flip the block around and do the same on the other 2.5" white square. 

Move to the machine and sew on all four stitching lines.  

Snip all threads and prepare to kill two birds with one stone!  

Cut down the middle of your two sewn lines.  

This will give you your primary block AND two teeny tiny half square triangles for a future project!

I wasn't kidding when I said "teeny, tiny"!  Those small HST's will finish at just 1" square!  Teeny, tiny and Oh. So. Cute!  I am thinking they would look just darling as the border on a throw pillow!  As tiny as they are, though, I know better than to try to work with them unless I am having a really good tremor day, lol.  

So, after working on my quilt for just 30 minutes my tremors decided to make their presence known and forced me on to bigger, more tremor friendly things (crochet).   

My stack of completed blocks to date.  A mere thirty one blocks out of, oh I don't know, maybe a gazillion?  This quilt is going to take a long, LONG time, lol.  I think my mom was right when she said I needed to live to be at least 125 to finish all of the projects in my head, but maybe I need that many years just to complete THIS one!

Off to work on crocheting the last dish cloth so I can list them in my shop.  Oh, and speaking of crochet...

 

On Sunday the landscaper came out and weeded, edged and mulched my flower beds.  Over the years all of my beautiful daffodils have died...with the exception of the muted, slightly peach colored flowers you see above.  They looked so pretty set against the new dark black mulch.  So I took my scissors out and cut a few fresh flowers to enjoy in my sewing room.  After pulling out my small vase I decided that a thin, top heavy water filled vase was NOT an ideal candidate for a tremor ridden admirer.  I could just PICTURE the vase and water splattered all over!  A quick search through my glass jar collection located this short, squat jelly jar.  While I like the pattern in the glass, it was still BORING.  So I crocheted a white bobble edging to put around the rim.  Okay, better...but still kinda BORING.  I crocheted a few pink flowers and green leaves to add to the edging.  I pinned them onto the edging in an effort to "live with the look" before I attach them permanently.  Cute, but.....I don't know.  

I like the light pink because it clearly picks up the pink flowers on my tea pot, but I feel like something is just not "right".  Maybe two flowers are too much?  Any suggestions are welcomed!!!! 

 

TRYING TO SIMPLIFY...

Good morning friends!  Sorry I have not been here to visit in so long.  Another bad stretch physically, but the storm is hitting today so I can expect things to level out pain-wise once it gets here.  In fact, the wind is picking up and the ground is beginning to look wet.  Sure hope we just get rain and not the snow that people were talking about for the past few days.  I will have to look up our local weather online, crossing my fingers the whole time that the snowstorm will skirt around us!

Even though I haven't been able to "craft" much recently due to my uncooperative body, I have still been working on simplifying our lives.  I want to make less of an impact in everything I do...whether it is less of a financial impact on our monetary status or less of an impact on the earth with our reusables vs. disposables challenge.  SLOWLY I am turning away from disposables and stocking my home with reusables.

This is a new washcloth pattern for me, so I will use it for a week to make sure it is serviceable.  Then I will slowly crochet another three washcloths to put in my Etsy store.  I have finished one set of washcloths so far.  Fortunately when the shakes, twitches and tremors preclude many other activities, the whole arm motion of crocheting is still possible...at least for a little while until my daily pain kicks in.  

I am also turning away from purchased items to homemade items, such as cleaners, food, mixes, etc.  I really like this citrus cleaner!  It works well, smells good and is EASY to make.  Simply drop pith free (or as pith free as you can make them) orange peels into plain white vinegar and let it sit for two weeks.  I shake the jar whenever I happen to think of it.  After two weeks I remove the peels and transfer some of the completed orange cleaner into my spray bottle.

From a savings standpoint I have not done too well.  I stole $120 from my envelopes in order to pay the painter a down-payment when I signed the contract.  Had I planned better, I would have asked dear hubby to take money out of our savings account for the down-payment in addition to the final payment.  But, the man was here and I was ready to sign the contract and get started.  I didn't want to waste the time mailing him the paperwork and check.  So now I am $120 short in my envelopes and two weeks behind on my deposits!  Not good.  BUT, saving anything is a step in the right direction and paying cash for the painting, or any home improvement, is rare for us! So I guess it is "all good".

As far as the expansion of my sewing room...it is coming along.  Thanks to the help of my dear folks and hubby we have made progress.  We have gotten the ceiling light replaced (thanks, Dad).  Dear hubby found this light online at Lowes.  It uses three 100 watt bulbs.  The light generated by this fixture is just WONDERFUL!  I wish my whole house was this bright!

We have moved in a chair and table.  We are going to buy a more comfy chair, but the table will stay.

We have also decided that two small "suitcase type" folding tables will suffice for my basting table.  That way I can have dear hubby fold them up and hide them behind the door when not in use.  We already have one table and will look for another the next time we are in Sam's.

With some help I have gotten one side of the armoir filled with my crochet/knitting supplies, all sorted and put away nicely.  I do not have enough drawers to load up the other side with material yet.  That will come as we have money to buy the drawers and/or shelves.

I found some cute "free" labels online to make everything more organized.  Of course I have a large bin marked "Misc." in which I have stored quite a few skeins of "unknown" yarn.  Does anyone know a way to distinguish types of yarn? 

We did move all of the big totes (mostly batting, but some tapestry pieces also) from my closet into the expansion room closet.  I don't go to them except maybe once per project, so they don't need to take up space in my main room.  I also moved into the expansion room closet my two piece sewing machine carrier, a free duffel bag that I will use to transport material and/or supplies to classes or on vacation and a new free rolling suitcase that will also be used to transport material and/or supplies.  The hard cover for my "Ellie" has found a new home too!  We added one extra shelf (so far) on which to store my miscellaneous quilts. 

All of my craft books have been placed on the bookshelf and all of my disability hearing paperwork has found a "temporary" home on the bookshelf and in the center drawer of the cabinet.  My disability hearing is now supposed to be in May, so hopefully I will be approved for SSDI and then I can pack all of the paperwork into a box and find a spot in the basement to store it for a couple of years.  I am thinking probably seven years, but I will check with my lawyer.   

The black shelf on top of the cabinet will hold our TV, cable box and DVD player.  Right now it is holding a briefcase filled with page separators and another binder to finish consolidating my medical records.  Someday I will get to it, but right now I am just burned out.  Punching holes in the pages gives me pain and I am just sick and tired of looking at records that document how "sick and tired" I really am!  For a little while at least I would like to play "ostrich" and stick my head in the sand, pretending I am just a "normal" housewife.  The pretense doesn't last long though...

Off to rest in my rocker and maybe read a magazine...