Myra's PhD Challege

I've just committed to SIX projects with Myra's PhD (Projects Half Done) challenge.  Woot!!

Christmas. With my family.

There's one person in my family that I particularly adore, and every year I find it harder and harder to sew for her. This year, after one table runner that just never felt like the right thing, I decided to make her a fabric bowl.

The outside!

I like the colors and I think it turned out really cute. :)

The inside!

 We're all getting together this weekend - hopefully, but it's dependent on weather. Here's hoping she likes it! :)

Just some pics :)

I have been sewing, not as much as I'd like, but some. :) Here are some recent pics.

Stuart's Quilt, hanging in the quilt show.

French Country Chickens, a quilt shop sample

Christmas Presents - A quilt shop sample

TableRunner for a Christmas Present

Another Table Runner Christmas Present

My super good helper who likes to rearrange my fabric closet to suit her comforts. ;)

Getting Scrappy

Pleasant Home is doing a series of projects the next few weeks to help quilters clear out some of their scraps. I'm really excited about this because I, well, have a LOT of scraps. A lot of batik scraps, and a lot of other fabrics too.

If you want to follow along, check out Pleasant Home and get ready to get scrappy!

An update of sorts

Been really, really busy lately. We had our biennial quilt show last weekend (I had five quilts in the show, and seven others in vendor booths, two more in charity displays, and four in the silent auction - that's a LOT of sewing!) plus I've been diligently writing every Tuesday and Thursday for at least two hours (the book's currently a bit over 53,000 words). And, along with all this - and my regular wife/mom/cat wrangler duties - I've been relocating my sewing room which, in theory, should be finished tonight.

See, I had all of my fabric and supplies and things upstairs in the smallest bedroom, all kinda mashed wherever they'd fit (please see the closet pics on the previous post) but, well, I didn't go up there much because there just wasn't enough room, only one electrical outlet (have I ever mentioned that simply plugging in my iron would often blow a fuse?) and it was quite a ways from where my family hangs out downstairs. So, what I'd do, was lug whatever supplies I needed downstairs, usually to the kitchen, and there'd be a huge explosion of fabric that, well, was a mess. But then I'd work on another project, lug down more fabric and whatever, and increase said mess.

Totally not a workable plan.

The room needs to be totally rewired, and the floors are craptastic (planks with worn, crappy paint and what appears to be wood-grain contact paper, I kid you not. In our otherwise gorgeous Victorian) so Bill's going to wire the whole room, replace the floors, put up fresh paint, fix the door latch, add a light to the closet, all that good stuff, but, to do that, my fabric and such needs a new home.

Hence the move to the back end of the living room (also known as Living Room B). I have a much bigger closet, plenty of room for my sewing table/desk, cutting table, ironing board and book case, plus the two built in book cases, nice, gorgeous hardwood floor (so pins won't get lost in carpet), bigger, brighter windows, more wall space... It's just going to be awesome!

It's been a process, though, me lugging down a little at a time and finding a place for it before getting the next batch (well, mostly, some stuff is still in bins and boxes). I'll finish emptying my bookcase tonight and, other than a little lingering clutter upstairs, it'll be done. The whole move should have taken a day or two instead of a couple of weeks, but there was that pesky quilt show thing.

Anyway, I'll post some pics of my expanded sewing space once it's set up, and I'll show y'all some of the quilts I had at the show as soon as Deb emails them to me (hint hint).

My Stash

When we moved here to the great rural cornbelt, I had to really trim down my fabrics and, well, I've been building them back up again.

Here are some pics of my fabric closet (and I really do need to organize it again)

  Straight into the closet

the right side of the closet

my batik shelf :)

One of many bags of fabric I really should put away

Fly Dirt

A fly. Has pooped. On my duck. And it's ticking me off. And I don't know how to remove said fly-poop. Because I can't toss the duck quilt in the washing machine, or scrub it. It's raw-edge appliqué and I don't want it 'fuzzy' for the show.

But there are random dark dots on the side of his head, and it can't go to the show with dark dots on his head.

Please excuse me while I cuss a while.