Birthdays and Shopping, Sewing

Last of August, hard to believe the month has finally come to an end!  It is a very full one for our family, three birthdays, the last two celebrated together.  Our son and his son have birthdays a week apart, so they celebrated them together last weekend. Here's Dane with his sack, hunting for toy dinosaurs hidden around the yard, with his younger cousin watching with his other Grandma and Aunties. 

Mama hid a lot of toy dinos in the flowerbeds, there was even digging needed.  The boys all had a great time on the hunt. Pin the tail on the Dino, there in the background on the house, was popular as well.  

Here's Dane looking pensive before singing and cake being served.  I didn't get any photos of him smiling, but plenty of video.  Just after he got his mini bundt cake, he pretended to let a plastic dino toy take the first bite, so cute. 

And here's the adult birthday celebrator, Nick, hanging out with his nephews and sisters.  It was a fun party and great to be able to get together for pizza and cake, presents and family time. 

Daughter Elaine finally found a spot to squeeze me in for a haircut and color--much needed /overdue.  I went downtown early and did some thrift store shopping. I was sad to see that my favorite Salvation Army thrift store closed or moved, but there were plenty of other shops. Of course I always look for fabric and most of the shops did have some. One nicely packaged trio of cuts was $1.99 and I snapped it up. 

This Egyptian print was just over a yard of fabric, very nice quality and unwashed.

Being that well-aged, it is even 45" wide. I've never heard of this company, though.  The other two conversation prints were over two yards each. 

Asian tigers in a rich  print...

and Asian figures and flowers on the other.  These also appear never to have been washed.  They will make great backings.  

Some sewing did happen recently, more work on the bookshelf quilt. 

I decided to add more detail to the bookends I made a couple of weeks ago, aiming for a "brass" detail at the base.  I also grouped two books in a tilted block setting. 

Directions are from the Fabric at Work Bookshelf Quilt Pattern.  

I was happy with the way these turned out.  Lots more sewing to do and detail decisions to be made!  

Design Wall Monday--4/19/2021

 Design Wall Monday--see more great creative endeavors on Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts blog. 

Following my last post about tea-dyeing linen, having diluted my tea bath to about 1/4 strength, I cut off a big piece of the white linen, wet it and put it in the pot after reheating.  However, it did not take up any of the tea color after an hour.  Perhaps I didn't wring out the piece of linen well, or the tea bath did not have enough salt. So I dumped it out and started over Sunday morning with fresh water and three tea bags.  I carefully wet and wrung out the white linen and left it in the tea for 20 minutes or so, checking periodically against the prior dyed strips.  I rinsed it in plain water and then in the water/vinegar bath, plain water again, rolled it in a towel and then hung to dry.  Finally I ironed it.

The white strip is the original linen, the smaller strip my first choice of  tea-dyed test pieces, and the background the final.  The gray background of my ironing board cover isn't showing the true color well, but you can see it is a little darker than the test strip, which is what I wanted.  

I used some colored pencils to color most of the stitching chart.  I may start with the House, as it is just below the center of the design.  I kind of want to get the overlapping pattern area out of the way so I don't get confused! I used some red floss to mark the center lines of the linen vertically and horizontally, but am considering adding a  couple more registration lines. It is a lot harder to count linen threads than Aida cloth!  The raw edges need to be folded and stitched too, to keep from raveling, but I'm getting closer to playing with the yummy floss.

We had a long visit with our newest grandson. Dane, and our son and DIL on Saturday.  Dane is just shy of 8 months and crawling everywhere, standing with help, and generally busy busy busy.

Proud Dada Nick with his charmer...

..and ever-attentive Mama Ashley helping him play and learn.  He loved crawling up the carpeted stairs in our house.

Mimi got in lots of hugs and kisses while playing with Dane. 

We're always happy to see our kids and grandkids and get in lots of play time.  Looking forward to more frequent visits now that we're all vaccinated and the state is opening up more.  Maybe in a couple more months we'll actually want to eat indoors at a restaurant--it has been over a year since that has happened.

Design Wall Monday--8/31/2020

Last Design Wall Monday of August--see more design walls on Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts blog. 

On my design surface is a new project, because having 24 or 30 projects just isn't enough, am I right? This is a seasonal pillow designed by Kristina of Center Street Quilts, and she is having a sew along on IG for her Gobble It Up design.  The pillow appeared in the Quilts and More Fall 2019 magazine and is available as a download from her Etsy shop.  I linked to her website above. 

Kristina noted in the magazine that her kids were always concerned when animals she designed did not have eyes, so she added button eyes to her pillow.  There was a lot of stash searching, scrap cutting, and counting and recounting to get all the pieces ready.  My turkey will be very colorful.  The orange scroll fabric will either be the backing or the binding, or both.

Although I was sure I'd cut the right number of pieces, one of the feather flying geese brown pieces turned up missing so I had to cut another.  While searching for missing piece on the cutting table, I came across the first set of leg pieces I had cut that had gone missing. Always a mystery when I'm cutting!

We had a lovely introductory visit with our new grandson and his proud parents at their place last week. We brought up dinner and got to hold the dear boy (while masked up).  

He was crashed out after feeding and very relaxed.  The little family is trying to get into a routine--there have been a few nights of little sleep, especially for Mama.  I got a pic of the cushions they had me make new covers for.

Ashley was very pleased with them and she and Nick are spending a lot of time rocking Dane in the glider.  Glad that job turned out better than I'd hoped!

Over the weekend I spent a lot of time making more masks;  our Guild is still collecting them for donation. Lots of larger scraps and chunks were devoted to this effort. 

These were made from the free downloaded pattern from Laundry Basket Quilts; the medium size is too small for me but good for kids/teens and smaller/thin adults.  I had fun picking out color combos.  I also made a couple more masks for my husband and myself in the larger size LBQ pattern.  My sister Kathy has been using the free pattern from Orange Dot Quilts lately, she likes it because it is one piece of fabric engineered into the mask shape with great nose and mouth coverage, as her pattern notes.  

I had been thinking of doing another self-challenge for September, working on a different project for three days and then switching to another all month, it was very motivating for moving along or finishing up stalled quilts and stitchery last year.  Making a list of prospects is the first step :)

And Baby Makes Three

The long anticipated arrival of our grandson went off without a hitch  yesterday.  Well, the doctor was running late (they always are, I told our son!), so baby's birth was about an hour later than anticipated. 

And he is healthy and whole, though his legs and toes were a bit purple from being folded up by his head for so long; he has a little flat spot where his head was wedged too.  He weighed just under 7 lbs and was about 20 inches long.  Ashley did great during the C-section and our son was thrilled that baby Dane looks so much like him.  The family has been sending us little video updates on a new app we downloaded called MarcoPolo.  It has been fun to interact within our family group and see Dane become accustomed to being outside the womb :)

Here with Mama...

And Daddy :)  He's feeding well and had perfect hearing.  

Eyes open now and then!  Can't tell what color they will be yet, of course. 

This is our son Nick when he was about a week old.  Pretty similar!  Can't wait to meet baby Dane in person.  We went and got our COVID testing today, and will get flu shots in a couple of days.  Meanwhile I still didn't completely finish the cushion covers for Ashley's glider.  Only the closures left to wrangle into submission, which I will get done tomorrow without too much drama, I hope.  

Sliver of moon was visible at sunset. The smoke from county fires has cleared a bit so we can see regular clouds in the southeast.  Coincidentally, Nick was also born in August during a fire :)

Reminiscing and Stitching

I have been looking back on my years of blogging, enjoying old posts and missing some of the early commenters and friends who were so encouraging to a newby blogger, and thankful for the many who still visit and share!  10 years ago I was moving out of the first dedicated sewing room I had, when our older daughter moved out, our younger daughter changed bedrooms, and our son moved back in.  

 

Back to the downstairs family room, and sharing it with my husband's music equipment--he was deep into playing in a band in those days. Can you believe how much we crammed in?  I had no fabric downstairs at that time, other than the project boxes in the Hoosier.

 

 At that point I was still using my husband's childhood metal desk for sewing and waiting on a big, very exciting delivery--no, not the baby kind, the furniture kind. 

Here Nick is earning his keep by helping put together my new sewing desk, a Bertha by Arrow Cabinets, which has seen so many creations travel across its top over the last decade.  Recently big cracks developed in two of the plastic drawer door bins.  Replacements are pretty expensive, mostly due to shipping costs, but after 10 years and no problems with this desk I will fork over the $40--after a bit of a balk!  I shared my first sewing days on the new desk HERE.  How time flies...now I'm working on cushion covers for a glider for Nick's wife Ashley, as they will hold their son by end of next week after a scheduled C-section. Baby did not turn on his own and an external version was unsuccessful. Dad and Mom get to stay in the hospital together with baby for three days after delivery.  I think that's wonderful.

The yellowed cotton fabric definitely needed replacing.  Ashley chose this nice patterned one--I had had her buy a shower curtain to use as they come in lots of patterns, the fabric is wide, and many are pretty inexpensive. This one is a looser weave due to some polyester content so I am lining the pieces.

I'll also be sewing up some PeePee Teepees this week.  Baby boys, you know!  Wish I'd had some way back when...:)

New Projects Everywhere

Startitis seems to strike on a daily basis these days.  There is no end to leftovers which I try to turn into "real" quilted items!  I showed the start of a small tablerunner the other day, and since the walking foot was still on the machine, decided to get it quilted.  The deep raspberry Dimples fat quarter backing was not quite big enough to make a traditional binding and I decided to make a flanged binding instead.  The scrap drawers produced a suitable length of a green linen string and I got cutting and sewing.  Due to shortage of the raspberry print to allow joining the final seam,  I found a chunk of a close colored print to add.  I got as far as stitching the binding to the back, turning it to the front and affixing binding clips before closing down for the night.

Next morning it was soon finished off by stitching down the flange with green thread.  I was happy with the way it turned out on the front....

...and the back.  The free-motion quilting looks a little like hieroglyphics on this side, haha.  No destination for this one either so it's resting on the bookshelf in the living room for now. 

Another set of those green star point pieces were still left to deal with, so I pulled another leftover small pieced item out of my "small projects" box.  This was a trial for the Dreamweaver quilt, making Disappearing 9 patch blocks as per the original pattern, with larger squares.  I used some pretty fabrics for the mockup so it wouldn't go to waste.  Ultimately I went with plain squares for the Dreamweaver quilt to simplify. 

Fiddling with the green and cream star points pieces, I ended up cutting them down to 3" wide and after sewing them together, sliver trimmed the D9P section to match the length.  The tablemat has not been paired with a backing or binding choice yet but is looking cheerful.

Our next grandson is due in four weeks and although I made him a small playmat a couple of months ago, I wanted to make a regular sized baby quilt and pulled out the Churn Dash blocks from one of Barb's swaps from a few years back; I was in the modern swap of 6" finished blocks of solids with low volume background. Last year I made this quilt for my grand-nephew Elliott from the blue blocks with black/gray and white backgrounds.

Well this is just the top, but shows the secondary pattern formed by the alternate 9 patches; this setting I first saw on Kathy's Quilts blog in traditional fabrics.  Since our nephew Matt and our son Nick were so close growing up, I wanted to make a similar but different modern quilt for Nick's son.  The cousins will be only 8 months apart in age and I hope will be close as well.

Graph paper and pencil are my friends!  I originally had a much grander plan in mind, using Drunkard's Path blocks for the diagonals, but simplified to the the HSTs.  

A suitable low volume print and gray-blue crackle print from stash were cut with Bonnie's Essential Triangle tool from 6.5" strips.  Initially, I laid out the chosen Churn Dash blocks in color groups, and ended up making a couple more blue blocks from stash.  Next morning, though, it seemed too formal and static for a baby's quilt.  After Switcheroo, stitching commenced.

I think it looks much more fun this way.  The colors remind me of sunsets and sea colors, and being the child of two adventurers, our grandson will no doubt see plenty of water and sky as he grows up. Currently, though, he's being bratty by not being turned head down yet...

Tuesday's Orts--Late February Edition

Tuesday's Orts--bits and pieces of thoughts and events that land here occasionally...

• Bruce, our younger daughter's rescued kitten, posed for a photo when I checked in on him recently when she was out of town.   He's close to four months old now.

Here he is surrounded by some favorite toys.  Bruce especially enjoyed attacking my feet which I had tucked under the blanket folded on the bed.  I told Erica that while he didn't let me pick him up, he tolerated me holding his paw to extract a talon from my sock.

• My mom's birthday was last week and we celebrated on the weekend with dinner out at a popular local restaurant as a party of  seven. There were several large parties there at the same time. While the waiter was friendly and personable, the service was surprisingly bad--it took over 30 minutes just to get the drinks we ordered.  The food took even longer, but was good except for my sister's steak, which looked to have been microwaved hot before serving.  She was not pleased at all, had the dish taken away and refused replacement, but was polite about it.  The manager sent over free desserts later but some family members will not return there, I think!
• The Meadowland quiltalong continues (pattern by Then Came June) and I posted my "middles" on Instagram.  I'm piecing the quilt by rows rather than blocks to eliminate some seams.

 

Somewhere along the way in making these blocks, I misplaced my favorite 6.5" square Omnigrid ruler that I have had for many years.  I have not been able to find it after multiple searches of everywhere I could think of.  I imagine it will reappear in an unlikely place at some point!

•  Traffic rant:  Drivers who look you dead in the eyes and pull out in front of you anyway.  Even worse if they poke along after doing it. Grrr.
• I was offered an extra shift to scribe at a different office and enjoyed working with a younger demographic--we even saw an 18 month old boy.  The doctor I mainly work for sees a large number of patients in their 80s and 90s. We had a 99 year old man the other day who wanted to be checked for a hernia.  I did not stay for the examination section of that visit!
• My husband helped me fix an issue that has been a bother in the sewing room for months.  My adjunct desk in the sewing room had a drawer failure--likely due to me adding too much weight, causing the center drawer support to fail.  One drawer has been taking up a lot of counter space and I finally tired of it.  We turned the desk upside down and Grant found some Gorilla glue in the garage.  Unfortunately it was completely dried up so I had to make a trip to the hardware store--making a 10 minute repair job take three times as long!  Anyway, my repair worked and yesterday after getting the desk back in place, I spent TWO HOURS clearing surfaces and putting things away in my small room.

 Finally I can use the desktop as intended and all my necessary tools are hidden again.

The Hoosier cabinet is a little more visible as most of the stacks were put away.  I have a lot of empty bins and totes that need a home.   The next photo is laughably blurry but does show a good clear cutting mat :)

• Finally, we have some exciting news we can share at last--we will be grandparents again in August when our son and his wife are expecting a baby BOY!   In an amazing coincidence,  DIL Ashley has the same due date as I had with our son.   Nick was born 3 days after his due date so we will wait and see if baby and daddy have the same birthday. Happy times!

Wedding Reception

Here's a few pics of our son Nick and new daughter-in-law Ashley's lovely, low key family style reception at her parents' beach house.  They worked so very hard to get the house and yard ready for their guests!  In the front courtyard guests were greeted with this:

I never learned who made the beautiful driftwood/beach rock art piece for them.

Inside, the living room wall displayed photos of both Nick and Ashley from baby to present.

The clips had their ages marked, so fun to see what they looked like at the same ages--and as a couple now.

Many of our family members at the table...

..with the next bride-to-be getting bunny ears from her little brother!

Here the bride's father is giving his speech for the newlyweds.  Grant and I, my brother, and several of Ashley's relatives also said many kind things and gave hopes and wishes for the future. 

 Ashley got a little emotional during her speech...

Happy to be joined together and celebrating with people who love them.

We're only missing brother Kevin from this family portrait--he had to leave early to catch a flight. My CK flowered dress stood up well to the day.  I made four cream cheese pies for the dessert table--which disappeared in record time!

 The couple on the dock, prepared to sail away in the channel.

 Ashley hamming it up in the Captain's hat. 

 Her dad made the "Recently Married" sign, so funny.  Many guests took the cue and left but a lot of family members stayed a bit to help clear up and we got to know them more.

It was a lovely day and we are so happy to have another family to join.  We wish Nick and Ashley a long and happy married life.