The Other Side of the Room

We have been working for two days.  More Vince than I but the shower has been removed from the guest room and this area will become shelving for the plastic storage boxes I use for fabric.  He is repairing and replacing wall board to make it clean and shiny.
In the meantime I organized and picked up pieces to sew and make UFOs "more complete".  Now that all the projects are moved to the new room I realize I have seven hangars full of pieces to be quilted.

I am adding some pictures for the other side of the room.  Vince built the lower unit four years ago to help store the fat quarters.  The top unit is new this fall.  He does most of his work with hand tools like all of the dovetails in the drawers are hand cut.  The top set of drawers are made of walnut.  It is beautiful but also very useful.  The top two shallow drawers hold my threads.

The lower drawers hold ribbons, buttons, bindings I have ready for projects, and one of the drawers holds tools like the sharpener I use to sharpen rotary cutter blades.  A place for everything and everything in its place.  Needless to say I am very lucky to have such a handy husband.





From second floor to basement

When Vince and I bought our home in 1997, we were the fifth family to live in this house.  The first project was to put an egress window in the lower level room (originally the maid's sitting room) and add a shower in the space taken from the laundry room.  This was the first student bedroom we had and when the college students stopped living with us, it became the guest room. 

On the second floor of our house we have three bedrooms and two baths.  The bedroom on the front of our house has now become my office.  The bedroom on the back of the house is a beautiful room with huge windows and the southern exposure assures warmth and sunlight.  Everything is great except the size.  Four years ago when we bought my Grand Quilter we realized the room is just 13 feet by 10 feet so it has been a COZY quilting room.

While working on our Christmas projects my friends and I have been scheming about how we could use more space.  Dah-da.  The room in the basement is 13 feet by 16 feet!  So the moving has begun.
I will post pictures later today.

This large bookcase was in the guest bedroom in the basement.  We moved it out into the hallway outside the bedroom and put all of my special children's book that I use when I teach Children's Literature or have a captive grandchild on my lap.  Then I began to move my yarn stash out of the closet in the former quilting bedroom.  These are all special yarns which I have separated from the C&C stuff that is not so special.

The first piece to be moved was my design wall.  Just a piece or oilcloth (that is what my Grandma called it) reversed and hung on a nice looking board Vince mounted near the ceiling of the west wall of the new room next to the door.  Two of the projecs are finished on the design wll and I just wanted you to see them.  I am expecially pleased with cabin scene.  On the back of the door I will have a place to hang finished projects like the "I Believe in Santa"  wall hanging.  The beautiful crocheted afghan hanging was a gift from my grandmother many years ago.  She was an artist in her own rights.

Moving to a new room

I will add pictures to the page when I get things situated.  In the meantime I want to share two pictures I have taken lately.  One was in the apple orchard in Minnesota and the other was my flight home from Michigan.

Christmas is coming

Recently some friends and I decided to consolidate our stash and begin working on Christmas projects to use for gifts.  We meet once a week and cut, press, and sew together.  We make three of everything so that each one of us has one to keep or give as we see fit.  Thus far we have made two wall hangings, three table runners and this week we made a lap throw for each of us.  The time when we are together flies by and we seem to get a great deal done.
I will atch some pictures of what we have accomplished.  I have always wanted to get things done ahead of time and not feel the pressure of last minute sewing and this year we are doing it.

Life is about using all the crayons in the box

Read this on a billboard yesterday and it spurred my need to write on my blog.  I find there are certain days I go into the quilting room and I am drawn to colors and not so much to other colors.  I am brainstorming the fabric for one of my "package" design quilts for a Christmas gift.  I am just fascinated by the number of red hues there are in the industry.  So because of that, I have decided to use forest green with the black background piece I have decided to use.  Pictures later.
About the crayons in the box. . .  Lately I have been pulling them out like crazy.  My primary color has been blue as it relates to my husband and his health issues right now.  It seems we have spent two months in and out of medical offices.  I have been taking my knitting along to stay calm and wait for results of tests and appointments.  I am blue about his pain, frustrations, and the worry of what the prognosis may be.
Another color vivid to my life this past week was yellow.  I spent six days working the field with colleagues from Ohio.  We are working with teachers to promote innovation in their classrooms to make the learning more relevant and culturally appropriate.  I feel bright yellow when I think about the changes in these Native American childrens' education as the result of the planning their teachers did last week.
I am red with excitement regarding our family vacation coming up next week.  The chance for Papa and I to spend a week with our children and their families is just too much to anticipate.  I am planning games and meals and can hardly wait to swim and watch them have some fun.

It Is About Time. . .

Time is something we waste, watch, and lose if we are not careful.  Time is a matter of priority.  I have been thinking about posting because I really have been busy sewing and creating but then time gets away from me.
I have a number of projects to share with pictures and I will start doing that with this blog.  I have been organizing and trying to make reason out of my chaos in the sewing room.  Vince has helped with that and I will show you his addition.  I have a new sewing machine which is lovely.  Finally I had a chat on Saturday with two quilting friends and we started to plan for our Christmas projects.  We met at my house because I won the prize for most stash and we have a great start on our first endeavor.  I will keep you posted.
Now for my first update.  My friends at the Chamberlain quilt shop sent me a pattern last spring for a birthday crown and we decided this would be a nifty tradition for our little Magdalyn.  So she is wearing the crown I made her for her second birthday which was in June.

Spools and Selvages

I must admit I have become quite interested in Pinterest and enjoy looking at the ideas.  As I was viewing sites pertinent to quilting, I came across a quilt covered in spools (I have always saved my wooden thread spools from Grandma's sewing drawers).  Anyway that idea intrigued me.
The next day I had a visit from my two little grandsons who live in our town and needed a place to stay because the blizzard was blocking the road to their day care.  Such a problem!  I love having them visit and they wanted two new pillowcases which were not a problem to make out of my stash.  While I was sewing, they were investigating the storage totes in my room and the next thing I knew they had two years of selvages heaped on the floor.  I should have taken a picture as it was as good and jumping in a pile of leaves in the yard.  They began to find pieces they liked and I decided to make little bags for them.  I took jean pant legs below the worn out knees and covered them with selvage pieces they selected.  Turned and seamed across the bottom of the leg and trimmed the top edge with rick rack and we called them "Ricky Racky Sacks".  They were enchanted and I even gave them some nickels to put in the bags.  Then we played "hide the thimble", a game I truly love and they got to take home the thimble in one of the bags.  Oh the wonderment of a three and four year old!
Laying awake and thinking about the sewing room led to my creation.  I asked my very talented husband if he could cut a piece of wood that would resemble a spool.  We drew it up and measured my selvage pieces I had already created.  6 inches wide and 11 inches long.  One of the spools is all the numbered parts of selvage where they give you the color guide.  I just couln't bear cutting the top and bottom pieces out of brown cloth and then try to back it with something.  The wooden back seemed so much sturdier and I intended to make these hang on the wall.  Well, as always, Vince used his skills and imagination and thus we have created another "Pay it forward" gift.  This one goes to my long time friend from junior and high school in Michigan.  She has a blog about herbs and loves to garden so I used selvages with floral prints as her spool.  What do you think?

This bottom one looks like it is more narrow at the bottom than the top but that is an optical illusion.

Susan's gift

I posted a Pay It Forward idea on Facebook last month and the first of five is finished.  I love to knit and decided to felt a bag for Allison's dear friend, Susan, who replied to my FB post.  I love the colors and I am still experimenting with how many stitches for certain yarns.  This is Brown Sheep Bulky and I love to handle it and it is quality yarn.  This time I made the strap of the felted piece by folding a strip in half and stitching on the sewing machine then I finished it with a blanket stitch of the black.  I then needle felted her initial with a simple dot or three.  I love it and I hope she does also.

For my sewing room and by the phone

My grandmother gave me some old Mason jars (blue) and of course I have old awards (wooden plaques) laying around.  For the phone, I combined the two with an old fork that I bent into a hook for keys and away we go.

The sewing room board was a "Welcome" sign at a garage sale for $1.  I painted over the words and added a pair of scissors Cathy gave me a few years ago for sewing room decor.  I then added the clamp and Mason jar and this handy storage is not right above my sewing maching.  (I use the word "I" to mean that Vince was by my side assisting).  Bless him.

Some crafting today

I took a dress back to TJ & Max and got a store credit.  Found this lamp on the clearance table for even more off the price.  Loved it and since I don't have any original thoughts, I had seen a number of things decorated with the lyrics to one of my favorite songs, "You are my sunshine".  So I took the linen type shade and a permanent marker and printed the words on the shade.  I have loads of buttons in a jar in my sewing room so I added some color with various buttons. The word love looks like a botch but really it is a heart shaped metal button I found in the jar.   I love it the look.

Can't Believe It is February

We just got back from a ski weekend with my son and his wife and two of his three sons.  We had a great time and I carried my knitting with me once again.  I am working on a project for a Pay It Forward I joined on Facebook.  The first project is something for a high school friend of mine and I am anxious to finish it and send it to her in Michigan.
While we were out west we visited Vince's cousin, Cleo and her husband Alan.  It is wonderful to connect with family.  Vince was an only child and values his relationship with his first cousin.  We will visit them again soon.  They have a lovely home and she is an excellent cook.  It reminded me of the title of my blog, seams sew simple.  We don't take enough time to be with the people we love and enjoy our lives.

The decoration above is something I saw on Pinterest and decided to replicate for Valentine's Day.  Buttons, white top straight pins, yarn, ribbon, and time.  It was fun to make.

Hand Muff for a little person

When I was a little girl I had a muff that I carried to keep my hands warm.  With all of the repurposing ideas floating around, I decided to have some fun with a pair of my wool socks having a hole in the heal.  First I cut the top (luckily these have stripes and it made that easy) right above the heal and I gently zigzaged a hem in each top.  These will make little leggings for my granddaughter.  Be careful not to stretch too much but you will get a little bit of a flair.  I have done this with socks before.  Now come the new creative part.
Then I cut the foot just below the heal part.  Obviously the heal is scrap and I threw that bit away.  Now about the hand muffs-  Turn the socks inside out so that the right side of the sock will be where the little hands will go.  I then overlapped the toes of the socks so that inside the muff the little fingers will ouch easily.

I tucked the outside tube into one end of the sock tube and stitched by machine.  Then pull the outside out and turn it over the inside tube.  I hand stitched the other end to finish.

 I made a tube with scrap of quilting batting.  This is wool batting so I wanted the extra warmth.  I stitched around each end of the tube which was wide enough to match the cut end of each sock.  The tube is about 10 inches long.  I then took a scrap of some soft fuzzy material and made another tube by stitching the right sides together.

Getting Organized

Don't know why it is side ways but I am using an over the door shoe holder to store my knitting needles.  I have been knitting for almost 60 years and I have a variety of sizes, types, and the like and this way I can go to this closet and find the needles I need quickly for the next project.  I also store all of my grandmother's and mother's crochet hooks in one of the pockets.