The Day Sewing Became A Chore...

So if you read my last post, you will know I was giving myself a brief sewing hiatus to get my house in order and just rest a bit. I made 3 (baby) quilts last week for goodness sake. I can't keep at that clip forever. Well, a sweet gal came up and showed me 2 hand painted napkins a friend of hers had done. This friend has limited means and she had made these 2 little napkins with Bible verses, hearts, and angels painted onto them as a way to show appreciation to a person who has helped her out a lot. Sweet, right?

Well, the conversation started with how to set that ink and what to do with it. It evolved into me doing 2 mini quilts. You've been there before, right? I am usually very good with "no" but the particulars of this situation tugged at my heart. The job was small, but the deadline was less than a week. I figured that meant me breaking my self imposed hiatus.

My body was telling me I needed a break. Soon my sewing machine would tell me, too...

I sewed the first one up pretty quickly. I decided to quilt it minimally. I had it bound and hanging on the wall when I realized we had mentioned scotch guarding it since it was probably not washable. I did a test spot. If you know me, this is big. I am usually just a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants type of gal. I don't think I have ever done a test patch of anything...from lotion to hair color. I just roll with it. Test patch was good. Whew. Moving on to coating the whole dang thing.

Spraaaaayyyy...

Black ink starts bleeding.

Oh. My. Gosh. I am in full panic mode. I tried everything. Everything. I decide to hurry up and get the other one done and get it out of my house. With three boys around something that delicate for that long, only bad things can happen. My needles started breaking. My thread was shredding. My bobbin thread would not pick up. I could go on and on. It was one thing after another. I was too tired to pay attention. I just wasn't that into it. It felt like a chore. Let me point out that sewing through painted fabric is not easy/fun/good looking.

I picked up my kids from preschool and the director (who is also a fellow member of my church and a sweet friend) told me she could fix it. I gladly handed it to her and gave her a hug. I'm not a hugger, but this situation called for it.

I am ready for a break. I will probably only last 2 days but I am going to tell those box pillow covers, I Spy doll quilts, and Katie Jump Rope Autumn quilt that are all in my head screaming "ooohh...pick me, pick me!!!" like the chunky kid in gym class to can it for a few days.

I've read a lot of people who say they love sewing because it is the only thing that stays finished. I can agree with that to an extent, but my favorite part about sewing is it's the only thing where I can control the pace. The laundry pile is ever growing, fresh food has gotta be cooked three times a day, and the floors are always needing mopped. Sewing is the one thing I have been able to do at MY speed...not on anyone else's timeline. This little experience showed me I need to keep it that way.

Three quilts done (and hopefully bad sewing mojo, too).

Recently a lovely woman from church invited me to visit a charity our church sponsors. I am going to attend a baby shower for the local pregnancy crisis center! I decided this is a perfect opportunity to get my Dorcas on and sew for charity. I made a boy quilt (my stash is ALL boy stuff) and was really stressing about the girl quilts. I don't have girl fabric, I don't really like girly fabric, and I don't have money to go buy said girly fabric.

On a whim on the way to get the twins at preschool, I stopped into a local thrift store and what did my wandering eyes find but a stack of girly cottons! Someone had donated an entire stack of fabrics that appeared to be coordinated with each other. It wasn't my style, but I did notice it was pretty good fabric...some P&B textiles in there. They sold me all the pieces (1/2 yard and 1 yard each) for 25 cents EACH! I got home and broke it up into 2 groups (too much treacle for my taste for just 1 baby quilt), added some white, and was able to make 2 baby girl quilts for $1.50 and the price of some batting & thread. It is not my taste, but I hope someone who loves it will receive it.



I used my orphan blocks from the Box quilt I made (which turned from a twin into a baby quilt upon a gut feeling) and I arranged them to play up the optical illusion aspect of the boxes.



I'm done. I'm so done! I will probably make another baby quilt or two, but I've had too many issues this week. It's bad sewing mojo. I've had wonky backings (shhh...we will tell them it was artfully placed on the diagonal), issues picking up bobbin thread, and problems getting a good miter on my bindings. I am really missing my Pfaff...it usually does my bindings and without it I am just not doing so hot.



Have I mentioned my living room floor looks like Grand Central Station?

No...LITERALLY!



So I've got to hop off the sewing machine and get this house in order. Hopefully my broom will not be too high tech for me!

Cracker Blocks

Cracker Blocks...My latest thing I'm crushin' on. To me these are so fresh and modern. It's hard to believe they've been around for decades.



I have read so much about modern quilters vs. traditional quilters. I'm not sure where I belong...not that it really matters. You're as unlikely to find me making a wonky log cabin in Denyse Schmidt prints as you are to find me making a Dear Jane quilt using civil war reproductions. I just like simple, clean blocks. I guess I am just a simple quilter. I will say that I am not an improv quilter. I like to start out with a great plan so everything can be mindless from there on out. I've done improv quilting before and it was just not a recharging experience for me. In fact, it was pretty draining. I think when you are in a house full of 3 small kids you crave a little order. Maybe I'll try again when I have an empty nest.

The best part about Cracker Blocks?


Tons


of

layout

options!

Drop a comment and let me know which one layout you like! Seriously, I'm torn!

Look & Learn Love

Recently I snagged some Look and Learn fabric on Etsy. It's a Sandy Klop line that is a couple of years old and now discontinued. The original plan was to make a twin size quilt for the twins bedroom. That just wasn't working out. It started gnawing at me because I did not want to change the quilt design. It is a mail order pattern from the 20's-40's that I found in the archives on this blog.

Lying in bed one night, I realized this should be a baby quilt for our friends who are starting their adoption journey. I felt so much better after that!


I am in love with this quilt! My husband said it is a gorgeous quilt and it was the best I had done. I am so glad I am challenging myself to more time consuming quilts. They are worth the effort.



This quilt was very simple to piece...just squares, rectangles, and half square triangles. The only tricky part was the cutting since I had limited quantities of each fabric. It is also one of those quilts that relies on fabric placement to create an optical illusion, so getting the pieces in the right spot was important. It's supposed to look like a box you can see through. You could do other placements for a more modern look, but I liked this placement for these fabrics. It created a cute secondary pattern, I think.


I did a new-to-me quilting method of swirling loops. I love this method but it took 10 bobbins of thread on a baby quilt! It also took a long time. It adds a little more of a vintage feel than stippling with all the crinkling I love. I added a few surprise words: faith, hope, & love. I thought this might be a fun find for mom and dad. I doubt I will be writing faith with a sewing machine...dotting your I's and crossing your T's on a sewing machine is kind of a pain!


For the back and binding , I used some of the Wee Play scraps and some Peas&Carrots scraps also by Sandy Klop. Amie gave me these to make more blocks for a twin size, but hopefully she will approve. Now that I think about it, this quilt matches the colors in our friend's home. It was just meant to be.

Finished quilt is about 48"x 48". I modified the original blocks by turning the flying geese on the corners into HSTs and adjusting my measurements from 6"blocks to 12" blocks.

They grow up so fast...

My 18 year old nephew started college this week. It's hard to believe. I'm so proud of him and the young man he has become. My other sister (his aunt) and I have decided to be the welcome wagon. I am taking the last half of the month and she is taking the first half of the month and we are going to send him a happy to let him know we love him. For my first round I made this:




It's a potholder (for all the ramen he will be nuking) and a bedside caddy for him to tuck in a book, an ipod, or whatever he might want. I may tuck a little money in the pocket if I can swing it.

Let me know if you have any great ideas for my next care package!

Weekend fun!

This weekend I packed up the kids, dog, and the Juki and headed to visit my old college roommate and soul sista, Amie. We have been friends for many many years and just so happy to both really love fabric and sewing. Having a best friend as a full grown woman is an absolute blessing. To share a hobby is just the cherry on top. I regret not being able to sew while my mother was still alive, so I definitely do not take this joy for granted!



Upon my arrival I was greeted with a couple of Happy Camper charm packs she had picked up from her LQS, Tomorrow's Quilts. She also gave me all the scraps from HER Happy Camper quilt. Woo-hoo! Thanks girl!



We sat on the floor for a long time and tried to figure out a solution to my current quilt dilemma. I started with about 30 fat eighths of an old Sandy Klop line and unfortunately I severely misjudged how much fabric I would need. I have 29 blocks but wanted 48. Not gonna happen. She did give me some matching scraps she had so I can hopefully scrape out a few more blocks. I'm still not sure exactly what to do. I have some math to do first...

Of course we had to take a ride to the LQS and I picked up some more Happy Campers (Hey, I learned my lesson from the current dilemma...too much fabric is not a bad thing!).



I also got some cute vintage inspired fruit fabric. I am thinking of recovering my ironing board in the cherries and maybe sprucing up some plain dish towels with the strawberries.



Amie also taught me how to do a pocket for my bindings in person. I am the type of person who needs someone to SHOW me how to do something in person. I have learned a lot from tutorials online but some things are trickier than others. She also taught my oldest son how to float on his back. I got a little carried away and had him practice his swimming a lot because he was making so much progress so quickly. I didn't realize we were in the saltwater pool for 2 or 3 hours so the poor boy got dehydrated pretty badly. He threw up the saltwater and was very sluggish. When I checked on him at midnight he felt clammy so I woke him up and annoyed him until he drank more water and went to the bathroom. He was even a little sluggish until the next day but the nurse on the emergency hotline for our insurance assured me he'd be ok as long as he was going to the bathroom regularly. You live you learn! There is a reason swim lessons are only 30 minutes I guess!

I also broke my Pfaff right before leaving. I was sewing a weighted blanket for a friend's son and I sewed right through a safety pin and knocked off my timing. GRRR. I am not used to sewing with pins but there were so many layers to add the weight that it was a necessity. Weighted blankets have a calming effect people with things from autism to insomnia. I was fascinated reading about them. I'm not sure if my version will do the trick, but if it does I will let you know and maybe write up a tutorial if there is interest. See...all kinds of ways to use your sewing ability to help others!

I will take the Pfaff to Alvin Sewing and Vacuum. He charges me $60 for servicing whereas the other 2 places I called told me it was $90 and $140. I really need to learn how to time my own machines. If anyone knows how, give me a comment or an email!

A Dorcas Update

So I've been keeping my eyes, heart, and ears open for a sewing project in the tradition of Dorcas. A friend read my blog post and let me know about some different handmade items her son recently received during a hospital stay for heart surgery. Here are some of the goodies that folks can donate:

1)Lactation dolls- small, flat dolls that can be stuffed into mama's bra to get her scent on it then stuffed into the bassinet so baby can smell his mom.

2)Crocheted hat to keep warm

3)Prayer blanket (from a friend, not a stranger) with verses printed onto patches and then sewn into fleece

4)Heart pillows for the heart patient to hold during coughing. I know when I had a c-section I had to cough against a pillow for the counterpressure and I'm assuming the same principle applies.

I then spoke to a friend who is a NICU nurse and she let me know that it was not OK to put anything Bible or Jesus related on the items for the nurses to hand out. Yikes. I talked it over with a lady from my church and what to you know...she was going to be the delegate from our church to attend the big baby shower at the Crisis Pregnancy Center. She invited me to attend with her. I am going to work very hard to get a quilt or two made by then and monogram a Bible verse for the label. Any favorite verse suggestions?

Sorry about the lack of picture. It's been quite a day here. We had playdate at our house and it all ended with someone kicking in a door. A little girl had accidentally locked herself in one of our bathrooms. As my husband points out, the door is replaceable. Unfortunately, the door frame was the one we recorded all our kid's heights on. Sigh. The silver lining is that in replacing the door/doorframe my husband had to remove tiles and he just decided we could go ahead and start that bathroom remodel we have been planning for months.

I'm going for a sewing and swimming weekend with my best friend starting Friday so hopefully I will have some finished projects to share next week.

Just because...

Of all the quilts I've ever made, I think this ranks very high in recipient appreciation. It's a little cheater panel of Scooby Doo fabric featuring my middle child's 2 favorite things...Scooby Doo and the Mystery 'Chine. Yesterday, knowing I had this fabric in my stash, he asked me to make him something with it. He has a child sized quilt already but I ruined it in a washing mishap. I've since become much picker about how I wash my quilts and I always use a Shout Color Catcher. Anyway, I decided to whip up a VERY simple quilt as a replacement.

I just added a little white to make it a better size then did very very simple quilting with my walking foot around some of the "lines" in the print. It was only about half bound by bedtime last night, so I had to remove the needle and let him sleep with it as-is. I finished the binding this morning before we headed to swim class.

It's kinda loud. It's nothing fancy. It cost about $10 to make. My son loves it, though. There will be a time where my homemade stuff is lame-o, so I am going to savor these years where I can make something that makes them so happy.

Next Up I am making blocks for this quilt using some Sandy Klop fabric and trying to quilt the Dukes of Hazzard quilt in secret...not an easy task.

I wanna be a Dorcas.

Sitting in church on Sunday morning, I glanced over to my son's lesson sheet. I giggled as I saw the name "Dorcas." I stuck the sheet in the back of the pew in front of me and went on my merry way. At some point I looked down and glanced in bold letters "SEWING". OH...you know I gotta pick it up and read it now. Dorcas, known to some as Tabitha, was an early Christian who lived in Bible times in the city of Joppa. I've never heard of her story until today...32 years of being in church and I don't hear about the seamstress in the Bible until I can actually sew. Good timing.

Her story is told in Acts 9:36-43. Dorcas is described as doing good deeds and charitable work continually. She used her gifts as a seamstress to provide clothing to the poor. This was an act of love for those in her village. One day Dorcas fell ill and died. The people of her village loved her so much they ran after Peter and showed him their clothing and told him that this woman who had showered them with love and her gifts had died. Peter went to the home where Dorcas' body lay. He sent everyone away and knelt down and prayed at her bedside. Eventually, he turned to the body and told her to arise. You know what? She did! The people rejoiced and there was a great revival in the city with many accepting Christ.

I can't believe I've never heard this story before. There are all sorts of songs and stories about Lazarus. I doubt Dorcas ever could have imagined that because of the simple act of sewing of those in need, she could bring about spiritual revival in an entire town. She didn't serve the Lord thinking of how he could use it. She just acted in love and let Him sort the rest out. So often I feel like I can't teach, lead, or sing, so I am useless to the big picture. This story showed me that instead of worrying about what will happen or thinking about what I can't do, I need to grab on to those instincts I have to show someone love through my sewing. God is big enough to figure out a way to use anything done for His Glory.

This week I am going to keep my eyes, ears, and heart open for an opportunity to show the love of Christ to someone through a gift He has so graciously given to me. Let me know if you plan on doing the same!