so much for mom sewing

I went downstairs to work on some quilt blocks. I did not. I untangled yarn and threaded needles over, and over, and over. For the entire two hours Dad and the big girls were at church. Seriously. As soon as I had one taken care of, the next needed a refill on her needle. It was a constant rotation. Plastic canvas and yarn, and these girls are ready to get their craft on!

Future Crafters of America

December journal

This month was the closest I came to no sewing at all. I've been working on a book project all fall - ghost-writing a memoir for someone else. The manuscript deadline was dropped on me out of nowhere, and I had only 10 days to get it done, reviewed, and submitted to the publisher. After being so completely furious that I cussed out the author for destroying Christmas for my family, I worked nonstop for a week (my kids ate a lot of store-bought pizza) until it was submitted at 1 a.m. on a Friday night. Mr. Author went with me to the school to pick up my kids that day, in the middle of our 15-hour marathon push to the end, and my 5-year-old wouldn't even look at him, much less give him a high-five. She had informed me that morning, "After today, I don't want you to work with him anymore, Mommy." Noted. 

So, with all of THAT, there went all my Christmas energy, any Christmas activities, and any Christmas sewing.

What I did instead was I took my DC map embroidery project with me on our Christmas break trip to Tennessee and Virginia, and worked on that while at my husband's sister's house. It was nice to have something productive to do instead of watching TV. I didn't quite finish the entire bottom section of the quilt, but I came awfully close! The whole project still has a LONG way to go and I doubt it will be finished in 2019, but I hope I can get a lot closer to that.   

And that concludes my 2018 year of sewing! I'm not going to do an entire review post like I have before, because I've done all the monthly journal posts. Just click on "review" in the index and you'll see my 2018 months all neatly in a row. I didn't finish any quilts this year, which is my one disappointment - I did want to do that. Other than that, I'm happy with what I did! 

For 2019, I have no new projects I'm adding - I still have a huge list I wrote out last summer that needs to be done! Mainly the four quilts for my kiddos. I have 5 kids, and I finished JE's quilt ages ago ... 2 years? I started on SM's quilt right away after that, but 2 years later, the pieced top is nowhere near being done. I'm making the Squared Away for JK. RG and TA are planned but nothing is started. It's way past time to get ALL my kids their quilts. I also have fabric that I bought to make myself a skirt AGES ago, seriously, I think 6 years ago. It's way past time to make that skirt too. 

what we're doing besides posting online

Holy. Cow. 5 months of the year already gone! The blog has been quiet because our lives certainly are NOT!

We decided in January to renovate our kitchen and Adam has been working pretty much nonstop since then. He built all the cabinets in our garage in January and February. We bought a new fridge so he could custom build cabinets around it. He did all the wiring to reroute the electricity here and there. He did plumbing with the sink and water hookup for the fridge. He retiled sections of the kitchen floor and it blends in really nicely - you can only tell where it is if you know what to look for in the grout. With moving a doorway, he learned how to make his drywall patching blend a lot more nicely. He's been a busy guy!

JANUARY KITCHEN:

TEARING IT OUT: Except for 4 days in April when Adam had to fix a sink plumbing issue, the kitchen has remained functional the entire time. My kitchen project job has been to clean up after him, occasionally hold something in place while it gets nailed in, and keep the kids out of his way.

GOOD RIDDANCE to the counter tile!!

Our friend Andy came over to help Adam with the final breakdown

A WHOLE NEW SPACE:

Current status: all cabinets and appliances are in place, and now Adam is doing the detail work like the cabinet facings and drawers. The counters are plywood with contact paper stapled to it, and will probably remain that way until the fall. We want an entire granite slab (rather than a teeny sample square like at Home Depot) and are trying to pay cash for the whole thing - so far, so good, but our budget got thrown off this spring from some kid-dental work. In the end, we should have a $40,000 kitchen for $10K or less. But that's still a hefty chunk in one year!

My house part just started this month - I'm the painter. So far, I've done the reading room in a light blue-gray with ultra white for the window trim. I started on the trim in the front hall area. There's a lot of blue edging tape up! We're testing paint colors for the kitchen. The blue-gray will carry into the kitchen, with an accent wall. Adam wanted it to be "cranberry." We played around with shades and ended up getting "Sugar Beet" from Home Depot. Adam was painting up the sample when JK (age 4) came running in. "Oooooo! Magenta!" HA HA HA! The hall from the front door all the way to the back bedroom will eventually be some shade of gray, and the girls want their bedrooms painted lavender. Still very much at the beginning of my part.

the old yellow getting covered with the blue-gray. The front door and hall are slated to change color as well.

I've done quite a bit of sewing here and there but nothing is done yet except the girls' bedroom curtains. Only one set is up because Adam stole the other curtain rod for the living room. I bought a new living room rod but we haven't swapped them yet. (Kitchen.) Photos of the curtains haven't turned out because of being backlit by the sun coming through the window ... still working on it.

In January, I made the first block for SM's Night Sky quilt - I saw a picture on a Google search for quilt star shapes (sorry for no source - I can't find it again), and figured out on graph paper how to make it with half-square triangles (HST). This is 16x16 inches - the starting squares were 5 inches. When made into the HSTs, they sized out at 4 1/2 inch squares to allow for a quarter-inch seam allowance on all sides to finish at 4 inches. Yes, actually, it did take me awhile - and some pretty botched up blocks for another project (if you want 2-inch HSTs, you start with 3-inch squares) - to figure that out.

Then sewing came to a screeching halt, because my iron died in February. I just replaced it.  I'm now in process on a dress for JK (with 3 more clothing items waiting for action), and have done 3 more blocks for SM's quilt. I've also started some strip piecing for RG's quilt, and fiddled around with some fabric for a 3rd one. I've been bookmarking specific block ideas for the little girls - TA can't make up her mind which type of quilt she wants. I have about 4 ideas for her.

On a whim, I made a heart garland from felt and a ribbon for the windows in our front hallway for a Valentine's Day decoration. Felt doesn't require the iron.

I received a template of a map of Washington DC as a gift from my good friend Sarah - it's supposed to be all embroidered into a quilt that's about 36x42 inches. SM asked me who will get it for their bed - no one. It's going on the wall. I started working on it at the beginning of April. It's slow going and this is going to take me a LONG time but there's no rush. It's just for Adam and me, for sappy nostalgia. And yes. Yes, I am adding pink French knots to represent the cherry trees around the Tidal Basin.

The garden went in the last weekend in April. It's a lot less than we normally do, but it's all we can manage this year. We're not trying to feed our family for 6 months with it - it's just a delicious supplement. So we're not worried about the quantity of plants we put in or the harvest we get.

TA helped me put in the dahlias and canna lilies

And all of this has been in between Adam's job, homeschooling, dance classes, a ridiculous number of doctor appointments (2 kids in weekly therapy and dental stuff, plus everyone recently got checkups all on top of each other), regular chores around the house, church assignments, and just ... life.