May journal

SEWING
Quilts, crafts, and clothes. Covered it all this month.

1. X is for X block in the Squared Away Block of the Month. The X was March's block, and I also did April's block. Green done, yellow done. Still working on pink for May.

2. Four more blocks for the Night Sky quilt. I'm trying to get section 2 done of the quilt, but it's not quite coming together yet. I wanted to do more on this project, but at least I hit the minimum.

3. Two pairs of shorts, one of TA and the other for JK. More coming.

The purple speckles was from the remnant bin at Hobby Lobby. The ice cream cones are from Made EveryDay, the Boardwalk Delight line.

I think I resolved my Shorts conundrum. I have the Kid Shorts pattern from Made Everyday but it only goes to a size 10. SM is way out of that now. I was trying to figure out how to size it up, and I probably still could. But I discovered that Oliver+S has a FREE!!! Sunny Day Shorts pattern online, so I printed it off. They're made differently - Kid Shorts does not have a separate waistband, Sunny Days Shorts does. They're put together differently, even though they look pretty much the same when they're done. And hey, I don't know that SM will even fit into a 12 anymore - I've been buying her 14/16 at the store, and even went to the Juniors section when we were shopping for a dress for her last week. So we'll see. But at least I have one more size up after the Kid Shorts 10.

4. On Sunday night this week, I got a sewing bug, and in just a little while, I made a swim cover for JK. Adam asked how this dress is different from any other dress ... it's not. It's regular fabric. But the top is too loose to be modest so we'll call it a swim cover. JK found the bow in my basket of random items and asked me to add it.

She's ready for the pool! Bring on the summer!

5. I started ... another ... WIP ... a fabric pennant garland for summer camp. I'm going to our church's youth camp with SM as one of the adult chaperones, and this is girly in that campsites are "decorated" somehow. So enter a pennant garland. This is just getting started so no photos yet.

It has the typical triangles but also flowers scattered randomly in between. I made a bunch of flowers as a hand-sewing project (and one was even swiped by JK - she had me stitch it to a hair tie). The gathering stitch would be MUCH faster on the machine, but I wanted a hand project to carry around and knocked out over 20 of them just while sitting in a women's church conference. This particular version of a pennant/flower garland is from the book Sewing Bits and Pieces by Sandi Henderson - I got it from the library for a different project, but this looked cute too.

This has been a great way to clear out blues that quite frankly, I'm not going to ever use in a quilt because the fabric is too rough, doesn't go with anything else, or I just don't like it. Putting those fabrics in a garland that's going to get the crap beat out of it by being outside!


THE HOUSE
We have a baaaaaaaack-splaaaaaaaaash!

This was the last major piece of our kitchen puzzle, and kind of on a whim, we just got it done. I wanted glass tiles in some shade of blue. When I was running errands at Home Depot once, I went through their entire in-store selection and really wasn't happy with it. It's mostly brown-toned, which doesn't not work with our gray/black counter at all. I found a couple of things and took samples home but nope. So we tried Lowe's and hooray! They had a lot of blues! We brought home a bunch, and the all-white that Adam liked and grabbed at the last second was the winner. The blues didn't look right with the counter - that was a hard match. The white/gray was also the cheapest - score!

I went to a Saturday night book club and when I got home, Adam had most of it up. (I need to leave him unsupervised more often.) I just had to come through behind him for the wipe-down of the extra mortar. (Typical. He makes a mess, I clean it up.) It still needs the grout and to be polished off, but the tiles are up! Hooray!

March journal

Very few photos here, because these things are either already in their own posts, or will get them when they're all the way finished ... here we go again for my monthly review.

SEWING
1. I bought new curtains for my bedroom from Ikea and they were WAY too long. I cut them almost in half to get the length where I wanted it, so now I have that extra fabric for the other small window and probably the bathroom. It almost seems like cheating to BUY curtains instead of making them from scratch, but hello - cheap Ikea fabric! The windows don't get to wear expensive fabric, my kids and I do.

2. SM's theater costume - I finished the peasant top in Feb, the skirt and apron this month. I also did an alteration job on a skirt for a friend, which took a lot longer than I thought it would.

Less than an hour after I finished SM's apron, I was cutting fabric for more zip bags because I never finished the batch on the list from right after Christmas. JK wants her treasure bag! And I sliced my index finger with my rotary blade ... so that ended all sewing for over a week, which was especially irritating because I was motivated to keep sewing! Who knows what I would have finished that day if I hadn't gashed my finger! It's still not fully healed but I could at least get back to work finally before the end of the month.

3. Doll quilt - Back to work with my own contribution for A Doll Like Me, which was going to be submitted to Project Quilting 9.6 as a scrap project ... but I ran out of time for that. I did get the pieced top entirely done but it still needs to be quilted and bound. This is where it sits now. It will have pink binding, which is also a leftover scrap! And I'm apparently cleaning out the baby-print flannel on the doll quilt project, because I haven't sewn anything for a baby for a really long time.

And I still need to get 4 more daughters to work on theirs. This is apparently an extremely long-term service project - I'm glad that ADLM has all the other contributions from the quilt drive to distribute first.

4. I made 2 more zip bags for gifts that will be given to their recipient tomorrow. Up to 11 now, and poor TA and JK still haven't gotten their's. If it weren't for that darn finger injury!! SM wants another one for summer camp, I want one for summer camp (I'm going with SM as a leader), and I'll probably make more at Christmas for the next bunch of school teachers. But those can wait awhile.

5. I worked on my DC map embroidered quilt off and on because I hauled it to two different book clubs and when I was chaperoning backstage during SM's play performance.


THE HOUSE
We needed to rearrange some curtain rods between the living room and one of the bedrooms, and FINALLY got that done. We took down the metal slatted blinds in the last bedroom when we put up the curtains, because I hate those blinds. (Too many years in apartments.) There is now only one set in my house, and they're in the basement next to the furnace. So we'll leave them. But the rest are GONE!!! Hooray!!!

Adam got another set of doors up on the kitchen cabinets, but doesn't like how they line up together, so he's probably going to take it all down and do it again. Where's the eye roll on Blogger ... just get the doors up!!! He keeps saying that he "sees every flaw." I'm really not sure what level of perfection he's going here but if he doesn't let some of those flaws go, we're going to die before the kitchen is done.

One of the garage doors has been sticking and not working properly. Conveniently, a former neighbor gave us a brand new door opener motor and pulley system, still in the box, when they moved 3 years ago. It's just been sitting there all this time, so Adam spent a Saturday swapping out the door opener system. (And it's one less thing taking up space! Yay!)

2017 annual review and 2018 plans

I didn't have a whole lot of planning for this year. I knew we'd be doing a lot of work on the house in the first half of the year, and wow - we did! Most of my sewing was in the 2nd half of the year. I did get the bedroom curtains done for the girls in January (surprise surprise!) and I made JE the split skirt that she wanted ... and now has worn all of two times. *frowny face* I worked on the quilt for SM and bought fabric for RG's quilt but haven't really done anything with it yet.


SEWING
Mending: 21
Spools used up: 6

Alphabet Challenge - I knocked out another 6 letters - N O P Q R S. Shooting to finish it this year! October will be 4 years - we started in October 2014. That's long enough for a sewing challenge, but I have persevered! Good for Mindy for finishing last month, and completing it in about 3 years!

1. For Laura Ingalls Wilder's 150th birthday in February, we had a whole Laura Day with a number of homeschool friends. The girls all dressed up in bonnets and aprons, we made Laura's recipe for gingerbread (heaven!), and we attempted to make rag dolls like Charlotte. The girls decorated the faces, and I sewed all the edges. Unfortunately, I cut them too narrow and the fabric frayed a lot more than I thought it would. Double whammy. This was eventually abandoned, but not without a lot of effort.

2. Felt banners for the girls' Frontier Girls badges. We haven't spent the money on the uniform vests yet (and might not at all), but they needed a place to put the badges they've earned.

3. Oliver + S family reunion dress, lunch box culottes, ice cream dress. For JK, JE, and TA. (SM and RG got dresses last year. Also Oliver +S!)

4. Open mouth zip pouches: 7 total for the year. The first one was a bomb, but I tried it again to much greater success.


5. Bento origami bag - only one this year, but it makes 7 total. All 5 girls have them for their dance bags, and JK was FINALLY old enough to start dance. And 2 more were made as gifts a couple of years ago.

6. Purple cape for JE to be Skyra the Guardian of the Portal (!!!) from Lego Elves at Halloween. The other side of the cape was a dark purple, and I did a fancy embroidery stitch all the way around the edge. Dad made her staff out of a really long dowel he found in the garage.

7. No-sew fleece scarves - we made 5, and they were donated with a larger amount made at a church activity to an organization helping people from Puerto Rico relocate to our area after the hurricane destruction during the summer.

8. Two placemats made from the leftover table runner strips, and Christmas strips on the other side. Double duty, as a Christmas gift for my parents.

9. Flannel handwarmers for the principal and vice principal for Christmas gifts. I apparently need to make more because Adam and the girls want them too.


QUILTS
1. Night Sky quilt: Work in Progress. I started cutting pieces for this in January of last year, and have been sloooooowly moving forward with it. I have these on the wall, and a piece of graph paper with the quilt mapped out into 5 sections to do, then put all together. The first of the 5 has been mostly sewn together but is not quite done. 2018 plan: Finish it. Sooner rather than later. I already have the backing purchased - a light blue flannel.

2. DC Map embroidered quilt: Work in Progress. I don't have a photo of the current status, but I've put in north of 50 hours on it so far. I haven't really kept track. I've learned the running stitch, back stitch, split back stitch, and French knot. 2018 plan: Keep going! The work on this goes in spurts because I don't want to move it around so much. The map template is starting to shred in places I haven't done yet. Maybe I'll get it done, but I won't be surprised if I don't.

3. Jeans upcycling: I'm chopping up old jeans and making picnic blankets. I did one last year, and spent some time this summer chopping up more jeans and sewing some strips. Not much done on this extended project. 2018 plan: Make at least 2 for the end of year gifts for the 4th and 2nd grade teachers, so they can sit outside and relax during their summer break! They've earned it! I've got enough pants piled up that I can probably make 10. I want to have 4 for myself, so I have an 8-foot square.

4. Reinforcement stitching: Adam has a couple of quilts that his mom made for him. She has little tiny ties in the corners of fairly large squares, so I shoved them through my machine and did stitch-in-the-ditch around the main blocks to strengthen it all.

5. Joint project with Mindy: navy and gray giant woven star quilt: DONE 12/10/17. Given to Tawnia for Christmas.

6. Joint project with Mindy: jelly dot baby quilt: DONE. I did a lot of the piecework in making the squares, so I'm going to claim it for my own work list. She finished it and gave it away as a gift.

7. Autumn table runner: DONE 11/22/17.

8. Aussie duvet quilt: DONE 10/15/17

9. A red quilt: Work in Progress. This is the third joint project with Mindy, which she is doing most of. I did the border and mailed it to her, and she's doing the rest of the quilt. She has suggested doing a Color challenge when we finish the Alphabet Challenge - well, she's done with the alphabet so she can start on her rainbow. Here's the entry for Red.

10. Red White and Green quilt: Work in Progress. I have a bunch of random Christmas fabric scraps, from making Christmas outfits for the girls in the past (including the very first clothing I ever sewed), the Christmas tree skirt I made (my first sewing project EVER), and a few other projects. I'd been wanting to make it all into a Christmas quilt to put on the couch to snuggle with in the winter, and I decided recently that log cabin blocks were the way to go. I made these first 5 just on Christmas Day. I have a total of 10 done now at 12.5x12.5 unfinished. 2018 plan: The target is 25 blocks to make it 60X60. I might need to redo the layout - I don't know that this diamond layout will work with 5 squares across. I'll figure that out when I have my 25 blocks.

THE HOUSE
1. The kitchen is Adam's project, and it's not done yet. But wow - he did a TON of work and it's a completely different room than when we started. Adam custom built floor-to-ceiling cabinets all the way around, including all the drawers, facings, doors, and hardware. He also raised the ceiling around the edge of the room, wired for new lights above the sink and for moving the stove, ran a water line for the fridge ice maker, a lot of drywall and plastering, and laid new tile when we moved the appliances. We had granite counters professionally installed. I repainted the entire kitchen, including a cranberry red accent wall.

So happy to have the counters installed! We had plywood with contact paper stapled to it for 4 months. This was in July. The bottom cabinets all have drawers and doors now, and the corner cabinet has a big lazy Susan turn-around. Still no doors for the top.

2018 plan: Adam needs to finish the fronts and doors of the cabinets, finish touching up the ceiling where it was raised, add the molding for the top and bottom edges, and we need to choose and install the backsplash. My job is the detail work like the window and making all new hot pads so we can throw out the junky ones we have now that are trashed anyway.

2. Curtains for both bedrooms for the girls. I made 10 panels in all with ruffles across the bottom.

(This is one bedroom. For the other bedroom, they have a yellow ruffle and purple bottom. Third pair for a small window is yellow with a pink bottom.

3. I made a drop cloth cover for the white (and filthy - I've been scrubbing at it, and it's clean-ER but still not CLEAN) armchair in the reading room.

4. I painted the reading room, kitchen, and front hall during the summer.

our front hall from the living room on Christmas morning. 

the color before, last Valentine's Day

2018 plan: finish all the touchups from my previous paint jobs - there are gray marks on my white ceiling still. I also need to go over all the baseboards where I've already painted the wall, and at least scrub them if I'm not going to repaint them. The front door is slated to become navy blue. I have paint ideas for both bathrooms, and the girls keep bouncing around on if they want their bedrooms painted or not. I do have a gallon of really pale lavender that could get started on one of them.

WOW. I had no idea I'd done so much! My plans for 2018 don't mean starting a bunch of new projects, but continuing the ones that are already in process. Hopefully finishing them! So then I can start on new projects. I have a list of over 20 quilt ideas that I'd like to do, so I'd better get moving with the ones I've already started!

GRANITE!

We! Have! Counters!

I never thought that I would just sit and look at kitchen counters, of all things, and think, "Wow! That is so beautiful!" But I do.

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.