Right back where I started.

Today I learned that if I keep the presser foot up, I can quilt all sorts of loopy swirly patterns with my sewing machine.
Today I also learned that if you keep the presser foot up it completely fucks your tension and you end up with cluster fuck knots of plastic invisible quilting thread all over the bottom of your quilt.
Today I learned that the ratio of putting stitches in to taking them out is about half an hour with the machine vs 3 hours with the seam ripper.
Tomorrow I learn to start all over. Perhaps I was meant to hand quilt.

Curtains

My sons' birthdays are coming up, so we are planning a party.  I have only just reached the phase where I obsess about my house being ready for company (it's not) now that we've ordered and received the gifts.  I realized on Friday, 8 days before the party, that my kitchen curtains were a bedsheet, and had been a bedsheet for about a year now.  It started out innocently enough; I couldn't find fabric I liked for curtains.  I wanted tan fabric with coffee cups all over it.  And all the stuff I found was either too light or too dark or the coffee cups were really teeny for quilting and would just look like oddly shaped polka dots to anyone who wasn't standing with their nose pressed into my curtains.  But now I had a party to throw and I could not let people come over and see my house with a bedsheet in my kitchen window.  Luckily I had recently ripped off Douchenozzle, so I was prepared!

Okay, a backstory.  I was looking through classified ads online and found one for a yard sale with sewing fabric, so I of course wanted to go. But then I noticed who posted the ad and it was DN. So I called my friend, who hasn't given me permission to use her name here so I will call her Pam Dawber, even though she is decidedly not Pam Dawber.  So I called the non-Pam Dawber and she said she'd go with me, because she likes yard sales and my discomfort would amuse her.  But it turned out that DN wasn't even there.  I bought a ton of fabrics, some in very large quantities, and the teenage kids who sold it to me was all "Two dollars for all of it" even though I was really hoping it wasn't much more than $20. Clearly, the kid had no clue what 15 yards or more of fabric is worth, but who am I to correct DN's kids at their own house?  So I gave them the $2 and hauled ass out of there before they realized they had been robbed. 

So, now I needed curtains, and had enough of a very high quality drapery fabric of questionable beauty, so I whipped up a set of curtains and padded valance for my kitchen.  I'm still not sure if I love them or hate them, but I'm stuck with them now since the valance is bolted into the wall and it would look really strange with another set of curtains hanging from it*.  So, here is what I did this weekend.

Today I tackle cleaning while Tom tries to make some way for me to get the frogs and crickets out of my kitchen, and the bearded dragon off my TV.


*Also, I stapled the fabric to the valance upside down. Is it as noticeable as I think it is?

Sewing room obsession, continued

I'm really getting into this sewing room project, and it's all in my head.  Someday some shrink will tell me that this habit of mine of jumping into hobbies or projects is the manic side of manic depression or something but I don't care.  It's not like I blow tons of money on them or anything.

I told Tom to figure out where he wants to put the playroom in the basement and then I'll find my corner and have him clear his stuff out of it.  I want to put paneling on the walls (nothing sturdy, just nail some 2x4s into the ceiling/floor joists and then screw the paneling into them to cover the cement walls, and then I have an old formica table I can use for a cutting table, and an old laminate kitchen table I could put my sewing machine on.  Then I could use the room while I let garage sales and auctions get me my shelves and drawers for material.  I like tearing apart old clothes for fabric so I might put a closet rod up in there, too.  And I'd hang curtains or shower curtains or something to block off Tom's storage shelves (if I get the corner I have my eye on) and then over time replace them with quilts on curtain hoops.

I think every wife should have a sewing room, even if she doesn't sew.  A few years ago all the talk was about Man Caves, and how men should fill their garages and basements with neon beer signs, pool tables, and flat screen TVs.  But what about the women?  Whether it's scrapbooking, sewing, collecting teddy bears, whatever the hobby, a woman needs a room to sit quietly in.  And no, floral curtains in the living room do not mean she already has her own room, not as long as you're going to go tramping through and eating Fritos on the sofa!

My grandma used to have a sewing room.  it was this tiny little walk-in closet off the bathroom but it was where her fabric could sit undisturbed and no grandkids would stomp on the pedal of her sewing machine or unwind her thread spools.  I envy her that little room. I hope to get one myself here very soon.

Sew near, yet Sew far away.

I've started quilting.  I can generally scrounge a few hours a week to sit at the sewing machine, or kneel on the floor to cut fabric, or iron in the narrow space between the closet and the bed.  I wish I had a sewing room.

I've always made curtains, and Halloween costumes, and the occasional pillow for my kids.  I like to sew and it makes me feel all June Cleaver to be able to give the kids something that not just anyone with a Walmart gift card can pick up.  But keeping my scissors and thread and other little things in the drawers of what's basically supposed to be a hall table to toss your keys on, and all my fabric in plastic storage totes in the basement gets old.  I really want a sewing room, and I know how to get one.  If I can move enough storage stuff out of the way I could set all my stuff up in the basement.  Then I'd just need a cutting table and a sewing table, and maybe dressers and shelves from garage sales.  I get so impatient when I can visualize a goal.  I want to start looking for tables and shelves now, and setting everything up.  Unfortunately, Tom has the corner I've picked full of baby clothes for next year's garage sale, all laid out on sawhorse tables.  So I am going to drop endless not at all subtle hints that a sewing room is what I want for Xmas this year.  I don't care if it has walls, just give me a space I don't have to arrange around a king size bed.

I will be able to get things done

I have, for the rest of the summer, 4 hours a week to myself.  I've hired my friend's daughter/Ryan's friend to come watch the boys every Thursday so that I can get stuff done. I am simply giddy with the freedom. I have projects and now I can actually do them, all for the same price Tom pays to whack balls into trees on the golf course.
I want to make this quilt.  I want to make it and sleep under it and drink tea out of a chipped mug under it amidst a sea of crumpled tissues when I am sick. I am therefor on a hunt for fabric with which to make it.  This hunt takes time, so until I find all of the fabric I need (anyone have old sheets for me?) I am making Ryan a t shirt quilt out of all of her old rec league shirts and kiddie marathon shirts, stuff like that.  Today I worked on that quilt and can already tell you that it has the potential to be awesome.  Unfortunately I have the potential to fuck it up, so we'll see how it turns out.  The thing about t shirts is that they are made out of very soft, very stretchy material.  This doesn't work well for a quilt because the fabric puckers up and sags and after a few washings the front of the quilt is bigger than the back and it all hangs wrong.  So you have to buy interfacing to make the t shirt fabric act like quilting fabric. (Interfacing is the stuff they use to make collars and cuffs stuff in dress shirts.)  So today I spent almost my whole 4 hours cutting out interfacing and fusing it to my shirt-fronts (it irons on like a patch) and now I have 23 squares of non-stretchy t shirt logos all ready to sew together into one big quilt of childhood memories.  Unfortunately 23 is not a number conducive to even rows.  So I need either one or two more shirts.  I may go steal shirts that still fit but that she never wears, or I may have to go replace lost shirts from her past.  When she was in elementary school the kids wore their school pride shirts every Friday.  Tom sold that shirt for a quarter at a yard sale and now no one on facebook has one to give me as replacement. :(  But, Ryan has souvenir shirts from vacations, including one she left out in the yard for a week to be leached out by sun and rain. I may steal that one for the quilt.  But still,  I'd like to find a school pride Friday shirt.  I'm almost desperate enough to go pay the full $10 for a new one, but it seems like a colossal waste of money for something I'm just going to cut the front out of.
I will post pics here when I get the quilt done.  I have no idea what Ryan will want to do with a quilt made from old Girl Scout camp shirts, but she will have it nonetheless.  And hopefully she will continue to amass souvenir t shirts and I can continue to add them to the quilt and eventually she will have a giant useless quilt made of ratty old clothes. And who wouldn't want that?