To be a bit cliché, this shoemaker is a professional Web Developer and her child is this blog, but it was past time to launch what I have of a new design. All the content is still here, everything else is a work in progress (kind of like most of my sewing projects)!
I’m convinced that my belongings grew in the move. I don’t know how, but things just weren’t fitting in the same amount of shelving as I had at the apartment. And, I’m still not completely unpacked!
A quick trip to Target last night for cabinets/shelving and a few hours this morning, and I finally have something that is starting to look like a sewing studio:
(…yesterday, not now) … and Carl, while frazzled shopping for Grandma at the third store and finding nothing, asked “dear, how long does it take to make a quilt”? And, I, clearly drunk from shopping all day, said “it can be shipped off by Christmas, if we shop for fabric now, don’t delay!”
Uhh, so that is how I got myself into making a quilt this week, on top of the other projects I’m working on.
First off, it is Sew Mama Sew giveaway day but I didn’t get my act together, so I have nothing to give away here. But you should check out all the great blogs and their giveaways!
What I did get started working on this weekend is organizing my sewing room a bit. I need more shelves. Here’s a start:
I have a new sewing space! My hobby is no longer relegated to a corner of the living room in our small one-bedroom apartment; I now have an entire room to myself—in our new house! We finally closed on Friday, and were moving in/starting to unpack for most of the weekend, but I managed to get myself set up a bit, so that I could work on our nephews’ presents—Christmas is coming too soon! Here’s a horribly grainy cell-phone photo of my space, since the good camera is still in a box somewhere (with my laptop charger 🙁 )!
One nephew present finished, four to go. Not to mention much more unpacking, and needing to haul my bookcase upstairs to the room so that I can organize.
That is the smallest of our three bedrooms, but it should be more than sufficient (for now, mwahaha). We keep going back and forth about which room I should use—that one or the other spare bedroom—and which should be the guest room.
… or why I haven’t been/won’t be productive for a while.
What was once the corner of my living room that housed my sewing machine, cutting table and everything else is now all packed up:
Saturday afternoon, I finished the last bit of machine stitching on presents for my five oldest nieces, and put my machine in a box, ready for a move. (It’s handy to keep ahold of your original box if you have room to store it.)
This update is brought to you by random photos of projects that I have on my cell phone. At first, I wasn’t planning on quilting the Synchronized Squares quilt or the Strip-pieced Lone Star/Star of Bethlehem quilt until later in the year, because they are both Christmas presents.
But then I got my hands on a spool of white Aurifil and decided to do the Synchronized Squares quilt last week. I basted it and quilted it Friday evening. It went pretty quickly. I even washed and dried it, then couldn’t resist snuggling under it a bit. But it’s been pouring rain and generally overcast ever since, so I haven’t been able to photograph it yet.
Hopefully the weather will improve later this week, as I’d like to photograph it and send it off. I decided not to wait for Christmas, as I don’t generally give this family member Christmas presents anyway.
At this point, you may have forgotten from my lack of updates that I am using Tula Pink’s Prince Charming in the Synchronized Squares quilt. But I am!
I really haven’t made much progress, because I haven’t touched the quilt for a month. I dug it out and started piecing again, before realizing that I hadn’t even cut the whole thing out! So, I finished cutting and now need to sew a few more blocks together to finish the top. In the mean time, I used some leftovers for a special addition to the back.
Head over to see my post and learn more about my progress on the quilt, including my pocket on the back into which you can fold the quilt so that it becomes a pillow!
Okay, I’m officially not allowed to buy fabric for the rest of the month. Well, the next 22 days, at least. I have plans to shop on vacation (going home to Missouri for a week), but until then, nada. There’s really no reason to purchase more, anyway, because this has all arrived recently:
A Simpler Time precuts and yardage, plus Somerset Cottage from 1 Choice 4 Quilting. Quite traditional yardage for a jelly-roll–based, strip-pieced Lone Star. I’m thinking Christmas present for either one set of parents or grandparents. I just couldn’t help but buy this, even though the bi-weekly class I’m taking covering different Lone Star techniques doesn’t start until next week, where we simply talk about what we should consider for fabric. I think some linen I have in my costuming/sartorial stash might go with this, as I still need some yardage for the borders/background of the lone star. I like mixing fabrics.
I’ve been terribly unproductive for the past month. In fact, I have half a post written about my unproductiveness and all the WIPs I have at the moment, but I’ve been too unproductive to take the photos for it.
And now, I have this guy living with me:
He’s nameless (at least, so far, 24 hours after we adopted him), 4 or 5 mos. old and not housebroken. So, it looks like my productivity will be shifted for a while yet, but have no fear, I’ll be sewing again soon (I hope).