Studio Spotlight

Jennifer over at Ellison Lane Quilts is having a "Studio Spotlight" series and has encouraged us to all share our "studios"...

Well, let's just say that ever since Peanut arrived and initially took over our 2nd bedroom (which used to be my sewing space), my sewing machine has been hopping around the apartment. For awhile, I was on the kitchen table, but then the kitchen table was sent back to SD with Grizz's parents. 

Have I mentioned that we're moving soon? ... maybe just a few times, right? :)

So, my sewing machine moved again onto this rolling TV tray/magazine holder.
BUT... I sold that on Craigslist, remember?

Thankfully, I've had quite a bit of handwork to do (I'm attaching the binding to my handsewn quilt!), so my sewing studio has been on this rocking chair :)

If I get to really sew again before we move (we're moving in about a month), I'll probably have to move the machine onto our kitchen counter or something, ha! Until then, my faithful machine is sitting in the 2nd bedroom, surrounded by my other sewing things, packed boxes, partially packed boxes and packing materials :)

Make do or do without, right?! I prefer making do!

Linking up here!


And guess what tomorrow is... DAY 1 of the Hexie Blog Hop!! Yippee!

August Goals

I cut and pieced these blocks in June (I think... or was it May?!). Anyways, they now need to be sewn into rows and finally into a twin-sized quilt top for Peanut!

The blocks are 6 1/2" square.

The mini squares were cut at 2 1/2" to make the nine-patch blocks.

All of the fabric came from Grizz's mother who is trying to decrease her fabric stash (I'll never turn down fabric!)

I'm linking up with "A Lovely Year of Finishes" with Melissa and Shanna. 

...and with Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday...

 However, I can't just sew during nap time and Daddy time... I also *get* to pack. Grizz's parents took a lot of our stuff home when they visited a few weekends ago, so now I am packing up the things that didn't fit. The pictures above show the 2nd bedroom which has now been converted back into a sewing room - it's also the packing and storing room!

We're moving in September!!!

Peanut's things are now in the "dining room," our couches were sent home, so we're sitting on the lone lazy boy and a mattress :) The big TV has been replaced with it's miniature little brother and Grizz gets to study for his Professional Engineering exam on a desk made of boxes, milk crates and the filing cabinet. 

Grizz's parents kept saying that we're "camping" in our apartment until we move back... all I can say is that we now have a lot more room :)

Some Christmas Joy

I don't know exactly how I feel about my first go at making collages over at PicMonkey. I love PicMonkey and I love how easy it is to arrange the photos into a collage (and thus less arranging while typing the blog post!). We'll see if I continue to use them :)

Anyways, here's a little sampling of the Christmas decor of the apartment... I've always loved decorating for Christmas! Even in college, I made sure that the dorm rooms and the houses I lived in were decorated! Thus, I've always lugged around a few totes of Christmas decorations. Thankfully, Grizz doesn't mind! 

The Dala Horse is my first try at making felt ornaments. I have a bit of Swedish in me, so I couldn't resist buying the pattern from Lova Handmade on Etsy! The button wreaths and the music balls were made last year, and the vintage ornaments were found this past summer at a garage sale - I couldn't pass them up!

I made the scrabble ornaments this past fall, and they will all be going out as gifts. It will be hard to see them go, but I hope the new owners will love them as much as I loved making them!

 Last but not least, at the top of the collage you'll see some painted barnwood signs that I created a few weeks ago (I pretty much took over the living room floor for several days as I painted and repainted until I was satisfied). They are the official greeters outside on our porch. And to top it all off, our tree has a fun garland this year :) We had our ultrasound last week, and Scooter is definitely the best addition to the tree for his or her "first" Christmas!

Summer Goals... Non-Sewing!

I'm in a pretty lucky position. I have summers off and I have hobbies (I will definitely not be getting bored anytime soon!). So, this is a perfect time in my life to improve my "house-wife" skills :p We have a small apartment, so it should be easy to keep clean, and we don't have kids, so I have smaller amounts of laundry, dishes and cooking to do. Yet, when I have projects I want to work on, I can easily forget my other duties!!

Thus, here are my summer goals (not including sewing goals!):

...get back on a running plan

...clean a little every day to keep the house neat 

...start planning meals for a week at a time

This little poster came from an idea on Pinterest. I created my version in Photoshop. It's hanging near the kitchen to help remind me!

So, if I can run and clean in the morning, plus get groceries on Mondays, I should be able to attain my goals throughout the summer. Besides, I will still have my afternoons to sew and craft and blog!

Future Scrabble Ornaments

 

Remember when I was sooo excited to find this vintage scrabble game at a thrift store for $1? Well, a few weeks later I found another one for $2. Yeah, I was thrilled! So, after my parents left two weekends ago, I decided to keep my second bedroom clean for a little while and instead of sewing, I crafted!

 

I dug out my go-to stain (Early America from Minwax) and my trusty sandpaper...

  

... grabbed some boxes from their storage spot under my bed, and set up camp in the living room. (I just didn't feel like going out to the garage, so the lone sitting area of the apartment was my only good option).

  

I'm sure you're wondering why the sandpaper and stain was even necessary. Scrabble tiles alone are pretty fun, but not if they have pink stains or weird dark blotches on them. Yup, neither of my games were in mint condition... thus, they are only for craftiness! Before I got to work, I wasn't even sure if the sandpaper and stain would even cover up or take off the weird markings, but lucky me... they did!

 These all will be Christmas ornaments...

 

... but before I glue them together (perhaps with some cute detail-y additions), I want to "create" a few more words... I can't show you all the letters I stained this time, since some of them will be gifts!

However, I ran out of a few necessary letters (H's, L's, M's, etc)... guess I'll just have to keep thrifting... :)

A Room Tour

 Since my parents visited this past weekend, I needed to clean the second bedroom. (I suppose they needed a place to sleep!). Usually, this room is my sewing and craft room as well as a storage location for our winter/hiking/hunting/climbing things.

While it was cleaned up, I thought you'd like a tour!

In this corner... the bed :)

The window was a wedding gift made by a wonderful high school friend of mine. The "Blessed" print was a shower gift, and the other pictures were hung in mix-matched frames that we had on hand.

The small quilt was created by Grizz's mother for a shower gift. The dresdan circles were actually made by Grizz's great-great grandmother! My mother-in-law then took the blocks and pieced them with new fabric and hand-quilted it. Amazing!

She had just enough dresdan circles to create three quilts - this one and ones for Grizz's two sisters. It is a most treasured gift :)

 In this corner... is my crafting dresser... the drawers, from top to bottom: a random storage, crafty goodness (including wooden spools, bottle caps, paint, etc), clothes to sew with, table linens, and costumes. It is one full dresser! To the side of it you can see Grizz's bows. The closet is on to the right as well, but that's just all storage.

 Here are some sewing goodies. There are buttons, elastic, rick rack, ribbons, yo-yos and other notions, all neatly tucked away for the visitors. When I'm in the middle of a sewing wirlwind, these are not so neatly tucked away :) Oh, the wine bottle was a fun experiment... we used a pinterest tutorial to cut the glass, so a candle can fit right in!

 On the other wall... we have the desk. The desk is home to lots of random office supplies, but also my sewing machine and books.

Even after I've cleaned up, this area is still a little cluttered. Guess I need a bigger sewing room ;)

 Above the desk is this window decoration that I put together a few years ago. I repainted it last summer to better match it's new purpose (hanging pictures). Before getting married, it held my hanging earrings and was highly decorated with beads and vintage jewelry (too cluttered for a bedroom shared with Grizz!)

 The last corner... sigh... my fabric and other storage tubs. There is yarn and non-cotton scraps in the hanging hoop hoppers, fabric is in one tub and two baskets, scraps are in a bucket in there somewhere, card-making supplies are in the blue tub, there's batting and fabric on a bolt by the filing cabinet, random craft supplies in the hidden tub, and my unfinished quilts all stacked nicely on top of it all. Yikes. If we weren't planning on moving in a year or so, I'd definitely be on the lookout for a bookshelf or cabinet to hold all this stuff!

 The bed side table holds some books, photo albums and guest towels. It displays some painted wine bottles...

 ... a fabulous lamp from my sister-in-law, and a journal for guests to write in (which reminds me, I need to go write about my parents' visit, as they didn't take the time to journal!).

 One last wall-hanging... this was at a thrift store... I thought it was perfect for a room of creations - keep climbing till that project is finished! :)

I am linking up to "Where I Sew" with Pink Chalk Fabrics... go check it out!

Buzz.... Buzzz.....

 Our apartment is just turning into a zoo lately! (Yes, the birdies are still fluttering around our dryer vent... Grizz will have to clean that out again soon).

Well, today, I didn't get called to substitute, so I was busily finishing up a quilt top. I took two finished quilt tops outside on our patio to take pictures. The door was open during this time. I did shut it, though, when I was all done.

A little while later, I heard a buzzing noise. I figured it was outside the open window near me, which explained why it it was such a loud bee.

However, I did eventually look over in the direction of the buzzing, and lo and behold, a very large bee was buzzing around our apartment. Drats. I quickly snuck over to the patio door to open it, hoping to lure the bee outside.

Nope. It found the window. It liked the breeze coming through the screen. Sigh.

I decided to go into the bedroom and put away clothes. Maybe the bee needed privacy to find the open patio door. That didn't work either. AND, much to my dismay, ANOTHER bee had found its way into our apartment.

Patio door shut.

I then stole away to the second bedroom to make a bee trap (google it... I made mine out of our recently emptied milk jug). Then, I was safely off to Walmart.

Grizz was scheduled to arrive home around noon for lunch. Once I got home from Walmart, I just laid low until my bee-killing husband came home. I did manage to trap one bee between the window screen and the window.

Grizz came home and quickly got rid of the free bee. The trapped bee must have found a crack between the screen and the outside because it was gone before Grizz could kill that one.

Grizz wasn't very impressed with my inability to smush the bees myself. I have never liked creepy-crawling-buzzing creatures. I have reached the point where I can kill spiders with kleenex. I still shriek a bit when a snake surprises me, and I still freeze whenever something is buzzing near me. When I had a basement bedroom in my college house, I kept a sandal in the bathroom as my bug-killing-shoe. I could easily squash bugs with that thing! Maybe I need to make a new bug-killing-shoe out here... but that's what Grizz is for, right?! :)

Put a Bird On It

 Sure, put a bird on anything crafty if you so choose, but please, please keep them out of our apartment!

 OK, so maybe they weren't actually inside our apartment, but they were building a nest in our clothes dryer vent...

 ... yup, all that stuff was between our dryer and the outside world (can you say fire hazard?!)

 Grizz was wonderful as usual and cleaned it all out. Then he tried to put some wire in the vent like a grid to try to keep them from coming back. Well, we heard them fluttering around in there again the last few days... it may be time to clean it out again!

I did feel kind of bad robbing the birdies of their eggs... but the birdies just need to learn that they cannot build their nest in the air vent of our clothes dryer! It is NOT safe to grow a family in there!!

**Sorry for the horrible pictures; our laundry room doesn't have a window, so there's no natural lighting. I shouldn't complain though - at least I have my own washer and dryer in the apartment!!

Quilting in an Apartment

For the longest time, I've wanted to go North out of town to a quilting store in the country - it's called the "Quilting Hen." Finally, one Saturday, Grizz surprised me with a trip there! I bought this bundle! I love the feel of these 30s reproduction fabrics.

 Last week, I finally decided what I wanted to make with it and I started cutting. It's a "Disappearing 9-Patch" quilt... and once I remember whose blog I found the tutorial for it at, I'll definitely post it! It's quite simple though - you cut some squares, you sew them into 9-patches and then you cut the 9-patches into quarters and sew those into a quilt top!

Because I had a bundle of quarter-yard cuts, my squares are 4.5" to use as much fabric as possible. I was able to get 18 squares out of each fabric. I only used 16 out of the 20 fabrics in the bundle, so I could save the baby fabrics for something else. I decided to keep color pairs together instead of doing it totally random.

 Sewing a quilt top in an apartment can be tricky! I didn't want to run from the living room to the 2nd bedroom (aka my craft room) bringing piles of blocks with me to sew into strips. Thus, here's my makeshift, moveable sewing cart! :) I can sit at the chair and sew the strips without worrying about messing up the pattern.

 Once I sew the strips, I bring them over to the "dining room" to lay out. Once I finish the strips, I'll bring my sewing cart over here to sew the strips together! (Look by the window; we've planted a few veggie-seeds in pots... but it started snowing today, so they're inside for awhile longer.)

I went back and forth deciding how to arrange my blocks. I went with strips across, strips diagonal, but I decided on an x-arrangement. Can't wait to show it off when I get the top done!

First time linking up here...

My Friends :)

We have a large empty lot outside our apartment building, which is a better view than just more buildings in my opinion... especially, because the entire empty lot is home to my friends :)

Meet my friends...

 Yup, lots of gophers live out beneath the ground. Most people complain about these little guys (the ones who live out in the empty lot and others that are everywhere throughout the city). They dig up lawns and eat flower bulbs.

 But to me, they are cute little, energetic friends who entertain me while I'm home. They give out little squeaks when they're on lookout that can be heard in our apartment even when our windows are shut - annoying? Nope, just fun :)

 And look at their tiny little arms... how can you not think these guys are cute?!

And of course, they bring more entertainment by being targets for stray animals... this cat stayed watch over the same hole for about 10 minutes before it got bored. Grizz has actually seen a cat catch one.

No, I'm not crazy... I know these gophers are pests and are annoying to some people. I wouldn't be against killing a few just to control the population. But please, just admit that you can see the cuteness in my friends :)

PS: When ever I see them on lookout, I always think of this song from on of the Lion King movies - check it out!