Life in Color Photo – Page 253 – Celebrating crafts, kids and the everyday through photographs.

A little piec(ing) goes a long way

September 24, 2009

I am this far on my little quilt (goal size around 50" square – but we'll see):

And I loaded all my photos onto a little thumb drive so I'm sitting upstairs on Bj's laptop with all those little wifi bars filled in happily surfing away. Ah life is good. Today a teeny tiny little bit of one of Tutu's teeth started poking through, and she seemed much better. We got out of the house, ran some errands, and even had her fall asleep in the car. So I tried the car seat on the shopping cart trick in Jo-Ann's, have you seen people doing this? I always have a sling, baby hawk, or the stroller. But she was ASLEEP and so I balanced the carseat where the baby sits in a shopping cart and it actually fit in there pretty good. I had to go out to get more thread (and to preserve some of my sanity):

Some little treats for mama. I had coupons for everything (love that), so I stocked up on some stuff. Needles, iron-off (interfacing….), pattern weights and thread. I always want to take my thread case in to the store to get what I'm missing, but feel weird doing it. I'm thinking with the light purple that I'm going to quilt the thing in straight lines. I still haven't found a backing fabric, Bj said no florals, and that was what I was leaning towards. He mentioned that florals reminded him of grandmas (not you I'm sure Nana and Grandma). I don't think he's taken a good look around the house lately… I did find this beautiful fabric:

That I'm going to bind it with. My lovely local shop only had a fat quarter when I got it, but they were nice enough to tell me what it was and I found eight yards of it on clearance (It's a Joel Dewberry print called Sunburst in green from his Aviary line – I am going to be on the look out for all the other colorways of this, yum!). I sort of had a panic when the shop keeper told me that fabric turns over every four months or so. So I also picked up some of my other favorite prints because hey, guess what? It takes a lot of fabric to back a quilt. Not as much to piece it when you start with fabrics you've gleaned from your husband's stash. Wait what? Bj has a fabric stash? Yes he does, he just doesn't know it.

The white/baby blue/pinkish stripe and the plaid were my inspiration for the quilt – and also used to be Bj's clothes. Sure I'll take that bag to Goodwill for you honey. I have my eye on a few things that are not even close to being on the way out the door either, I hope they don't get ruined in wash. Just kidding, I can wait it out, I've got a nice little stash of them to work with now, and some of the fabric really is lovely. It's gotten me thinking about using other alternative fabrics. I'm obsessed with sheet sets right now. From what I've gathered from middle of the night iPhone googling you can use sheets, but a 200 thread count or less is best. If it is hard to pierce a safety pin through the fabric the weave might be too tight to quilt. I have my eye on this organic set from Pottery Barn, this one from Pottery Barn Kids, and a king size duvet cover from the Company Store (to practice my free motion quilting along the shapes). I have taken the time to figure out what the price per yard equivalent is. I took 36 x 44 (the normal width of quilting cotton) to get 1,584 square inches per yard. Then I figured out how many square inches and thus yards were in sheets and sheet sets. I wrote it on the back of my quilter's reference card I keep in my wallet. So for example a twin flat sheet yields four yards. If it's $20 then the fabric is about five dollars a yard. If anyone wants all the math I've done I'll happily post it.

So yes life seems to be much better. And now that I am back to writing it out look how much I got done, whoo hoo. I can't thank you enough for all the wonderful comments. I always love reading comments, but find them particularly wonderful when I am having a rough day. Lots of love to you all!
Dial Up, Dial In

September 23, 2009

It seems my days have been very full, in ways I like and in ways I'd rather not have to deal with (horribly upset teething Tutu – but thanks for the tips, they are helping!). I have been getting an every so tiny bit of crafting in. I snapped this picture with my iPhone before pulling off the pieces to stack and put together:

I have better pictures of it coming together, but I thought what happened next was more representative of how I feel about many things in life right now.

I bumped the board. And all that work of deciding what goes where and putting them just so was scattered about on the floor. I don't have a lot of time to do much of anything craft wise. So I sighed and got out the phone to reference and put them all back up again. Then Tutu started crying so I balanced her on one hip while stacking the rows.

And I bumped the board again. I just wanted to finish ONE THING. I feel that I can't do that ever and it's driving me nutso! I have yarn spun and plied that is one my wheel because I have no time to get it off (this is a process that takes 15 minutes tops). So I took a deep breath, took sobbing little Tuesday upstairs and told Bj, "I need 15 minuets, I need it, PLEASE." He took Tuesday, I figured out the pattern (again), got the rest of the blocks stacked and ready to piece and feel much better. I have seriously got to get it together! My mom thinks it's her fault I feel that I have to get so much done. She called today to apologize after explaining that I must have gotten it from her. She was throwing a neighborhood girls night out party (such a cool idea to meet all the neighbors!) but at the same time felt she had to finish a blanket, run to the store, etc. Of course the difference is that she did it all…

Maybe I just need to get back to the blogging every day to feel better, because I do get things done, but life seems to be moving so fast I can't focus on any one very long. The problem is the !#$@#% wifi won't connect well to my computer, and now not to my phone. And I realize this is terribly spoiled of me, but I've gotten used to surfing the web and uploading things super fast. I do not like the whole, go make a cup of tea while a page loads thing, at all. I think maybe that is the Universe telling me to slow down, take a breath and look around. Which I plan to do for the rest of the week. Hopefully I'll be able to upload and tell you all about it.
Life in a gated community

September 17, 2009

Okay I totally staged that photo, but had to get one of Tuesday and the gates. Bj put three of them up last week and we're waiting on an extension for the one in the basement to partition off half of it. It doesn't really matter right now for miss super slow mover, but she is just so on the verge of being everywhere I can tell. She is also no the verge of getting teeth. I know I said that before but this time, whoa they are so close! I have been trying to get her relief so basically she's been my super special buddy all day – either because I'm holding her or nursing her, hence the lack of computer/crafting/blogging time. I think my mom told me about teething biscuits so I had Bj pick them up today when he ran errands. This is the first "food" Tuesday has held to eat (we feed her with a spoon usually). Oh the mess.

I do think she likes it though. And she is working it on her gums; making a fist with one hand while she rubs the biscuit as hard as she can on her soon to be teeth.

After this one little experiment the biscuits are for high chair use only! And I need to make the little clothes I got the supplies for to keep near it to clean her up. I actually need to do a lot of things, but I am really having trouble trying to figure out how, so sorry about the quietness on the blog front as of late. I expect we will be back to being super fabulous just as soon as those little buggers peek their way through the gums.

A little piec(ing) goes a long way

Dial Up, Dial In

Life in a gated community

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