From drab to fab.

Today I gave new life to my sewing chair. Here is before...



You can see how tattered it has become due to a certain kitty sharping their claws on the back.

Here is Mr. George-pants in all his cuteness. I just hope he can leave my "new" chair alone.

Here it is all done. I think it looks mighty fabulous! It ended up being a rather easy project and I can't believe I didn't get to this sooner.














After I finished up the chair, I moved on to whip up a new pillow cover today. I looks wonderful on the couch with my first quilt I ever made.

I guess today was all about refreshing items because I also fixed up a cork board to go in the kitchen.

Sometimes I like the rain...

Because it allows me to have more time to sew. I've been busy in the sewing room this last week...
Ok, so these coaster's aren't from this last week, but I forgot to get pictures of these back when I actually made them. When I first came up with the design I liked it so much I've made 24 coaster in all.
Now these I made this last week. I was just having fun with some improve quilting by making some hot pads. I really liked the way they all have turned out and it has been good practice for me to not to over think the design. I tend to spend way too much time thinking and planning out the finished product and not enough time just sewing.

These are the first three I made.


I whipped these three today. My favorites are the ones with the Kaufman silverware fabric.

They just look so pretty all stacked up!

Yikes!

Time files! I can't believe it's already been a month since I last posted on my blog. Oh what a busy time it has been! First off we had a few issues come up after moving into our house... turns out our nice "forest" has been seeking it's water from our sewer lines, so it lead us to have to dig up part of the sewer line to replace. Here is me and my big trench I dug.
So for now we have fixed the sewer line , except we have some impending doom overhead as we have a 60+ year old Douglas Fir growing (in fact if you look to the top left corner in the next photo you'll see the trunk of the huge tree) right over the line right before it gets to the street. At some point we'll have either move the line or take the tree out, but as things are flowing freely for now we're just going to wait it out for now. Now, all that digging and making mud caused us to bring in all this...
4 yards of rocks and 4 yards of cedar hogs fuel (and the hogs fuel pile was almost as big as my car!). We moved the the hogs fuel to side of the garage to control the mud and moved the rock back here... And made a patio, where I immediately cluttered with pots. Then since I ran out of pots to put all my plants in I decided to till up the back corner of our property for a garden.
It's about a 15' by 40' section fenced off from the dog for my vegetables and another 3-4' out from the fence for flowers. I'm so please with the way the yard is looking, but boy is it a lot of hard work!!! I have sugar peas, lettuce, beets, radishes, elephant garlic, bok choy, kale and some various herbs growing right now (well more like surviving the cold rainy weather we've been having). Then I have some cucumbers, summer squash, zucchini, winter squash, pumpkins, tomatoes, peppers and snap bean starts inside waiting for the weather to warm up. My goal is to produce so much that I have to give stuff away, we'll see if it actually warms up enough for that to happen... Here are my cute little squash starts.
There hasn't been too much time for sewing lately, but I did get a chance to start this the other day...
Which yesterday I turned into this...
And today finished this...
Each square is 1" finished size... I started it as a patchwork piece for a new sewing machine cover, but changed my mind partway through. I think I'll piece it into a baby quilt... maybe I'll get to that tomorrow... just maybe.

My reason for being away for so long...

We bought a house!!! The BF and I just bought our first house and closed two weeks ago. What a whirlwind these last two weeks have been! Moving is such hard work, I'm just glad that we won't have to move again anytime soon.

I finally got most of my sewing room up and running (even spent a couple hours in there creating this evening.) Here is a shot of my sewing station - even still there are more boxes to unpack.

Here is my cutting station. I made those curtains from table linens I found at Target. I just couldn't resist the grey and yellow, and the look wonderful with the paint colors I picked out.
Finally here is my pressing station. I love that I've declared each section of the room a station... I'm just thrilled with my new sewing space! As you can see my inspiration came from my WIP - the Celica quilt, I'm loving yellow and grey a bit too much these days.


Only thing I have left is my design wall. I'm hoping to get the materials to finish that up this weekend... I can't wait to have it all finished and spend my nights creating away in my "own little world".

Sew much to do, so little time...

Well there hasn't been too much time for sewing lately. The BF and I are getting ready to close on our first house (YAY!), so much of my free time has been packing and packing and packing some more. Isn't it just amazing how stuff just accumulates? Anyways, seems I got a bit to over-excited and packed up majority of my sewing space leaving limited access to what I can work on. It's actually been good for me since it's lead me to work on and actually finish some older projects I've started.

Case in Point.... I took 8 these:
And made this:
I think it turned out pretty good. It's my first attempt at fusing plastic bags. I did find out that the #4 bags work much better than the #2 bags to fuse. I think I have enough extra bags to make a second one, I'll have to snap some in progress shots to show you how it was constructed. I don't think I would load it up with all cans, but certainly seems pretty sturdy. (Can't you tell I love Target a bit too much.)

I also was able to quilt up and bind 3 baby quilts. Now I just have to make labels and get some better photos and get them up on my Etsy site. Probably will have to wait until after the move for that one tho...

And there is more...

So remember the other day when I was bad... well there was more, I just had to wait for it to come in the mail.

I'm quite the sucker for grab bags.... I just love the thrill of the surprise. This is 10 - 1/2 yard cuts of Westminster fabrics.

Here is some more clearance Amy Butler... I'm thinking one or both might make a good skirt.

Can't resist the owls!!!

I swear the one in the middle should have been yellow - at least that's how it looked on my computer screen.

These were suppose to be able to go with my car quilt, wrong colors tho... guess the hunt is still on.

How could I not get the plaid cars?


I got a great deal, I swear!

Busy Saturday

Yesterday was a great day! I headed up north to take a "Mystery Quilt" class with my mom at her church. It's my second year taking the class and surely not my last. I have a good time spending the day with fellow quilters and especially my mom. Another thing that made yesterday so great is it was the first time I've taken my car out long distance with my new engine (and definitely won't be my last either). About two weeks ago I got summoned for jury duty and on my way home after a long day performing my civic duty my car decided break again. There was a clearance issue on my cam gear (a novice mechanic's mistake) and it sheared off the dowel pins securing it to to the camshaft causing it to stop rotating. That caused a couple exhaust valves to bend when the collided with the pistons. Long story short, my car up until it's recent event always seemed to have some issue I couldn't quite figure out, and was never quite confident about it to take it out on long trips and now it's finally running great. Finally all current problems have been fixed (knock on wood). Anyways, back to the quilt class - here are some photos from the day.




And lastly, here's a shot of how my Mystery Quilt is coming out and might I add that I'm not sure I'll want to piece together anymore triangles for a while after I'm finished with this quilt!

I was bad today...

And I went out and bought this

and this

but then I combined all of these

and made a couple of these

so I guess it was good I was bad....

A new toy

Well the BF and I finally decided to get a MIG welder... So we spent the afternoon welding together some junk to make these.



So from left to right we have Legs, Octoman, Sunface, Giraffie, and Sparky. Here's a few close-ups of a few of them.


























It was lots of fun to scavenge around the house and garage looking for odds and ends that could be refashioned and turned into these cool characters. I'm looking forward checking out thrift shops and junkyards for more items to transform, as well as garage sales too. Although just what I needed.... another hobby.