Another UFO Finish

 I finally have something to show!

I finished this Weed Whacker quilt, that's been a UFO for at least a couple years. There are a few puckers on the back, which I'm pretty disappointed about, but it is what it is. I always have the most blue fabric, therefore the most blue scraps, and this quilt used up quite a few blue scraps. I hate blue, so why I always have so much blue is somewhat of a mystery. The colors I love I usually have the least of, maybe because I use them right away???

I've been all about making two color scrap quilts lately. I think they appeal to more people overall, and since a lot of these will be donated at some point, I think it's a safe bet. I still love scrap quilts that are a riot of color, so I'll always make those too, but two color quilts have been becoming my go to for scrap quilts. 

My BIL's quilt just needs a binding, which I'm hoping to get done tomorrow. Then I really need to buckle down and get the quilts for my niece and nephew finished so I can start another baby quilt (baby is due in December). I feel like I have so much to do in the rest of 2020, and not enough time to get it done. On the upside, I'm busy enough that all the craziness in the world isn't something I have time to dwell on, so that's good. 

Not Much Sewing

 I didn't even bother to post last week, because I just haven't been in the sewing room much. I did get my BIL's quilt basted, and I'm over halfway done quilting the UFO that I started a while back. Once I start quilting a quilt, I don't like switching to another before I finish. I need to get the UFO finished before I start quilting my BIL's quilt. I'm hoping to have quite a bit of sewing time over the weekend, but we'll see.

Last weekend I had no sewing time, because we took a quick trip to see a couple grandkids, with a couple of grandkids coming along with us.

This little cutie was having fun playing with a block my mom made her.

She had sweet smiles for DH.

Mr. X really loves playing ball with Daddy (DS the Younger)

We had a good albeit short trip. 

DH and I did a chance to go to a few thrift shops this week, searching for some out of print books for one of the older grandkids. While I was looking for kids books, I was really pleased to find myself a book I've been debating on buying new.

I've done a quick browsing of the book, and I'm very glad I found it, and the $3 price tag was pretty sweet!

I just finished cutting one of my granddaughters hair, and now my sister is on her way over to get her hair cut, so I'm not sure any sewing will happen today either, but such is life. Sometimes other things need to be done. My mind is swimming with quilty ideas, and I have a long to do list as it is, but things will calm down eventually.

Change of Perspective

I used to be so sad when I used the last of a fabric, and throwing out scraps? Never! Well, I also used to think a fat quarter was too small to bother buying, and after seeing one fat quarter going into a dozen different quilts, I've changed my mind.  

This week I've been dealing with flannel, that I made a big pile of months ago, and swore I'd get to right away. I've been moving that pile around for months, but not anymore! 

I have mixed feelings about working with flannel. I love the way it feels as a quilt backing. I prefer it when making burp rags. I have no problems making garments from flannel. Rag quilts? Flannel is great! Piecing with flannel? I've made several flannel quilts, and it's fine, but the smaller the pieces the less I like piecing with it. The looser weave of flannel makes it harder to accurately piece with in my world. I always prewash flannel, and I starch it before I cut it, but I still have issues. When I decided to try simplifying my scraps, I took all those things especially into account when it came to flannel scraps. I decided to only save 4.5" squares of flannel, no other sizes of scrap flannel. Anything I couldn't get a 4.5" square out of was getting tossed, but could I do it? Could I stick to that? I routinely use 1.5" cut squares of quilting fabric, but I know I wouldn't enjoy working with that size of flannel scrap. I love making string quilts, but I have no desire to make a flannel string quilt. I quilt because I love it, and sometimes I do steps I enjoy less because the end result is worth it. But, is saving every scrap that you don't even want to work with worth it?

That pile I dug out months ago? It was all the flannel pieces I had that were too small to back a baby quilt with. If the piece wasn't big enough to back a baby quilt, the piece is also too small for garments, so it was destined to be cut. 

I make a LOT of burp rags! It seems I always know someone having a baby, and although I don't make everyone I know a baby quilt, a few homemade burp rags is a nice start to a baby gift. Step one was to cut all the burp rags I could with my burp rag die.

This is what I ended up with. I make burp rags with multiple layers of flannel, so it won't make as many as you might think. 

I cut whatever was too small to cut into a burp rag into 4.5" squares. 

There are a lot of squares here, and I'm not quite finished, but I'm close!

This small stack should become squares tomorrow. Then that pile I made months ago is all gone! 

Here is the kitchen trash bag filled with all the scraps that I couldn't get a 4.5" square from. At one time I would have felt terribly guilty for "wasting" all that fabric. But you know what I was really wasting? I was wasting a trashbag sized space in my house filled with stuff I'd never use. You know what I'm keeping? The good stuff I'll actually use. 

How long was I wasting the space in my house?

Well, a bunch of my flannel scraps were in this Toys R US bag, and our local Toys R Us closed in 2018, but I hadn't shopped there for at least a couple years before that. So at least four years of wasting the space in my house, on something I wouldn't have used no matter how long I stored it. I'm keeping what I will use now, and sure, something could have been made from what I'm tossing, but I wouldn't have made it, and I'm OK with that now. 

Speaking of making burp rags, I made a pile of burp rags to go with the giraffe quilt I finished!

I hope the parents like it as much as I do!

I even think the backing came out cute!

The next quilt to be assembled is the quilt for my BIL from my late sister's clothes.

It's sideways on the design wall, the blocks will run vertically. I used pants for the outside of each block, and squares from her shirts in the middle. I hope he'll like it. I'll have to make a quilt like this from regular quilting cottons, I enjoyed making the blocks. 

Cheers to Progress!

This is my glass right now, freshly refilled so I can drink while I sit and write this post. As I've been simplifying my kitchen, I opted to get rid of all of my regular glasses, and use these instead. These are actually beer glasses from Ikea, and they hold more liquid than my regular drinking glasses did. I bought 60 matching glasses like this when we had DS the Younger's wedding in our backyard.  We aren't big drinkers around here, so I wanted nice glasses for the wedding, but a decent size for lemonade and iced tea, and these were perfect. I decided to keep about two dozen of these glasses, and I donated the rest and all the other misc. glasses I had in the house. I'm really liking the change, I find these glasses easier to hold, no sweat rings since they are stemware, and I get to use a pretty glass instead of a plain one. Wondering if I have a wine problem? Nope, I fill the glass with water and top it off with about 2 tablespoons of apple juice. Sometimes I get tired of just water and that's enough juice to flavor the water without adding a bunch of calories or cost. A jug of apple juice lasts me a couple weeks. 

I donated all the plates I had bought for the wedding (which all came from thrift stores in the first place). I think DH has made three trips to the donation center in the last two weeks! To be fair, we got a lot more use out of the plates and glasses than I expected. We ended up having two weddings in our backyard, and I've lost count of all the showers I've thrown, both baby and bridal. Now that all my kids are married and done having kids, I feel like I can get rid of that fancy stuff. For family getting togethers I tend to use paper plates! 

DH tackled the dining area this week, and took out all the built in seating we had added years ago. Now that it's mostly just the two of us, we don't need that much seating, and usually when we have a houseful we eat outside. The weather is usually perfect for eating outside at Thanksgiving! 

We had used cabinets to make the built in seating, and when I decided I wanted to pull out the seating, I also decided to repurpose the cabinets. We had two great big corner cabinets in the dining area that we gave to a friend to use as a pantry, but all the rest we are using.  We had five cabinets to work with, in three different sizes. I wanted DH to make me a freestanding piece of furniture from three of the cabinets to put under some that were mounted on the wall. I did have three of the same size, but they were the smallest size, and when I auditioned them, I just didn't like it, they were too narrow compared to the ones mounted on the wall. I decided to try three different width cabinets pyramid style, and I liked the visual interest. 

The three cabinets are fastened to each other, and DH added feet to keep them off the floor. 

Now our dining area is much simpler, and I took the leaf out of the table so now we have a round table instead of oval. 

I had room in the corner for the china hutch that used to be in the living room with DH's scooter figurine collection in it. The collection is now in his office, in the other cabinets we took out of the living room.

Now the china hutch has my grandmother's china, and a few pieces of milk glass from my other grandmother. I had quite a bit of milk glass, and when I had two built in corner cabinets I had plenty of room to store it. DD#3 wanted my milk glass collection, so I packed it up for her, and I got rid of lots of misc. pieces of glassware, until I could easily fit what remained in the top of this china hutch. The bottom has kids craft supplies for the grandkids! 

I used to have a LOT of kitchen antiques, and I've whittled it down considerably. I kept some stuff that's been handed down, and a few key items so I still have some antiques present, but I cut down on the volume. I think it gives a similar feel, but less clutter. 

Built-in seating was definitely the way to go when we had a houseful, but I was ready for a change, and for the price of four furniture feet, I have a new storage piece, a completely revamped dining area, and DH can even repurpose the boards we had covered to make cushioned seating.  

My week hasn't been all purging and household stuff. I finished the top of the giraffe quilt, pieced the backing, basted it and the two doll quilts I had made, and I'm almost finished quilting the giraffe quilt!

I did snap a photo of the quilt top before I basted it. I thinks it's really cute! Yup, there's a mistake in it, and if you find it, good eye! I had to fix several mistakes in this quilt that really looked wrong, but the last one didn't bother me enough to fix it. I can tell I'm don't usually follow patterns, because I had to do a lot of unsewing on this quilt! 

I got this baby quilt all assembled too. It's a good size as it is, so I won't be adding a border. 

We don't have any other imminent house changes planned, DH is anxious to get his wood shop set up. Electricity gets run to the shed next week, then the work for DH really starts! He's got tools to buy, he plans on building a workbench and tool storage himself, so that will be an ongoing project. 

I have designed an island for my fabric room, that he'll be making me when he gets the chance. I'm anxious to get it, but I can wait until he has more time. I've got LOTS to keep me busy in the meantime!

What Goes Up! Must Come Down

What a week! Last weekend we had our youngest grandson for the weekend, and we had a blast!

His favorite activities of the weekend was either going back forth between Nana and Pappy or this...

He figured out he could turn my lamp on and off and he thought it was quite magical.

I did indeed take a rest day after he left, and my week has been pretty busy with non-sewing stuff. DH is off this week, and although he was busy, just him being home throws me off schedule. Don't get me wrong, I love him being around, it's just hard for me to do the things I normally do when he's at work. It's not because he prevents me, but I just can't get my act together. 

This is the quilt I was working on last week. I've got it into columns now, but haven't sewn those together. 

I'm working on the giraffe quilt, but I made a mistake on all four heads, so there was some murmuring and gnashing of teeth while I unsewed and fixed that. The head is correct in this photo. I have parts of the body done, but it's not sewn into a chunk yet. Hopefully I'll get to work on that tomorrow.

Today I had a BIG distraction! The shed DH ordered to be his woodworking shop arrived. It's a beast, it came fully assembled, and because of where the power lines run, they had to use a crane and lift it over our house!

The truck with the shed and the crane.

The crane setting up in our driveway.

Going up!

Starting over the house.

Please don't hit the chimney!

Right where DH wanted it in the back corner of the yard! The shed is 12x16 ft, so it's a good size, but since it will be workshop, anything smaller wasn't really going to work. We don't have a garage and have no way to add one. 

Our backyard is quite large by Tucson standards, and we still have plenty of backyard space. We need to set up all my metal flowers again in new locations, but not today. It was 106 degrees when they delivered the shed, and DH and I had to keep putting ice packs on our phones just to be able to take photos. The phones were overheating, and honestly, so was I. When the weather finally cools off, and we aren't setting record high temps, Then I'll get the patio cleaned up and get my metal flowers all situated in their new places. 

We plan to put a barn quilt on the side of the shed. Since it will be a woodshop, we've decided a Carpenter's Star will be perfect! That's a project for cooler weather as well. 

DD#1 took this photo on their homestead a couple hours away from here. I thought it was an amazing photo, and really wanted to share it with you! Nothing like being able to see exactly where it's raining!