(Re)Started Quilt Blog

This blog started as a way for us to share with our family what we were up to after we moved out of state. But over time, as we remodeled our craftsman home in Laurelhurst, it morphed into a historic house remodel blog. It was a way for me to save info I had researched and as a way to record progress on our projects. But I have shifted a lot of my leisure activities to fabric crafts now and they don't really fit into the Laurelhurst Craftsman house theme. I will still use this blog for our gardening and woodworking projects since they still benefit this house.

Once the weather warms up we do hope to do another round of woodworking. I would very much like to finish my master bedroom closet. We decided to try and make the cabinets ourselves but the pandemic brought our progress to a halt. I'm hoping we'll get back to work on the project later this year.

Anyway, since I am seriously considering starting a long arm quilting business, I decided I should shift my sewing-related posts over to my long-abandoned quilt blog. Once I figure out a new name, I'll change the name of the blog, but I will leave it as it is for now.

If you're here primarily for the quilt posts, I would encourage you to follow that blog. I will start using that blog to post about project progress and challenges I am participating in.

I have posted a new post over there.

Last FNSI for 2020

I joined Wendy and gang for the last Friday Night Sew In of the year. Thank you Wendy for hosting these virtual gatherings; it really helped motivate me to get extra sewing done at a time when I would normally be wasting time in front of the TV.

I worked on blocks for my Queen's Jewel quilt. I managed to get eight of them done.

I am so happy this year is almost over. I am just going to cross my fingers and hope next year brings better things.

Today is Jeff's and my 33rd Wedding Anniversary so I won't be able to spend all evening in my sewing room working on this project. I signed up for Disney+ so we'll be binging Mandalorian. I hope you all have a good holiday.

Oct Friday Night Sew In

For this month's FNSI, I had planned to finish the overnight bag I started in August. I still need to finish sewing the lining.

But instead, I ended up spending most of the evening cleaning my sewing room. A couple months ago I started sifting the boxes that were stashed in my bedroom closet. I had boxes that moved here from California ten years ago and I'd never unpacked them. I finally did. I found quite a lot of stuff that belonged in my sewing room.

I've spent several hours this week trying to unearth my sewing room tables again. I thought I'd get the room cleaned by this evening, but there was still a pretty big pile of fabric stacked up and I spent probably three hours ironing and folding everything so I could put them up in my fabric stacks. My table is finally clean and I can work again.

It took so long, I barely got any sewing done. All I managed to finish was a new collar and leash set for Bailey. 

I also got everything ready to start a new project. This is actually not a UFO as I just bought the fabric to make a new train quilt for my father. This is a design offered by eQuilter and I know my father will really like it. Since these are mostly printed panels, it should go pretty quickly.

But I won't be starting tomorrow as I finally got my first box of 160 flower bulbs and I need to get started at planting them tomorrow. I hope it won't be raining all day.

Aug Friday Night Sew In

I joined Wendy from Sugarlane Designs for the Friday Night Sew In again this month. But I had a short night because we were working on canning during the day, but I did finally make it up to my sewing room in the evening. I turned my attention to making Jeff an overnight bag, similar to the one I made for myself. I had originally planned to make him a quilted one, but then I remembered this wonderful tapestry fabric I bought about 15 years ago. He would like this much better.

I finished making the outer pieces on Friday night and then today, Saturday, I finished assembling them. I still need to make the lining, but it will have to wait because we have some more canning to finish.

This time I had the interfacings the video called for, though with the tapestry fabrics, the seam is still pretty bulky and it's hard to get it to turn and lay flat.

June Friday Night Sew In

I went and retrieved my dinosaur lap quilt from Bent Needle Quilts yesterday so I was able to finish the binding on it for the Friday Night Sew In.

It was quilted with Dino Jungle from Urban Elementz.

Unfortunately, I didn't save any of the print fabric for the binding, and I didn't have enough of the rust-colored batik, so I dug through my stash and found a dark teal fabric that matched pretty well.

Since I learned how to do machine binding last year, I don't bother to hand sew them anymore. Though, I have decided it's worth taking the time to hand sew the corners on the backside before I go through and finish the second pass. The corners turn out much more tidy when I take that time.

I prefer to make my bindings a little wider, but I didn't have enough of this fabric either.

This also completes one of my WOOFA tasks.

May Friday Night Sew In

For this week's Friday Night Sew In, I decided I wanted to finish the quilting project I worked on last Friday. I fuss a lot with corners so it took me most of Friday and several hours on Saturday to finish quilting and binding the six placemats. I didn't remember to preshrink the cotton batting so when I washed them to remove the small scraps of paper, it caused the slight wrinkling.

Once I finished the placemats I sewed together some of the scrap pile and made a mug rug. It's sort of a weird design, but I figured the leftover pieces would likely go to waste.

March Friday Night Sew In

I joined Wendy from Sugarlane Designs and others for the Friday Night Sew In again this month.

I decided to work on my long-neglected living room reupholstery project.  I spent Thursday cutting out all the necessary pieces and shortening metal zippers so I could jump right into the project.

I spent Friday night sewing together the first cushion and then ripping it out because the corners were bulging weird. Then I finally figured out the best way to sew it together and sewed it together again.

By then it was getting late. I decided to build the other five side cushions with an assembly line process and I started by assembling the zipper panels.

My Friday Night Sew In continued into a Saturday Sew In. On Saturday, I finished assembling the remaining five side cushions.

I still have the three back cushions to finish as well as recovering all the seats, but I hope I'll finish them before next month's sew in.

This Time For Sure

Now that our moving plan is uncertain, I decided I want to go ahead and recover the living room furniture. I was looking back at my original posts and realized it's been almost exactly three years since I bought the replacement fabric. It's time to get this project done.

The original upholstery fabric I bought at Fabric Depot has not held up at all and it has only gotten worse. The new fabric is heavy-duty (exceeds 35,000 Double Rubs) and should wear better.

I spent two hours this morning planning the cutting layout to make sure the twelve yards I bought would be enough to cut out all the pieces with the fabric design running the same direction across all the pieces. I think I've got it figured out, so I'm going to start cutting the fabric tomorrow. I think I can make myself do it.

My hope is to start sewing everything together on Friday for this month's Friday Night Sew-In.

Feb Friday Night Sew In

I decided to join Sugarlane Designs for the Friday Night Sew In last night. I'm doing anything I can to find the motivation to work on my many unfinished projects.

I had already prepped my lap quilt for tying and decided to try quilting it instead. I got about halfway finished last night.

Then I finished up this morning/afternoon.

I think it needed more pins in it because the fabric shifted a bit, especially around the outside edge, but overall I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I still need to finish binding it to call this one complete.

My Pfaff sewing machine is not well suited to machine quilting. The throat is too small and it was a significant hassle to wrestle this quilt to rotate it. I might consider getting a machine that has more space so I can finish more of my own quilts.