Making Master Bedroom Shades

I'm all excited to have a new project to work on. Our Master Bedroom doesn't have any window coverings. (Well, we could have hung the old roller shades back up, but they were pretty brittle and didn't seem like they would last long.) Anyway, it gets pretty bright in there and Jeff's current solution, while amusing, isn't working very well.

From the beginning, Jeff has asked that I make Roman shades. While I was cruising around on the web yesterday looking for the parts to order, I found a great website, Terrell Designs, that showed how people made pieced Roman Shades and then I knew how I wanted to do this project!
So, I got to paw through my quilt books today and pick a pattern. This one looked really suitable for this project. It's called "Comet" and I pulled it from the 101 Fabulous Rotary-Cut Quilts book, by Judy Hopkins and Nancy J. Martin. (This is my all-time favorite quilt book.)

I'm trying to build this without buying any new fabric for the pieced front. Though, I did have to buy the blackout fabric, but I only had to buy 3 yards.

I am, of course, not going to use anything like their colors. I am going to use green, beige and peach colors. I must use this fabric as the wide strip because it matches the bedroom paint so well.

These are the colors I'm going to use for the central comet:

I had a green that matched the carpet better, but I didn't have enough of it for the borders as well. So, this green is my second choice but I should have enough to finish the project.


And these are the fabrics I think I'll use for the light portion. I had to squeeze some purple in there.

I went and ordered all the rest of the parts I need this morning. I found a really affordable site, though the quantities were much larger than I would normally buy. But now I'm thinking I'll be making Roman Shades for the other two bedrooms. It's really sad when buying a large quantity online is about as expensive as buying only what you need at your local hardware store. Oh well.

Jeff spent several hours last night and today reconstructing my sewing tables correctly. Thanks Jeff!










Jeff finished setting up the tables this morning and now I can finally start unpacking.





























Update at 6:30PM:

Well, I spent all day unpacking and moving into the furniture. And with Jeff's help, we got the thread rack and quilt hung on the wall. The serger thread racks didn't get hung yet; I simply cannot drill a dozen screws into the nice wood panelling so I'm going to go buy a piece of thin plywood and install them onto there.

Anyway, with a bit of clean-up the room is basically ready to use. There's still a pile of boxes in the corner for the closet and a pile in the hallway, but I can work around them temporarily while I try and get these window shades finished. (I cannot move into the closet without cleaning it out first; it's still full of my grandmother's stuff.)

I've unpacked most of the easy boxes and I did not find the long quilting rulers. Dang, they're probably in one of the long bolt boxes, but they're not called out on the labelling. And I simply cannot talk myself into opening all of them to see if they're in there. If I cannot find them fairly soon, I think I'll just go buy another 24-inch ruler and then I'll have a spare.













Another Update, this one at 11:20PM:

I just finished making one square to try out the fabrics. It would probably look more striking in solid colors (as the pattern calls for), but I'm trying to bring in more colors. I think this will work OK. Though this square ended up a little skewed as I just sort of sewed it together without pinning any of the corners and some of the diagonal cuts were slightly off.

Still Dumping Old Food

I'm again working on cleaning out old jars of food from the garage cabinets. I'm on my third dishwasher load of jars. Most of the jars of food just sort of smell alcoholic but still look okay, but a few are a special kind of gross. So far, the oldest canning jars are dated 1970.

I haven't sold any of the furniture on craigslist this week; I probably need to lower the prices a bit. I haven't yet listed the office furniture because I still need to take pictures, but the pieces are blocked by other furniture that's going to storage. We have far too many projects that are dependent on something else happening first.

We desperately need to hang window shades in the master bedroom. I'd like to make roman shades, but I'll need my sewing room set up to do that. And then I have to deal with the disaster that is my sewing room. The movers didn't even get the furniture put together right and then they piled all the boxes in there. I think we'll try and tackle that mess this weekend, at least enough to set up the sewing machine and clear the cutting table. I can probably mostly work around the boxes if we pull some of them out of there.

Shasta's Home!

Well, we couldn't make it any longer without our dog child, so we went and picked her up this morning. It's good to have her back. Though, she was a little stinky, so we had her bathed.

I met the carpet cleaners this morning and had the carpets in Cupertino cleaned; they look good as new. The house is now vacant and clean, though the kitchen floor needs some spot cleaning. And we need to go and do some minor patching on the paint. Tomorrow I'll have to remember to take pictures when we go out.

We'll have to go back tomorrow to schlep another load from the garage. These loads are really unfun as they're quite miscellaneous and mostly stuff we should probably just get rid of. Today we loaded up the stained glass and brought it out to Redwood City. We still haven't figured out where we're going to put it.
Check out time is Sunday at 3PM. ☺

Mostly Moved

Well, the movers didn't show up yesterday until 2:30PM, but they did arrive. We were moving until 9:30PM last night and we were pretty wiped by the time we were done.

The house looked pretty good, until the deluge of boxes hit.
























And there is quite the pile outside, under a canopy. So now we begin the long process of unpacking and going through all the boxes and getting rid of as much as we can bear to.

The sewing room is a total disaster. They didn't put the furniture together correctly and there are so many boxes in there we can barely get in the room. That's going to take a long time to get fixed up. We are going to have to purge the boxes and arrange the furniture and empty grandma's stuff from the closet and work on the unpacking process. It's a room that needs some serious downsizing.

Today, we went back to Cupertino to do the mop up of all the loose stuff that was still lying around and got it out of the house for the maid to clean the house. It took us 4 hours, but we managed to accomplish it. The only thing left in the house at this point is Jeff's jewelry rack (still on the wall) and the table with the stained glass on it. The garage is still a mess though.





















Tomorrow we're having the carpets cleaned in Cupertino, then we'll be mostly done. Over the weekend, we just have to spend a few hours clearing out the last dregs from the garage and cleaning it up.

We've decided to go pick up Shasta tomorrow from DoggieCamp. We're missing her.

Movers No-Showed

Well, the movers were supposed to move us this morning but they didn't show up. Oops. I called and left several messages and we finally got a hold of them this afternoon. They were pretty embarrassed and apologetic and actually offered to reduce the price of the move by quite a lot, so I guess now we're moving tomorrow.

After the movers didn't show up, Jeff went on into work.

Today, I spent the day working my way through all the rooms packing up every last thing; finished all four bedrooms. By tomorrow things should be in pretty good shape.

Exterior Painting Nearly Finished

Jeff and I finally made it out to Redwood City tonight. Here is a picture of the house, which is nearly done (looks like some of the green needs one more coat of paint). I wanted to use a darker green, but the painter told my Aunt it would make the house look small, so she chose the lighter green. I'm hoping that Jeff and I will be able to add some dark green to the roof line. Anyway, here is the picture.
I mostly packed my sewing room today. We're making progress on getting ready for the movers on Tuesday. We're going to have two crunch days this weekend getting ready and then we'll have to go out to Redwood City again to clear the construction debris from the house so we can move in.

The last few tasks inside the house have mostly gotten done this week. Our contractor friend Brian went out this week and trimmed out the kitchen at the floor line. And, surprisingly, the painters also came in and painted this stuff up. That's pretty nice, as I was expecting we were going to have to finish these tasks up.


Brian added unfinished birch around the bottom of the cabinets. Jeff and I still need to finish the trimwork with a clearcoat to match the rest of the cabinetry.




Also got a picture of the dry rot/termite repair. It looks decent for the price we paid for the repair, though I'm somewhat disappointed with the way the new siding ties into the old. There is a pretty bad seam.

Packing is Boring

Well, I've been packing most of the week, and I must admit that I've spent too many hours watching Angel (the TV series). I pack for a while and then watch an episode, then pack some more. I haven't been blogging this week because it's really boring to write about and to read about. I'm so sick of moving.

The exterior of the house in Redwood City is getting painted this week. I haven't made it out to take pictures, unfortunately.