Monday, December 24, 2018

Merry Christmas

Our decorated tree from last year
We hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas, or whatever holiday you celebrate. Jeff and I pulled out all the Christmas decorations this year, but never managed to get them set up. I'm vaguely disappointed because this will probably be our last year in this beautiful house, but our energy level is pretty low for optional projects.

And for a progress report, we continue to sift never unpacked boxes from our basement. We've been selling stuff on eBay, Facebook marketplace and craigslist. And stuff that isn't worth selling, we've just been donating. There hasn't been much to take pictures of, which is a large part of why I haven't been posting. We have fewer boxes in our basement, but we are probably accomplishing too little for our timeline.

I've finished scanning all of the photos packed away in our storage. I pulled apart old photo albums and scanned all the loose stacks of photos. We only kept one plastic filebox of photos and the rest were discarded. I'm still holding a couple boxes to give to other family members who wish to keep them.  Hopefully, we'll make it down to California next year for a visit and to deliver all these things we need to give to family members.

Oh, and we sort of changed the moving plan again.... 
Yes, we are still planning to move to Prineville. And we are still planning to sell our Laurelhurst house. But the declining economy scared us and we decided not to spend the bulk of our savings right now remodeling the new house with the risk that we wouldn't be able to sell the big house in a timely manner. So, we postponed the remodel on Prineville and decided to rent it out short-term while we continue to make progress on the Portland end. Once we are in escrow in Portland, we'll revisit the project plan.

We also changed the washer and dryer delivery to Portland. I have a huge rant about Home Depot, but I'll spare you all. It's Christmas and who wants to hear me whining about my frustration with Home Depot? No one. I'll just say, I remember now why I stopped buying big stuff from Home Depot. After Jeff hooked the machines up, I spent about three days washing most everything in the house. It was great to have working machines again.

Saturday, November 24, 2018

November Update

Most years Jeff and I don't take advantage of Black Friday sales but, with the move, this year was an exception. Our current dryer went kaput after only 8 years. (Which is a rant, I'll spare you.) We've also been having problems with the washing machine, but it is still limping along. So, yesterday, I ordered a new washer and dryer (and freezer and microwave).

I don't know about you guys, but I have had a dilemma about which brand to buy. Basically, there are no laundry machine brands that are designed to last and all are likely to fail within the first decade. So, given that, I decided to go with a lower budget line of machines. I figure if they make them to fail, then I'm going to spend less on them. Though, I still haven't figured out why anyone would want WiFi laundry machines.

I actually ordered them to be delivered to the new house in Prineville, so it should be interesting. Little stuff we'll continue to wash here in Portland and hang dry. We'll bring the huge stuff, like sheets and quilts, to Prineville and wash them there. LOL

In the afternoon, we found ourselves back at Portland Direct Tile & Marble. I often find myself perusing their tile pictures online and their staff are super helpful about bringing out pieces for you to look at. Yesterday, I found a room in the back I had never seen before where they had a ton of discontinued borders to choose from. I was super excited to find some that I thought would look good with the soapstone. Green is really not in style this year. Also, I am not excited about this year's encaustic tile trend. We have always tried to avoid trendy kitchen materials because we don't want to "date" our remodels.

We finally made a commitment on the border when we found they had enough remaining of this one.

Sunday, November 18, 2018

Sifting Again

Jeff and I finally decided we needed to get serious about making progress on downsizing so we have started sifting our possessions again with renewed energy. I've been working in my sewing room, Jeff started opening moved but never unpacked boxes in my closet. I was excited to find a couple quilts I made that I haven't seen since they were packed up in 2006. (Yes, you read that right. 12 years ago.)

I have a full-size set of rose, burgundy and dark green bedding from our guest room in Forest Grove I have no idea what to do with. We don't have a full-size bed anymore. I made the quilt, shams, pillowcases, matching throw pillows and curtains. There is also a bed skirt and coordinated sheets. It's really too bad handmade items have so little value in the resale market. Sigh.
I think this is the move when most of the rest of our SCA belongings depart. We'll probably just keep enough gear for day trips. And we're still trying to decide how much of the too-small clothing we're going to get rid of.

I spent several hours scanning and posting SCA period style costume sewing patterns to Amazon. I hadn't even known you could buy out-of-print patterns on there. With any luck, some of them will sell. Otherwise, I'm not really sure how to get rid of unused patterns.

Update later: My niece has a full-size bed and wants the bedding. Yeah.

Monday, November 5, 2018

Quilt Progress

I spent a couple of hours cutting out right-angle triangles for my Queen's Jewels quilt project before realizing they were coming out way too unevenly. It was really difficult to get them all identical when I was relying on the 45-degree line on a rectangular ruler. I pride myself on my uniformity.
This is the finished design of the blocks I'm making

I ordered a right angle ruler off Amazon and it took nearly two weeks to arrive. I should have just gone to the fabric store and found one, but somehow it just seemed easier to order it. I didn't expect it to take so long. (Amazon sucks now if you don't pay their monthly tribute.)

Anyway, I'm glad I bought the ruler. It makes a huge difference in how uniform the pieces are. I finally restarted the project again this week.

If I were smart though, I would have tossed the old, uneven pieces, but I don't like wasting fabric. So instead I'm wasting a lot of time fussing with getting these old pieces to work.
After I sew the 4 triangles together, I have to add another strip to the bottom edge.
I need 144 of these triangle units. I've finished about 8.
I obviously won't be finishing this project before the election. LOL

Tuesday, October 16, 2018

Started New Quilt

After spending about three days goofing off designing quilts, I've finally started working on one. In the end, I chose a scrappy quilt. Most of my fabrics are only about a yard or two, and a lot of the designs I made need five-yard pieces. So, ultimately, I decided to choose a design that would look good made with lots of different fabrics.

It's called Queen's Jewels and I found it in the book Quick Quilts from Your Scrap Bag by Patricia Wilens. I need more than a thousand of the little two-piece triangle units, so it will probably take me at least a couple of weeks. I'm rather hoping to get this quilt top finished by the election because Jeff and I are planning to participate in NaNoWriMo in November again.

Wednesday, October 10, 2018

Distracted Again

It's finally occurred to me I'm going to lose my sewing room so I felt a surge of inspiration to do some quilting. I originally planned to make a T-shirt quilt but changed my mind when I realized I was missing some old high school shirts; I must have another box kicking around somewhere.

So I pulled out my go-to quilt book and cast about for another project. I could, of course, make this quilt project that I planned in April, but I actually designed that specifically to match the master bedroom in this house. Now that we're moving, that project makes a lot less sense.

I pulled my go-to quilt book off the shelf and noticed a drawing for a quilt I had wanted to make way back in about 2002. The book gave directions to make a lap quilt with tiny 3" blocks and I wanted to convert it to a queen size quilt with 6" blocks so I thought maybe I'd go play with Electric Quilt. It's always nice to be able to check for the proper amount of fabric before you start a project.

Then I thought it would be ever so much better if I had the actual fabric images in the program, so I hauled the fabric down to the scanner and made scans. It worked great. Finally prepared, I struggled to put the design into Electric Quilt because the quilt design is a combination of blocks and strips. The program is pretty much designed to plan either strip quilts or block quilts, not a combo. So then I started looking for another design that would work with the fabric.

When I woke up sick Monday morning, I knew my plans for countertop slab shopping would be delayed. I don't share colds if I don't have to. So I continued to scan fabric and play with the program.

By Monday evening, Jeff relocated the scanner to my sewing room and I spent several hours pulling down piles of fabric and scanning them. At this point, I've scanned about half my cotton quilting fabric. Despite my impatience, I had to take a pause when my shoulder informed me it had had enough of that repetitive activity and it was time to do something different. So, armed with images of half my fabric, I went and played in Electric Quilt.

I don't actually know if I'll make any of these quilts. I hope so. But it is fun to play. I'm not going to show them all, I've made at least a dozen designs. But, if any of my followers are quilters, I'd be happy to share the quilt instructions, if you'd like. Oh, and most of the quilts have silly names as placeholders because it was better than the boring descriptive names I was originally using, like "purple rust quilt."

Saturday, October 6, 2018

Train Quilt Finished

I finally finished scanning all our photos. For the most part, I quite enjoyed the project. I was getting pretty tired of it near the end though. I have three boxes packed up and ready to move out and one box packed to go into our storage area. And one heaped pile to get destroyed.

Jeff and I have a box of old sentimental T-shirts packed away in our closet and I've decided to make a T-shirt quilt out of them. But, of course, my last couple of projects are still kicking around in the way, so I really need to finish them first.

Today, with real life being so stressful, I decided it was an excellent day to go hide in my sewing room. I finally finished the train lap quilt for my father.
I had this quilted months ago. I really don't know why I took so long to finish it.

Now that we'll be moving into a house with no spare bedrooms, I'll be losing my dedicated sewing room. I guess it would be a good idea to finish all the projects I've got spread all over the place.

I'll probably also be selling my sewing room furniture, which will make me very sad. It's such beautiful furniture. The set is solid cherry and we had it custom made for me about 15 years ago.
We're still working out the furniture plan in Prineville, so this furniture may make the move. But right now I'm inclined to sell it, if I can get a good price, and get something smaller.

Thursday, October 4, 2018

October Update

Time has been flying by. Last weekend we rented a trailer and took our first load of stuff to Prineville. At this point, we're not moving in, we are simply bringing over items to put in the large storage area above the shop that we do want to keep but we don't expect to need before we move.

On Saturday, we planned to run around and do a bunch of shopping for remodeling materials, but it turns out, most places are closed on weekends. I've gotten spoiled by living in Portland. EleMar Oregon was the only place open in Redmond or Prineville on my list of vendors I wanted to visit.

I went into this process planning to buy soapstone counters again, but I did find one granite slab I liked. Unfortunately, I didn't write down the name of it, I think it may be the Colonial Gold.
Once upon a time, we had dark green marble counters in our house in Forest Grove. I loved the polished counters when they were clean and freshly shined, but it was a bit of a nightmare maintaining that beautiful showroom look. And I was a much better housekeeper back then. I'd be more likely to get the granite if I didn't expect it to be a replay of that old scenario; I may look into whether we can get it honed.

They also had some soapstone slabs. They were all very dark, approaching black. Any of them would be fine if we decide we want to go with black soapstone.

On Monday morning we met with Mike Montgomery from Montgomery Remodeling and Restoration in Bend, Oregon. We really like him. He didn't seem pushy and seemed to really listen to what we wanted. He spent about an hour with us walking through the house, taking measurements and writing stuff down. At the moment, we're waiting for some kind of proposal from him.

He recommended we visit Baptista Tile in Bend, Oregon so we decided to do that before we left town. We spent about an hour there and I realized I mostly don't like this year's trendy tile. The main thing I got out of the trip was perhaps finding a reasonably good green soapstone.
And they also directed me to some good vendors to visit in Portland. Yay!!

With the "big rocks" out of the way, I turned my attention back to backsplash tile shopping. As usual, I start with online stuff because it's just easier to shop from the comfort of my own living room. :)

I ordered a number of samples and am awaiting them. The current front-runners:
Emprador Dark Marble Polished Florida Flower Border with Crema Marfil Dots if we go with the granite
Jade Green Marble Liner if we go with the green soapstone
I'll probably also drop by United Tile and Pental on Monday to look at what they have in stock. It's not really a feature to have too many choices; it just makes the decision more difficult. Once we've got all the samples in hand, I'll probably head back to the EleMar location in Tualatin to compare them to their wider selection of slabs and see if I like any of the combos.

Saturday, September 8, 2018

September Already?

Our Prineville remodel is at a standstill right now because Danny Dark, the contractor we were planning to hire, told us he might have to decline the job because his crew supervisor may be leaving. We're waiting for an update from him before anything moves forward. I will probably wait for another week or two and then hire someone else if I don't hear back from him.

I have received some tile and Marmoleum samples but we still haven't finalized any colors so I don't know which we'll be using. I'll post photos once we figure out more details.

We have plenty of projects on our Portland house to work on, but Jeff has been so busy with election volunteering that we haven't worked on any of them. I predict little will happen in Portland until December. So, I've focused on downsizing projects I can do myself.

I finished shredding several boxes of old financial records, then Jeff dropped off the final two boxes and we paid to have them shredded. I've also been working on scanning old family photos. I had five boxes total of photos to scan, and I think I've mostly finished four of them. The last one is really difficult because it is tons of miscellaneous small photos in no particular order and all different sizes. It's really time-consuming when everything is a different size.

We've been trying to organize belongings to start moving over to Prineville when we visit. Having overlap between the houses is a bit problematic because we don't want to move our furniture to the new house until after we've sold the big house in Portland. We really need the nice furniture for staging. But we do need at least some furniture in Prineville so we can stay there for visits during the remodel.

So, I am currently cruising around on craigslist trying to find some good chairs to keep permanently and perhaps a cheap dining room set and some bedroom furniture we can use temporarily and resell once we move over. I 💜craigslist. I've never found better deals on good furniture any other way.

This morning we found a couple of Stressless Recliners that don't feel used at all for about a third the price of new ones. Now that I've sat in them and realized how comfortable they are, I don't want to move them over yet. LOL

Wednesday, September 5, 2018

More Kitchen Planning

I have been scanning like a woman obsessed. I actually scanned photos for more than eight hours both today and yesterday. It's been fun to post some of the best family photos on facebook for family members to share the memories. But after about 8 hours, my back has had enough and I go crash in my comfy recliner in front of the TV and goof off with my remodel plan.

I thought I had a contractor lined up to start the work this winter, but he just wrote me that his head guy might be leaving and then he wouldn't be able to take the job. So, I have spent several hours shopping around for another contractor so we'll be prepared no matter his answer.

I've also been poking around to see if we can find the wonderful green soapstone again. I do love it. But just in case we can't, I made plans for both contingencies. Then, once we find a contractor, we'll be super prepared to get started.

Here is the tentative plan if we have to use the black soapstone:
Yeah, I clearly have way too much time. But this was fun to work on in front of the TV. Obviously the counter is all wonky and nothing is particularly to scale. I was just trying to see how the colors looked together.

Monday, September 3, 2018

Keeping Busy

I've now finished sifting all the old file boxes. I still have a bunch of shredding left to do, but I now have a stack of 14 empty plastic file tubs. Woo hoo! I figure I'll shred stuff until my shredder dies, and then I'll bring the rest into a commercial shredder and pay to have the project finished.

I've already spent three days scanning old photographs. I had about five tubs of old family photos I wanted to digitize. I've mostly finished scanning the photos in two of them. I'm also planning to disassemble the majority of my old photo albums and scan those photos too then discard the albums. It's not like we ever look at them. Most of them never even got unpacked in our current house. I'll probably keep our wedding album, but most of the rest of them will be discarded. I have to admit, I'm rather enjoying this project. It's fun to remember so many old memories.
Our first pet as a married couple: a rabbit named Chacko.
Jeff cuddled up with our beloved dog named Lady. She was our
first border collie mix and she was adored by everyone who met her.
I've also started listing stuff for sale. It feels like I've been selling books for forever and we've probably downsized our book collection by more than 50%, but now I'm also looking around and doing the easy stuff. I realized I could list most of my cross stitch pattern books on Amazon, so I worked on that over the weekend. I had 57 cross stitch patterns; 25 of them were designed by Teresa Wentzler. Even if I spent the rest of my life doing cross stitch, I doubt I would have finished all those projects, so I've decided to keep three or four of them and get rid of the rest.

I wish I'd been more motivated to work on the Teresa Wentzler designs during my life because they really are beautiful projects, but they're just so damn time-consuming.  My current cross stitch project I started way back in the 90s and I pull it out occasionally and work on it almost full-time for a week or two until I get distracted and it's still only maybe halfway done. It looks like the last time I blogged about working on it was in July 2016. Here it is in its current state. I think I'll take it to Prineville for our next visit because we haven't yet turned on the internet so there's actually a slim chance I'll work on it there.
"The Storyteller" by Teresa Wentzler. Work in progress.
Our apple tree in the front yard is covered in apples. They've started falling on the ground and we really need to start using them. It would be a shame for them to go to waste because they really are quite good. So we're also trying to squeeze in time this week to make apple butter. It sounds like it's faster to make it in the Instant Pot, so we're going to try that.
I've been really impressed with how many apples this small Liberty apple tree has made.
If we can, we're going to buy the same variety for the new house.

Friday, August 24, 2018

Kitchen Dreaming

The kitchen is my highest priority in the Prineville house because it must be done before we move in. I am debating whether to stick with the current cabinetry and just replace the counter and appliances, whether to reface the cabinets and add a couple more, or whether to replace it all.

Jeff loves his Blue Star Range in Portland, so we want to buy another for the new house which means we'd no longer need the wall oven and we would have to rearrange the base cabinets. Also, the current vent over the stove doesn't vent outside of the house; that will have to be changed.

I'm thinking about refacing the current cabinets or replacing with ready-to-assemble (RTA) cabinets, depending on the cost. I love cherry, but I'll also consider other woods without a dark grain, i.e. maple, fir, etc. I don't know why, but I've just never really been a fan of the heavy grain in oak. I've had plenty of oak wood furnishings in my life, but given a choice, I'll take cherry any day.

While I'm binging on Netflix I've been cruising around window shopping for some possible materials to use for the kitchen. Here are some of my current top choices. (I mostly make these posts so I can record the information.)
Backsplash: Philadelphia Scabos Travertine 1x2 Basketweave Honed with Black Dot Mosaic Tile
Cabinetry: Shaker-style Cabinetry Shown in cherry, but I may get maple or birch or fir, depending on cost.
Counter: Blackish Soapstone (I assume I can't find the amazing green soapstone again, so I'll simply make the black soapstone work)
Flooring: Bottom: Four color choices of Mannington ColorFields Smooth surface rubber flooring: L to R: Battleship, Oak, Mesa or Scroll (I'll use whichever matches the backsplash best.)

Backsplash: Georgia 3" x 6" Travertine Subway Tile in Mediterranean Ivory
Border: Crema Marfil Border 3 1/8"x 12"
Floor: Mannington ColorFields Smooth surface rubber flooring: Trumpet (or whichever matches best)

Appliances: Stainless steel, or a matched color.
Range: BlueStar 30" RNB-series Range
Dishwasher: I still love my Miele dishwasher so I'm planning to get another.
Refrigerator: Another 36" built-in. We have Sub Zero now, but we may try a BlueStar in case we want to get a color and we'll be able to have it match. :)
Hood: I could get a matching BlueStar Hood

Thursday, August 23, 2018

Huge Record Purge

After finishing three file boxes of SCA records, I undertook to also sift through all our personal records. We had tons of them in the basement storage. I didn't take a specific picture of them before I started sifting, but I did find this one. You can see all the black and blue file boxes plus a few banker's boxes.
I've spent all week sifting and discarding nearly all the records from before 2010. It was appalling how many records we had from the 1990s. I cannot believe how many times we moved all this paper.

Anyway, I spent at least 20 hours this week and I've finally finished this project.
Sorted and Labelled and Ready to Move
Empties!!

Wednesday, August 22, 2018

Prineville Escrow Closed

We drove to Prineville on Monday to sign the papers and get the keys.

The house is pretty small, actually. Only about 1600 square feet. It has two and a half bedrooms (one is really tiny) and two bathrooms.
Entry looking into Living Room
Other side of Living Room. I think this used to be a bedroom but they removed the wall and
merged it into the living room to make it an L-shape.

Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Craigslist Purging

In addition to shredding records, I am trying to get started on purging furniture that will not be moving to the new house, especially the stuff that is not in current use. In case any of my Portland followers are interested, I'll show some photos here.

 Antique push button recliner. The fabric is worn out on this one. I'd be pretty happy with $150 for this one.
Antique oak chairs. I picked these up at a garage sale several years ago and we never really used them. They've been sitting in our basement for ages. Somebody cut the legs off, so the seat is only 16.5" off the floor. I'm only asking $10 each to get them gone.

Long term, we're also looking to sell the living room furniture, pictured here.
And the parlor furniture.


And the guest bedroom furniture. 
Ideally, I'd like to use the furniture to stage the house for sale but I'm not sure we'll have enough time to sell it all at the last minute.

Sunday, August 12, 2018

Slow Start at Sifting

It has been really hot in Portland this summer. We basically skipped spring this year. I don't function well when it's really hot, so I've been crashing in the basement on the futon and I often get sucked into binging on TV. This week I have finally managed to start sifting financial records. I realized we've got records that date back to the early 1990s, and there is no reason to keep most of them anymore, so I've started shredding them.

We have an inexpensive shredder so it's not quite up to the volume I need to process; it keeps overheating. I can usually shred for about 20 minutes before it needs to take a long break. This is five day's effort.
I probably have a couple more weeks of shredding to do at my current pace.

And I have a bunch of photo scanning to do too. I have at least three boxes of old family photos I had planned to scan right away when we moved here and then return to other family members. It's been eight years and I still haven't done it. It's time. Even though we're hemorrhaging money right now, I went ahead and ordered a new photo scanner so I can get this project finished too. These boxes are not moving to the new house.

The new house closes on Aug 20. I suspect we'll pick up our pace of sifting once we start moving stuff over.

Saturday, July 14, 2018

House in Prineville

The last time we went shopping for a house we spent three years and five failed attempts before we finally bought our beautiful Craftsman house in Portland. So, this time, I decided I would not write much about our house shopping efforts because it so often went sideways in the offer or escrow period.

We are buying a simple little rancher house in Prineville, Oregon. The inspection was Friday and there were no surprises, so there is very little to stand in the way of close at this point. I have to admit, I'm a little freaked out because we're buying the new little house before we sell our beautiful big house in Portland, but I simply can't deal with moving into storage and living out of luggage while we find another. So, we're taking the leap of faith that it will work out. I guess we shall see.

Historic houses in Prineville were pretty much nonexistent, but, in reality, I didn't really look for them. I decided I didn't want a really old house because I am slavish to the details of "getting it right" in my remodels and decorating. By buying a newer house, we don't have to spend anything upgrading the plumbing, electrical and other systems and are free to do what we like without feeling guilty about messing it up. (But since I love the Craftsman style, our work with be heavily influenced by it.)

Why Prineville? Well, we have a good friend who lives there and it is significantly cheaper to live there. It's rather hotter there than Portland but, in truth, we spend most of our time indoors and we'll be fine with air conditioning.

I will do another post with interior photos. The Frankenstein kitchen counter is pretty funny. As usual, we do have plans to do some remodeling, though we have a strict budget and we'll have less grand interiors than we have now.

I know I will be sad to leave our big, beautiful house in Portland, but when we bought it we planned to both be working full-time and expected to be more financially able to afford Portland, but we've since realized that's no longer our plan. If we stay in Portland, there's a good chance we'll outlive our retirement assets. I'm hoping by cutting our cost of living to something less than half the present cost will extend the time.

I expect our Portland projects to kick into high gear later this year. The current plan is to get the house onto the market next spring. That gives us the winter to get rid of roughly half our stuff. I really should get started now, but I think I'm still in denial.

Monday, May 21, 2018

Considering a Move

Jeff and I love our beautifully restored home. We do not, however, love Portland anymore. I wish we could pick up our house and put it someplace else, but that's not possible. Ever since our last property tax bill, we've been contemplating a move.

This week we've started poking around property listings in a few different cities. We're still pretty casual in our efforts. We don't know if or when we'll move, but we've started exploring our options.

On Saturday, we drove down and visited Sandy, Oregon. It's a small town not far outside of Portland. It was a nice little town with some cute Western-themed facades along their main business route. I wish I'd remembered to bring a camera. Here are a couple of photos I swiped from a google search.
We looked at one teardown house. The lot would be perfect to build on, but the owners want way too much money for the disgusting little shack.  We liked Sandy, but I'm not sure if we can deal with 80-inches of rain a year. LOL

We're also planning to look at Springfield and Prineville, Oregon.

If we find the right house, or the right lot to build on, we might just make the jump.

Monday, May 7, 2018

2nd Lap Quilt Finished

And now the other lap quilt is done. It took about two hours from start to finish to cut out and sew on the binding. I doubt I'll hand sew another binding now that I've learned this process.


Saturday, May 5, 2018

Lap Quilt Finished

Denise and I picked up the finished quilts earlier this week. We were quite happy with how the quilter finished them. Today, I finally got around to finishing the binding on the tool lap quilt.
I spent a few hours earlier this week watching videos about how to properly sew on machine bindings with all machine sewing, and now that I've successfully done it, I'm a fan. (The secret I was missing is start by sewing the binding on the backside then fold it forward and sew it down along the edge. It's very tidy.) I doubt I'll hand-sew too many more bindings.

It's quilted with a fun repeating tool pattern:
I've still got to add the binding to Jeff's space quilt.

I also dropped off my father's train lap quilt. It should be finished in a week or two.

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

The Next Quilt Project

I'm not really planning to turn this into a quilt blog, but this is just what I feel like doing right now. Since the weather is changing, I'm sure we'll get back into house projects pretty soon. I'd really like to finish the interior of the garden shed soon.

No sooner did I make a plan for a new quilt, then I realized I didn't have enough fabric for it and I originally bought that fabric way back in 2011 so it's discontinued. I can't buy more. Then I started playing with different blocks in Electric Quilt and made a few options. This was Jeff's favorite.
And, because I can, here are the rotary cutting instructions for making this block.

I won't be using the last batch of fabric as there still isn't enough. I'd really like to make it out of batiks, but I don't have enough of them either. I almost bought batiks until I filled up the cart and it was over $150. Then it will likely be about $150 to get it quilted. I really cannot spend $300+ on another quilt, so I'm going to see if I can find enough fabrics that are basically the same color so I can use several smaller pieces. I need to paw through my collection and see what I can come up with.

Update later. Here are the final fabrics. I did end up buying more of a couple of colors, because I didn't have 3 yards.

Sunday, April 22, 2018

Another Lap Quilt Finished

I just finished another lap quilt. Excuse the bad photo; I'll take a better picture after I finish the binding.

This is a train quilt for my father, who is a huge fan of trains. He frequently takes train vacations. I had this marvelous train fabric but the trains were so large they wouldn't have worked well cut into small pieces so I used this pattern from my favorite quilt pattern book, 101 Fabulous Rotary-Cut Quilts. When I realized the pattern was called The Railroad, it seemed like it was fate.

Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Quilting Binge

I've spent most of this month working on quilt projects. Jeff, as usual, has been keeping busy with his volunteer work.

I helped my friend Denise finish her king-size trailer quilt. Sadly, neither of us managed to take a picture of the finished quilt and it's already been dropped off at the machine quilter, so it will be another couple of weeks before we can show off the result of our hard work.

This is one of the in-progress photos of the squares laid out on a bed:
I also finished another lap quilt for a gaming friend who is a contractor. It's also been dropped off for machine quilting. (Yeah, these are the same pattern. LOL)
I've actually got a couple more quilts that I'd like to finish before the end of the month before I move onto outdoor activities.