Happy dance!!

My very favorite sewing companion (and all around best teenage girl I know!) will arrive here with her daddy on Friday.  Oh, the things we will do!  Sweet girl likes my garden so we will poke around a bit in there.  She loves to sew and I have a new special place for her in the studio which will be air conditioned once said "daddy" above installs it on Friday.  Now that we can actually see all of it, I imagine my stash will deplete just a bit but I know that my darling girl will want to trek over to Burkholder's while she is here.  There will be trips to the farmer's market and hours perusing antique shops and thrift stores.  (I swear she is 14 going on 40!)  I am not sure how long she will be with me.  I just know I am going to have the best time with her than I can manage.

I am pretty darned excited.  Can you tell?!

So down in the basement

was a sofa table that I picked up at a yard sale a few years ago.  It is a simple Shaker style pine table that I used behind my couch before I bought my house.  The layout of my living room now does not allow for positioning a sofa in the middle of the room so the table was banished to the basement.  Truthfully, I have been using it as a work table and had my boxes of nails, screws, etc. piled on top of it. 
I saw a post on Sew Many Ways and thought Karen had a great idea.  The table is the perfect height to use as an ironing station, is wider than a regular ironing board and because it is a rectangle, much more efficient when ironing quilt tops or large pieces of fabric.  I picked up some ironing board cloth at Joann’s with a 50% off coupon, dug some scrap cotton batting out of a big plastic container and loaded up the staple gun. 
 
As you can see, I needed to “boost” the table up a bit to a comfortable ironing height.  That was easily accomplished with some bed risers I had in the storage closet.  And wouldn’t it have been a good idea to trim the edges nicely?!

Actual time to make the ironing table was only about 30 minutes.  My kind of project – cheap and fast!

Happy day!

This morning when I woke up I noticed immediately that the house was cool...very, very cool.

I am going up to the studio and sew, sew, sew.  Look at the temps for the next few days.  I know were I will be every morning for the next week!

More storage for the fabric hoard

Yesterday I went to Target and picked up this

On the outside of the box it was noted that it was a "team lift" item which means it weighs a freaking TON!  A very nice man loaded it in my basket and then another very nice man put it in my car.  Unfortunately, there is not a nice man at my house so I had to figure out how to get it out of the car and up the steps of the front porch.  I opened the lift gate on my Sportage slowly and let the box fall out against my hip.  Then I slid it down my legs until it was on the ground.  I zig zig inched it over the sidewalk and dropped it against the porch steps.  I pushed it from the bottom and then wrestled with it to get the box upright so that I could drop it into the house.  Since it was going to the 3rd floor, I knew I needed a better plan.  I opened the box in the middle of the living room floor and started pulling out boards.  I carried 2 boards at a time up two flights of steps until all the pieces were in the studio.  Then I put it together...by myself...swearing intermittently.

I really need to convince one of my sons to move closer to his mother!

We have a winner!

I am so excited that someone wanted my scraps!  I used the number generator from Random.Org to choose the recipient (had to do a little math):

And the winner is:

Becky, I will be contacting you via email.  Thanks again to everyone for participating!

Nook cover

I posted on my other blog about this yesterday.

Ignore that little fuzzy bit...wonder what it was?!

I had a need, had the fabric and had little time to play around.  I think it is prettier than the VeraB products I have seen and the one I made doesn't support the Chinese economy.  I almost finished another one made with a different type of fabric AND leather.  Yes - leather!  The new one has an extra pocket for things like earphones (so that you can watch old episodes of "Big Bang Theory" on Hulu Plus and not disturb those around you).  I hand stitched the binding because I am not very satisfied with my machine binding abilities.

Perhaps I should practice binding mug rugs and potholders...

Spreading the love

I actually had two titles I could have used for this post.  One is above and the other is "I can't take it anymore!" I have been the fortunate recipient of some beautiful pre-cuts in the past few weeks.  I have so many scraps that I am overwhelmed.  I have spent the last several evenings cutting up foamcore and organizing fabric into mini-bolts of 1 and 2 yard increments.  Fabric over 2 yards is being put onto regular size bolt boards as I am able to acquire them.  I have been organizing and sorting fat quarters and half yards and putting them into clear plastic shoe boxes.

I still am not finished and have to pick up more foamcore boards at the Dollar Tree today.    I am running out of shelf room and will have to find another big, white bookcase unit.  I have too much fabric.  (I know, how can anyone have too much fabric?!)  I know that I cannot possibly use what I have in a year or even 2 years.  It is time for a big clean out.

So...how about a giveaway?!  I will send out a box of scraps, some yardage, some fat quarters, whatever smooshed into a large priority mail box.  I promise that the scraps are all usable sizes...no itty bitty 2" pieces!  The scraps will be a mixture of colors.  If it looks like there will be enough to go around, I will do a second drawing.

Let's make it really easy (mostly because I do not like rules).  Leave me a comment for an entry.  It would be nice if you were a follower but that is not a requirement.  If you want a second entry, mention it on your blog and let me know that.  Also, not a requirement...totally up to you.  I will leave comments up until 6am Eastern time on Friday, June 15th.  Unfortunately, due to the crazy prices to mail out of the country, this giveaway will be limited to US and Canadian mailboxes only.

Thanks for helping me clear up some of my mess!

Comments are now closed.  Thanks for participating!

Another giveaway win!

A couple of weeks ago there was a giveaway organized by Sew Mama Sew.  One of the giveaway sponsors was Pam from Off Avondale Road.  She was giving away a layer cake of Moda Fig & Plum  by Fig Tree Quilts.  It is probably my favorite Joanna Figuero design so I jumped on the list of those leaving comments.  I won!

I happen to have a fair amount of yardage from this fabric line.  I don't know what I am going to make with it but I know I am going to love it!!

Do you have a Nook?

My sweet son and his lovely wife presented me with a Nook Tablet for my birthday/Mother's Day gift this year.  Chad took me through the basics and I started buying books.  What I figured out pretty quickly is that I could go broke in a hurry because it is just so easy to buy a book on line and have it appear moments later on my Nook ready to read.

I have seen a couple of quilt blogs that point out free books for the Kindle but nothing for the Nook.  If you are a Nook reader and are looking for some inexpensive (and often FREE!) books to download, here  is a great link.  I just added the link to my blog reader and automatically get updates throughout the day.

Now to find free quilt patterns I can download!