Thursday, June 13, 2013

Posy

I have been wanting some Posy fabric.  I have been looking eveywhere but I haven't been able to find many places with yardage.  I wanted 1.5 yards so I could use it for a backing.  I just love how whimsical it is.  Then I found it on Etsy at Fresh Modern Fabrics.  Alice was great and bent over backward to get my order completed quickly.

Posy Bouquet in Daisy, Aneela Hoey, Moda Fabrics

Then as I was checking out, I found this.  It is Bee Bop, Monkey Bizness by Alexander Henry Fabrics.  There are tons of images on it.


I love how vintage this fabric feels.  I plan to fussy-cut the pictures out for a baby quilt.  I just love all the animals.  So this is a to-be-continued project.



Sunday, June 9, 2013

April Stash Club

Hooray for stash club.  April was yellow.  I'm a little behind but enjoy anyway!



1. Good Morning Honeycomb in Yolk from Moda's Good Morning
2. Pearl Bracelets in Meyer Lemon from Lizzy House's Pearl Bracelets
3. Bike Path in Sun from Alison Glass' Lucky Penny
4. Don't know... sorry!
5. Rain in Lemongrass  from Timeless Treasures Basics
6. Swinging in Mustard from Zen Chic's Comma

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Flea Market Chicken


The hubby and I love to go flea markets.  Sometimes I have something in mind, sometimes we are just looking.  Husband is usually looking for vintage toys, I am just looking for interesting things.  I have been in desperate need for a white glass chicken.  I have been looking for one for more than a year, but I didn't want to spend more than $15 (yeah I'm cheap).  It must have been chicken week at the flea market because there were tons of them.  Most of them were WAY overpriced.  Then I found this beauty for $8.  Yep, it had to come home with me!



I understand a white glass chicken isn't for everyone. But a white glass chicken is for me.  I can't wait to have my house back so I can find a happy home for it.

I like this guy too.  I'm not a master juicer or anything but for a buck, I thought it was awesome.



Then last but not least, my favorate quilting secret.  There is a guy at our local flea market that sells OLFA blades super cheap.  Every time we go I get a whole bunch of rotary blades.  I have been wanting a 60mm cutter but have never really had a good reason to get one.  For $8, I didn't need a reason.  YEAH! This whole stash was only $62. I know... best. thing. ever.


I love my flea market.

Monday, June 3, 2013

Pot Holders

My mom and dad have been pouting about not being able to find pot holders that they like.  So I took that as my direction and made them pot holders for their birthdays.  

The materials were fairly basic, Insul-Bright and quilting weight cotton.  I had these happy cardinals laying around so I had everything I needed.  I used Insul-Bright, heat resistant batting, but decided to use two layers instead of one.  I made a batting sandwich and then placed the cardinals on one side and plain colored fabric on the back.


 I drew straight lines and quilted away.  I did a simple box pattern about 3/4 inches apart.


Then just a little binding a voila!


I didn't take any pictures of the final product, but you get the idea.  I made 4, two for each of them.  Their hands will never be hot again.

Happy birthday parents!

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Bachelorette

One of my dear friends is getting married!  So of course I wanted her to be able to celebrate in style so I whipped up this bachelorette sash.  Her wedding colors are blue and silver so I went with a blue satin with a white center.  

Satin is super slippery, so I had to extra pin it and go very slow.

I couldn't possibly have a sash without pink, so I chose hot pink iron-on letters. They are very easy to use even on such a touchy fabric.


We had a great time in Nashville and she was the only girl with such a nifty sash!

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Construction Catch-Up



hi blog.  It's been a while.  

It had been my hope to keep up with the blog during the construction, but every last moment of my time has been spent painting.  I have exciting pictures though so here we go!

Each grouping below has three pictures.  The first is what the house looked like when we moved in.  (Holy 1970's batman!)  The second picture is how we lived with it for 6 years.  Knowing that one day we would  tear out all the wood paneling and pink tiles, we just made it as neutral as possible.  The last picture is how it looks after construction.  There are still some things left to do, like get the vent covers on and repair the damage from the carpet installers (ugg!) but I am SO. IN. LOVE!!

Here is the floor plan again just for reference.


When we moved in, there was this terrible pinkish-orange carpet.  There were green and orange curtains on every window and pink and tan tile in the bathroom.  Because we knew that we planned to rip everything out, we just wanted to make it bearable until we could do it right.

Bedrooms

We ripped out the carpet hoping for gorgeous hardwood, but what we got was one room of mediocre oak floors and one room of terrible pine floors.  One bedroom was plaster and we painted it tan because the lighter paint hid the textured walls best.  The other room was wood paneling which we painted a dark blue to hide the vertical lines.

This is the bedroom at the top of the stairs (Bedroom 1).  


Just off of bedroom 1 is a walk-in closet.  You can kind-of see in the first picture that the original space was a room with two small closets inside of it.  It was a waste of space.  I ripped all the extra walls out and put back a simple divider with hanging bars.  The new closet is similar but a much better quality.


This is Bedroom 2 (upper left corner of the diagram).  Please note the lovely curtains.


This is still bedroom two (lower left corner of the diagram).  There was a trap door in the wall originally, but it was filled with insulation so it couldn't be used for anything.  


This again is bedroom two (lower right side of bedroom 2).  There was originally a built-in book case and storage cabinets, but they were very poorly made.  I painted them white which made them a little nicer, but they were crap and had to go.  I have yet to figure out how I will replace the storage space but I don't miss them at all.


Bathroom

Now onto the bathroom.  It was by far the biggest change.  When we moved in, I stripped all the floral wall paper and painted everything that wasn't tile plain old white.  You can't see the floor in picture one, but it was carpet.  We ripped that out and I put in 12 inch vinyl white tile.  I can't tell you how satisfying it was to take the whole place to the studs.  

If you are looking at the diagram, this is the left side of the bathroom.


This is the right side of the bathroom.  It really is a HUGE change.  There was a wall that created a little cave of a shower.  The door to the bathroom opened against the wall and made the whole room seem really small.  We took out that wall, put in a pocket door and made the whole space a huge shower.  The room feels enormous now and looks so much more modern.


This is a close up of the floor tile.  It is a filled stone.  We went with a light tan grout so that the color in the stone would pop.  We also opted for the high gloss tile sealer.  We debated the choice for a long time because we both really like the natural stone, but in the end, this seemed much easier to clean.


This is a super-duper close up of the shower tile.  They are actually 10 by 12 inch rectangles.  The grout is the same color as the floor.



The End

In every project there are favorite parts.  For me, this project had two MAJOR upgrades.  I know that seems silly since we ripped out every last thing and replaced it but there are definitely two things that stand out. 

The first upgrade is that we put a light and an exhaust fan in the shower.  Neither of our bathrooms have a fan and it means that everything gets foggy  and it gets really dirty really fast (nothing grows mold like a warm, wet cave...).  It also adds a lot of light to the shower.

The second item that made this makeover is the pocket door.  What a difference it made!  It opened up the space completely.  Instead of opening into the bathroom, it slips behind the shower and leaves the whole room free and clear.


Thanks for playing catch-up with me.  For now it is just a shell, but I will have more pictures and details as we get our own stuff put into the space.

Ta-Ta for now.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

New Old Project

After much procrastination, I am finally committing to this new old project.  We are very close to my husband's grandparents.  About a year ago, grandma asked me to repair a quilt that her mother had made many years ago.  It is a beautiful dresden plate of which I neglected to take a full picture...

Sixteen blocks sashed in solid blue.  You get the gist. 


When it come into my life, there were a number of issues.  I don't think I really knew what I was getting myself into.  Not because it is so difficult that I can't handle it, but because it needed more love than I initially thought.  I got it all taken apart and repaired the appliqué and then panicked.  They sat like this for a really long time.


All of the squares were different sizes and not one of them was actually a square.  There was up to three-quarters of an inch variation in them.  The first thing I had to do was find the center of each plate and mark it.

I also bought a new large Omnigrid and marked off a 13 inch square.















Once I had my grid taped, I could use my center mark on the dresden plate and the marks on my grid to get the squares cut correctly.















You can see how uneven the sides were when I went to cut them. 


Nothing look prittier than a stack of scraps and a perfictly square stack of blocks!


More later!