Ready for the Reveal

Hello!  My apologies for being away for a bit.  It's been a bit hectic.  Summer vacation is looming - next Tuesday is Punk's last day and she is READY.  Ready for lazy days.  I haven't told her but I'm going to keep her home once a week, if I can swing it.  She can hang at home, in the pool (once we put it up for the Summer), and I'll just do my work.  I'll see how that goes.  We are gearing up for our annual School is OVER! road trip.  We normally go to Lake George, NY for a few days but this year we are shaking it up.  This year we are hitting the road for Hershey, PA and going to Hershey Park.  Getting ourselves excited for our Disney trip in August.  We'll spend time at Hershey and then we are going to drive down to the Amish area.  I can't visit PA without going to see my Amish peeps.  LOL!  I love it there.  I will be bringing 4 quilt tops with me to get backings.  Swoon is at the top of that list.  I need to get that one quilted.

Now that you are caught up with my upcoming adventures, let's check out my updated sewing room!  Post will be picture heavy.  Sorry.  

To review - this is what I was looking at for a loooong time:

My lovely pressing station

My cutting area is under that mess somewhere

And.  My stash.

Beautiful.  Isn't it?

Looking at the chaos for many months got on my nerves.  I finally got fed up and got to work over the Memorial Day weekend a few weeks ago.  I unloaded the room to every available space upstairs.

the hallway.  Like how I store my quilt tops over the bannister?  

My bedroom.  This is 2 bins deep.

 

What I had to paint around - minus the chair

My husband is a trooper.  He had to work around the chaos in the house for 2 weeks. He's a good man.  There are still a few stragglers hanging out in my bedroom and I will deal with them this weekend.  For the most part, my room is back together again.  And ahhhhhhhh.  So.  Much.  Better.

You can't really tell but the walls were originally a sage green.  Color was nice for Amelia's nursery but the paint job was 8 years old and looking tired.  I went with an aqua color named "Sprinkle" by Valspar.   Pretty! 

The cutting area.  I can SEE it again!  LOL.  I made myself a new window valance using some Scrumptious yardage by Bonnie and Camille.

Another view

Another DIY I did was a framed chalkboard.  I found the frame at Hobby Lobby but it was black.  I was going to leave it as is but I had some fun with it.  I found some removable vinyl, punched some polka dots and had a spray paint party.  Instead of using chalkboard paint, I found chalkboard Con-Tact paper out on Amazon.  Only thing was that it wasn't wide enough for the frame.  In comes some ribbon and double stick tape.  Amelia practiced some of her cursive before it was it was hung on the wall and I kept it.  I added my Summer "to do" list to it.  I doubt I will get to it all but I'm going to try!

My cleaning pressing area.  Bags are now on hooks behind the door

Another view

My stash.  All cleaned up

New lighting.  Much needed!

There you go.  My improved sewing room. I love being in there now.

I have some project starts to show you but I'm running out of time today.  I need to earn my paycheck now.  

Enjoy your day!

Jen :)

Little Things

Tomorrow is the big day!  Solo painting party.  Who wants to come and help?  My sewing room is all cleared out (somewhat).  My Koala sewing cabinet and the rack that holds all my fabric bins are staying in the room.  Everything else?  Out.  My bedroom is loaded up.  Punk's room is holding some stuff.  The hallway is crammed with everything else.  I'm excited to get started.  My goal is get out of bed before 8am and get started.  We shall see.  I may be up way before 8 am but I'm a bed lounger.  I love to get up at 6am, turn on the TV and just channel surf for hours.  It's a bad habit.  My focal fabric for my new window valance is here.  Just waiting on my accent fabric to show up and I hope to get that sewn up this weekend.  Few seams shouldn't take me that long.

I will snap some pictures before I get started with the re-painting.

I finished up a few small projects before I tore into my room.

A personalized pillow for a birthday gift.  Did things a little different with this one.  I used the capital letter set and a colored solid instead of my usual white. Brown and pink is the color scheme in the baby's room so I thought this would be a good match.  I was right.

A little cupcake mug rug.  Just messing around with this one.  In one of my older quilting magazines there is a wallhanging with 3 cupcakes just bigger.  I took the idea from that.  Now that I've made this mini, I'm going to make the wall hanging.  Either for my dining room or my new sewing room.

I gifted this one but I will make myself one. It's just too cute not to have one around.

Scrap purging has been happening around here and I have put some aside to giveaway.  Stay tuned for that if you are interested in some scraps.  They aren't mini scraps either.  Some pretty big pieces.  I just don't want them anymore.  I plan on also purging my patterns so that will be a second giveaway just for fun.

For those here in the US - enjoy the Memorial Day weekend!  You know what I'll be doing.  :)

Enjoy your day!
Jen :)

Stayin' Alive

Sorry.  I have the Bee Gees running through my head right now.

HI!  How's it going?  I know.  I took some M.I.A time.  I have been doing a little sewing and I have some little things to share but I forgot my camera card at home and I'm at work right now.  Bummer.

Big things happening over here.  I finally got tired of looking at the hurricane mess in my sewing room so I'm getting down to business.  My bedroom is running over with totes and totes of fabric.  I have 2 donation bags full of stuff I don't want anymore.  And don't shoot me - but - I am throwing scraps AWAY.  Yes.  I said it.  I'm throwing it out.  It's not worth the stress it gives me to "use it all!".  I can't.  I am saving bigger pieces for Punk to use for her sewing fun but lots of the bits?  Gone.  Even if I can trim it down to 2.5" square.  It's outta here.  It would just collect in a pile for me to trim and then I will throw it back into Punk's bucket and the cycle will never break.

I'm doing it.  It's very therapeutic.  ;)

A sewing room re-do is happening too.  I'm going to make this room officially "mine".  I have held off for the "just in case" we had another child because the room I am in would be the nursery and future bedroom.  I think I sealed that fate when I bought my huge Koala cabinet over a year ago.  That sucker isn't moving.  LOL.  I now am going to repaint the walls, make myself a new window valance, get new storage cabinets.  The works.  It will be a slow process but it's needed.

Painting starts this weekend.  Window valance fabric ordered.  Ikea cabinets looked at - I am going to get one wall cabinet for now.  To pacify myself.  I can't quite afford what a I want for closed door storage for the fabric with Disney happening this year.  That will be my goal for next year.

So no sewing happening for a few weeks but I am very excited to re-vamp this room.

I will show pictures soon!


Enjoy your day!
Jen :)

Just a bunch of little things

Howdy!  Spring!  Spring is here!  The sunshine and warm(er) temps feel SO GOOD after this lousy, cold winter.  I'm hearing rumors of a 70'F+ day on Sunday.  Already promised Punk a trip to the park and maybe a stop at Dairy Queen for a soft serve cone.

I've been getting some things done in the sewing room.  No, not cleaning.  That can wait until after Easter.  Truly?  I think I will be putting off the clean and re-organize the sewing room for months and months.  It is just a chore I don't want to do but then again, who does?  My machine does have to go in for a cleaning and service.  We are headed out of town for a few days soon and while I'm gone, my sewing machine will be headed out for some spa treatments.  I've been fighting lately with my walking foot and/or the dual feed on my machine.  I'm really pushing/pulling some of my projects when I'm sewing.  My machine isn't happy right now.

Onto what I've been working on.  Michele posted her Lollipop bag and I thought it was just too cute.  I haven't made one for myself yet but I made 3 for little Easter gifts.  I left off the rosette since I knew it would give me fits and I wasn't in the mood.  LOL.

I'm trying to get away from baskets full of candy for those that I give Easter gifts to.  I'm trying but it's hard not to load up kids with candy.  LOL.  I also don't care for the little $1.00 trinkets out there.  I end up throwing all those out.  They just clutter up the house.  With that said, I made the smaller size of the Lollipop bag for Amelia, my God daughter, and my cousin's daughter.  They can load them up with pencils or whatever.  A small bag of candy with the bag and I'm good to go.

I plan on making the larger one for myself.  It will be good to have in the backpack with band-aids, ibuprofen, and other smaller items in our upcoming trip to Disney this summer.

I found a tablerunner online using the Charming Stars tutorial on MBS and I shamefully copied it.  My fabrics are slightly different but not by much.  Everything was stash for this one.  I'm pretty proud of myself for digging in the stash first.  I'm getting pretty good at it too.  :)

Last up for now, I made a wall hanging for my God son using the Spell it with Fabric blog hop that Moda did a couple of months ago.  I made letter pillows for his big brother when he was born but I wanted something different for Jimmy.  While Jimmy is still a little guy, I used more sophisticated fabrics for him.  I just didn't want a baby look for his letters. I hope my cousin likes it.

One of these days I will make myself a whole alphabet quilt.  The letters were fun.

Enjoy your day!
Jen :)

National Champs!

I don't follow sports but for both the Men and Women UCONN basketball teams to bring the championships home... makes me proud!

Jen  :)

Who are the People in Your Neighborhood?

Who remembers this little ditty from Sesame Street?

One of my favorites.  Amelia wasn't a big Sesame Street fan.  I just didn't like the new-ness of it so I never turned her on to it.  I loved the version I grew up on; she wasn't an Elmo fan at all.

Every time I look at my newest project finish, People in your Neighborhood skit from Sesame Street runs through my head.

Dwell from Camille's book "Simple Retro".  Happy to actually make something out of the many quilt books I have collected.

I had intended to make only a small wall hanging size but I enjoyed the house construction so much, I kept going and made all 16 blocks.  The top is finished as the pattern was written but I'm going to add a wider outer border.

I used a mix of Bonnie & Camille fabrics in this one: Ruby, Vintage Modern, Marmalade, Happy Go Lucky, and Scrumptious.  I have decided that Scrumptious is my favorite.  The colors make me smile.  There's a citrus-y undertone to them to make them nice and bright.  Right up my alley.  I'm hoarding the rest of my Scrumptious stash for right now.  The white flowered house in the upper left corner of the quilt is going to be the wider border.

I was on a major sewing kick but that has slowed down some.  I'm working on a Schnibbles and it's coming along but I'm getting bored with the process.  I have a wall hanging I need to quilt.  Once I get that done, I will post it.  I hope to get it quilted this weekend.

Enjoy your day!
Jen :)

I need an intervention or a good organizer

The current state of my sewing room.  In pictures.

There's about 4 projects going on at the same time over here.  Even have a list posted to my table.

My stash that sits behind me when I'm cutting or what I stare at when I'm sewing.  Oh the horror.  It's no wonder I can't find anything.  To be fair, it wasn't THIS bad to begin with.  I started to get my fabrics separated by color families.  I had done it once before but fell out of practice.  I picked that task up again but then I started cutting strings for my string blocks and well, this is what I have now.

Just another view.

More projects in the works.  I need to get back to them.  There are some quilt blocks hiding in that pile.

More stash.  On these shelves are my favorite fabrics.  Easy to find.

My ironing station and the place where things go that need to be fixed.  Like a pocket in a pair of jeans, a button on a pillow and a ripped stuffed toy.  Just so you know, all three of those things have been sitting there for about a year.

I have been in the sewing groove and have been ignoring the state of my sewing room.  I think it's high time to take a big pause and get to organizing myself.  Anybody want to come do it for me?!  :)

I have a plan.  I'm just waiting for a free weekend to implement it.  I'm going to clear the entire room out (not the furniture) and put it all back nice and organized like.  I'm just afraid it's going to take me much longer than a weekend to get it done.  

:)

Enjoy your day!

Jen