So Much Sewing

I know it's been forever and a day since I last posted, and much of that period stemmed directly from the lack of sewing time. Between February and early May, I'm not sure if I sewed a stitch. Finishing a dissertation will do that to you. But the dissertation is done and defended, and I've enjoyed a nice chunk of relatively open-ended time. Thus May has been, err, was (it's June today, woah), a wonderfully sewing-filled month.

One of the first things I did was make a long-planned wedding gift for Joel and Sibyl. They got married in September which was a lot of months ago, but I had zero time to make things back then. I did have time to purchase fabric, however, and I picked out some fun fabric for cloth napkins that also formed the basis of the color scheme and aesthetic of a table runner. At one point, my mom wondered what I was going to make for them, since I had already given Joel a quilt.

Joel and I were roommates back in the day, including the days in which he began dating Sibyl, and we spent a lot of time enjoying good food (not to mention our stunning ability to polish off whle jars of pickles and olives in one setting). Quality napkins and a table runner for Joel's super awesome craftsman-style table (which he found at a yard sale and was already in the apartment when I arrived) fit the bill.
 

Handily, Joel was in Ann Arbor for work this week, which meant that I not only got to give his wedding present to him in person but we got to take some fantastic parking lot pictures. Who doesn't need a few cars in their crafty photos? As it turns out, one of the awesome things about making gifts for people with whom you lived is that it's pretty easy to nail their aesthetic -- a task made even easier when you have quite similar taste. So the table runner has two sides, the little bits and bobs side and the chunks of cool fabric side. Both are intended to work well in the neat green kitchen J+S have in Seattle.

Initially I was a little uncertain about how to quilt this, given those tiny bits and a lot of negative space. I opted for undulating free-hand echo curves which I love. I used several shades of gray, blue/aqua, and black. While I could pretend that this was a design decision, made to reflect nature and the Pacific Northwest, the truth of the matter is that I ran out of both the medium gray and aqua while quilting and thus needed to add in more and more colors. Happenstance for the win.

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Pretty Things

In July, I won a giveaway of Aurifil thread from Lynne. I got back to Michigan Saturday night and was excited to open the box -- living like a nomad really increases one's tolerance for delayed gratification. And gratified I was. Look at the color card: so.many.colors. I'm looking forward to playing with this thread. I've heard it really decreases the lint in one's machine and since I've grown a few lint monsters over the year, I'm looking forward to seeing if this holds.

Yesterday was an errand day, and errands meant getting a new planner. I know it says 2012, but it's an 18-month planner, and I always get a new one at the end of the summer. Random fact about me: I've always operated on a school-year calendar. All of my non-student years were spent working in high schools or universities. And my mom was a teacher, so even my tiny years moved with the cadences of the school calendar.

My roommate and I went looking for baskets. We ended up in Marshalls. She convinced me that I needed (and would wear) these 3-inch heels. I am not a heels person. But now I own crazy heels. Three inches. That's insane. But they are pretty. And made of patent non-leather (the non-leather shoe options have exponentially increased in the past decade, a trend that greatly pleases my vegetarian self).

Today: more errands and more sewing. That's right, I started sewing last night. It was too dark to get good pictures, but pictures coming soon....

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When I Have Arthritis in My Thumb....

....I'll know whom to blame. I spent several 10-hour days helping my brother and his girlfriend work on their new-to-them fixer-upper. It's a classic DC rowhouse that needs, um, work. More work than anticipated, I think. It has, as they say, "good bones," and I think it will be quite lovely one day. In the meantime, the goal is to get it liveable -- and I am quite invested in this goal as I'm supposed to live there.

This experience has renewed my appreciation for the hard work of demolition, construction, remodeling, and renovation. It's no wonder it costs so much, when such efforts require things like pulling staples out of formerly-carpet-covered floors. Luckily the hardwoods underneath the carpet are in great condition. The two rooms sanded yesterday look fantastic and will look even better when stained. But staple-removal in 3 rooms and a staircase took 2 people 10+ hours.

So a few thoughts from this weekend's work:
1. Never ever carpet over good hardwood. Sand and stain the hardwood, and relish it.
2. Do not paint over textured wallpaper (or any wallpaper for that matter).
3. Do not plaster and paint over wallpaper (seriously, strip the wallpaper when it's fairly straightforward and then plaster and paint).
4. Four layers of bathroom tile are too many. Rip out the old and replace the new before creating an absurd tile-monster bathroom floor.
5. Some people are willing to live -- and eat out of -- disgusting kitchens. Seriously, who doesn't clean up the mouse droppings? Or allows layers upon layers of grease in the oven? But when you encounter such grease, Easy-Off* is your best friend. It's probably full of terrible chemicals, but it is a fabulous cleaner. I really should have photographed this marvel. The oven is now a usable appliance once again.
6. Bleach and white vinegar are truly amazing cleaning products.

I have to confess that I'm still a little tired and sore from the weekend. And my sewing machine sat idle as I squatted and pulled staples, hacked at old wallpaper, and ferociously cleaned a kitchen. There are a few little projects I'd like to wrap up over the next couple of weeks, but the state of the fixer-upper may determine how much gets done...

image from here

But when I get back to sewing, I'll have something new to play with. I checked my email this morning to find that I've won some Aurifil thread and a color card from Lynne's giveaway. I've heard that this thread is silky to work with, especially because it produces very little lint. I'm excited to test it out and perhaps find myself a new kind of thread to use. It also looks like the 5-pack includes a multi-color thread spool and I think that will be especially fun to use on a quilt top.

*I have not been paid to endorse this product. My mom and I plucked it off the shelf because it claimed to be fume-free (true!) and it turned out to also be a miracle-worker. I thought it would take about 8 passes to find the original metal in the oven. It only took one. 

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