Home & Sewing

Last week we took a trip to one of my favorite places. 

We got really lucky because every single thing we went in for was in stock or able to be ordered and delivered within a few days. You might recall me discussing our 10-month quest to gather parts for a closet remodel. {Which hasn't even been started yet...} I've noticed that a lot of things have really gone up in price here, too. But I still love the simplicity and use of space.

We underestimated the size of some of the boxes. Everything just barely fit in the car.

My son was very excited that the desk he wanted was in stock. We didn't think that would be the case based on the website. It said the desktop wasn't in stock. They had tons. We did get the last Alex unit though. He has resurrected our ancient Mac (not pictured) and made himself a little workplace.

We are doing some customization on all the other pieces we purchased. My husband's been hard at work in the garage. Hopefully by next week I will have a clean living room with new, customized furniture that I can share. 

I had a bit of an accident with my sewing chair last week. It had been making horrible noises  every time I moved for a few months. I was talking to my husband on the phone, told him my chair felt funny, and boom. Down I went. The chair broke in half. I did not drop the phone, but my daughter was upstairs and heard me thud onto the floor. I bruised up my arm/elbow pretty good, but nothing else. The chair base used to connect there.

I already had a replacement chair picked out, but it turns out it is discontinued, so no chair for me. My husband found (he thinks) a replacement part for my existing chair. It's on order and I might get it within a month. We'll see. I'm back to using my antique bench, which is quite comfortable, but stationary. So I keep moving it back and forth between the computer and the sewing machine.

I've done a very small amount of personal sewing this week. I made some small throw pillows for our chairs.  This project has been in the purchased-but-not-started category since November. That's actually a pretty short time for me. The big delay came because I couldn't figure out how to insert the zippers. I finally found a tutorial here that made sense. 

There are a few changes I would make. The biggest one is that I would have serged all the raw edges first. I also would have taken more time to center the stripe pattern on the pillows, but when I cut them out I was more concerned with lining up the stripes on both sides and I didn't have a lot of the upholstery fabric because it was expensive. 

Even though I lined up the zippers and matched centers and edges and so forth, when I sewed the zipper using the invisible zipper foot for my machine, the pattern did not line up. I took more care with the second pillow than the first and it still did not line up. Perhaps this is where the built in even feed on some machines would be useful?

I was successful at lining up the pattern on the tops of the pillows, so that was good enough.

The only other personal sewing I achieved this week is completing the next two blocks of the Loves Me, Loves Me Not QAL.

I did quilt a few quilts.

First is the quilt I teased last week. Paula expertly pieced this one and it is my most favorite quilt I've been sent ever. 😃 It's a quilt full of Harry Styles! How fun is that!?! The quilting design is Interlocked Orange Peel. 


This is an interesting pattern because the line drawing looks like this:

But when you zoom in all the way, it looks like this:



So the challenge is to try to get the intersections to line up as closely as possible to give the illusion of touching, but they will probably never touch. Here's a detail shot of one of my own quilts that I used the same design on. Can you see how they don't quite touch?

The next quilt I did is Ann's t-shirt quilt. This one, like Harry, has a minky backing. Ann graciously let me quilt Diagonal Plaid on it. 

Next I quilted Baptist Fans on Lyn's Irish Chain quilt. 

And then Swirling on Ann's Melodic Mystery quilt.

These last three are all very large quilts!

The only other things of note this week are that something ate all my tulips before they had a chance to bloom. 😭 This is the only spot in the yard I can actually grow tulips (until now).

And my husband and I are going on a marathon shop hop on Friday and adding another IKEA stop to grab some more cabinet doors since I changed my mind on what I wanted to do. 

The link up for OMG finishes opens on Saturday. Stop back to see if I will complete my goal or not. 😬

Linking with For the Love of Geese, My Quilt Infatuation, and Confessions of a Fabric Addict

4 comments

  1. Glad you weren't seriously injured when your chair collapsed! The quilting on the quilts looks so nice, you do a great job. Happy stitching!

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  2. Gotta love an IKEA run! I'm very due up--planning on getting a whole new cutting table and set up for under it (storage), among other things. I laughed at your pic because years ago I took a similar one with my daughter in back among all the boxes sticking thru. I have no idea how to change patterns but I guess I'll get to that eventually. Not enough time in the day for me to figure everything out it seems! (I know there are three different modes in QP for me to work in and right now I'm comfortable in the mode where it does all the work!)

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  3. Hi Anne-Marie, you've done some lovely quilting for your clients. Your pillow is a success and looks wonderful :-) I'm glad that you didn't cause yourself any injuries falling off your chair. I know that it can cause bruising (lol). I haven't planted tulips in my garden since the first year that I moved in and the rabbits and squirrels ate them or moved them. I now have a couple of tulips that bloom every year - probably a neighbours! Take care.

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  4. Sounds like Ikea was a win for you!! What a fun way to stuff your car haha!!!
    your quilting is so pretty!!!
    Your Love me, Love me not blocks are really cool!!

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