February’s fluff

This month flew by. February is a short month. And I was sick for a week!

On the plus side, we enjoyed a visit from my Aunt Bertha this month, we did a little shopping, some pool and hot tub time, and just enjoyed vacation time together. I had a productive month at the sewing machine. And I had a birthday! All in all, it was a very good month.

QUILTING

Star Blocks –This was meant to be a hand-piecing project, but I found out (rather quickly) that I don’t like hand-piecing these little 3″ blocks. I fiddled around with making them by sewing machine, and I’m quite pleased with the result. It takes me about an hour to do each one. Thirty-nine done…a jillion to go.

HSTs — I needed almost 50 more half-square triangles for my scrappy quilt project. I got them done in February, and now I’ve started constructing the quilt top. This is a HST challenge, so I’m not sharing a photo yet.

GOALS FOR NEXT MONTH:

  • Finish the last seven basket blocks for my Ruffled Roses quilt
  • Make more stars!
  • Prep a wool project so I have some hand work ready to go

KNITTING

Gifted Yarn — Aunt Bertha left me with some sumptuous Malabrigo Arroyo yarn in purple. Project to be determined. I also purchased some yarn so I’ll have a knitting project for some car time next month. It will be a cowl.

TRAVEL

We plan to take a little North Carolina day trip to the Callabash area, but it looks like that will be in March.

PHOTOGRAPHY

I’m not getting much photography time in, but there are a few more pictures in the Gallery section of this page. Look at the top of the right-hand column. We have had some really pretty days.

MOVIES

Continuing with our Thursday Movie Days, we saw one movie in February:

Stan & Ollie:

If you grew up with Laurel & Hardy movies, you’d probably enjoy this movie, which covers some of their later years. The actors were so believable as Laurel and Hardy, it adds to the appeal of the film.

TV

  • Mr. & Mrs. Murder on Acorn (binge watched!)
  • We re-watched almost all the Doc Martin episodes on Acorn
  • I’ve introduced Jim to The Brokenwood Mysteries on Acorn, and it’s been a while so they are almost new to me.

So another month has slipped away. Changing my blog’s format and purpose into sort of a project diary has helped me focus on specific tasks I want to accomplish each month. Thank you for stopping by !

Sue

January’s Jottings…

Quilting/Sewing:

Ruffled Roses by Sue Garman. I am working on the twenty-four 6-inch-finished basket blocks. They are really a great exercise in improving my accuracy, as there is not much room for error. Seventeen of the 24 are done. Here area few of them on my “design chair”:

Travel:

We took a road trip to North Myrtle Beach, SC. This is our first visit to the area. I knitted and sewed, Jim enjoyed walking on the beach.

Knitting:

Spotlight Shawl.  

This is an easy shawl that’s taking too much time, and it’s all my fault. I decided I couldn’t do the lace section. It wasn’t that hard, but I would have to give it full attention and count stitches; I like to watch TV while I knit. So I created my own brainless design for that section.

I did a picot bind-off, and I really like it. The whole thing will look much improved once it has been blocked. (I learned how to do the picot edge on a YouTube video. All the how-to help that’s out there is just amazing.)

Reading:

  • (Audible) Top Secret Twenty-One by Janet Evanovich, a Stephanie Plum novel. Predictable and enjoyable. If you liked the first 20, you’ll like this one.
  • (Audible) The Child Finder by Rene Denfield. Recommended by an acquaintance, I enjoyed this book. I would like to read another by this author — not for the storyline, but for the richness of her writing.
  • (Audible) The Witch Elm by Tana French. As a Tana French fan, I expected something similar to her previous books. Not so. First time that I can remember buying a book, getting 1/3 of the way through, and then I quit.
  • (Audible) Bone Box by Faye Kellerman. Still in progress.

Movies:

This winter, we have designated Thursdays as Movie Day. Here are the movies we saw in January:

  • The Mule with Clint Eastwood. Kind of predictable, but still an enjoyable movie, especially if your husband is a big Clint Eastwood fan!
  • On the Basis of Sex, biopic of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. An interesting and educational tribute of the Supreme Court Justice. Worth seeing.

Binge-Worthy TV:

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Seasons 1 & 2, on Amazon Prime. Love the characters and the story. Avoid if offended by frequent coarse language. Now to wait until Season 3…probably 10 months from now!

Photography:

The big event was the lunar eclipse. There are a few other January photos in the Photo Gallery at the top right of this page.

As always, thank you so much for stopping by. Please feel free to leave a comment for me.

If you’d like to get my monthly blog posts by email, there’s a spot where you can sign up in the upper left-hand column where you can enter your email address. Of course your information goes no further, and is considered private.

Sue

the “old bat” cave…

Since it’s pretty tidy, I thought I would share a few of my favorite things in my sewing space, or, as I like to think of it, The Bat Cave.  And no, it’s rarely this tidy!

Welcome to my blog and my sewing room! C’mon in, because who doesn’t enjoy a good snoop around someone else’s sewing space?

I knew I needed a pegboard (or something similar) above my sewing machine. I need to have things handy and out where I can see them. I got this clear plastic pegboard from Amazon, and I love it.

The pegboard comes with the bins and various pegs so you can customize it for your needs.

Next is my cutting table under a traditional pegboard storing my longarm thread supply.

My favorite item in this photo would be my wireless headphones. I find them handy when using the longarm…I can actually hear all the dialogue! There are all kinds of newer ones available as well.

The upper cabinets are from Ikea. I still need to add some under-cabinet lighting. I store my in-progress projects in the cabinets.

I used to have a traditional ironing board in this room, but space is so tight, it seemed like an enormous waste of space. I bought this dresser from Next Act in Apple Valley, MN. It’s a second-hand dresser that they revived with paint. I added a padded pressing surface to the top of the dresser. Now I have a great pressing surface and loads of storage as well.

In the dresser, there are drawers for zippers, sewing-machine thread, manuals, wool, and three drawers FULL of Paula Nadelstern fabric.

Until recently, I stored my cutting rulers in a large drawer. I would forget which ones I owned, and I got tired of digging through a jumbled pile of rulers. The rulers now hang on 3M Command Hooks, and I can easily see what I have…specialty rulers above the turquoise dresser, and traditional rulers on the side of the white unit.

Here you can see the traditional rulers on the side of this unit — also hung on 3M Command Hooks. These white shelves, shoe cubbies, and drawer units were purchased at Target some time ago. They are great for small cuts of fabric, fat quarters, and all kinds of miscellaneous things like buttons, and T pins that I don’t use very often but I need a way to organize them. Various cutting mats are slid between the wall and the closet storage unit. Not pretty, but I can see where they are and easily grab what I need.

My most recent additions are two Sterilite storage units with drawers. I have a small one and a larger one, and they fit perfectly under the Gammill table. I am using them for longarm supplies.

Longarm bobbins are stored in ice-cube trays and kept handy in one of the drawers. The drawers also store some smaller Red Snapper pieces, tape measure, longarm rulers, and my Towa gauge. The large drawers are great for pantographs.

The Bat Cave is in the lower level, so I have one window for some natural light. I was going to put something lacy on the window about the same time I was trying to figure out what to do with county & state fair ribbons. I found a solution to both problems:

Well, that’s about it. Thanks for taking the tour with me!

Sue