Baby steps

I feel like I was taking baby steps with crafting this week. I've been volunteering at the elementary school library for the past two weeks, and I will probably be there for all of the upcoming week. I'm helping the new librarian reorganize the library. It's turning out to be a much bigger job than either of us anticipated!

As a result, I'm too tired to do much of anything when I get home... a ring and a chain here and there, five minutes at the sewing machine, ten minutes of reorganizing at home... I'm looking forward to getting back into a normal school year routine of leaving the house around 10:30 and arriving back home around 1:30.

One of the high school girls is saving money to buy a sewing machine. When I heard what she was doing, I asked if she'd like to help me organize my craft supplies, something I've been working on for years without much success. She came over Friday afternoon and put together this seven drawer storage cabinet for me. It's a great size for my craft supplies, and I have two great spots where it will be useful. I may have to order another!

Dave's sister gave daughter Carol her chair that she was given as a young girl. The fabric was well worn, and the chair needed some tender loving care. Carol went on a fabric hunt and found some beautiful vintage fabric from the 1930s on Etsy. Even with the extremely high shipping cost, the fabric was less expensive than any fabrics she found in upholstery shops in our area. 

We were surprised at the similarities between the two fabrics. Carol is holding a piece of the old fabric that the upholsterer was able to salvage.

The chair looks great in Carol's bedroom! So, my Saturday adventure was picking up Carol's chair. It doesn't sound like much, but it's a half hour drive to Carol's house and another hour to the upholstery shop.  That makes a total of three hours driving time for me. I didn't mind. I find it easy to talk with all of my daughters, and that always makes the time fly by.

I recently watched a YouTube video on turning a sweatshirt into a patchwork jacket. I followed the directions for cutting apart the sweatshirt earlier in the week, and I chose the fabric that I wanted to use. Yesterday afternoon I cut my fabric strips into the size rectangles I wanted. My plan was to also bind more blocks for my quilt, but I ran out of energy.

I'm making slow progress on my latest Curds & Whey bookmark from Tatting with Visual Patterns by Mary Konior. 

Dave is heading out to help a friend today, so maybe I'll have some time to make good progress on my projects. I want to accomplish as much as I can today and tomorrow, because I know that crafting time will be sparse in the coming week!

Starting the second strip

 

There wasn't much time for crafting today, but I did manage to bind two blocks and join them together. This week is proving to be a very busy one, so I don't expect to get much done. Still, any progress is good progress!

First strip

 

Last night I sewed the first strip together for my current quilt. I meant to bind more blocks this today, but it didn't happen. Instead, I volunteered at the elementary school in the morning, did my lunch duty, and then went grocery shopping with Mom. It was a busy day!

Bookmark and quilt blocks

 

Today I gave Serafil another try, and I'm glad I did. Maybe it was a difference in my attitude, but this Curds & Whey bookmark tatted up beautifully. The thread is color #156.

I spent the afternoon binding the quilt blocks for the first row of my new quilt. It took me a while to settle on which fabric to use for the binding. My choice was this soft gray or a tone on tone white fabric. The white seemed to stark to me. I'm glad I went with the gray!

Busy Saturday

 

I forgot to post yesterday that I finished quilting the blocks for my new quilt. I know I opened my computer, but I must have been distracted by something. That seems to happen a lot these days!

This morning I finished reading The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier, the story of a glass making family in Murano, Italy. The story was interesting but a bit bizarre. The family ages normally, but they skip through time. Everyone else in the world stays on a normal timeline. The story starts over five hundred years ago, and ends after the 2020 pandemic. It was interesting, but not something I would read again. I do plan on reading at least one more book by this author with the hope that everything happens in one time frame!

Tollway Tatters met this morning. We had a nice sized group, and I managed to tat a Curds & Whey bookmark from Tatting with Visual Patterns by Mary Konior. Since I used larger picots than I have been lately, my three mistakes are pretty well hidden.

We talked about tatting with polyester thread and King Tut. I've decided I'll give the Serafil another try, and I'm really tempted to start a hanky edging in King Tut. Getting together with other tatters sets my mind spinning with ideas!

I squared up all of my quilt blocks this afternoon, and then I arranged the layout for my quilt. This one will be a little smaller than my last one, only 30 blocks, 5 across and 6 down. 

I've decided that I will machine stitch the binding, but hand stitch the blocks together. I need something that will keep me awake when Dave and I watch t.v. at night!

Half way there!

 

My allergies were really bothering me today, so I didn't feel like doing much of anything. I did take some time to quilt this afternoon, and I was surprised when I checked my progress to find that I have half of my blocks quilted. Yay!

13

 

I wasn't quite as tired when I returned home from school today, so I did some quilting. 13 blocks are quilted with 19 to go.

Tatting didn't happen last night. My hands just didn't want to work with shuttles and thread. I think they might have been protesting the number of books I've been moving around the past few days!