.....surfacing

It's been awhile since I posted!  This is not because I haven't been sewing, but I've been too busy to get my act together to write a coherent post LOL.  We have been working hard on sewing machines and updating the for sale blog, cleaning up machines and testing them.  And, I have a new ceiling in my basement!  We built the house four years ago, but had to save up a few pennies to put a drop ceiling in this large room.  We found a great deal on tile and fluorescent fixtures this summer and it was time to get it in.

(click on the photos to enlarge)

putting in the frame

lots of figuring around the angles

ceiling in

this took a little thinking

this treadle machine is just like the one I learned to sew on - it now serves as our coffee table

we added lots of daylight tubes

I found "create" at an antique shop

my black Singer 301 in a trapezoid cabinet - I finished the topper from leftover hexagon blocks

some toys on the ledge

the six Singer Featherweights we serviced and tested this summer ready to find new homes :-)

all my rulers are sorted and organized again - on the wall is my selvage cube quilt

I opened up my Singer 403 in the curved front cabinet and did some sewing on it last week.  Love that machine!

This area needs to be dealt with yet!! LOL  I have to sort my book shelves first to make space.  Hopefully, I will have time this summer.

Sorting and organizing a sewing room is an ongoing, never ending process, but it's always fun to root through and find things you've forgotten about.  Now I need a few weeks of UFO retreats to make headway on the stuff I found :-).

Snow day production

Jake has a snow day today, so we're in a bit of a relaxed mode. I was going to go to one of my favourite quilt shops today and roam around in London, but the weather is not good for that, so I'm staying home. Cozy inside with the snow blowing around and the wind howling around the house! Sounds like a blizzard out there, but we're not getting real major amounts of snow.

Jake put the coffee on, grabbed the ladder and decided this was a great day to get our family blocks up to date. Our youngest son, Ben, started this tradition years ago and kept it updated with current girl/boyfriends and new babies. When he married 2 1/2 years ago, he continued the tradition in his own home. When one of the girls was expecting, he would add Baby in non coloured letters until the baby was born, when the blocks would be replaced with the name in coloured letters. A fun tradition. This is also how we found out they were expecting their first child when he added 'baby' at our house :-).

Here is Jake preparing for the job:

My task was to organize the leftover baskets of blocks and pass proper letters to him through the railing. This is a two person operation :-).


Do you have another E for me??

Arranging the blocks neatly in order, adding the two newest grandbabies and updating the year:

Note the convenient spot for Jake's coffee cup :-). This is when you find out things about the construction of the house...the coffee cup does not fit between all of the railings LOL.


Have we got everything correct:


The completed, updated blocks:

We ran out of the letter e so I scrounged around til I came up with Quilt til you Wilt for the sewing room window sill:

That oughta inspire us to quilt in that sewing room :-)!

Stash Management

Comments on yesterday's post about the leaders/enders quilt got me thinking of posting a few pictures of how I organize my leftover fabric strips. Whenever I am finished a quilt, I cut the small leftover fabric into 2 1/2" or 2" (or smaller) strips and put them in the appropriate drawer. I used Bonnie Hunter's suggestions for sizes that work well in scrappy quilts. I look at yard sales for these drawer units and use them for all kinds of things. My cutting table is actually two kitchen tables which we also picked up at yard sales a few weeks apart for $5.00 and $2.00 :-). DH, Jake, made square 'risers' and drilled holes in it exactly the size of the table legs to make the cutting surface at a comfortable height. I now have a 60" square table for cutting and pinning. I have these drawer units under the table all around and store tools, thread and supplies on one side and projects that I have on the go in other drawers. Here is the side that stores the 'homemade' jelly rolls :-).

The first bank of drawers has 2" squares, 2 1/2" squares, 2" strips, 2 1/2" strips and 3 1/2" strips:

The second bank of drawers has strings, 1" strips, 1 1/2" strips (I'm working on a scrappy log cabin with these) and leftover binding pieces:

It takes a little work to get this set up and get into the habit of putting things into these drawers, but after awhile it gets to be second nature. And, the best part is that when I need something, it's right there.

and we have grass and a new barbecue!

We got the sod in for our house on Friday! That will definitely make for less mud in the house!! It didn't take the guys very long to put it in...an hour and a half and the ground was transformed from dust to lush green grass. Here is the front of the house:

The backyard looks just like a patchwork quilt :-).

We also got a new barbecue on the weekend since we now have a natural gas hookup and our old barbecue was having a few issues. Let the summer begin!

We emptied the whole sewing room on Saturday afternoon!! We hope to put the laminate floor in that room tomorrow. Then I can finally find permanent places for all my sewing stuff and maybe memorize where it all is :-).

We have a new deck!

Haven't been doing a lot of sewing lately as we've been working on the house doing more unpacking and cleaning up. My brother in law and nephew have a deck building company and just finished up making our first deck. It'll be so nice to sit outside since we don't have grass yet. This deck is covered so we should be able to sit here a lot even when it's raining. We have to pick up our patio chairs yet; our kids have been storing them :-). Here is the view to the right side of the deck:

View to the back...we have a ravine here so no neighbours that we can see:


We hope to build a shed under the deck to store the lawnmowers and garden tools:
Railing along the back. We hope to build another deck next summer halfway down to the ground and connect it with a stairs. We will remove the left railing to make the stairs:

It even has a quilt on it already :-). Actually, this one is a little small...I have another one on the go that's bigger which should work perfectly for this table:

We have a natural gas hookup on the deck so now we need to go shopping for a barbecue :-).
The back of the house:

More spring on a COLD day

My sister in law brought a very pretty bunch of tulips over on Friday. Nice to enjoy them on the kitchen table to try to convince us that Spring is really here. It's so cold here today, it feels like snow in the air.

Spring has sprung!

Mother's Day yielded some colour for our mud surrounded house :-). Nice to see flowers and plants through the windows.

Son in law, Brian, snuck up to the house on Saturday evening and hung these two pansy bags on the coach lights of the garage! We had company and never noticed a thing...what a surprise to walk outside and find flowers had sprung from the lanterns :-).

Ben and Heather brought my Mother's Day, birthday, housewarming gift over..two lovely lilac bushes (we were just planning earlier in the day where we'd like to put some lilac bushes!) and a beautiful Geranium.

The Geranium found a nice spot on the bench that my grandfather made when he first visited from Holland when I was 11 years old. I remember watching him build that bench. When it is warm enough, I will give it a coat of paint to match the house.
Jake fabricated a couple of wire hangers and we hung the pansies on the lights...I'm thinking they look pretty good hanging there.

I'm moved, I think!

We have just moved to a new house and are loving it! We moved in two weeks ago and I've been busy unpacking things and finding lots of items that have been packed for several months. We stayed with my sister in law for 5 weeks between places. It worked out well and I even had my own sewing room there :-). We built a raised ranch so that we could have large windows in the lower level which is where my sewing room and Jake's office are. So, we basically live down there. We put in floor heating in the basement which makes it very comfortable. We hope to put a laminate floor in the sewing room this summer, so I have set up the room temporarily. Here are a few pictures.

Here is the Dear Jane sewing station. I have my Singer 28 handcrank set up in a library table. I received the laminated poster of the original Dear Jane quilt from my friend Amy last Christmas and hope to hang that on the wall above the machine.

An old Husqvarna cabinet (the machine is long gone) is serving as my light box work area. I'm working on some embroidery and need to do a little more tracing, so now it's all set up to work.

My Bernina 614 electric and the trusty Singer 15-88 treadle are set up right under the windows with my drawers of supplies and UFO's close at hand. The ironing board and cutting table are close to the sewing area.

Here is the sewing room looking from the back to the front of the house. There is lots of natural light. My old kitchen table (with four leaves) minus the casters will serve as a sewing table until I find some individual tables. We also hope to make a cutting table this summer. I'm contemplating the design :-).

The sewing room looking from the front to the back. The wall between the two book cases will be my design wall. It will have shelves along the whole wall for my fabric and we hope to put sliding doors in front that will serve as the design wall.

Now to find time to actually sew in the room!