Project Creep

When you start the project of replacing the sewing room floor...

Ripping up carpet

 But then have to investigate water damage to the sub-floor...

And end up needing to repaint the walls, so then you might as well fix the ceiling paint while you're at it.  And as long as the molding is off you might as well refinish it...

My sewing room's wonderful new floor!

...That's called project creep.

We're getting closer though.  The floor is done.  Hopefully I'll be reporting from my new studio next week!

Linking up with WiP Wednesday.

Penguins - A Finished Top

Penguin Quilt Top

Ta da!  The penguin quilt top is now complete.  There are still some waves in it, but I've made my peace with that.  Hopefully they will work themselves out during the quilting process.

This quilt was originally supposed to have one more round of borders, but I decided to leave them off.  They were just plain borders, and these penguins were telling me they were done.

The quilt top measures approximately 51 x 63.

Floors in Boxes!

 

In other news, can you tell I finally got over my procrastination on setting up my sewing room?  I had been dragging my feet for about ten months.  One week after I finish setting everything up we went out to buy new floors!  Isn't that always the way...?  I told my husband that I should have continued to wait, but he pointed out that I wouldn't have gotten my new floors then. 


Operation (re-)empty the sewing room has begun.  It will be a lot of work, but I'm very excited to get rid of the carpet!

Linking up at WiP Wednesday and Finish it up Friday.

Finally Pillowcases

Nothing big to report today, just thought I'd share these pillowcases.  I made them this week while taking a break from struggling with my machine and the free-motion foot.

I make pillowcases for charity with the 1 Million Pillowcase Challenge when I can, and this fabric has been sitting around waiting for me to attend to it.  I'll probably make a few more before bringing them in to my local quilt shop.

I don't know if you can tell, but the pillowcase with the gold band is actually purple.  I find purple to be one of the most difficult colors to photograph.  What about you?

They call me Little John. But don't let my name fool you.
In real life, I'm very big

Linking up with Finish it up Friday.

Free Motion Frustrations

My pillow

I'm not sure why I thought that I would be able to just pick up machine quilting and go.  I certainly have no reason to believe that should be true.  Nevertheless, when I decided to machine quilt my latest pillow, I thought it was going to be easy.  Oh, how wrong I was.

I thought a spiral would look nice and give my pinwheel some motion.  My first attempt was to try quilting my spiral the same way I did crosshatching (that one time) in the past.  My thought was that I would draw the inner bit of the spiral, start following my chalk line, and then follow the rest with a seam guide.

One trial run later I was at my local quilt store to see if I could find a seam guide.  I couldn't find one with my machine, and I may or may not have even had one to begin with... 

And somehow I walked out with a free motion quilting foot!  I'm not quite sure how that happened.  I've never been interested in machine quilting, yet here we are.

After recruiting my husband figure out how to attach the darn thing, I spent most of the week trying to figure out how to regulate my machine again.  I'm not sure I'm making any progress, and I'm pretty sure I could have hand quilted it by now, but I'm determined to stick it out a while longer.

In the meantime, my pinwheel pillow sits untouched and patiently waiting for me to figure out what I'm doing.

Linking up at WiP Wednesday.