Chewing On It

Flannel and Fleece For Connor

Connor’s sex was a surprise at birth, but I had made this blanket thinking of him.  At least the idea of a him.  Lucky us, because this quilt moved from an idea to a pieced top to a finished quilt faster than any other quilt I’ve made.  And was also the fastest I’ve been at actually sending a gift.  For example, my college roommate’s youngest is six months old and her quilt was mailed after this one.  So soon after (ok, so it was after waiting 7 months- yep, it was finished before she was born! and it still took me sending a gift to a new baby to guilt me into finally shipping it) that I forgot to take a picture. 

Here’s the pieced top for Connor:

Blue flannel whales with blue flannel dots and a few cotton squares in the mix.  This was my first time piecing a top with something other than cotton and using fleece.  I like both the flannel and the fleece and will use them again for winter babies, like this January in New England little guy. 

Here it is all finished with a cozy blue and white polka dot back and the whales for the binding.

Sleepy Connor snuggling with his happy mom and cozy quilt:

Connor was my inspiration for trying the baby shoes that he and Alice have.  He was happy to model them.  Just like Alice’s but with a more manly brown thread to compliment his valentine’s pjs.

Looking forward to meeting you soon, Connor!

Guest Room Redo at Not Chew (aka My House)

Unlike the Chew house, I have just one dedicated guest room (there’s a day bed in my office so it can comfortably accommodate one but it’s no guest room).  Might as well make the most of it.   This is the evolution of a room I’ve grown to love- and hope my visitors will too.

When I moved into my house over 8 years ago, the entire second floor had this carpet that I just hated- the feel of it, the color, the everything about it.  The walls had no color.  And all three wonderful roommates who called this room home- I truly couldn’t have hoped for better-  had the same layout with the bed facing the window and up against the wall.  It’s a tough space for anything else because of the doorway and the closet and the fact that the room is pretty narrow.

  

Eventually my roommates moved out and I graduated grad school and got a job that allowed me to pay my mortgage on my own.  And to pay to have the room painted … yellow.  This picture probably looks familiar from the quilting post.  I never really liked this color- too bright and tough to coordinate the linens for the bed.  You can also see here that I replaced the carpet with Brazilian cherry.  I absolutely love my floors!

Inspired by painting the Chew house, and perhaps feeling a little bitter about no change at my house, I snagged a gallon of the Mindful Gray and painted the guest room. Ahhh, no more yellow.

I also re-oriented the bed, moving it to the middle of the room facing the wall towards the door.  Now two people can get out of bed without climbing over each other.  They just have a narrow passage at the foot of the bed:

The space might be annoying if you had to do it everyday to get to your closet, but on the occasional one or two night visit, it’s perfectly comfortable.  Or so I hope.

The bedspread was an amazing deal at the Restoration Hardware outlet.  Can you tell that it’s meant for kids?  Me either.  But it means it costs 85% less than the “adult” version. I picked up the brown quilt at Pottery Barn years ago and they work nicely together.  The white sheet visible above is what I use to protect the bedding from the cat hair from the cat who thinks this is his room.

I made a roman shade for the window with Lotta Jansdotter’s Echo fabric.  The linear pattern looks great in the long and narrow space.  I backed the shade with black out liner and am amazed at how well it blocks the light- sleep tight guests, the sun isn’t getting in this room until you want it.

 

I was feeling good about the progress.  And then super excited about applying my Blik mural to the wall opposite the bed.

I love it!  It was really easy to put up and a lot of fun to position all of those birds. Half way through I decided to wrap the wires around the corner and had just enough to make it happen.  It’s perfect for this wall because I couldn’t hang anything due to the already narrow space between the foot of the bed and the wall.  No profile to worry about here:

If you’re wondering, the other piece of art on the wall is a painting I got in Israel back in ‘99 and then recovered from an ex-boyfriend’s when I visited him years later and saw it hanging in his place.  Huh, didn’t know that was left behind and yes, I will take it back, thank you.

What’s on the other wall?  The wardrobe visible above is gone in favor of a new-to-me dresser and night stand (and mirror- keep it?) for just $40 on craigslist.

I like the simple lines and the size of the dresser.  I’d prefer bigger drawers to having 9 of them, but each of these 9 are big enough.  The night stand is actually one deep drawer made to look like two.  Tricky.

I will likely paint these pieces in the future.  Probably not the yellow seen on this Domestic Adventure blog post, but the post did inspire me to get this dresser.

The rocking chair wasn’t working in the window- there’s just not enough space.  So out it went and I replaced it with a nice plant to add some green and some life to the room.

The pot looks ceramic, but it’s tricky too- light-weight plastic and just $14 at Lowes.  Is that a bird cage?  Yes, it is.  And it will soon have a few fabric birds that coordinate with the shade to pull the room together and add some fun.

Also on the to-dos is hanging the print that’s resting on the pillows- a Hanukkah gift from my folks.  It reminded them of my block.  You can see why when you compare the print to this picture of my block in spring (with my packed car in the foreground)

 

Welcome guests.  I hope you enjoy your stay and like this room as much as I do.

Seattle Theme for Alice

Alice is a Seattle baby.  Rain drops, waves, and whales.

This was my first quilt without a pattern or a class or a real plan.  I just started pulling the pieces together, thought of whimsical pinwheels, needed a ninth block and liked the slightly wonky bordered square.  I wanted it to be bigger so I added the sashing which makes the pinwheel blocks pop.  When I saw the wave fabric I knew I had my back. 

The quilting is just straight lines to frame the squares.  This was my first time using a different color for thread for the front and back.  You really can’t see the quilting on the back because the white thread blends in.  I think I like it better when the stitching is visible, even with the bright pink contrast.  But I still love how this turned out.

With a two-sided coordinating pillow to decorate her room:

 

And baby shoes, my latest favorite sewing project.

Welcome to the world, Alice!  Looking forward to meeting you when our paths cross from coast to coast.

A Quilt for My Sister

This was a very enjoyable labor of love. 

Step 1:  Fall in love with the “I Do” quilt pattern at Spool made by Olan.

Step 2: Adjust pattern to a queen size quilt- I added a few columns and made the rows longer.

Step 3: Spend hours picking out fabric at Spool (with help from Olan).  My sister has a yellow bedroom and likes “natural” colors, so that was my theme.

Step 4: wash all that fabric.

Step 5: Dry all of the fabulous prints

Step 5: iron (least favorite step)

Step 6: Cut hundreds of rectangles and squares (coffee helps)

Step 7: Attach Steam-a-Seam to squares and cut out circles using Margarita glass (this was sample that I ironed together to see how the fusible webbing would work).

Step 8: Lay out the pattern.  This took HOURS.

Step 9:  Stack the columns into numbered envelopes for sewing (because it was way too late to start sewing after finally getting the pattern set)

Step 10: Iron the circles to the background square.  Steam-a-Seam is my favorite fusible webbing by far.

Step 11: Piece the top by sewing the 13 columns and then sewing the columns together.  This was actually the easiest and least time consuming of all the steps.

Step 12: The back.  I decided to use the solid green fabric on the front and to incorporate all of the other patterns by piecing the scraps in two rows in an off-set cross.  This turned out to be a lot harder than I thought it would be, but I’m glad I stuck to it because I love the way it looks.

Step 13: quilt it!  This took me months to get to, and not very long to actually sew.  I had it pieced in August for my sister’s Labor day birthday.  And didn’t quilt it until Thanksgiving.  Luckily, she’s patient.  I quilted it in straight lines in the ditch of the columns to keep the linear look of the pattern.

Step 14: the border.  This is the truly hand-sewn part.  And it took about 15 hours to finish over a few weeks in front of movies and Sunday night HBO.  I used the brown bark fabric and it looks great.

Step 15: Take pictures

Step 16 (in progress):  Hand it over.  I will.  I swear.  When I see her.  I’m just not willing to ship it and risk that it could be lost in the mail.  That’s reasonable, right?  And now she has extra motivation to visit! 

Felted Wool Quilt for Mom & Dad

I’m notoriously late with gifts.  This year’s holiday season was no exception.  I was two weeks late with this quilt for my parents- even with a holiday that’s 8 days long. 

I saw a quilt of felted wool sweaters at HOBNOB, a fantastic store in Chestnut Hill (owned by a Buffalonian) that introduced me to Galbraith and Paul fabrics.  The quilts were expensive … and inspirational.  I thought, I could do this!  Or at least try.

So I went home and went through the bags of clothes awaiting delivery from my basement to Goodwill (as noted above, I’m kind of a procrastinator) searching for 100% wool.  There was a nice snowflake patterned J Crew sweater and a a solid tan that were destined for donation.  A good start, but not enough.  So I went to the Goodwill in South Philly (no, I was not smart enough to bring my donations with me but I thought about what a good idea that would have been when I was there) and then to another South Philly thrift store and then to the Salvation Army in Manayunk.  I couldn’t stop.  FYI, sweaters do not cost $1.  The cheapest one I found was $2, but most were $5 or $6 and one was $13 but I had to have it- 100% cashmere and really pretty colored stripes. I spent about $100 and I now have a stash of sweaters.  This quilt used 5 and is a nice throw size.

Time for felting.  Loads and loads of laundry.  I washed them three times with hot water and a good amount of detergent on the first two loads, none on the third.  And I put them in a hot drier in between loads. 

There was some dramatic shrinkage:

  

And some just noticeable shrinkage:

I cut up the sweaters into random rectangles and then just started sewing pieces together.  It was a pain to get everything to line up by sewing without a plan but I like the end the result.

It’s backed with blue flannel that I just machine stitched to the front.

I love how the pieces vary in color and texture, even within a piece where the sweater’s cuff is included.

I hand tied this quilt (no picture- that’s just an errant thread in the shot above).  My dad’s response: why are there all these strings sticking out?  So maybe next time I’ll just tack it in a few places with the machine. 

Front Load Bliss

No more laundromat!!!

Pictures of the first load:

The install wasn’t so much fun- after fours hours, including three trips to Home Depot, and two people there is now one functioning laundry closet.

Some pictures of the install:

Attaching the dryer vent at the top …

and at the bottom.  Check out those heavy-duty, no-burst hoses.  Sweet.

Are you kidding me?  How is 8 feet not enough?  I am NOT going back to Home Depot.

How much room do we have for the gas line?  Let me see …

Just enough. 

The Landings Get Mindful

What does that mean?  I don’t know.  What does “Mindful Gray” mean?  It’s the color that ties this house together, so be mindful of the improvement that a fresh coat of pain(t) can bring to a house. 

Showing off the freshly painted laundry room that is awaiting appliances to be delivered tomorrow.  A nice shade of deep green/teal/bluishness on the back wall and Mindful Gray on the sides.

Because we were over-achievers in the paint department today, we didn’t just stop at two flights of stairs, two hallway/landings, and the laundry room- we painted the ceilings and primed the master bedroom and the small bedroom on the second floor.  That’s how we roll.  Get it?  Roll.  Yeah, there were a lot of paint fumes (low VOCs, but still).

At Long Last, Behold the Clawfoot Tub

This tub has been filled with drama.  We went from buying the tub in March and moving it from Philly to New Jersey to Philly, having the contractor scrap the tub on the second day of work in July, spending hours to find a new tub only to have the contractor fail to buy it, finally locating another tub and having the contractor get it, refinishing the tub and feet, finding out the feet that the contractor was given and gave us don’t fit the tub, going to New Jersey to get a second set of feet, refinishing those feet, fashioning a bracket and attaching the feet, to finally having the hardware installed (and then one more day to have it completed correctly), to now.

It helps to remember that just six months ago, the tub in this bathroom was a litter box:

And now it’s a beautiful big bathroom with pedestal sinks, a comfort height toilet that won’t let you slam the lid, a snowflaked floor, and the perfect tub.  (It will be perfect when we clean the rolled edge of the old paint and caulk). 

I’m looking forward to filling the tub from the gooseneck faucet, lounging against the perfectly angled back with my arms on the rolled rims, and washing my hair with the hand-held shower.  I just need to get some bubbles.  And a curtain for the window so the neighbors don’t get to join me.  And this will be my view:

Carriage House Bathroom Update

A whole lot closer to done- the toilet is back in its place and the new vanity (that the homeowner scored for $100) has moved in.

To be continued with a faucet, medicine cabinet, and threshold.