Relentless Toil

Happy Birthday to Me! I got an Easy Quilter 3

It was my birthday last Wednesday. Much earlier in October, my present arrived. Of course I did not wait until my actual birthday. Come on.

I may have done a little dance when it arrived. Maybe I did. I was really looking forward to this in a big big way. Ask my husband and Julie how many times I spontaneously gushed about it at them before its arrival.

All excitement and eagerness aside, I most definitely read the instructions. Well, most of them.

This is some of the hardware. Totally non-threatening stuff. I was actually able to do 100% of the assembly all by myself, AND there were no mystery leftover hardware pieces at the end of assembly! I get the heebie geebies when there are mystery leftover hardware pieces when I am done assembling something. Especially something that is somehow supposed to house a baby, you know? That is why I read the instructions nowadays. Mostly.

So, the point of the Easy Quilter 3 is that, without spending thirty thousand dollars, and without even needing a fancy pants sewing machine like my Bernina, you can machine quilt by moving your regular old sewing machine machine, instead of trying to push and pull and shove a great big quilt under your comparatively-quite-small machine. Here is the rear track. The little wheels allow the machine to move left and right. There's another track parallel to this; and 2 more tracks perpendicular, that allow the machine to move forward and backward. You get a full range of motion.

And there's miss fancy pants Bernina sitting pretty up on the fully assembled rig, with her fancy pants stitch regulator, which cost me like three kidneys and a dog a couple of years back, and which I would realize, shortly after taking this photo, I didn't really really need. (I do like the stitch regulator for small quilts, still, though. And the Easy Quilter 3 isn't good for quilts with any dimension less than 48 inches.)

There are little handles (you can barely see one of them peeking out under the quilt) that I use to move the machine any-which-way over the quilt. And that quilt there is just a small crib-sized one, the top of which I had sitting around for YEARS, since before the kindergartener of the house was born...

And there. I quilted. This one's a bit imperfect, I hadn't yet gotten the hang of steering slowly while letting the machine run at top speed -- but I think I had the whole darn quilt quilted in some insanely small amount of time, like an hour tops. Crazy! When I was done, there was no neck pain, no shoulder pain, no back pain, no grousing at my family (hee). Seriously, it's so much faster and easier machine quilting this way. I have since quilted much bigger quilts, and much more evenly, but I have no photos of them yet. It is gift-making season, you know. You'll see them after the holidays.

back to school

This is the first year in a long, long, long while I've had the pleasure of buying new school supplies. My little girl is going to kindergarten -- a little early, so maybe she'll do kindergarten twice, we'll see. Anyway, we're very excited and so far it's going very well. For school supplies, she needed: 2 folders, crayons, markers, colored pencils, regular pencils, a pencil sharpener, safety scissors, glue sticks, and a box she can open and close all by herself in which to store all of this stuff. She decorated the box with many fairy stickers.

For the first sharpening of the pencils I hauled out the very same electric pencil sharpener my mom bought me when I was very young. I was thinking I would have myself some kind of International Foods Coffee Moment, you know, nostalgic and proud and romanticized (that pencil sharpener saw a lot of action in my day, I like my pencils sharp as needles and I drew with them almost constantly) until I plugged the sharpener in and realized it's now a dud. I had to use the mechanical sharpener that a previous homeowner installed in my basement many years ago. It's the kind you crank. I'd never used it before but it worked fine! Now I wonder who installed it and who used it. I guess it's more of a If These Walls Could Talk Moment than an International Foods Coffee Moment but anyway, pretty cool.

--

Assuming you could go to school for ANYTHING now, what would you want to learn?

Give Some, Get Some

Today I freecycled 2 great big bags of fabric that I was sure I wasn't going to use. I have to make some room in the attic (where most of my fabric is kept) for some kitchen storage as we are slowly but surely getting an entirely new kitchen (yay). Plus, I'd rather this fabric got used by somebody instead of just sitting around here. I do like having a fabric museum of sorts, it's fun to visit, but that's not really the point. All the fabric is supposed to become something else.

I used to buy a yard at a time all the time -- or more, if I really liked the print or if I thought the fabric was going to back or bind a quilt. Now I find that a fat quarter is really a good size for most of the work that I do these days.

Of course I made so much room I had to fill it back up a bit.

The above fabrics were from Z&S Fabrics who have really great clearance deals and always ship fast and do a sweet job of packaging. I also stumbled upon Chester County Quilting, a new-ish local brick-and-mortar shop, and holy cow, I love it, and it's a good thing I didn't discover it previously because I would surely be in the worst debt by now! I got some Moda charm packs there (5" squares, pre-cut) which I hope to deploy on some delicious ideas from the Moda Bake Shop.

Meanwhile, Maya (all back to normal, though of course the rest of the family has to be ill now 'cause that's how it goes) witnessed our various giveaway efforts and very gamely took us up on our offer of one small new big-girl toy for each bag of outgrown toys she donated to charity. She put together !!4 BAGS!! of toys! She is really thrilled with her trade rewards, too, and I am so happy that she made such fine grownup decisions.

Julie's Tea Party Quilt

Some months ago, Julie and I were driving down to our friend Gosia's and we got to talking about what Julie would like for her 40th birthday; I wanted to do something really special for her. She chose high tea with some of her nearest & dearest ladies, and wow, what a good choice. I would like to have a tea party, like, every week. We had the party at Tea With An Accent in Yardley which really deserves all the very good reviews it's gotten. I didn't have to lift a finger, either, which was particularly good this week as nasty germs continue to plague the household (Maya is almost out of quarantine but it looks like Sam's got sinusitis... again!).

I wanted Julie to have a very special memento of her day so I made her the teacup quilt shown above. Each teacup is of a different fabric; the curls of steam above each cup are in free motion quilting, just running stitch, and the teabag strings are pretty tight zigzags. Each tea party guest was invited to write a word/phrase describing Julie on a teabag tag, then sign. I was so proud to see this quilt fill up with such beautiful and fitting sentiments. Here are some that I remember:
"my frilly garden princess" - Julie's mom
"sparkling wit" - Micki
"pursuer of quests" - Lianne
"loving flowers" - Gosia
"beautiful as a butterfly" - Alicia
"defender of the mighty" - me

Julie's young cousin Haley interpreted the rules in a unique and delightful way by drawing a sweet butterfly on her teabag tag instead of writing something. I totally approve.

Lianne (a great photographer) snapped lots of photos, and here we all are with the quilt all signed (though I think Drin was taking a turn with the camera here). I'm on the far left and Julie is front and center with the shiny tiara. Oh, and here I am stuffing my face and invading Haley's personal space, I think. I'm happy, though. Awesome.

Mommy's Art Camp for Very Poorly Children

Mommy's Art Camp for Very Poorly Children has only ever had one customer, but she's a REALLY FREQUENT CAMPER. I shake my fist at you, germs and plagues and diseases. Yesterday Maya was deemed too infectious for school but she was very jolly with the paints and crayons at home.

One thing she likes me to do is make a "coloring book" page for her using Sharpie on watercolor paper. I have to draw quickly or she gets, ahem, peeved.

I sense someone at her school is encouraging her to color within the lines. It does not come from me. I also think that, as her school is such a peace-love-n-happiness kind of place, no one is being bombastic about it. I suppose what I am trying to say is, wow, she's getting some good fine motor control.

Today's camping experience was a different story. Today the camper was much worse off and was weary and despondent and bedridden -- yet sleepless -- and she reasoned (almost tearfully; there was big pathos afoot) that videos of kittens were her only hope.

That actually worked very well. Thank you, youtube. She laughed out loud. Then she rallied out of bed, drew herself a cat and a mouse, wrote "cat", wrote "mouse", ate noodles, wrote "Noodles! Yum!" (her exclamation points have fat circles on the bottom, they are very cute and bubbly) and slept for 3 solid hours without coughing herself sick all the way through. Improvement!

Wherein I Whine About My First World Problems

First World whine #1: Alas, my summer vacation is over. We went to Kalamazoo, the Jersey Shore, Newport, and then my family crashed my friend Sarah's family's Quisisana party, which, except for swarms of mosquitoes* feasting on me and Sarah's daughter, was really, really lovely and a totally unique experience that occasionally hinted at that old chestnut, Dirty Dancing, only with less dirty and generally less dancing.
The people who take care of guests at Quisisana double as musicians and performers and they are really quite talented; seriously good. Shannon Kessler, the lady who sang the part of Mimi in the La Boheme number, had me SOBBING in the front row. SOBBING. I was so impressed I felt like I should be the one pouring these guys THEIR coffee in the mornings. In Dirty Dancing parlance that would be like carrying a watermelon.
While there, I discovered that I am really good at kayaking. Well... I guess I am really good at kayaking. I did not have any tip-over-and-have-to-get-back-on-in-water-over-my-head opportunities. I might be bad in that kind of situation. But in the calm and beautiful waters of Lake Kezar, I can paddle really fast. And not tip over. I can also put my own kayak and my own folding chair away. I like carrying the watermelon. Sarah reminded me of this many times.

* All the nasty bitey bugs of the northeast US find me particularly delicious. I've contracted Lyme disease twice, and a few days before our vacation, I removed yet another deer tick from my person. Happily, I remain symptom-free this time... phew!

First World whine #2: My chocolate cake and ice cream diet has embiggened my butt to previously personally unknown levels of bigness. My pants don't fit. I have to stop eating chocolate cake and ice cream. I have to stop eating the brioche and cookies my husband bakes so well. I have to stop making and subsequently Hoovering coconut custard pie. I have to get back to working out. Sarah and I theorize however that a giant bottom is an asset in balancing a kayak, so maybe I should reconsider. Except there is no kayaking in my hometown. We only have little bitty streams.

First World whine #3: Why must Ultra Bond Lite fusible web gunk up my sewing machine needles? I think I will take a tip from the Chicago School of Fusing and try Wonder Under, or maybe Misty Fuse, because I have fusible-web applique projects in mind, but I don't want to be de-gunking gunky needles every few minutes. Do you have this problem, too? What a trial. What a complete first world trial. I managed to make a brand new baby this name quilt, though, with fused and then machine quilted letters:

First World whine #4: My next round of Netflix dvds don't get here until late tomorrow afternoon. I need to see the next episode of Manor House! Great is my suffering.

Feeling Very Accomplished

My daughter's room looks wonderful. The mural looks wonderful. The dresser looks wonderful. It isn't all completely done, but she loves it.

There's about 2 more days of work to do -- seal the dresser and put its little ladybug knobs on, tack on the missing toe moulding, touch up the paint on the trim, blah blah blah. I don't know when these things will happen, we are in social summer mode, but we can live really happily without having these things done. I mean, my daughter loves her new room so much that she cleans up after herself, putting all her little toys away, every day since the big reveal. She's four and she cleans her room! No, wait, we need more exclamation points!!! There!!!! I don't even have to tell her to do it. (MY room is not clean, just so you know.)

I thought I should explain how all this came about. It wasn't spontaneous and it wasn't something I had always planned to do someday, not really. I never designed a nursery or anything. A few months ago, some friends were sharing photos of their homes, and especially their kids' rooms. My friends are really creative. They poured their creativity into their homes and created all these special spaces for their families. The kids' rooms were simply dreamy and dreamily simple. Nothing was too extravagant, nobody spent a ton of money, and everything they had done, I knew that I could do, pretty much, if I would just make the time to do it. And I knew my kid would love something more put-together, if I would just put it together, and that I would really, really love doing it. One day soon that room is going to be much more hers than mine and eventually she'll want to paint it black and hang up crazy posters of crazy celebrities or something (and you know -- I probably won't stand very much in her way, I think), but right now, my kid is my number one fan, my muse, and my best customer. She really puffs me up. So I did this for her, and for me, and the pinky-purple paint may be buried under lots of other layers of color in years to come but we will never forget this.

Now onto the details I figure some people will be looking for:

The mural. The mural was drawn in Illustrator and finished up in Photoshop by yours truly. It measures 43"x54". I used uprinting.com to print it; they call this a "wall graphic" which in actuality is like a giant piece of medical tape -- a thin fabric with an adhesive back, and the adhesive is repositionable, but I wouldn't monkey with it too much if I were you. Uprinting says they can print these wall graphics up to 60"x60", I believe. They packaged it very carefully -- it came all the way across the country without any damage whatsoever. Sam and I learned the hard way, when mounting it to the wall, to smooth out its bubbles and wrinkles with our hands and NOT with a squeegee (it's thin, you'll scrape some ink away), and if your wall has little pockmarks and nail pops and defects in it, they will definitely not be masked. But I still think it is a really fabulous solution, and excluding shipping it was under $100 with a 1-day turnaround. I think that's astoundingly good. I also think there is some hope of transferring this mural to another little girl when my girl outgrows it, if we're all really careful. If transferring years from now was higher on my priority list, I would have had this printed on paper or canvas or foam core instead and I would have Velcro-ed it to the wall. I had considered printing on vinyl, too, but that tends to off-gas a lot.

The paint color. That's a little tricky. I'm very fussy about paint. I wanted zero-VOC (I have used MAB's EnviroPure a few times previously and I'll be glad to use it again). My town (3 hardware stores and a just-paint shop) was essentially out of zero-VOC in a configuration that could produce the vivid bluish-pink color I wanted. My paint salesman sold me on Sherwin Williams Duration, which isn't entirely zero-VOC but close, and meets their GreenSure standard. Sherwin Williams/MAB have, I think, awfully limited color swatches, so they matched Behr's "Posies" for me. It's a pink with a lot of blue in it. The major difference between Duration and EnvroPure is that Duration is done in ONE coat, EnviroPure wants 2 or 3 coats. I'd still rather have truly zero VOC... but getting it done in one coat, that is pretty convenient.

">

When the big day came, my friend Julie was wonderfully supportive. She works hard and yet she spent her day off on somebody else's housework, you know? That is love. She painted the doors (which needed it! bad!) and assembled the bed and was generally in charge of the soundtrack while we worked. It was pretty funny when she put Loreena McKennitt on. Loreena McKennitt is fine in small doses, I find, but in a room that is ever so PEENK, oh mah gah, I laughed right over the edge. I think she switched to Sweeney Todd right after that. Or maybe it was Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog. Either is a worthy antidote. I know we listened to both.

Sam put in plenty of sweat equity too AND the photos that are actually good, well, he took those. If you have photos of a pretty room for me to look at, please share them. I am a new fan of design*sponge too!

The Things We Do for Love

Well, now that my kid can read (!!!) posting this is pretty risky, but she doesn't know how to spell or type or even turn on the computer yet so my secret surprise, all for her, is still safe. Hidden in my attic are a ginormous mural (drawn in Illustrator/Photoshop and printed on adhesive fabric by uprinting.com - it looks terrific, I'll let you know how the adhesive works out) and the assorted pieces of a "ladybug garden" dresser which I am INSANELY HAND PAINTING, AS IN, BY HAND, AND IT IS NOT SOME TINY LITTLE WOODEN DOLL, OH NO, BECAUSE I'M NUTS. I am at the stage of the project where I'm sure I've lost my mind and taken on too much. If this project is like any of the other insane projects, that means all will be just fine. She will love it.

So the photo above are little ladybuggy drawer knobs and below are the drawers in progress. I made the photo nice and blurry as a special treat for you :D !

My white paint marker was too thick-nibbed to do the eyes and mouths of the ladybugs -- they are so tiny -- but lots of patience and a toothpick with just a little bit of unthinned acrylic paint, wiped clean between strokes, did the trick.

My amazing and awesome friend Julie arrives tomorrow to help me turn Maya's bedroom walls into a kind of lilac apocalypse while she's at school -- I'm taking a day off of work. I am really psyched. And insane! But psyched.

Welcome Summer

...well, just about summer, anyway. I love it. I have noticed, though, that I am feeling the heat more this year than in years previous, and this may have a little something to do with *ahem* my chocolate cake and ice cream diet. I weigh more this summer than I did during my pregnant summer, actually. My friend A and I are planning on running walking shambling our way through a 5K soon, though, that'll fix me.

It has been an intensely busy month and then some. All is pretty well but we are working on the house and garden quite a lot. Home is the project that never ends, right? Among other projects, my friend J gave me an intensive lesson on landscaping (already put to very good use) and my brother and I just put an upholstered headboard on my bed (pre-fab, not homemade, but just Google "how to make upholstered headboard" and you will find great ideas that you too can implement if you are not also holding down a full time job, a side job, and raising a tiny child). The headboard makes the bed look massive -- too big for the small room -- but there is no denying it's a cozier place to read, which I do in bed more than anywhere else. I am a big fan of Terry Pratchett lately. What are you reading this summer?

A bit of nostalgia

When I was very little I had a little suitcase not too much unlike the one drawn above. I don't know where it is now, and it wouldn't be practical, and I suspect it isn't really my daughter's cup of tea -- but I would like to see that little suitcase again for a little while.