Apr:1

Having done my time in Houston, I know better than to characterize this weather as "pouring rain." I've seen veritable rivers surge past my front door because the sky had opened up and was dumping water faster than could be drained into the sewers. But what we do have here, what Seattleites like to remind tourists to discourage them from getting too comfortable, is a constant and widespread dousing. Today, it rained in earnest, big cold drops, all day, enough for one to forget that we're a week and a half into spring. Except that everythings is in bloom. I had no idea this tree was going to do that.

Mar:31

I'm still deep in the fabric cutting stage of quilt-making here. My original calculations had it hovering around 1000 pieces to cut and fit together. To ease the pain a bit, I treated myself to a larger, less warped, cutting mat. At 18" x 24", it's by no means huge. But it plays nice on the table with the sewing machine, and it doubles the cutting surface of my last mat, which was one of those cutting/ironing hybrids that I may have, in multi-tasking haste, abused with the iron a bit. And it lays completely flat, which seems to agree with the rotary cutter. Also, treated the cutter with a new blade, so we're rolling along quite smoothly now.

Pillows, done

March 31, 2011

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Finally.

I'm not sure what finally got up my ass to spur these pillows into action, amid all the other incompletes laying dormant around the house. I finished the Sashiko-inspired embroidery shortly after we moved into the house. They've been innocuous enough, needlework tied-off, hanging from the boards, looking pretty and serene. 

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But even before those curtains were done (hell, I'm still hunting for proper cleats which aren't to be found at Home Depot as had been promised) I was looking to those linen panels to fill up some crafty evenings. And so I backed them with my herringbone wool remnant find, outfitted them with zippers, and finished the pair with some of the miles of binding tape I'd made up for Bear's quilt last year. If I'd gone with what I thought would be most visually pleasing, I might have picked out a nice steely gray to adorn those edges. But, you know, use what you have and all. 

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Back to those zippers, though. My best ever thrift shop score was a bagful of zippers in all the hottest flavors of seasons long past and smelling like the floor of some ancient sewing basket. It was a haul so great I compare all subsequent thrift store visits against that great day. Dozens of zippers, invisible, metal coil and nylon, wide unwieldy coat zippers, ones long enough to seal up a sleeping bag, little ones for a future coin purse, their average age besting mine by at least a decade. All for 4 bucks. Their original packages list prices lower than what I routinely hand over to The Boy for a gumball out of the machine after soccer class. Added to my modest accumulation of zippers bought and miserly reclaimed (read: ripped off of no longer used items), and never again will I write off late-night project ideas for lack of hardware.  

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Another thing about these pillows… When the size of the panels is dictated by a sheet of stabilizer small enough to run through your printer to serve as an embroidery template, your end result will perhaps not conform to any known pillow form. No worries, though, because I've got that big bag of sewing scraps (I really should consider throwing things out occasionally) sitting by the sewing machine. I cut up a big pile of scraps into fabric confetti and stuffed them silly into makeshift cases of layered muslin and quilt batting. And, again, because the template was essentially a letter-sized sheet of fabric, these are teeny little pillows. Comically tiny, albeit highly decorative, throw pillows. Unless you're a toddler looking to accessorize her scaled-down replica of the chair you used to nurse her in. In which case, they're the perfect size.

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Tags: pillows, sashiko, sewn, zippers

Mar:30

The Mr. skipped town this morning, and took with him the iPad, a fact I am not in the slightest bitter about. Not in the slightest. The man's job, after all, is to work with mobile devices. Still, even though I'd been doing my nightly crossword puzzle on paper for the sixteen years prior to the introduction of the iPad to our home, it felt a bit strange to sit down with paper and ink again.

Mar:29

I wouldn't normally advocate coffee as an appropriate go-with for microwaved quesadillas. But on Tuesday nights, coming off the bus after the kids have already been put down, and having had nothing you might call a meal all day, what's left of the evening has to accomodate my needs for both quick and dirty nourishment and the sweet comfort of my nightly coffee and crossword puzzle habit.

Mar:28

This little stack of cut flannels represents the teensiets of dents in the body of fabric that will need to be pressed and cut and pieced and pressed and sandwiched and then pressed again for good measure. It's nice to know, though, that I have an entire month's work (at least) of work lined up for my evenings.

Mar:27

Sometime last month we converted Bear's crib to a toddler bed, and if I haven't mentioned it before, it's because it's been an unnoteworthy passage to this new era of kid-dom, with the children sharing their room, now, as peers who enjoy each other's company. It's all good, even when, like today, instead of the silence of a well-deserved naptime we're witness to a cacophony of giggles and teasing and toy guitars secreted into the room. Today's image was captured in the 15 seconds it takes Bear to stumble down after her brother from their room upstairs once they give up pretending to sleep.