Quilting and Stuff by Knitnoid

Category Archives: Cleaning

Design Wall Monday – 4/12/21

Sunday afternoon I decided I need to get back in the sewing room to make some progress and so there was something to post for Design Wall Monday.  So, 6 rows of my second Easy Breezy top was sewn together.  I have 2 more rows made, I just didn’t get them attached.  During this assembly process, I made my final 2 Easy Breezy blocks.

My short absence from the sewing room was due to more de-cluttering.

My first stop was the linen closet. Still way too many towels for any one person, but it’s so much better than it was.   One large bag of older towels was hauled to the pet shelter. The sheets which no longer fit my deeper mattress gone.

Then I started on other “low hanging fruit” as the saying goes. My husbands shoes, the stuff in the bottom dresser drawer that I haven’t worn in 20 years, the clothes that have been hanging around because “we might lose enough weight” to get into them. Ha!

This week I’m going to focus on the boxes in my husband’s office.  I need to get them out to I can get to the musical instruments.  It’s time to sell them.  Anyone want to buy a marimba?

 

  • 350 Challenge April = 20
  • 350 Challenge Cumulative = 202
  • Easy Breezy = 144

What’s Next

After a busy week in the sewing room I splurged and purchased a yard each of the Muppets and Kermit. I have no idea what I’m going to do with either print.

I briefly pulled my MQA BOM Blocks out, thinking it would be another quick finish.  Ha! The multi-colored stripe on the left was my color inspiration.  I’ve used it a couple of times, with plans for it to be the border, but in the end have gone with something else.  So I dug deep into my yardage stash looking for possible options.  I think I’m going with #5 — keep looking.

Since I was digging through the yardage, I pulled it all out and sorted it.  Stripes, floral, tone on tone (2 boxes!), paisley/leaf, cat/novelty, neutral/batik, everything else.  I’m not sure I’m going to like this, but what I had wasn’t really working.  I slid note cards both the yardage boxes and the “FQ” boxes so I know where to begin looking.  The “FQ” boxes are roughly sorted by color.   Neutral/Tan, Pink/Red, Orange/Yellow/Green, Green/Indigo/Blue, Blue/Violet,  Brown/Grey/Black, Halloween/Cat/Multi, 30’s, KTQ.  My Christmas box has both yardage and “FQ”.  There are also 2 boxes of vintage, a box of flannel, and a box of denim.  The final box is kits. The larger bits of music fabric are stored in the former thread drawers.

Up top there is a box of UFO, Misc Sewing Stuff, upholstery samples, ties (washed), and batting scraps.  Not show below the shelf are smaller batting scraps, clothes to be deconstructed and …

A box of “fabric” vs. “scraps”.  There’s the music yardage I was looking for to use on the back of the crazy quilt. It’s just as well. I think the other music fabric worked better with the black and red on the front of the quilt.

Also in this box are the red and white FQ I collected for the Winter Wonderland quilt I’m working on, some Halloween fabric, a couple pieces of yardage and a few bits and pieces.  Clearly I need to sew faster.

With all of the fabric shuffling around my sewing room is looking halfway decent.

I’ve even exposed more of the design wall.  That’s not to say there is still not more to do, but the room is in pretty good shape.  I have a pile of batting scraps I want to deal with, then I need to spend some time in the rest of the house.

Now It’s Cleared

Ok – so to move things along the other day I simply moved everything to the ironing/cutting station.  But I’m happy to report that both flat surfaces are now cleaned.  And I didn’t move it to another location – I actually put it away.

Even the shelving is looking better.

While I was cleaning, I stitched out two quilts – or rather the computer did.

 

 

Life Happens

graciebinding

 

I feel like I’ve fallen off the face of the earth. I haven’t, it’s just that “Life Happens”. I tend to keep everything (especially my quilting) going through crises real or imagined and then collapse when it’s all over. The past couple of months have been a whirlwind and it has caught up with me.  Two new cats, two trips, in between DH in the hospital for 3 days (thank goodness(?!) it was during my vacation) with a cat bite and mi$cellaneou$ car/home/yard maintenance that had to be done NOW.

So, I’m slowly getting my act together. The living room got a once over after watching a video of the cats jumping at a feather toy. I’m sitting down and working on the DWR – I’ve got about 5-1/2 rings left to bind, then I’ll add a label, photograph the quilt, wash it and photograph it again. (I’m terrified of the reds bleeding, but I really need to clean it before we sleep under it on a regular basis). Gracie was helping out a couple of nights ago. Last night Butterscotch was keeping an eye on me.

quiltingcats-butter

Earlier this week I’ve finished a few more of the batik blocks – I had pinned the strips to the center before the last trip so this required no brain.  There are 14 more blocks to finish.

batik1118

We aren’t going to talk about the Stars or the Alphabet BOM until after Thanksgiving.

In the meantime, I really need to do a bit of housekeeping.  It’s so far behind it’s beginning to bother me.

 

 

 

Clean – Or At Least Close Enough

A month ago I said I needed to clean my sewing room.  Today it’s clean — or close enough.  Sure there’s stuff piled on my sewing table and desks, but the cutting board is cleared and there’s space for three to sew.  Admittedly the ironing board is in the other room, but that’s only so I can get to my design wall.

One of these days I’ll get through all the boxes on the black shelves and maybe even get the shelves out of this room.

What Cleaning Does


I did not set out to clean. However, I received a “ton” of fabric cast offs which needed to be put up. There is still more in the basement waiting to be washed.

When we redid my sewing studio/office, I made the decision that if it didn’t fit on the two sets of shelves, I had to find another home for it — whatever it is. A few weeks ago I looked through all of my quilting magazines and donated a 12″ stack. You can’t tell by looking my shelves, because I gathered up the magazines that were scattered through out the house.

The fabric is a bit tougher. But, since I’ve made significatant progress on my DWR, it moved out of the bin it’s in and into one of my project bins. I also pulled out the extra fabric from a couple of other quilt tops recently finished and either put it away or dumped it on my table to be cut up into scraps. That’s the pile on the right in the picture below.

The pile on the left if what I found when I cleared my cutting table off. I’ve midplaced my small EZ Angle Ruler. I misplaced the large EZ Angle Ruler at the begining of the year. I didn’t even know I had one let alone two, plus the Companion Angle Ruler until I started working on Bonnie Hunter’s Orange Crush. Now I can’t find either!

I guess I keep digging.

Where has the Week Gone?

Here it is Thursday and I’m trying to figure out what I’ve done this week.

Monday – A bit of cleaning to uncover my big board. Then I pressed and carefully folded the fabric I need for the borders of the quilts I’m taking to retreat. I also started ripping the ribbing off of a sweatshirt. Yes, a new project is born and the race is on to see if I can finish it before I leave for retreat next week. I’m using a jelly roll and a charm pack of Decadent Victorian.

Tuesday – I don’t want to repeat Tuesday. I dropped my car off at the repair shop. When he called me back he started the converstion with “You need new tires on top of this amount I’m about to tell you.” Picked up the car and drove straight to the tire shop. Got home late and then started chopping up the Decadent Victorian.

Wednesday – Sewed the chopped up pieced back into strips and got two strips sewn to the sweatshirt. I’m hoping I make more progress this evening.