What Are You Sitting On?

In all my years sitting in front of a sewing machine, it was always on a chair with a back.  The chairs have changed over the years, and for a long time it's been a very comfortable office chair that swivels and goes up and down.  Sometimes I make covers for it, sometimes I leave it uncovered.

The other day I decided I was tired of the chair back getting in my way.  I would swivel it around to sit down, then swivel it back around to face the machine, and then scooch it in.  It seemed so hard.  Not that I'm impulsive or anything, but as soon as I realized a person could sit on a stool just as well as a chair, well, I grabbed my car keys and headed out shopping.

I went to five stores, came home with three options to try out, and settled on this.  I love everything about it, including the knockout color, comfortable seat, brassy legs, and open profile which makes the room look bigger.  Plus it's super light and easy to move around, not that I've done it much.  It's going to stay in front of my machine for a long, long time.

It doesn't work for everyone, but it works for me.

It inspired a new project, so I dropped the one I had been working on, and am close to finishing the new one.  More about it tomorrow.

Monday is Fun Day - Concrete Birds

I went to my favorite garden center last week, looking for Hyacinth.  They only had them mixed in with other bulbs at a price I didn't want to pay.  But I found some really pretty concrete birds while I was there.  I couldn't decide which one of them to buy, so I wound up with the whole set.

Then it was a matter of putting each bird in the environment that best brought out its color.  I bought this begonia the same time I bought the birds.  Bright chartreuse leaves are rather unusual for a begonia; this was the only one they had.

Each bird is slightly different in its tail, angle of the legs, and body posture.

This orange, flowering begonia is also from the same trip.  Sometimes pigs sit in this chair, but not lately.

 

At first I had the birds spread all over my sewing room, but they didn't stand out.  The garden center always has such nice tiered displays, so I was inspired to try something similar, to showcase all the birds together.  I didn't want to spend any additional money, so I tried a bunch of this and that from the basement.  Now I have this cheery vignette right next to my sewing machine.

I still miss that Hyacinth fragrance, though.  The garden center had a wreath of white flowers that smelled really good.  I might go back and get it.  The only problem is it's getting pretty crowded in my sewing room - this is just a portion of the plants in there.  I really should leave some space for sewing, don't you think?

Fabric Storage

When I think about it, I realize I sort and store my fabric according to favorites.  And the favorites are usually the ones I bought most recently.  For some reason, probably irrational, I don't like to mix them all together.  I have five separate storage areas (for now).

This is where I keep my favorites, in a brand new open-sided faux birdcage.  I have other favorites that are already in project buckets, too.

A detail from one of the shelves. 

My second-favorite group is kept in large baskets.  These are all candidates for the front of quilts.

On my orange bookcase is where I keep my third-favorite group, arranged by color.  Some of these might be on a quilt top, but most will be pieced into backs.

To make me like these fabrics more, I bookended them with some fun color-coded accessories.  This napkin holder is metal.  I like painted metal very much.

The Leah Duncan fabric in the orange metal pail should really be in the bird cage with my favorites, but it looks pretty displayed like this.

I don't have very much purple fabric.

 You've seen this blue teapot before.

Lots of green, so it got stacked.

Blacks and whites.

Reds and pinks.

My fourth-favorite group is large yardage that I  keep in a white wire basket.  This isn't very attractive, so I keep it stashed away so I don't really see it.  

And then at the bottom of the heap, the fifth group consists of very old fat quarters, totally out of favor, that I use for practicing free motion quilting.  This group isn't even allowed in my sewing room.  I keep it in a chest of drawers in another room.

So this is how my fabric storage looks today, but since I change things around in there all the time, no doubt it won't last long.  In fact, a little tweaking has already taken place since I took these photos last week.

Now I think I'll stop moving fabric around, and go so sew.

Monday is Fun Day - Starry Terrarium Is Starting Over

Last December I made a beautiful mossy, ferny, starry terrarium.   I was looking at it the other day and the moss was looking dull and dried out, so I threw it out.  I kept the star and what was left of the fern, though.  You should go look at it to see how pretty it was - usually the before picture is worse, not better.

There isn't much left of the fern, but there's plenty of room for some vintage pigs.

There were many times when I totally forgot to water the little guy until it was bone dry, and that's not a nice way to treat a fern.  Now that it's out in the open, I'll be keeping a better eye on it.  

Gerberas

What is it that's so appealing about Gerberas?  The vivid colors, the simple shape, the sturdy large blooms that stand high above the foliage, their longevity, and inexpensive price are all good reasons.  Whether as a cut flower in a bouquet or as a potted plant, I just love them.

My sewing room has all kinds of flowers now, including Gerberas.  These are just three of them.

The new plants led to some rearranging/redecorating in my sewing room.  Or maybe it was vice versa, since it doesn't take much to get me going.  At any rate, when going through one of my cedar chests, I found this Gerbera tablecloth I made sometime in the last 10 years.  (There's no label so I don't know the year.)  I had forgotten all about it, but decided it should become a throw over my reading chair.  Since this area gets lots of direct sun, I figured a cover over my pretty coral chair might be a good thing.

I started with the Gerbera panel, then just added strips and blocks of brights on both ends and along the edges.  I'm glad I found this because I decided it would be fun to make more of this kind of thing.  Sometimes you just don't feel like making a quilt after piecing the top.  So I can just hem the edges and throw it over the chair for a quick redo.  

I suppose I could do the same thing with a finished quilt, and that might be better, come to think of it.  A finished quilt gives you more flexibility in how you use it - I generally either hang them on the wall or throw them on the floor and use them like a rug.  And since the back of the chair is curved - note the saggy orange Gerbera - a quilt would have a little more oomph in that area.

Current Quilt Project

These are all part of my current quilt project.

Iron Caddy

Yesterday I finished my iron caddy that I started in January.  That was the month I bought a great travel iron to take to a quilting retreat.  When I found out that irons and ironing boards were provided, I stopped working on the iron caddy.  I got tired of seeing this unfinished project cluttering up the end of my sewing table, so I made myself finish it before working on anything new.

The Painted Quilt has a link that downloads a free pattern and instructions, which actually get downloaded from the Tri-County Quilters' website.  The Painted Quilt has pictures and a blog post about the iron caddy.  Tri-County Quilters merely has a link to the iron caddy pdf file on their Supply List page.  In the interest of complete disclosure and full credit, I wanted to mention both.

I also found this video from Pattern Pile to be very helpful, especially for the button and closure placement.

Of course I needed to pick fabric that coordinated with my iron.

When I started the project in January, I thought I had only a short time to finish it.  I already had the outer material, and wanted an "instant" handle and binding, so I used the yellow webbing and brown bias tape that was in my stash.  

You see those two buttons on top of the binding?  They were my first choice, but I wound up going with different ones.  For the elastic closure, I followed the advice of The Painted Quilt and used ponytail elastic that I bought at a dollar store.

The only other things I had to buy were the silver ironing board fabric and Insul-Bright.  The last time I used Insul-Bright, I couldn't tell one side from the other, which was a problem because the directions said to place the shiny side toward the object you want to insulate.  See photo on left.

With the new Insul-Bright (photo on right), the shiny side is clearly visible.  But now the instructions say it doesn't matter which side goes where.  Huh?  That's illogical to me.  I made sure I laid the shiny side toward where my iron is going to be.

I'm not going to show you how to make the iron caddy - see the links I posted above.  But here's what the paper pattern looks like after stitching through all the layers, which were pretty thick.  If I make another caddy, which I don't think I'll ever do, I'll mark the lines on the fabric instead of making a paper pattern.

These iron caddys have a dual purpose.  First, when fully open, you can use them as an ironing surface.

And second, you can pack up your hot iron at the end of the day without waiting for it to cool off,

After all my machine stitching was done, I was so excited.  I wanted to celebrate by taking the caddy to the store and finding some really cute and knobby buttons.  I even made sure I still had some Jo-Ann coupons.  And then I asked myself  "Really?  You have hundreds and hundreds of buttons at home and you mean to tell me you can't find something that will work?"  So I stacked three buttons and made a minuscule dent in my button collection.  

I'm going to reward my goodness, though.  Next time buttons go on sale, I'm going to be there loading up on weird and cute ones.

I'm glad I went with the ponytail elastic recommended by The Painted Quilt, instead of the plain white elastic that was in the original instructions.

So here they are, just itching for an opportunity to get out and travel a bit.

I'm happy with the way everything turned out, and even happier to have it done so I can work on a new quilt.