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Exciting night here in the ‘burbs.

See the crazy man up there?

He cut down our 70(ish) foot tall dead oak tree.

The carnage.

I’m not sure which is more disturbing - the large hole in the trunk of the tree or…

(ewwww)

…or the man with a chainsaw outside my window.

But at least now it won’t hit the house.  Phew.   We just won’t think about how many yards of fabric I could have bought if I didn’t have to write him a very large check.

It all started back in the fall of 2005. We went up to the Amish country in Pennsylvania and stopped in a quilt shop. They had the most amazing quilts and were all handmade. One double wedding ring quilt with purple fabrics caught my eye but it was expensive and since we were building our current house I felt guilty about spending the money. But I was now hooked on quilts.

When we got home I started figuring out how to make quilts (I knew how to sew clothes and home dec stuff, just not quilts!) and made Maeve her first doll quilt. And then I made a lap quilt. And then a twin quilt for Maeve’s new room in the new house. I still wanted to make a double wedding ring. So in the spring of 2006 I bought some templates and then promptly packed them away since we were about to move.

So now we’re in North Carolina and I’m exploring new fabric stores. I come across a whole ton of Moda/3 Sisters’ Wuthering Heights. Perfect. Beautiful. I buy tons and tons of it. And Sean hadn’t even seen it. And it was for our Master bedroom. Hope he likes it!

So I sew little bits here and there but quickly learn to hate curves. Late in my pregnancy with Liam in winter/spring 2007 I hit some crazy nesting stage and decide to finish the quilt top. And then Liam came along and the household went crazy.

Late summer 2007 I took it to a long-armer for quilting and got it back a couple months later. And then it sat there. Until this past Saturday night.

I trimmed the edges Saturday. Cut the binding and attached it Sunday night. Flipped it over and finished sewing it on today. Probably about 4-5 hours to get the binding on. And it’s been sitting there just waiting for binding since last fall. I still have pillows and curtains to sew plus nagging the husband to paint the room (but argh, I can not figure out what color to put on the walls!) plus buy some new sheets and lights for the night tables. But for now my long awaited quilt is done.

See my cool scallopy binding?

It’s king sized, 7 x 9 blocks.

The NCTriangle Street team asked for pictures and some words (that I still need to write!) about where I sew my quilts. If they had seen my room on the day they asked the question they would have retracted quickly since it was a disaster area. It’s clean now but with two little kids it won’t be for long.

This is our bonus room. Starting at the left: my desk, easel and painting supplies, fabric storage bookshelf with embroidery thread, quilting machine and serger on top, comfy chair, kids Lego table and bookshelf with their toys and a TV. I have a curtain rod with rings hanging above the bookshelf. I change the quilt out whenever something sells or I want something fresh up there.

The other side of the room. In the dormer on the left I store my 40 yard rolls of batting (which is almost gone… again!), then my sewing table, ironing board, bookshelves and then back to my desk. Above the ironing board is my typesetting tray with my various threads for piecing and binding.

A close up of my sewing table. I have a large cutting mat with an insane amount of rulers. A small basket of tools and notions plus some small drawers for pins, sewing machine feet, etc. I have a large set of drawers on the other side of the table that stores packing supplies, notions and large quilting thread spools. Since I only use the large quilting machine for quilting, I pull this one off the table and carry the other one over when I need it.

Finished quilts are stored in a closet way high up and out of the reach of small little hands.

I try to be random in my quilts but sometimes (ok, most all the time) I just can’t do it. I have to lay it out first to make sure all the colors and patterns are evenly distributed. So this means all my quilts get laid out on the floor block by block (or in some cases piece by piece) and then stacked up to sew.

My sewing room is our bonus room. It measures about 20′ square and is supposed to by my room. My computer, my books, my lounging room and my space for me. The kids object to this. They have a playroom. Neither one of them plays in it. They play in my room.

So whenever I need to lay out a quilt or pin a quilt I need a shovel to clear all the toys out of the way.

That’s the Maypole quilt so far.

Progress on the other projects for this week:

The Cowboys got ironed, cut patterns, and started cutting fabrics.

The video game quilt fabric that I ordered last week just now shipped. Note to self: don’t shop there anymore.

Pants? Yeah, haven’t even started.

I saw a mention of this in the paper and off we went.  How could I pass up something called Herbfest?

Oops.

These got planted up on the wall next to the knot.  You can’t really see the plants because of the new fluffy pinestraw.

(The knot… in need of some weeding, de-leafing and mulching.)

And the coolest part of today… the Duck Parade.

I swear my next post will contain a quilt and not my kids or my house.  I swear.

So it was a really good thing that we finished all the gardening yesterday.  </sarcasm>

I gave the rosemary on the side of the house a haircut.  Maeve came and rescued a couple ‘trees’ from the clippings pile and went and planted them around the yard.

These are the trees in the ‘buildings’ of dirt.

These ‘trees’ didn’t get planted.  According to Maeve they were tired and were going to take their naps.

…work in the garden! The plan was to sew all week and then clean up the yard this weekend but it is supposed to rain… again… on Saturday. I love the rain. We need the rain. But why does it always have to rain on the weekends? Doesn’t the rain know how hard it is to do major yard work and mow with 2 small kids? Hrumph.

So here is the uglyness of the front of our house. We have boring holly shrubs from the builder, leaves that were blown in at some point, mess from the masons and lots of blah. It needs spring cleaning and some prettification.

I am waaaay limited in what I can plant here since we have the hugest herd of deer in existence. They eat EVERYTHING. The only things they don’t eat are boxwood, holly, herbs and ferns. I try and be positive and think about how aromatic my yard ends up because we have so many herbs it’s not even funny. When you turn on the side spigot you get this whoosh of rosemary. Yum.

So we did a trip to Lowes for some dirty stuff…

And a trip to the farmers market this morning for the herbs…

Maeve had a blast there as she always does. And in a couple weeks the strawberries start coming in. Drool. And then the peaches. Drool.

We have some rosemary, thyme, sage, curry plants (!), lavender, germander, peppermint (for the pots) and a lot more thyme. And as it turns out, I need 6 more thymes to finish up. Back to the farmers market! Darn. I just hate going there and oogling at all the plants.

So while we were outside a little froggie decided to join us. Maeve was in love. She was jumping around behind him like he was jumping, laying on the ground staring at him and just being a curious 3 year old.

We pulled up all the stones, filled in with some dirt and put the stones back. Maeve was in charge of putting all the little stones into the little holes.

I totally wore her out outside. She’s now playing quietly in her playroom. We should do this gardening thing more often! And because I know Sean will say something… I was in this picture too. I cropped myself out. I’m ok with being sweaty and dirty in the family picture album but not on my blog.

All done. I’m going to venture to say that it looks a wee bit better than before. Hopefully everything will fill out nicely this summer.

We didn’t get the other side done. It’s all cleaned up but we ran out of dirt, mulch and plants… oh and Liam woke up.

Wow. This is a really long post that really has nothing to do with quilts except for the fact that it demonstrates that I didn’t work on any today (so far… it’s only 5!)

The project for the first part of the week is new silk curtains for the kitchen and family room. These have to be the most boring thing in the world to sew. I have 9 panels to sew. I have 2 done. Yawn.

Quilts are much more fun.

I listed a new quilt last night on Etsy. It’s a bit more modern than recent ones.

I got an email from my local quilt shop saying that Moda’s Simplicity had shipped and it will be here in a couple days! I’ve been waiting impatiently for this line since Maeve’s room is getting a makeover with it.

Her quilt is going to be a Kaffe Fassett pattern. It’s amazing. I can’t wait. I get warm fuzzies just thinking about it.

Wow. It’s actually done. I’m still pondering a couple details but overall, it’s done! I like this room. Maybe I’ll move into it and make the guests stay at a hotel.

The before:

Painted - Mesclun Green and Optimistic Yellow.

The after. I’m still pondering if there needs to be something above the bed. I want the bed to be the centerpiece of that wall and I want it to have a clean look but I also don’t want it to look unfinished. I *think* I like it without anything up there.

An up close look at the quilt.

All five pillows were quilted as well.

The nightstands. Lights and clock are from Target. The vase, candlesticks and tables are from Ikea. I’m somewhat tempted to make tablecloths to drape over the tables as well. I’d love to cover them up more but I don’t really like tablecloths. They’ve always looked so cluttery to me.

This wall turned out well. It wasn’t originally going to have floor lamps but then when I was putting stuff together yesterday I realized I had bought floor lamps instead of table lamps. Oops. So I ran out to Target and got the table lamps in the pics above and used these on this wall. They aren’t really necessary but oh well. Two of the frames don’t have glass because it broke. Must head to the store to get replacements. The frames, lights, table, vases, candlestick, and watering can are from Ikea. The bucket of tulips is from Target. The picture frames on the top of the table still needs some pictures. There is still a mess of cords over on the right. I wonder if the CordMaster can clean those up a bit.

These are the three fabrics that make up the curtains. The top white paisley is my favorite of all the fabrics in the room (about 30+ different fabrics make up the room). And you can see that we now have blinds! Yes, that is right. We made our poor guests sleep in a fishbowl where the whole world could see them.

No, we really aren’t that mean. This is the view out the window. See all the trees? The only things snooping on people back there are the deer and squirrels. But now they can close the blinds anyways.

And a picture of the boys just because. 10mm lenses make everyone look funny.

So it all started about a week and a half ago. My mouth hurt and I knew it was my wisdom teeth but I was in denial. When the pain didn’t go away I finally made an appointment with a dentist. After going to the appointment I realized she was a DMD and not a DDS and couldn’t take out the teeth herself. We called the DDS that she referred us to and learned that our lovely insurance company didn’t have any in-network oral surgeons within 45 miles of Raleigh. Lovely. So I go to that appointment and the DDS says that all 4 need to come out. Three were impacted and there was an infection around the fourth. The only good news is that it was bad enough that I would get to go to sleep for the surgery. I go to make the appointment for the surgery only to find out that the lovely insurance company, let’s call them Fetna, refused to pay for the $1700+ procedure because we hadn’t had the policy long enough. Keep in mind that on the medical side of our policy they had already paid for 2 surgeries, a baby in the NICU, and 3.5 hospital admissions. I couldn’t chew on one side of my mouth, had an infection and was in constant pain but couldn’t get the insurance that we pay for to pay for the teeth to come out. We decided to just pay for it so I could be pain-free. Stupid Fetna. I also learned that I need about $1200+ of work done at the DMD (that’s after insurance pays their part). Stupid Fetna. So by the end of the month I’ll have racked up almost $3000 in dental bills. Anyone want to buy a quilt?

So the teeth came out this past Friday. I am feeling better than expected but seemed to have come down with a nasty cough. Not good with heeling gums. At least the husband has dealt with the kids so I could rest… and sew. Sewing is resting right? I didn’t get to go to yoga this morning which I am not happy about. Hopefully I can get back to the gym soon. I’d actually be happy if I could just eat more than just mush.

I finished the quilt for the living room as well as the pillows and tiny table runners for the guest room.

So now the sewing is all done for the room!

And of course we had to watch the commercials tonight. Who is playing by the way?

And I’m still not used to seeing this.  And the little guy isn’t so little anymore. He weighed in at 20lbs10oz this past week.

And BTW, stupid Fetna. Stupid Fetna. Stupid Fetna.

I originally bought the Fresh Air by Chez Moi fabric for a quilt for our living room. I thought the colors worked perfectly. I came home from the fabric store all excited and the husband let me know he didn’t want a quilt in the living room (!!!). So I went ahead and made the quilt to sell on Etsy. Well, now that the quilt is done, he likes it and wants it to stay in the living room. See? Husbands should listen to their wives. Now to pick out drapery fabrics.

I do have fabric left over so I think I’ll make a table runner for the shop.

We make our oldest child earn her keep.  It was her job to paint the guest room.

Ok, so we were really just letting her play with the paint while we were deciding which green for the walls.  Thanks to the wonderful husband our guest room is now green (solid green too!).  It was really hard to get the colors accurate in Photoshop.  For those of you with Sherwin Williams books it’s Mesclun Green.  The ceiling is Optimistic Yellow.

The quilt is finished as are the curtains.  I’ve started the fabric thingies that are going to dress up our budget friendly Ikea night tables.  I also need to do throw pillows and shams.

I ordered a matte white iron headboard this weekend which should be here in about 4 to 5 weeks.

So exciting!

I’m finally getting around to decorating our guest room. It’s not just the decorating that I was ignoring (ya know because I bought all the fabric last summer), it was the huge queen sized quilt that went along with it. All the blocks are done and I’ll start putting them together today. I hope to start quilting the behemoth Wednesday or Thursday. I should check if I have thread for that because it’s going to need a lot. The quilt is done in the same pattern as this quilt on Etsy in the fabrics of this quilt on Etsy.

This is what the room looks like right now. The ceilings are a whopping 10 feet tall. We have all the decorative crap needed for a pretty room, it’s just all sitting in boxes and bags. I must nag the husband to paint for me.

Hopefully it will be looking a little more presentable in about a month or so.