Before... After...

Our school district has been going through a lot of changes these past couple of years and this year was the big year for our son's school - they got to move across the street to a brand-spankin' new building!

With the move across the street to the new building meant a lot of stuff was left behind - old desks, chairs, tables, cabinets, etc.  And they had a big auction.  It was my first auction as an adult and I teased our son I was going to let out loud "YUUUUUUUPs" (Any Storage Wars fans out there?!)  

We ended up spending around $75 and got two tables, a Doctor Octopus cardboard cutout (Son was drooling over this, had a $1 burning a hole in his pocket and that's what he got it for!), a couple of student desks for $1 and a chair to go with one of the desk, a metal storage cabinet for out in the garage (our big purchase of $50), and my best find... a Danish Modern Chair.  That I won for a whole whoppin' $5!  JACKPOT!

Here it is, with it's really gross cover.  When you touched the fabric, it fell apart in your hands and left this gross dusty film on your hands.

After looking and looking for something to cover this chair locally and not finding anything.  I kept coming back to the Jessica Jones' Outside Oslo line.

No one in our town carries it though.  Thought about buying it online, but then we decided to make a road trip to Minneapolis and their was a store down there that carried it.  Perfect!  Ended up with Picket in the Dawn colorway.

To make the covers I followed this tutorial on "Sew, Mama, Sew", leaving off the handles.  They went together great!  I reused the foam from cushions since they were in decent shape. For the zippers, I re-purposed the old cover's zippers by ripping them out (which meant I had to touch the icky fabric.  Gross.  Gross.  Gross!)  But I was in the mood to make them and Hancock Fabrics seemed so far away so it was a small price to pay!

Here's the final product.

  

Much happier now!

The Top is Done!

The Top is Done!, a photo by Life on the Selvage Edge on Flickr.

Yay! Got it all put together! I love, love, love it!!

Now to decide what to do for the back... Do something scrappy? Flannel?

Got to figure it out before Friday. I've put together a "crafty" day at the church where I work. Everyone's invited to bring their craft of choice... quilting, scrapbooking, beading, knitting, etc (And I've been hearing some smarty pants "etc's" - "How about my woodworking? Chainsaw art?" Sounds perfect for the church basement!)

 We'll get going Friday morning, craft the day/afternoon/evening away and then come back on Saturday for more. It should be fun!  My hope is to get a couple of quilts quilted (this one being one). Can't wait to be productive while crafting with other creative women.

Thank you to everyone for your kind words from my last  post... your kindness is appreciated greatly!

Lay out

Lay out, a photo by Life on the Selvage Edge on Flickr.

It's been a doozy of a week. Some many in our circle of friends are going through so much... heavy, heavy stuff for multiple families. Death of a parent. Cancer. More Cancer.  And more.  All together, too much.

A heavy heart, aching for these friends.

We've spent time talking and will spend tonight and tomorrow evening gathering together, circling close to lean on one another for support, share in food and conversation, and share in some tears and hopefully some laughter.

In those overwhelming times I feel like I'm able to deal/escape/cope when my hands stay busy and my mind can be a bit distracted from the heaviness at hand. Sitting at the sewing machine is therapuetic.

And hence, I've flown through putting this quilt together this week. I came home last night and I knew sleep wasn't going to come easy so I sat down and sewed. And pressed. And cut off lots of little corners. That resulted in all my blocks getting done, and lots of prayers being said in rhythm with the hum of my machine.

And I'm absolutely in love with this quilt. All the different colors. Order coming out of the chaos. Every time I look at it will be reminded of the pain of this last week, but will also be reminded of the brightness of friends, hope, joys, happy memories. All those jumbled together to surround the dark times, to help us through.

I couldn't stop myself...

I couldn't stop myself..., a photo by Life on the Selvage Edge on Flickr.

While 99.999% of the world hates Mondays, it's my most absolute most favorite day of the week.

Why? Because it's my day off. And I'm home alone. All by my lonesome. Husband heads off to work, get the boy-child off to school. And then it's just me and the rest of the day.

Totally what this introvert needs to re-fuel as my job throws me into an extrovert role.

And this particular Monday the house was clean (we had our house appraised last Thursday for refinancing - nothing like a stranger coming to your house to take pictures for some cleaning motivation!). All I had to do was move some laundry around. Which meant I had a date with my sewing machine. :)

So all those beautiful squares and rectangles I cut out over the weekend... yeah, they were staring at me, begging to be tested out.

So I sorta skipped ahead in the quilt along, and put some of the blocks together.

Is that against the rules?

Dang. My first "quilt along" and I've gone and made it a "quilt ahead" instead. Please take pity on this no-self-control-when-it -comes-to-quilting person. When I get inspired to make something, I've got to do it. Right now.

I've got about half of all of this particular block done and the other half just have to have the long sides joined to the center section.

And I'm loving how it came together - all bright and chaotic, reminders of past projects sprinkled through out. And the Robert Kaufman Tweed for Quilters in the center... love the subtle texture it adds and a place to "focus" in the midst of all the color.

2012 Quilting Resolutions...

After reading a bunch of blogs with sewing goals in the new year, I'd make up a few of my own.  I stink at follow through on the diet and exercise stuff, but quilting... I can get behind that!

1.  Sew a quilt out of buttery goodness voile
2.  Participate in a quilt along
3.  Sew a mammoth king size quilt for our bed
4.  Attempt hexies, even if it's just a rug mug!
5.  Organize the shoved up balls of fabric that make up my stash
6.  Use up some of the scraps that seem to be breeding uncontrollably.

Even though we're just a week into the new year, I'm starting to tackle the list...

First up, a quilt along that uses scraps... SCORE!!  Two items on "The List".

So after church yesterday I spent the rest of the day...
evening...
night...
cutting up 2.5" squares.  450 of them.  And over 100 4.5" x 2.5" pieces.  Which, when cutting from big pieces of fabric wouldn't be too bad, but cutting out of random bits of fabric.  Yeah.  That takes awhile.  But it was quite satisfying to go through my scrap bin and use a ton of it up!  Put a nice dent in it.  VICTORIOUS!!

This is going to truly be a scrap quilt.  A little bit of everything!  I'm excited to see it come together.