Needles and Pens

Previous Posts on January's Project: Week One Progress Report Grandpa's Cradle Week Two Progress Report Pillows! My January Better Home Challenge project is done! I'm so excited to have this room, formerly a dumping ground, transformed into a useful and cozy guest room. I have some pictures to share, though the colors may seem a bit different from my "in progress" shots. My daughter is taking a digital photography class and her instructor discourages the use of flash -- so I gave it a try. It does produce a much softer look, though it took a lot more tries to get a sharp image. At any rate, all of my "after" pics are flash-free. What do you think? Here's the view as you walk into the room: And around the corner, the bookshelf holds (almost) all the children's books my kids have outgrown. My mother painted the butterfly painting years ago. The colors are perfect for this room! The closet corner: That yellow wall unit is par...

It's been a busy couple of weeks around here (and I have a camera now!) so there's lots to share on this Sew & Tell Friday . Late last Friday, I finished binding the quilt for the guest bed. (I blogged more about this on Monday, if you'd like to see all the details and pics .) And if you remember the cradle from last week's Sew & Tell , you know there had to be a matching cradle quilt, too: But the majority of this week has been all about pillows, pillows, pillows. First, the quilted pillow shams for the bed. I was down to the tail end of my green Fairy Frost, so I had to make it stretch for two shams -- thus the (maybe a little TOO busy) checkerboard pattern: Yeah, I definitely would have preferred solid green for the shams. Something was needed to break up all those squares... So I went on a throw pillow kick. I can't say enough great things about this zippered pillow tutorial from The House on Hill Road . It's super quick and easy, an...

Time for another progress report on my January "guest room" challenge, and I think I've set an all-time personal speed record on this one. The bed quilt is finished! I started on Monday with this: And here is the end result, finished on Friday. (Just out of curiosity, I kept track of my time. From cutting to piecing to pinning to quilting to binding -- 26 hours, 15 minutes.) I was lucky again fabric-wise. Halfway into making the blocks, I realized I was short of the cream print. (sigh) When I went back to the store for more -- the bolt was gone. (groan) BUT when I checked the remnant bin, I found the end of the bolt. (yes!) It was just over a half yard, and turned out to be exactly enough to finish the top. (whew!) Best $1.39 I ever spent. My only regret on this quilt, I wish it were just a bit wider, so it had a little more drop on the sides. Of course if it were, I wouldn't have had enough of that cream print, so... all for the best, I suppose. I...

Well, here it is Friday again, and though I've been sewing my poor fingers to the bone this week, I haven't quite finished the quilt for the guest room bed (and since my daughter took off for the weekend with the only working camera in the house, I couldn't share a picture if I had), BUT I do have one other little project in the works, and a tiny sewing finish was involved this week. When I had my first child in 1987, I was fortunate to inherit the cradle my grandpa slept in when was he born in 1890. He had many younger siblings, who most likely slept in it, too, but at some point it was stashed away someplace and forgotten. Thankfully someone had the foresight to hold onto it, and though it skipped two generations of use, it did stay in the family. The original stand was missing (probably why it was never passed down), but when I brought the cradle home, my husband's grandpa (who has since passed) was kind enough to build a stand so I could use it. I'm su...

Could it be that we're only one week into 2012? I've been going great guns on my January Better Home project all week, and having a blast with it! I thought it might be a good time to post a recap of what I've accomplished so far. I started off just dealing with the piles of odds and ends. Fortunately, there wasn't much clutter in this room, so that was a pretty easy task. One of the first items on my list was to designate the closet space in this room for one specific use. Everything that was in there belonged somewhere else. It was such a waste of storage space! Here's the closet, before: Now it's been designated the "Christmas closet," for storage of Christmas decorations, wrapping paper, all those gift boxes that were piled on the bed... The timing on this was perfect. I spent a couple of hours one day packing up Christmas things and it was so nice to have a specific place to store it all! There will probably be a couple more bins yet, b...

Happy New Year! Ready to start the Better Home Challenge? The first number has been drawn, and it's number 11! For me, that's the spare bedroom in the basement... yuck. At first glance, it doesn't look so bad... Until you actually walk into the room... And around the corner... It actually started out empty, but has become something of a dumping ground... Definitely need some sorting/organizing/stashing in here, plus this room is just so... blah. I'd like it to be a room in which a guest could actually sleep. A little decorating is in order, too. Time to make a list and dig in! If you'd like to join in, show us your January project (on your blog, Flickr, etc.) and link up here. Just be sure to link directly to your project, not to your homepage: Let's see what we can accomplish by the end of January!