puttering around in the sewing room

 I think I'm just avoiding doing the bathroom cleaning by picking random things to work on in the sewing room.

First, I have cut the emblems from the front of a bunch of the Sasquatch's childhood tee shirts that I have held on to for roughly 30 years.  I have in mind to someday make a tee shirt quilt for him.  That's on a back burner for now...but hopefully sometime in the next 30 years.

  

Anyway,  they are taking up a lot less room like this than storing whole tee shirts.

I also have dozens of his scout patches to incorporate into the quilt as well.

The patches could be sewn to a plain square of fabric for the quilt or spaced out around the entire border...maybe sewn to denim?  I'll keep thinking about it. 

This next project went pretty quickly.  It's a repair on a small quilt that was given to me by my Aunt Velda for my firstborn son, Chopper.  It is homemade and hand quilted but I don't think she was the maker...mainly because she was busy with her own after-age-40 born  toddler and also running a beef cattle operation.  

So this little quilt has been around for about 45 years!  It has been used quite a bit so the binding was in bad shape...coming loose and splitting at the fold.

I honestly thought the whole quilt was bad and had been using it to scoot furniture around when we were moving stuff for the new flooring.  When I washed it afterwards I realized it was only the binding that was bad.

I thought it was worthy of adding a new binding but didn't want to use fabric that could be used in a nice new quilt. (I think the bible says not to attach new cloth to old, ha ha). I rummaged around and found these short strips that I had picked out of some other quilter's scraps give-away.

They were only 2" wide but that's big enough for a single fold binding. I joined the strips and sewed them on .

Done in only 3 Netflix episodes of Seinfeld.

It's a quirky little quilt. Not patchwork, just a heavyweight cotton cloth, a thin batting and a plain muslin back. An extra strip on each end to add some length. 

Hand quilted around each motif in the fabric.

The fabric is an unusual choice for a baby quilt. I'd have to say the theme is "Tattoos".

Ships, eagles, anchors, roses, and cherubs...banners with the word "mother".

But, it was skillfully stitched and made with care.  

So I did accomplish something. But I am out of excuses for not cleaning the bathroom.

Not a glamorous New Year's Eve activity for sure!

Mug Rugs

 My friend Wanda thought of a fun plan for our quilt group Christmas exchange. 

Each of us would make 4 mug rugs and bring them to our Christmas party in brown paper lunch bags. Then we would all choose 4 different bags and open up 4 surprise mug rugs.

If you haven't heard of mug rugs before, they are like a coaster or a small place mat. Just the right size for a drink and a small snack.

Here are the ones I made.   A tea pot.

A chicken.

A baby chick.

And a regular quilt block.

I quilted them by machine.

 Actually, the original plan was to have this exchange last Christmas...but our meetings were canceled because of the pandemic.

So to be truthful, I have had nearly 2 years to complete these mug rugs but I work better with an approaching deadline so I started and finished these in the past month!

The patterns all came from this book "Farm Girl Vintage".  I am planning to make the quilt shown on the cover when I get around to it.

 So, I'm ready for our party. In a few days, I'll  show you the Mug Rugs I get from the exchange!

Storm and strong winds

 Overnight storms...wind, rain, hail, then a wake-up tornado warning coming over the cell phone.

I decided to go to the basement but my husband stayed in bed, despite me telling him that the warning means a tornado has actually been reported in the area.

The cat went downstairs with me and we hung out, cold and uncomfortable, about 25 minutes until the warning was over. 

In the morning we woke up to see some large trees broken off at the trunks.

Whoa!

Two trees snapped off...both Sassafras.  This one broke just inches away from the shed but fell at such an angle that the shed wasn't touched.

This one snapped off and landed upright beside the oak tee...held standing in place by tangled branches.

Fortunately, no damage to our new-ish swing either.

A lot of limbs ripped off a cedar tree too.

A few more broken branches on near by trees.

So no real damage, just the job of getting the fallen parts cleaned up (Oh, Sasquatch?)

Later we heard the sad news that another area in Kentucky was in the path of a tornado with a lot of damage to homes and tragically...the loss of many lives.

Warm weather

December is off to a good start with some nice warm days.  High temperature around 65 degrees today. 

I did some digging and rearranging in a flower bed then sat on the back porch to sew and just enjoy the weather.

Of course Puss didn't want me to do all that relaxing alone...

Later, I planted these tulip bulbs in two flower pots that I'll move by the back door in the spring.

I see that Lonnie likes them. He has written "BEAUTIFUL" across the center of the package.

I hope they do bloom this beautifully!