As it is, one of our couches has just enough un-pillowed space left for a single dog to enjoy a siesta when she’s feeling antisocial in the evenings and chooses to relax in a different room than her humans and her doggy “brother.”
Did I make more pillows?
Yep.
You can never have too many, right?
Besides, I had numerous scraps left from the Lemon Pepper Quilt–little bits that had already been sewn together which could be trimmed up and pieced together to make pillow tops.
I also had enough larger scraps left that, with a bit of piecing, could be used to make backs for the pillows.
I trimmed the already pieced bits down to 2 1/4″ strips and sewed four of these strips together to make a block. Each pillow top had 4 blocks, 2 going vertically and 2 going horizontally. I added a black border and quilted the tops in a similar style as I had the Lemon Pepper quilt (kind of an all-over straight line quilting 1/4″ from some of the seams…think boxy zigzag.)
My grandmother, my dad’s mom, died before I was born. I’ve seen photos and heard many stories about her, but the only connection I have to her is a quilt my grandfather gave to me a few years before he passed away.
By the way, those stories about grandma? The one told most often was about how she was such a kind woman. But one day, one of the chickens in their backyard flock pecked her one too many times, and that kind woman wrung his neck! You can guess what they had for dinner that night.
I’m fairly certain–judging by the fact that many of the fabrics are florals–that not all of the quilt squares were cut from my dad’s clothes, but I know for certain that at least one of the fabrics came from a pair of his childhood pajamas. If I recall correctly, his pajamas were made of red and white stripe fabric.
Though my dad is still living and I don’t need a tangible item to bring memories of him to mind, it’s nice to have this quilt nearby as a connection to the grandmother I never got to know and to the child my father once was. And I’m glad my grandfather trusted me with this heirloom and knew I would appreciate the effort put into each hand-stitched stitch.
I also appreciate all of the fabulous patterns on the old fabrics.
Many years ago a childhood friend got married. I was her Matron of Honor. She had been my Maid of Honor a few years earlier.
I chose the pattern “Treasured Hearts” from the book Hearts are Forever by Four Corners, picked out the fabrics, and got started. I worked diligently but, as I was an exhausted new mother, quickly realized I would never finish the quilt in time for the wedding.
Besides, I had fallen a bit in love with the quilt and really didn’t want to part with it. Horrible, I know. What kind of friend am I?
So a new gift was chosen for the wedding, and I put the quilt away to finish when I had more time.
I wouldn’t find that time for several more years, not until long after we’d built a house, moved, and had two more children. I can’t remember exactly what year that was (I should probably label my quilts), but I have a very clear memory of being cold and working on the quilting at the kitchen table while our across-the-pond neighbor at the time was in the basement fixing our broken furnace.
Ordinarily, I’m not a fan of white fabric. I find it tends to show every single wrinkle. But I liked the white on this quilt. I chose to quilt in the ditch around each colored piece of fabric. I used a soft, green flannel, that my parents purchased an entire bolt of at a very reasonable price in Ohio’s Amish Country, for the backing. The pattern made a twin/double size quilt measuring 73″ by 87.” For now, this quilt is draped over a chair in our living room. I thought that one day, should we ever turn our kids’ bedrooms into guest rooms, I might use it on a bed. After laying it out today to take photos, I realized how much it has aged just while draped on the back of a chair. The white is less white; the colors are a bit faded. It was a reminder that everything…and not just me…is aging.
Last weekend I wrote of the two tiny tyrants who share our house, or as our daughter calls them, the Guinea pigs. This week, let me introduce you to the other tiny terror in our lives:
Her name is Rosie. She’s 17 and spoiled absolutely rotten. (She would disagree on the spoiled rotten bit for two reasons. #1 – She has to live with 2 dogs and #2 – She occasionally has to wait to get her bedtime treat longer than she would like.)
Rosie, and her sister Belle (who died in early 2020), came to live with us when they were one day old. We then became a, gasp, four cat family at the time, having adopted two males from the shelter four years previously. (Sadly, the boys died several years ago.) Rosie and Belle had to be fed with bottles (even in the middle of the night), burped like babies, and taught how to do cat stuff (like use a litter box) by the humans in the family.
I was the only mama Rosie ever knew. And I didn’t shove her out of the “nest” as a normal mama cat would. Thus, a monster was created.
She’s clingy, insisting on sharing my chair when I sit down to sew. If she’s not on the chair behind me, forcing me to teeter on the very edge, she’s sitting on whatever project I’m attempting to work on. If I’m lucky she might lay in her bed nearby. Chances of that improve if I’ve got a space heater running nearby so she can toast her little whiskers.
At night she insists on sleeping as close to my face as possible, occasionally treating me to a neck stomping as she settles into position. As a person with allergies, let me just say that it’s a real treat having a cat sleep right under my nose every night. We tried evicting her from the bedroom, but her meowing skills are top notch. She can meow for hours at a time and often does so if her nightly treat is running late.
Her most recent transgression had nothing to do with neck stomping or lengthy bouts of meowing and put her firmly in top place on the naughty list for the week. Displeased with the state of 1 of her 4 (!!) litter boxes, she left me a stinky “present” right on top of the Lemon Pepper Quilt I was quilting.
I disposed of the “present” and spot cleaned the area, mentally cussing the entire time because I knew a spot clean would not suffice. There was no way I would put that quilt on the back of the couch or snuggle underneath it until it was washed.
I ordered some Shout color-catchers, knowing I did not want a repeat performance of what happened when I washed the bed quilt that took me 19 years to complete. (Blue backing that had been previously washed bled onto the front cream stars, which might not have been stopped even with a color-catcher.) As this quilt was a mix of whites and blacks and pale greens, I worried it could all be ruined with one washing.
After finishing the quilting (straight line meandering and a lot of it!) and binding AND taking photos just in case something bad happened, I said a prayer and tossed it in the wash. Thankfully, it came out looking perfect.
So, here it is, the Lemon Pepper Quilt that was on my UFO (unfinished objects) list and the third project knocked off the list this year:
Luna is carefully checking out those quilting stitches.No word yet on if she approves.
*Update on the Guinea pig hay bags from last week: Apparently I made the holes in the hay bags slightly too large. The boys are able to yank the hay out a bit too easily, thus creating mounds of hay on the floor of their enclosure which they might or might not eat. They will, for sure, act as if they have nothing to eat when the hay bags are empty despite these mounds of perfectly good hay.
There are two tiny little tyrants who live in our house. (Plus one medium-sized tyrant, but this isn’t about her. She’ll have her own story next week. And it isn’t pleasant.)
Our tiny tyrants rumble strut around in a pair of cages that take up nearly a quarter of a room in our house. They stare at me with interest as I do my daily workout in front of their cage, their little jaws gnawing away at hay. I’m their entertainment and the hay is their popcorn. They demand their dinner every night at the exact moment I rise from my chair at the table with loud, shrill WHEEKS of bossiness. And anytime I peel anything while cooking, they loudly request a sampling of whatever it is.
But the funny thing is, these little bossy potato-shaped furballs aren’t even MY pets, nor do they belong to Hubby, though we provide at least 75% of their care.
Allow me to introduce you to the two little boys I call “Sirs,” as I greet them every morning when they run to the side of the cage in anticipation of the pellets I will measure out: Winston and Basil, the guinea pigs.
Photo credit to my daughter
How did Hubby and I come to be the caretakers of these two hooligans who flip pigloos around like they weigh nothing, making me wonder just what strength these creatures would have if they were human-sized?
It all began with two other guinea pigs. Once upon a time, our middle daughter begged us for a guinea pig. She would be the sole caretaker, she promised. Since she seems to have been born with a responsibility gene that some youth lack, we relented and Beatrice, a senior citizen rescue piggie, came to live with us. As our daughter lived up to her end of the deal, providing all care for her piggie, we allowed her to adopt another piggie. Mable joined the family. (I blame the picture book One Guinea Pig Is Not Enough that we read to her when she was younger for this guinea pig obsession.)
Sadly, Mable developed what the vet suspected was a heart condition, and she passed away. Not much later, our little senior citizen crossed the rainbow bridge, as well.
Our daughter was heartbroken. There were tears. Lots of tears. But we couldn’t get more piggies! She was a senior in high school at the time, about to launch into the world of college and dorm life where piggies wouldn’t be welcomed.
Let me just say that allowing her to adopt two little baby guinea pigs from the rescue was NOT my idea. But they were cute, our daughter promised to be home on weekends to care for them, and I relented.
And that’s how we came to be the nearly full-time caretakers of those two fellas who I will probably miss when they move out when our daughter graduates from college next spring.
Anyway…that was a long story to get to today’s sewing project.
The two little dudes with very sharp teeth had chewed through their hay bags. Thus, I whipped up some new ones. I thought this fabric, leftover from a pillowcase I made for my dad (he collects pigs) many years ago was just perfect since our little piggies are pretty hoggish.
I had hoped to have my Lemon Pepper Lap Quilt finished to share this weekend, but the quilting is taking WAY longer than I had planned. Hubby and I made it through the audiobook A Rule Against Murder by Louise Penny (We’re working our way through the Inspector Gamache series), all 10 hours and 50ish minutes of it while I quilted and he worked, and I’m still not finished with the quilting. I see another entire audiobook in our future before I’ve sewn the last stitch.
Meanwhile, I did knock another unfinished object off my lengthy list. The goal for the year was to finish up three projects (before starting anything new…although where’s the fun in that?), and I’ve now completed two.
Behold…the socks that took at least a year:
Not only did these socks take at least a year for me to finish, but they weren’t even supposed to be one of my projects.
Several years ago…probably at least ten…my daughter and I bought yarn to knit socks. I picked a black and orange and pink and numerous other colors variegated yarn for mine. She picked a blue and brown yarn. After several years (YEARS!) I finally finished my pair.
It took years because I was terrified to do the whole “Turning the heel” bit because our local “Knitting Lady” had passed away and I felt like a YouTube video couldn’t possibly compare to live instruction. Thankfully, YouTube did not fail me, as I haven’t found a replacement Knitting Lady to pick out my mishaps and pick up my dropped stitches. (I can actually pick up my dropped stitches all on my own now.)
Anyway…my daughter moved on to other knitting projects since socks didn’t really interest her, and I became the owner of the blue and brown sock yarn and about 1 inch of the sock that she had completed. Last year I finally picked up the project, unraveled what she’d completed (since we knit at a different tightness), and vowed to make myself another pair of socks. Hours and hours, days and days later, I finally Kitchener Stitched up the toe on the second sock yesterday. I can’t explain why it takes me so long to knit a sock or a pair of socks. It just does.
(I like how this yarn stripes. And, amazingly and through no effort on my part, the stripes on each sock nearly match.)
Now the question is: Do I frame these? Hang them up somewhere? Put them in a safe and bring them out once a year to admire? They’re super comfortable, but after all that work I can’t just wear them and wear them out!
Last year I created a list of my unfinished projects. Some call them UFOs (Unfinished Objects) or WIPs (Works in Progress). I came up with nine projects that were in various states of completion–7 quilts, 1 knitting project, and 1 cross-stitch project. The goal for this year is to knock at least three of those projects off my list. I will, no doubt, end up starting several new projects thus causing my list to grow rather than shrink! But at least I’m trying to keep the pile of projects to a minimum.
The first project I completed off my list was the Pieceful Waters quilt which featured Crossed Canoe blocks. I absolutely love how this quilt turned out. I love the colors and the design. I especially love that I was able to use some carefully hoarded Wizard of Oz fabric scraps left from a quilt I made one of our daughters when she was a toddler. (That quilt was in last week’s post.)
This quilt pattern was from the October 2014 issue of American Patchwork & Quilting magazine. I believe I started working on the quilt in 2020. Because it involved paper-piecing which I’m not a huge fan of (I don’t like tearing all the paper off.), I worked on it rather sporadically over the past 2 years.
I made a couple changes to the pattern. As I’m not a fan of huge borders, I did not add the outer 5″ border that was in the original pattern. I also made 16 blocks instead of the 20 in the pattern. (That was mainly because I was running low on green and pink fabric and didn’t want to purchase anything new for the project.) I did very simple quilting, choosing to quilt approximately 1/8″ from the edge of the pieces. I used green thread on the pink fabric and pink thread on the green fabric.
Once Hubby makes a compression hanger, this quilt will hang in our bedroom. I can’t wait to see it on the wall!
My next project won’t be one from the Unfinished Project list. Our middle daughter’s guinea pigs need new hay bags. It’s not an exciting project, but I’ll try to choose a fun fabric.
Hubby, our middle daughter, and I enjoyed a trip to Texas during the last two weeks of December. We visited Enchanted Rock State Park, Big Bend National Park, Guadalupe National Park, and El Paso. We hiked miles and miles every day, summited Guadalupe Peak, and enjoyed a visit with my brother and his family.
Guadalupe Peak Summit
It was a great trip.
Then we got home.
Where one after another we succumbed to what we think was the Big C. The Great Contagion. The thing for which we were all vaxxed to the max. I wouldn’t say it was horrible, but it definitely wasn’t a good time. Now, a solid month and a couple days from the first symptom, I think I’ve finally fully recovered. (Tests were very difficult to find, so we simply stayed home.)
For most of January, I didn’t feel like doing much. I read. I slept. I watched television. I cooked “interesting” meals from what we had on hand in the freezer since we were pretty much stuck at home for three weeks straight. (We might not have still been contagious after a week or so, but no one wants to be the person having an uncontrollable coughing fit in the middle of the grocery store right now! It was just easier to stay home. And, as an added benefit, we were forced to use up some older food in the freezer.)
This past week I finally felt like doing some sewing. I picked up where I left off prior to vacation on the quilting of my Crossed Canoes quilt. I had hoped to have the quilt finished by this weekend, but didn’t quite make it. I also spent an evening working on some knitted socks.
Since I have nothing new to share, I thought I’d pull a couple older quilts out of the cedar chest to share. Please excuse the wrinkles. They were well-used and have also been stored for some time.
These quilts were made from the “Friends” pattern found in Quick Rotary Cutter Quilts by Pam Bono Designs.
Quick they were not!
Each large doll block was constructed of 45 different pieces, and that didn’t include the buttons and frills and hair! (It was fun choosing the ribbons, lace, and buttons to dress up each doll.) This quilt pattern could be a great use for scraps.
I made these twin-size quilts, one in blue and pink for our oldest daughter and one in green and pink for our younger daughter, when they were around 4 and 2. They are both in their 20s now.
As I look back now as a mostly empty nester who doesn’t seem to complete projects quite as quickly as I used to, I am amazed at how much sewing I got done when the kids were younger. At the time I made these quilts, I was pregnant with their younger brother and had two very active toddlers running around the house.
(The book also contains a pattern for a doll that matches the quilts.)
Shortly after we moved into our house I decorated the kids’ bathroom with an underwater theme. I painted the walls light blue, then sponged a darker blue on top.
(Sponging paint on or off was quite the rage there for a while in the early 2000s. I must have sponged, ragged, and even plastic-wrapped paint on over half the walls in the house. Looking back, while I liked it at the time, it was a pretty weird fad. The plastic-wrap technique involved painting the walls with a base color, then adding a darker color. While the darker paint was still wet, you put a layer of plastic wrap on top then pulled it off. This removed part of the dark paint, leaving behind interesting lines in the remaining paint.)
Anyway, I digress.
Where were we?
Ah, yes. Underwater bathroom.
After painting, I added an undersea-themed wallpaper border up near the ceiling. (Borders were “in” at the time also. Had I known how difficult this one would be to remove years later, I never would have put it up there.) We then hung a fishing net and blue tulle from corner to corner over the bathtub and put a couple starfish inside. That, I think, did look pretty neat.
As a final touch, I added this small dolphin wall hanging:
The dolphin block, a paper-piecing pattern, was from A Quilter’s Ark by Margaret Rolfe. Each dolphin block finishes at just 4″ x 4.” This little wall hanging was just the right size to fit between two medicine cabinets.
Several years after painting the bathroom, we decided to give it a bit of a freshening up. The netting and tulle were dusty, the kids had outgrown the underwater theme, and I just like to have painting projects. We didn’t put a lot of thought into the paint color, instead choosing to be frugal by using leftover paint from when I painted our oldest daughter’s room. She’d chosen a pale blue for her walls and a strange pinkish-purple for a tiny angled wall where her bedroom door is located. We had nearly a gallon of that strange pinkish-purple color left, and so that’s what ended up in the bathroom.
I hated that color.
And the dolphin wall hanging didn’t quite match the room anymore. But we left it there anyway.
We tolerated the paint color for several years until it came time to paint our son’s bedroom. He chose a lovely grey paint for his walls, and, since there was leftover paint, I was able to redo the bathroom. Now, the dolphins once again look like they belong.
It’s been a rough couple of weeks. Following a super fun, two-week Texas adventure where we hiked lots of miles, saw family, and summited Guadalupe Peak (the highest point in Texas at 8,751 feet), we returned home and started battling a “cold.” It’s been approximately 24 days of one symptom after another, and I finally seem to be in the final days of a nagging cough. (Do you ever wonder when sick if you’re ever going to feel fully normal again? I’m at that point right now!) Our daughter, who claims she’s just “built different” by which she means “built better,” luckily had barely a sniffle. No one got tested for anything since we were able to just stay home, so we will forever not know if we caught the “thing.” (Our daughter and son did eventually get tested when they moved back to college.)
It wasn’t until the last week or so that I felt like doing much other than vegging out on the couch watching television or napping. When I noticed that my slippers were sporting some holes in the soles, I decided to get busy making a new pair since that was something I could easily work on while continuing to recuperate.
The pattern calls for using a double strand of heavy worsted weight yarn. I chose to use a single strand of bulky yarn. I purchased Buttercream Luxe Craft Roving from Hobby Lobby as that is the only local place to purchase 100% wool yarn. (Lest you think I went shopping for yarn whilst sick and potentially infected other townfolk, let me assure you that I purchased this yarn a couple months ago when I realized that I would soon need new slippers. I went nowhere for 3 weeks, finally venturing out to the grocery last night since we were nearing a dire empty fridge situation.)
Still a bit large
Comparing this yarn to one I had purchased at a Joann’s store in a nearby town (sadly our Joann’s closed many years ago) for my last pair of slippers, I believe this brand felted up a lot faster.
The felting process is like magic. It’s amazing to see what can happen to what looks like a big floppy pair of clown shoes in just 10-15 minutes of hot water and agitation in the washing machine. I’m not a fan of trying the slippers on during the felting process. They’re wet and dripping everywhere, a bit soapy, and hot. Plus I don’t like that fuzzy yarn against my bare toes! (I always wear socks with these slippers.) They were still a bit large in the photo, so I put them in for another 3 minutes which made them just right. After forming them to my feet, I placed them in front of the fireplace to dry.
All finished!
Though both slippers are knitted from the same pattern, once you form the wet slippers to your feet, you do end up with a distinct right and left slipper.
These are so cozy. They are great for when you’re just sitting around on the couch at night. I prefer a hard-soled slipper for when I’m walking around the house during the day as these are a bit slippery on hard surfaces. Plus, though I enjoy knitting them, I like for them to not wear out quickly.
A final note: I do not make the extra “bumper” sole that can be added to these slippers.
Lazy Saturday Quilts 