Thirty Three

You know when you move or at least do a major clean you uncover a wicked amount of crap... er, stuff? Yeah that.

Yesterday two of my local quilty friends, Andrea and Lee, came over to help me get prepped and start moving my scattered quilting stuff to my new space in the basement. It isn't quite done yet, hopefully by the end of the week. But the closets are in and were ready to be loaded. So load and fold and inventory we did.

I love my fabric, but I must finally admit that I do indeed have enough. I've really got to use more before I buy more. Or find it a new home. But I've known that for a while. What was more.shocking to me was the amount of quilt tops, WIPs, and intentional quilts that I had.

O   M   G

Instead of burying it all back in bins and ignoring that I might perhaps have a problem with starting and not finishing quilts I decided to actually inventory all those piles. And because I believe in full disclosure of my faults here is a full listing of all the projects awaiting my attention. I've numbered them for full effect.

Quilt Tops - Ready for Quilting

1. Anniversary Quilt
2. Cosmos Blocks
3. Wine Gums
4. Improv Sampler
5. My version of Checkerboard from Sunday Morning Quilts
6. Slaveship Quilt Inspired by The Book of Negroes
7. Gum on Concrete, my version of Splash from Sunday Morning Quilts
8. An old Amy Butler quilt top I picked up a sample sale

Quilts - Basted and Started Quilting

9. Girlie Quilt
10. Low Volume Circles

Works in Progress

11. Mid Mod Bee - Blocks to be assembled into a top
12. Unscripted Bee - Waiting for a couple of blocks, then to be assembled
13. Hand Pieced Diamonds - always ongoing
14. More Cosmic Burst blocks - I have a whole other set of blocks for a baby quilt
15. Voiles - Still cutting and piecing every now and then
16. Name quilt for my daughter - haven't done anything since this post
17. Chandelier quilt - was so close, then discovered a big mistake and have never fixed it
18. Mountain Meadows - have made no more blocks since
19. Liberty Circles - I make a handful every now and then but I'm still not assembling the top
20. Blue and green Christmas Tree quilt - I cut the pieces last year then promptly put them away
21. The alternate pink/black/white blocks I started when working on the girlie quilt
22. Respite - a project started in a Bill Kerr design workshop
23. Pieced Stars - a BOM I started years ago when I wanted to do some precision piecing breaks when doing a lot of improv
24. Japanese Curves - Fell in love with a Japanese fabric and a curvy pattern, took a class, never finished
25. The Water Quilt
26. Maple Leaves

Class Samples (Pieces I work on while teaching, as examples)

27. A values quilt in neutrals
28. Green/Yellow/Orange Improv blocks

Intentional Quilts

29. Sympatico and Organic solid stack
30. Lucky Penny Bike Path
31. Some vintage feedsacks intended for Amanda's quilt from Fresh Fabric Treats
32. Turkey reds, blues, and whites for a striped project
33. A collection of screen printed and low-volume favourites

To cap all this off, as Andrea and Lee were leaving the mail arrived, and in it was a fat quarter collection of Architextures, my friend Carolyn's new line.

O  M  G
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Friday Favourites: Acapulco Bags

Storage! Funky retro storage!

Or...

Horribly tacky, tourist storage.

I picked these up off the floor of my Mom's garage. She'd had a garage sale a few weeks before and shockingly, shockingly, no one bought them. I do remember them hiding in the closet of my parents' room and I have a vague recollection of the trip to Acapulco where these originated. Obviously they were well loved because my Mom found a bottle of rum from the same trip in the bags.

And now they hold in progress quilt projects. Hubby even kind of likes them. Then again, anything is probably preferable to a plastic bin in the corner. The small one holds my Maple Leaf blocks (more to share on those next week).

Still Life With Chair

Behold the cuteness. And I don't mean the little guy's chubby legs or the Monsterz quilt from Rashida or the handknits. Behold my chair. In my sewing room. And in a week I will be able to park my behind in that gorgeous new chair and sew.

Until then I am packing and cleaning and researching permanent design walls and buying outlet covers and and and...

So Close Now

The other night Hubby and I stayed up very late cleaning the floors in our basement. We had to clear out rooms, give them a good vacuum, then wash them in anticipation of carpet going on. I couldn't help but think of the many late nights we spent with mops and a Shop Vac over seven years ago when we flooded.

We are FINALLY in the home stretch of a reno that started, unintentionally, with a flood in the summer of 2005. A month of rain + a house built on clay soil - any sort of waterproofing on a 50 year old house + a cracked foundation = lots of water in the basement. Lots.

It felt wrong to be celebrating colourful floors, finished baseboards and awesome wallpaper in the wake of Sandy and so much destruction for so many, but I had to remember that this was born of our own disaster. And we've worked very hard in the years since to get to this point.

It's kind of been like the Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly.

  To finish the basement we had to waterproof.
  To waterproof we had to dig a trench around our house.
  To dig the trench we had to rip out the driveway and tear down the fence.
  To tear down the fence we had to build a new one.
  To build a new fence we had to grade and landscape our front and back yards.

And all that before we could think about walls, toilets, and colourful floors.

So soon, very soon, the Dining Room Empire will change slightly. I will get my own sewing room (that room on the right there) and the baby gets his own room. I can't wait.