Hello again!

Well it's been awhile since I've written, life just seems to march along at a steady pace doesn't it?  So what have I been up to?  Well there was the trip to see my Mom in Massachusetts, the quilting cruise to the Caribbean, a trip out to Minnesota for Jim's Dad's funeral and a vacation to Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks topped off with a stay in San Francisco for Bernina University - phew!  You could say we've been traveling fools this year.  And we're home for a total of 7 days before heading off to my niece's wedding in Massachusetts next week and then off to Janome Institute in Las Vegas in late August.  I'm tired just thinking about it!

I don't know what it is about vacations but after about 10 days, I'm ready to sleep in my own bed.  We were gone 12 to California and while the parks were absolutely gorgeous and I love getting together with friends and colleagues at conventions, I'm ready for my own bed, my own routine and puttering in my garden when 10 days have gone by.  Ten seems to be the magic number for sleeping away from home!

My sewing room still isn't done . . . .the little room is perfect, the big room, well lets just say it's more organized but it's still a mess and my cutting table is probably worse than when I started.

All that mess is a direct result of my designing and tweaking more patterns lately.  My trusty graph paper is always with me and I have EQ7 on the lap top.  I spent a wonderfully relaxing afternoon on the patio at our rented condo in the foothills of Sequoia National Park scribbling on graph paper and figuring in EQ and came up with three new patterns that you'll see later this summer.  

Waves & Whitecaps

Before I left for CA, I finally took a pattern that's been floating around in my head and on scraps of paper for a little over a year and figured it out, sewed it and sent it off to be quilted.  Waves & Whitecaps is the result and I'm really pleased with the way it turned out.  I used two of the batiks I designed for the shop and two blocks to make the pattern.  I love when two blocks form a third pattern!    

The sample was supposed to be queen sized for my bed but time got in the way and I ended up doing a lap size.  Either way, I love it!

How about you?  Are you sewing more this summer?

Until next time

Falling Off The Face Of The Earth

I really didn't fall off the face of the earth but I might have been hanging off the edge for a bit.  I went to Kaye's College in Las Vegas at the end of January and had a wonderful time - until the day after I got home and I started to feel funny.  The "kid" - young man - on the plane next to me sniffled the whole way out to Vegas and I really thought I'd dodged getting sick.  HA!  Then there were people getting sick at Kaye's College - including Kaye! - and I felt ok the whole time I was there.  

Two projects almost done!

I had a wonderful time sewing, chatting, learning.  Who can complain about 5 days of non stop sewing?  Not me!  AND I actually finished two quilt tops!

I came home Friday night and was tired but fine, Sat I started feeling iffy and by Sunday I was in bed - fever, chills, coughing- UGH!  Of course being me - did I go to the doctor?  NOOOOOO.  Not for 10 days and then just because I was sick of coughing.  First round of antibiotic and cough medicine with codeine.  

A week after that I'm STILL coughing, 2nd round of antibiotic and a stronger cough medicine with enough scary warnings on it, I didn't take it.  Did I mention I don't like taking medicines?

I'm finally finishing up the antibiotics - which were HUGE by the way - and the cough is almost gone, as long as I don't laugh, then all bets are off.

So I haven't touched the sewing area.  I'm still half way done.  BUT Jeremy's birthday is next weekend and my grand plan is to have all the kids help move furniture around while they're here celebrating.  They don't know it yet and SHHHHH, don't tell them or they'll find excuses not to come.  Sara's birthday is the weekend after Jeremy's, what I don't get them to move the first weekend, I can con them into moving the second weekend.  Of course by then they'll be on to me . . . .

Till next time.

Sewing Space Cleaning, Sorting & Pitching Goes On and on, and on . . .

I bet you all thought I'd finished long ago right?  HA!  I'm about half done.  I admit that my cleaning, sorting and pitching took a bit of a rest the last week or so but I am still working on it and I am making progress!  I don't want to even add up the amount of money I'm spending on plastic bins . . . .  I am happy that I'm finding plastic bins made in the USA, BJ's Costco and Home Depot all have them.

Shelf One is now full.

My little stash room is now full.  

Bins hold yarn, (I've been knitting since I was six and my Mom started me on big needles and blankets for Barbie, Midge, Skipper and Scooter), fabric, buttons, trims, embellishments and Crazy Quilt stuff.  

Shelf 2 still needs to be organized more but  at least I have places to put things away!

Bindings, Strips & pre-cut squares 2 1/2" and 5"

More of the stash is sorted.

Up off the floor and onto a high shelf just in case the basement floods.

My back up sewing machines (yes I realize that I have a bit of an addiction there . . . no wait, it's not an addiction, it's a collection!)











It's amazing the stuff you find.  I've come across three quilt tops I'd forgotten about, one I don't even remember making! (I think that just might spark an obsession discussion)

My children don't believe me that I'm actually cleaning it, sometimes I can't believe it either. I must have been crazy to start this . . . . 

The cleaning and walking down memory lane goes on

The unfortunate part of all this is that one must clean a portion of the space before one can start organizing that space.  And looking at my space, it was almost overwhelming to figure out where to start . . .

I have a tall black plastic shelf that was stuffed with crazy quilting stuff and who knows what else.  It was fun to throw most of it on the floor, what's a little more mess on the floor!  Then I started sorting.

I first tackled the crazy quilt mess.  I love to collect things to crazy quilt with almost as much as I love to crazy quilt! (I'm thinking it's an obsession the more I clean up this space.)  I had a wonderful time sorting through bins of stuff thrown together - fancy fabrics, bits of lace, beads, fancy buttons, charms, crystals, ribbon, trims - a ridiculous amount of stuff jammed all in three big tubs.  Kind of, sort of, semi organized but still a mess.  I had to ruthlessly take myself in hand to sort rather than start stitching . . . 

Beads, crystals & fancy buttons

Beads went into plastic sectioned boxes and baby food jars (I knew I saved those for some reason!)  Charms, fancy buttons and sparkly stuff into other sectioned plastic boxes.  

Trims, bits of lace, ribbons and couching "stuff"

Trims, bits of lace and ribbons into shoe boxes.  I felt victorious until I remembered that a great majority of my crazy quilting stuff is still at the shop . . .

Buttons

I played with buttons for days and finally decided that just setting up the boxes and having somewhere to put all the stray buttons I come across would be enough for now.  Sorting through my Mom’s, Nana’s, Great Aunts Viola’s and Beatrice’s and my mother-in-law’s button collections was a task that could take weeks and I’d never see the entire top of my sewing table.  

I do love going through all their button boxes.  Being children of the depression, my grandmother and her sisters worked in a sock factory somewhere in Gloucester when they were young and learned to save everything.  They were the original recyclers, not because they were trying to save the environment, they were trying to save every penny they could by reusing everything.  Which is why I find sets of buttons taken off old clothing & strung together on thread or in small plastic boxes or wrapped neatly is a clean tissue in their button boxes.  They make me smile and think of my Nana and her sisters.

I've started a box of vintage sewing tools.  Their sock darning eggs make me laugh.  My Nana was horrified that not only did I not darn socks, I didn't know how.  She could never get me to sit still long enough to teach me and while I still wouldn't darn socks, I do wish I'd let her teach me how.

I feel the same way about knitting pot heads - that sounds interesting doesn't it????  My Dad used to sit on the stairs during the winter and knit (he called it knitting but it was actually kind of like macrame) lobster pot heads - the netting funnel on lobster pots.  I always meant to get him to teach me how to do it.  My brother knows how, I saw the set up on his stairs last time I was home, I'll bug him to teach me.

Until then, I'm still sorting here.

Tis the Season

So in the middle of all this craziness called holiday preparation, I've decided I can't stand my sewing room one more minute.  It probably could qualify for that hoarders show and while I know this will stun the few people allowed to see it, I am slowly but surely cleaning it up.  Why now?  I have NO IDEA!  Just got to a point where I can't stand it anymore.  So I am busily buying clear containers to organize and put stuff in.  So far I've done the embellishments and that was really fun sorting through it all, then I moved to buttons - whew I have A LOT of buttons, more than I thought I had, and I'm now into the notions.  

I think the problem with all of this is, I've inherited my grandmothers' sewing paraphernalia, two of my great aunts, my mom's and my mother-in-law's along with the assorted vintage sewing baskets I've picked up and customers have given me.  I have quite the collection of vintage sewing stuff plus all the stuff I've brought home . . . . and I can't bring myself to throw any of it out.  My Nana and great aunts cut all the buttons off old clothing and strung them together on string to save them.  How can you throw that history out?????  But this has all lead to a room that doesn't function at all.  My friend Jerry has an expression - it looks like the walls threw up, and yes, that's exactly what my sewing room looks like, except it was a particularly nasty flu.  

Pictures you ask?  Before pictures?  HA!  NEVER!  Not going to happen.  I will show pictures on the blog though - the areas that I've cleaned up but no before pictures exist, no will they ever . . . .  Stay tuned for more of the trials and tribulations of shoveling out my sewing room.

Hello again!

It's been awhile since I've blogged, too many other things going on!  Hopefully at some point, my life will slow down to a normal speed.  Let's catch up.

Coming in the door.

The shop is moved and we're settled in.  We keep rearranging things but that's normal for any retail store.  There are a few things we can't find, a few things that need to go to the storage unit and a few things that need to come out of the storage unit but I have a feeling that is always going to be the case!

We spent most of the month of August finding things that we KNEW we had and trying to figure out the best place to put office supplies and stuff.  And since we all have opinions on where the best place would be and everyone has a different idea of what's best . . . . well use your imagination to figure out how organized THAT was!  We finally worked it out and it's only every once in awhile that we think, WHERE IS THAT?

Aubrey

Miss Aubrey Michelle Welch joined our family on September 14th.  She belongs to my oldest son James and his wife, Stefanie and she's a cutie!  She weighed in at a very dainty 5 lbs 11 ozs.  She makes Nathan & Colin look like Amazons!

Classes & clubs started up, shows started happening and we settled into fall.

I headed out to Quilt Market in Houston with hurricane warnings starting to ratchet up and then Sandy was a direct hit on the Jersey Shore. 

I'm sure you've seen all the news reports or lived through it yourself so I won't elaborate but to just say, the stories are horrifying and so sad at the same time.  The store is fine, our family is fine but we know friends and customers who have lost everything or almost everything.  Our local high school is still being used as a shelter, so much of the shore is just gone.

There is a desperate need for blankets and quilts.  Our local Project Linus coordinator is taking donations to filter out through the Red Cross and her contacts.  Here is Hillary's information - you can read more information by clicking here.  

Please follow the following guidelines when sending your quilts:

• Quilts should be twin to queen sizes.
• Please include your contact information (name, address, phone and/or email.) Project Linus will try to let you know where your quilt is heading.
• Quilts should be machine washed and wrapped to keep the quilts fresh in transport.

Ship to:

Hillary Roberts, President

Project Linus NJ, Inc.

79 Jackson Street

Keyport, NJ 07735

If you have questions, you may call Hillary at (732) 335-9033 or email her at director@blankiedepo.org or blankiedepo@aol.com. You may also visit the Project Linus website at www.blankiedepo.org.

Thanks for anything you can do.

Until next time.

Moving Update

No matter what anyone tells you, moving is NOT fun.  Choosing the paint colors, imagining what the new space will look like?  That is fun.  The actual physical work of moving - not fun.

Boxes, boxes, boxes . . . .EVERYWHERE!

Everything is IN the new space.  Things that aren't going to stay, are in the new space.  Let's just say the new space is more than a little overfull.  Today we're renting a storage locker.  Yes, I'm becoming one of those people who has WAY too much stuff and no place to put it.  The house is full.  The oversized two car garage is full.  The store is full and the storeroom is PACKED.  And there are still boxes everywhere in the store.  With stuff in them.  Lots of stuff in them.  1200 square feet of storage space does NOT fit into 400 square feet no matter how hard you try.

The clean half of the shop!

All that said, the new store is shaping up and will look great after a few visits to the storage unit!  I love the paint colors, Jim is building a new checkout/cutting area, the floors are GORGEOUS, all the fabric fits! (YAY!) and notions, patterns and books are starting to be put out.  Samples go up tomorrow.


We've been working really hard to get ready.  The staff thinks I'm crazy, more so than usual, but we will be open at 10am on Wednesday, August 1st! Stop in and see us!


918 Lacey Road, Forked River, NJ 
 Click here for directions.