I am on a roll!

I finished another quilt! Yay! I started this quilt back in July 2007 and of course, I've not had much time to work on it since then, with the yo yo quilt and with the house. I finally got it basted a few weeks ago when I was up at my parents' house and I started quilting it last week, just after I finished the yo yos.

I am ridiculously obsessive compulsive when it comes to the quilting and binding and I've been working on this non-stop since I started. I just did a simple cross-hatching, like the sand & white quilt that I made last year. This time, I started by laying down a straight line with painter's masking tape and sewing alongside that. After the first line, I ripped it off and just used the little guide bar. It worked fine. Just takes forever.

For the binding, I cut random length pieces of the black and white and pieced it together. I think I like that. It is very narrow, which I like, but darn if it isn't hard on your fingers! My left hand gets numb and both thumbs hurt and I get a nice hole in the finger I push the needle with. Must get a proper thimble, I think.

The Man's Day

Yesterday was the Man's 30th birthday. To celebrate, he had eggs, toast, bacon and sausage for breakfast. Then there was pizza for dinner and a hockey game. The game was fun and the Pens won. We even picked up Malkin bobbleheads. I'm not a huge hockey fan, but he enjoyed the game.

Then we came home and watched a movie and had birthday cake. Very exciting day, I know, but that's his idea of a good day. Very healthy. He did redeem himself by getting on the treadmill today, however.

Love you, babe!

Ikea stuff

I stop in at Ikea every now and then, since we are lucky to have one very close to our house. I mostly just like to look and get some ideas, since most of the furniture and stuff is not what I'm looking for at this stage. Every now and then, though, I get something that I love.

I picked up this canvas for the bedroom. Isn't it lovely? Those are just my colors. I don't know where I'm putting it yet, since its too large and doesn't look right above the bed, but its going in there somewhere.

These vases were there the last time I stopped too. Aren't they cute? Sorta like labware. I have a soft spot for labware, I think.

I also bought this poster. I don't know what for, but I like it.

IT IS FINISHED!

The yo yo quilt is now done. Hallelujah!

Another apron I like

I saw this apron the other day at the Tie One One newest flickr set. Its over at montessoribyhand.blogspot.com - the Emmaline Apron. How cute is that? Completely reversible. I especially like the red polka-dotted one. She has patterns for sale!

This time a project was successful!

I did manage to finish one successful project. Okay, its not quite finished, but almost (I have a small closet area I'm still ignoring). I got the Man to fix the baseboards in the house and I painted them. Yay! It looks much better, I think.

When we refinished the floors, we made them darker, so they no longer matched the baseboards. The baseboards were a nice shade of orangey tinted oak. Not my thing.

I thought maybe we'd replace the trim altogether with something nicer, but that didn't seem to make much sense when we priced it, so we left what baseboard was there and added it to the wall that it was missing from. Then we put on all the missing shoe molding. There are still a few gaps between the floors and the baseboards in the spare room, but whatcha gonna do? Not a big deal.

Then I primed it and painted it all white. Looks much better. I had a little dog running around the whole time who really wanted to be in my lap or chew on my arm, but he didn't do much damage. I only found a few little foot prints of paint on my floors and they were damp, so they came right off. Twirp.

Oh, and I discovered something else. This is probably elementary, but I didn't know it. This is my baseboard before. Kinda disappointing.

This is after. After what? CAULKING. Yay! Caulk is my new best friend. I've run around caulking all the gaps in the trim that I can find and everything looks so much better!

Now if I could just get the Man to put up crown molding in the bedrooms. Wish me luck! He's been dragging his feet for weeks!

Maybe someday I'll post again. . .

Where did January go? I don't feel like I've gotten much done, so where have I been? I really don't know. . . I'm going with the excuse that my real job has taken up more time than normal. Just that time of year.

One of my other little projects that I didn't get around to posting about was a set of pillows for Dutch to sleep. Well, it started out as a set. I bought box pillow forms and soft chocolate-colored fur and spent too much on them. Then I set out to make the pillow covers with a zipper in the band. Oh my word. These did not turn out well.

The zippers were really p*ssing me off. I couldn't get those right for the life of me. I did finally get one in, but I had to practically shave all the fur off around it to get it to zip up. Then I had a heck of a time sewing the fur together and keeping the edges even. Much too slippery and a bit of stretch in one direction.

It turned out okay, but so not worth the money in materials. He promptly peed on this one, so I couldn't return that pillow form. But I did return the other pillow forms and retrieve a little bit of my wasted money. Dutch tried it out and will get on it now and then, but he eventually retreats to the folded up blanket in our bedroom.

I still have the other pillow pieces cut out and I think I may just get a cheapo flatter pillow form and make pillows out of those and see if he'll sleep on those. I hope so.