Spring Cleaning in the Studio

The countdown to new downstairs carpeting is at three days. On Tuesday the installers will be here to begin laying new gray/taupe carpeting in my studio, the office, stairs down to the basement, and the small stairs from the office down to Bruce’s laBORatory. We (meaning me) have cleaned out the studio except my sewing machines and the furniture that the installers will move into a spare bedroom. It’s desolate! I have been pacing myself, doing a bit each day to avoid overdoing the physical stuff (as I tend to do when I work outside in the garden). Bruce helped yesterday to drag two heavy totes of stuff down to his laBORatory, which is where the office furniture will be stored come Tuesday. All that’s left is moving the computer stuff, storing the seven desk drawers and their contents, and moving my machines and cutting mat. We’ll do all that on Monday. 

In looking at the picture above, I guess I need to move my iron and ironing board too. Easy peasy. The picture below is the left part of the same wall pictured above. I’ll move that cart of my neutral scraps on Monday, too. But you can see the old, yucky carpet. I don’t know if you can click to see, but there are rust spots in the carpet. I used to have an old iron-based Victorian dress form that stood in that corner. Before the exterior drain was fixed outside that door (it was actually the former door), we had a flood in that area and the iron rusted into the carpet. Never could get it out. 

But by this time next week I hope to have it all carpeted and all my stuff returned to normal. Fingers crossed. They said it would take two days - one to lay the carpet in the rooms, and the other to do the coving (which requires special woven borders) and the light cutouts on the stairs. 

In the meantime, I did get a bit of stitching done. I quilted a Halloween quilt that Cousin Kim assembled. I don’t have a picture of it yet because she hasn’t added the binding yet. Anyway, I plan to show the last several quilts that Kim has finished in an upcoming blog post - she’s been on a finishing tear these last three months. 

But Purple Posies did get basted, quilted and bound. Yay! In fact, it’s coming with me today (along with about 17-18 other quilts) to our Quilts for Kids workshop this morning.  The weather looks threatening in this picture, but it had been beautiful all day and then clouded up about a half hour before this picture. We hurried out to get a picture (I also wanted a picture of the blossoms on the tree before the storm hit) before it began raining. Only it didn’t rain. A half hour after this picture, it was bright and sunny again. Pffffft......

Purple Posies is a donation quilt that I quilted with little loops, flowers and hooks. It turned out cute, but I didn’t get a photo of the back, which is just the solid lavender with a strip of the leftover floral fabric to add width. It finished at 50x60”.

Last week I was having tension issues with my machine. I had tried adjusting everything and cleaning and oiling as per usual. Nothing had helped. But my friend Pat suggested using canned air to blow out the tension discs. I hadn’t thought of that. Once I did that, the issues disappeared! Who knew? I made a quilt sandwich and played with my walking foot, free motion foot - just playing and speeding, etc. Perfecto! YAY!! Thanks, Pat. That precipitated my quilting frenzy this week!

Since this is the last Saturday of April, I’m linking up with Scrappy Saturday at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. Here are the light blue scrappy blocks that I finished this month.

I didn’t get a picture of all the string blocks I made, so the picture in the lower left of one block represents the 18 that I made and inserted in one of the light blue quilts for this month. Eighty blocks total, a good showing.  Next week I’ll show all the quilts for the month. I’m hoping I’ll have time to get my studio back together and finish two more quilts before month end.

Which two, you ask? (You did ask, didn’t you?) Why, Rainbow Scrap quilts. I decided that my Twin Sisters (aka Windmills, to me) would be better if made into two separate kid-sized quilts. 

The first one included most of the darks and expressly forbade any pink, although some of those reds and oranges look pink in the picture. It will be a gender neutral quilt. These blocks finish at 6”, so this flimsy measures 42x48”.

The second flimsy contains the pinks and more of the floral and pastel blocks, again measuring 42x48”.

I had a piece of multi-colored polka-dot backing fabric in my stash that split perfectly in half to make the backing for these two tops.

Finally, last weekend we had dinner with son Ryan and his wife Kim, plus our two grands Lauren (17) and Easton (22) at their place. Ryan is becoming an excellent cook/chef! He reads and watches a lot of cooking shows and experiments with new recipes. And the new gadgets (special grills, meat grinders, etc) attest to that. That evening we had birria tacos (I hadn’t heard of them before this) and they were to die for. OMG, my mouth waters just thinking of them. My DIL Kim wisely lets him do the cooking! Anyway, we celebrated the March birthdays (me and Ryan) and Lauren’s April birthday. Easton is graduating from Utah State University in two weeks, and we will attend his (virtual) graduation. In June we’ll have a real, in-person family gathering/send-off for him as he heads out to New Hampshire to begin naval officer school and their nuclear engineering program. 

Life is good.