QUILT and SEW

Papier-mâché letters + cheater fabric = Mod Podge

Paper board letters + vintage sewing pattern paper

A corner of my sewing room

This was originally a wordless post but last night after attaching the SEW letters to the wall temporarily using that blue paint masking tape, I was in the basement and heard a loud THUD.  Sometimes the suction cup hook in the bathroom falls into the tub, I thought that was it.  About 15 mins later, another THUD.  Yikes, I was home alone so I rushed upstairs and Rosie was sleeping at the top of the stairs so I knew it wasn't her, she heard it and we both ran through the kitchen.  Just then I realized.  The letters were falling down, one by one!  I need to get some of that 3M double adhesive tape which is really bad for the wall but I can't think of any better way to stick them onto these old plaster walls!

What up?

Juvenile squirrel watching me one day.  Obviously her or she is young because he/she didn't run away.

I just discovered the new Blogger look, yikers!  I thought I was web savvy but sadly, nooooooo.  Anyway, bear with my design here while I get used to it.  It looks amazing, just need to figure out how it works!

So I've decided to dust off the blog, oil the gears and try to do some more regular posting, yay me!

Here's a recap of things since my last post in 2011:

• October - December 2012:  After three years consulting on a government contract, I left that job and took another government contract.  Um, really?  Big surprise that it didn't work out but lucky me, I had an offer come up in December that was amazing so off I went.  
• January 2012:  New job, yay!  I'm working for a utility supplier on a new energy trading market which is SO cool.  Yes I am a geek.  All jobs have their ups and downs but compared to the government job, I LOVE LOVE LOVE this one.
• February through today 2012:  Acclimating to the new job, preparing for a trip to Barcelona, Spain, working on my quilt bee (Mod Mosaic Bee), doing the Spring garden thing, and house remodeling.

 

Here are Mod Mosaic squares I've made for other bee members

This is my WIP quilt from the Bee-Stitched Bee.  These are the blocks made for me by the bee, now I have to make another 24 blocks, woohoo.

This is a photo taken in the reflection of my fish pond.  I saw the tulips and the same color in the fish and thought it was so beautiful.

Looking into a mirror on a hike with my father.  I am totally always taking photos of wildflowers! 

I love photos of laundry drying outside.  My husband's shirts.

The (sort of sad) Tale of a Quilt

I've had a collection of Little Folks voile for a long time and I finally got the inspiration to make a quilt, using my own pattern, which I really like, based on the numbers 5 and 10, I made rows of blocks that were ten inches high, pretty simple but kind of fun since it was improvisational.

The voile is amazing to work with. Very smooth and soft, great feel to it, finely woven. Once the top was done (baby quilt size) I decided to use a gorgeous handmade wool batt for the inside. This came from a sheep farm, so it's like wool roving that you use to spin yarn only it had been carded into a flat sheet that was the exact size of my quilt top.

It was so fun working with the fluffy natural wool and I used a solid piece of Coloring Garden from the voile for the back. After pinning it together, I read a few articles about quilting with an unprocessed wool batt. They mentioned encasing the wool in cheesecloth first, to prevent "bearding" (I had no idea what bearding was but if you read on you too will know what it is). So I took the quilt layers apart, bought some cheesecloth by the yard, and encased the wool in cheesecloth, then put the quilt back together, pinned it and free motion quilted.

It was beautiful when I finished! But as always, I wanted to wash and dry the quilt so it would shrink to it's final size and give the quilting a little more wrinkle. Again, I had read online that you should be able to normally wash and dry a quilt with wool batting. WRONG.

I used cold water and a 4 min gentle cycle for the wash. When I took it out of the washer, EEK. It was all wonky. I stretched it out and tried to dry it as flat as possible overnight. Here is the result.

This is bearding. The wool fibers come up through the fabric, in spite of my cheesecloth coverage:

And the fibers aren't sitting on to of the quilt, they are still attached to the wool inside the quilt so you can't remove it all.

So, it wasn't really that sad because,

GOOD NEWS instead of listing this in my shop for sale, I get to keep it! And, it's super warm and cozy.

BAD NEWS, it's kind of wonky. It's about 34 inches wide by 40 inches long so not really great for a human throw but one can never have enough quilty things laying around the sofa for various creatures to use on chilly nights.

LESSONS LEARNED:

1. Don't believe everything you read on the internet.

2. Practice new things using small pieces of fabric first.

3. Natural, unprocessed wool batting in a quilt should be

hand washed in cold water and dried flat, like a wool sweater (duh on my part).

4. Processed wool batting, which is needlepunched and sold ready to use at Joann's or quilt stores, has already been prepared for quilters, pre-washed, super shrunk, guaranteed not to shrink. Probably a better bet to use this than what I did, unless you're like me and you love to experiment.