next on the list: the office

Usually I am in bed by now, because by this point in the day, my mind shuts down and I drift off to sleep. And I'm old. Today, however, I had a raging headache, fell asleep for 3 hours, then thought it would be a brilliant idea to have two caffeinated cups of tea at 7PM. Biiiiiiiiiiiiig mistake.

It is now after midnight and my mind has transformed into a friggin' craft circus.
WHAT PROJECT SHOULD I DO NEXT? It keeps saying. Painting? Sculpture? Quilting? Glass? Dental crap? Nah... I think I'm into redecorating my office space.

OK. When I say redecorate, I'm not talking about getting rid of my treasured shit in favor of new fancy shit that I won't use purely for the vanity of it. I love my space and my shit. But lately the dark orange paint is getting on my nerves. The room has always been dark orange, I never 100% liked it, but I worked around it. Now it just seems heavy as hell.

Like when you go to a restaurant, your eyes are bigger than your stomach and you get everything covered in Alfredo sauce, type of heavy. After awhile you stop and think, oh man... I can't take any more of this f***ing sauce.

My gosh, take a look at all this shit. There's a damn pig under my desk.

So here is what I'm thinking. Lose the dark orange. I think I'm going to do a faux-brick white-washed wall on the only exterior wall, which also has a window... goodbye forever to the stupid brown blinds, because I f***ing hate blinds. The desk is going to change a little. It's going to have some areas fixed because a bunny nibbled the bottom. Also, all of the cubby-areas that were painted orange will go white, or a sunny yellow color. The sliding stained glass panels... I might do another set in shards of light colors that I have collected over the years.

One wall will hopefully be just floor to ceiling art. I don't want to loose all the colors I have in here... just lighten the walls to make it feel bigger. Some furniture will have to be rearranged... things will get cleaned out, reorganized or donated. I'm not sure on the closet space yet. I made a shelving unit in there and everything behind it is that damn dark orange. Maybe I should just not cut corners, take it down, repaint and assemble again.

The ties will be hung and color coordinated. LIKE YOU HAD ANY DOUBT ABOUT THAT.

Not sure where I should start, to be honest. Maybe with just repairs of the desk first, and go from there. I think this will be a pretty cheap but very dramatic change for the better!

in my spare time, I made a f***ing quilt.

I have NO IDEA how I did not post ANYTHING about this over the past couple of months. I literally started this quilt... almost a year ago I think? AND NO. NOT ONE POST.

Not a look I bought fabric! post.
Not a I washed, pressed and cut all these squares! post.

some sample colors that I wove together for your viewing pleasure.

Not a look how many squares I made or look now the squares are sewed into blocks! post.

NOPE! NOTHING! So I'll have to summarize my misadventures in my 2nd, yes 2nd! quilt.

Back last May, after I took my board exams, passed! and was waiting (im)patiently for my license to practice, I decided to go to Jo-Ann's because damnit, I had a coupon. I bought 20 fat-quarters of fabric, a couple yards of white fabric with tiny little birdies on it, and an Omnigrid 8.5" square template. I didn't know what type of quilt I was going to make, but damnit, I was going to make another quilt.

Seriously, nothing against my first quilt, but it's not exactly big enough for our bed. I'm afraid one night we're going to rip it in half because we always seem to be yanking it to cover our feets.  Here's where it gets confusing. 

Each fat quarter gave me 4, 8.5" squares of colorful fabric.I now have 80 colorful squares. I then cut another 80 squares from the white fabric. Every colorful square was sewed to a white square, then cut down into 8 triangles. You can see below how I drew, on each white square: Diagonally with a 1/4" allowance, then in half. This made a total of 640 squares. Unfortunately, I needed to sew an additional 10 squares from scrap fabric, but I found this out early, allowing me to incorporate them seamlessly into my quilt!  SEAMLESSLY. GET IT?

Every triangle was then pressed open into a square. Then came the hard part: Trying to decide how I was going to assemble all of the now 650 squares. So I'll leave you with some pictures... the first set is just showing how I actually assembled the blocks, and the last photo is of all the colorful blocks! There were so many patterns to choose from, but that'll have to wait for yet another post...

a new... something

Heads up: I've had wine! 

After I finished up the t-shirt quilts, I decided that it was finally time to focus in on one for myself. I found this AMAZING but complicated pattern in a quilting magazine that I purchased (YES, I buy quilting magazines. Thug life.) but there was a problem: It was a pattern for a twin quilt. I don't need no stinkin twin quilt. Another problem: I already had way too many scraps left over from my first quilt, I thought it'd be a waste not to use them... but how?

So... I just started sewing. I took out my box of scraps and basically just started machine stitching them together. Since all of the scraps were tapered, they started looking like colorful fans. I had another interesting thought. What if I sewed these fans into a wave? Then what if the wave became a column? And what if I sewed these columns together to form a sort-of-painting? 

 So many questions! One final product,  though.Once I finished sewing the columns together, I quilted it with gold thread. Then stapled the s*** outta it onto a canvas. Soon I'm going to frame it. SOON... SOON.

 

 

don't be jerky.

While I was in the midst of being proud of my increased sewing productivity on Sunday night, I noticed that my trusty sewing machine was getting a little loud. Actually it was getting A LOT loud. I guess it kinda sounds like this: k'chunk, k'chunk, K'CHUNK, k'chunk, K'CHUNK... And it was jerky.

NO NO NO. Not JERKY. You know, JERKY!

[jur-kee] characterized by jerks or sudden starts; spasmodic.

It also started shaking as the speed of the stitch got progressively higher. I think my poor machine was trying to tell me something: So I decided to take my pride n' joy to Modern Vac & Sew for a little tune up. I'm sure it will be well worth it for the amount of sewing I do. I'm going to call them later today to find out the diagnosis, and hopefully they might give me a time frame on when I can pick it up!

Last night I started piecing together the wine bags. And I'm glad I did, because it took me about two hours to pin the straps and the interior fabric to the exterior! And, since I had extra tie-ends, I ended up piecing together nine new bags. Now when I get my machine back, I'll be ready to roll!

when the cat's away, the mouse will organize

It's no secret that I like organization. Lou jokes around that I am ze German because I love ze oerdaa (order) and following ze ruules. So on Saturday I decided to tackle a project that I long put off.

Organizing the spice cabinet.

Now, I know it sounds lame. But I had so much friggin' fun. You know why? CAUSE I LABELED EVERYTHING. I can't take total credit for the idea, though. The jars and labels were a hand-me-down from my Mom. Who also loves oerdaa. Ve arrr ze o-pit-o-mee of oerrganizaachun. She lent me her P-Touch label maker to add spices that she didn't have, and I went to motha-f'in TOWN on those jars.

I pulled up a nice section of carpet in front of the television, which was blaring episodes of renovation awesomeness and cooking awesomeness, and started the spice transfer. Do you know I had three things of dill? And three things of cinnamon?! WHY?! I also found bouillon cubes that expired before Lou and I started dating. Grossness.

Boyfriend Future Husband isn't totally thrilled because none of the spices have shaker tops. Possible fail, but maybe I can make a special spice shaker spoon?