Sewing Space

There are many of my friends who have a room in their home dedicated as their Sewing Room. They have a big table, a cork board for inspirations, a shelf to hold their stuff, and a design wall. All of you who have that space are so lucky! My house is smallish, so there isn’t a room for my sewing. I have to share. The past 9 years I have been sewing on my kitchen table. We have a really big kitchen table, but it’s our table you know? It was hard to share, and with the amount of things we need to use that table for: meals, homework, school projects etc. my sewing was always in the way, and I was so stubborn and refused to put it away because I can’t get my sewing done if I have to constantly be putting away and setting up.

This past year Mark and I have been trying to figure out what to do about it. I wanted it in our bedroom, he didn’t. I wanted a new table by our desk in the kitchen area, he didn’t. And we went round and round. He had no solutions to our dilemma. So, I brought up again moving it to our bedroom. In our smallish house, the master bedroom is HUGE. He finally relented, and I bought a folding plastic table at Costco for $50.00. And that, my friends, is the best $50 I’ve spent! I am set up right under the windows for maximum light, and I can keep up with my kids when they are out in the front yard playing in the culdesac. My kids aren’t sure if they like my new spot yet :P I’m always looking over their shoulders now, I find this really fun. They find it annoying.

I can leave my stuff out! I can make a big mess and who cares? I get a nice breeze through the window! It’s wonderful! My fabric won’t get crumbs on it! My kitchen table actually looks like a kitchen table now!

I have yet to figure out a design wall, I may not get one still, and for now that is okay. I can live with that. I am just so happy to have a little corner in our house just for my sewing.

The 2011 Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show

We hit the quilt show on Saturday morning early, the weather was perfect all day, we were so happy to be there. I had a quilt on display this year with the Portland Modern Quilt Guild exhibit. It was really fun to see our quilts hanging, and so many people excited about them.
Over 1,300 quilts were on display, I have a lot of photos in my PHOTO GALLERY so feel free to go and take a look at many more of them.

Charissa and I liked the mermaid quilt.

Colleen, Me, Jenn and Barbara

While I was at the PMQG exhibit, Jean Wells stopped by to visit. She is the owner of the Stitchin' Post and quilter extraordinaire. It was fun to get to meet her. In this photo is: Jean Wells, Monica Solorio-Snow, Elizabeth Hartman and Me. (I am a huge fangirl of all of these peeps, so I was stoked!!!)

Miss Jill with her fabulous quilt that won the Project Modern Challenge!

The Mad Hatter, this group of quilters all read Alice in Wonderland and made a quilt interpretation, then they dressed up. I'd like to note that the Mad Hatter is my Accountant, isn't that hilarious??!?

We had a fabulous time, if you haven't attended this quilt show, I highly recommend it!

Project Night

By Friday night all of us had arrived in Sunriver for the weekend. We had our Gift Exchange, and Jenn made yummy chili, and we got right to work on our projects.

Petra was working on a gorgeous pattern by Chasing Cottons, her fabrics were so pretty. It made me want to make one of those quilts.

Jenn was working on her Oregon Porch Moss quilt, love it! She told me she is almost done with it now.

I worked on the Warm Cool Quilt Along, all of my half square triangles are trimmed and ready to go! I have to find time to lay it all out in a pattern, have to choose a pattern...

Charissa was cross stitching, Jen was making a Hexagon "Z" for her cute son Zeke, Colleen was making a flip flop summer wall hanging & Jill was binding a quilt.

Barbara was working on an activity book for her grand daughter. We tried to go to bed semi-early because of the quilt show the next day :)

Shopping until we were dropping

I had a plan to leave at 9:00 am from my house on Thursday morning, so we could get to Hollyhill Quilt Shoppe when it opened, that way we could spend plenty of time in there before continuing on our way to Sisters. Jenn and Charissa rode with me, and Barbara and Colleen followed us. Hollyhill was kind enough to open the "modern & children" section of their store for us, we were in there forever! We all got a lot of goodies and spent a lot of time wishing we could buy everything there. Brian and Jan are AMAZING at making the displays in their shop, it's pretty great.

After a few hours in Hollyhill we drove up to Sisters and stopped at The Stichin' Post. I had stopped in there a few weeks back when me and family drove through, but it was so fun to go with my girlfriends. We again spent a few hours in the store looking at everything, there was a lot to see and take in. I bought a large stack of Kaffe Fasset shot cottons to make a quilt out of (more on that later).

Jenn and I happy to be at the Stitchin' Post (I stole this pic from her)

(Me in the back, Barbara, Colleen and Charissa, pic again stolen from Jenn)

We managed to somehow cram our purchases into my car and continue on our way to Sunriver.

We unloaded our stuff, and set up camp for the night. We did a show and tell of what we bought and what we are going to do with it (half of what we bought, we bought "because it's cute, and I couldn't live without it" you know the drill) It was fun!

The next morning we woke up and wandered out to Bend, our first stop was QuiltWorks. They had quilts hanging from the rafters and a great art quilt display upstairs. I have to say their staff was so friendly and helpful, I was impressed, plus everything was 10% off and they had a good sale rack.

Look at these fat quarters, it's enough to make me drool!

After that we went to Sew Many Quilts, again a lot of samples, and it was a big shop. We stayed in there for awhile and most of us walked out with a big pile of fabric. By this time I was shopped out, so I was an "enabler" and encouraged a lot of fabric purchases :)

Charissa and Jenn ready to go home and sew.

I couldn't get Colleen out of the Fig Tree corner.

When we got back to the house, I ate a Dove chocolate and the message inside reads "You are Exactly Where you are Supposed to Be." AMEN!!

To be continued...

Gifts for Friends

There were 9 of us planning to go to the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show this past weekend, and only 8 of us made it. The weekend full of friends, sewing, food and quilts was very fun, and we were all wiped out by the end of it.

We planned a gift exchange, all of us make 8 gifts to give to each other. It was fun coming up with a plan on what to make. Here is what I came up with. Each pouch had a turquoise bracelet in them, they are my favorite bracelets to wear.

All of us at the house were: Colleen, Barbara, Charissa, Jenn, Jen, Jill & Petra. We first opened Jenn's gifts, she made us all beautiful bags, we were all pretty excited by them as you can tell.

Jill and Petra with their gifts.

Jen with her bag.

Colleen loved it!

My stack of gifts after we were all done, it was so fun.

This bag is SO Barbara.

I love my mermaids :)

Jenn and Charissa buried in treasure.

I have a lot more to share about our 4 day weekend, so look forward to more posts!

Summer Sewing with Jessie

Jessie has been taking a sewing class again with my friend Barbara. This time around they made aprons, she had to break it in helping me make pasta salad! Look at how cute it is, she did such a great job.
I am teaching Jessie and her friend to sew a bit this summer too, and plan on having them make this bag. They've already cut their fabrics and we plan to start sewing this week. I made one yesterday to make sure it'd be doable for them, and I think it'll be fine. I used it today going boating, and it held a lot and looks cute too.

I used the Madras Tote tutorial from Noodlehead. Go try it out.

Have a wonderful 4th of July! Can't wait for Monday, it's going to be a fun day.