Project Progress: Hexagon Quilt

Quick post to show you my progress.

Maybe I'm half way done? I'm not sure. I'm thinking I might want to do a few rounds around the outside to make it bigger anyway, so who really knows.

I'm just happy it appears to be getting bigger. Maybe I'll finish in time for Christmas. Darn. Now that I've said that, it sounds like a goal or something.

Midterm grades came out last week. I have an A- in my public speaking class (it will go up, we do a semester long test, and the best score out of three counts, so once I take it the final time, I think I will have an A in the bag) and an A in my Organizational Effectiveness class. I have to watch that one, because I'm at the point where I'm starting to be highly UNmotivated to do my assignments. Always dangerous territory.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Project Progress: Hexagon Quilt

Yes, another week has come and gone and all I've managed to post is another update on my quilt.

It's not that I haven't been doing other crafty stuff. I have. It's just super-secret-crafty stuff that I can't share yet, because it's super-secret. I haven't done any super-secret stuff in a while and it is KILLING me not to share.

I clearly need to do more crafting, so I can share more on the blog and save my arteries.


However, I still have been sewing my fingers to the bone on my hexagon quilt. There hasn't been actual blood yet, but I have stabbed myself a few times, and I get a lot of hand cramps. I try to just shake it off and keep going. David and I had an argument the other day after I'd been sewing for hours and watching Vanity Fair. I got a case of the hand trembles. I said it was because I was getting a migraine and need chocolate, and he said it was because I'd been doing too much close and delicate work with my hands. No one won, because our arguments are more like mild disagreements, and we both go away thinking we are right and rolling our eyes in our heads at each other. Except, if David is reading this, I never, ever roll my eyes at you, not even in my head, because you are the best man in the entire universe and I love you and respect your opinion and you might have been right about my hand trembles and I love you. Smooches. (I know know you just rolled your eyes at me! Ha! Caught you!)

So, here's the progress I've made on my quilt so far:

It's getting bigger! I'm thinking I might be half of the way done by now. Maybe? We shall see. I'd like to step it up this week, but we'll see. If school and laundry and birthdays and zoo trips and Primary programs and Halloween costumes didn't keep getting in my way, I could get a lot more done. Not that those things aren't important, but it's impossible to look at elephants and hand sew. Just saying.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Project Progress: Hexagon Quilt

Well, I had a little bit more time to work on the quilt this week. Actually, I think I spent about 8 hours working on it, but this thing is slooooooooooooooowwwwwwww.

It's growing though. Look!

And just so you can remember what it looked like before, here's what it looked like the last time I showed it to you.

It's bigger right? RIGHT?

Well, it's a little bit bigger, and I did make a ton of hexagons last week.

And just 'cause I like to, here's a pic of the newest section.

I was afraid I was going to run out of scraps, so I added a few more fabrics to the mix. I think they blend in nicely. I wish I had some more aqua options, but alas, I do not. I'm really tempted to go and buy a few fat quarters, but it's fun to be able to say I did it all from scraps. Perhaps I will sacrifice a cotton shirt or something.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Project Progress: Hexagon Quilt

I miss summer. I had so much time during the summer. Oooooodles and oooodles of time! Now it's all gone. Xander's birthday was last week and he's getting baptized on Saturday and Griffin's birthday is next week, so you can see what I mean.

I've been recording my first speech this week for my college class. I finished yesterday and I'm going to post it to the blog next week. Then you can see how, um, silly I am. In person. Or rather, on video. It was really hard to stop doing takes (I did two non-filmed practices, two filmed and very kid-interrupted filmed takes and one final take). I could have probably done 20 takes and still not have been happy.

Still, last weekend I found some time to work on hexagons. I made a lot of hexagons. I figured out I'll probably need around 475, or maybe more. Depending on how distracted I am and how long I've been doing them (the more I do in a row the faster I get), they take me between 4-8 minutes to do. So, let's say 6 minutes on average. That's 47.6 hours on hexagons. Roughly. I'm just happy I don't have to put it all in as one long work week. It's a nice break from school.

So, here's the stack I got done this week. Aren't they so pretty?There are about 150 hexagons in these stacks. I can't wait to sew them into my top!

I'm thinking that if I get my coursework done quickly today that I might start a dress. Maybe. I found some of the feet for my Bernina at my mom's house! Not the regular 1/4" foot (I believe that has disappeared into the dark abyss and joined that planet floating out in space somewhere made up entirely of mother's objects lost by their children), but one that I think will work for most regular sewing. At least one that will work until I buy a new one!

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Project Progress: Hexagon Quilt

Hey there!

Contrary to any rumors you might have heard (or not, considering I'm just making that up right now), I have not fallen off the end of the earth or taken any voyages into space or moved to Mexico to escape the law.

I haven't posted in forever because my kids started school, and then I started school, and between the two and getting a new routine down, I didn't take any pictures of the projects I was working on. Then I started writing a few posts to explain, but they sounded all strange, so I gave that up, and thought I'd just update once I took some photos.

Which I did yesterday! So hurray! Except that my camera might have died at the end. I'm hoping it's just being a tempental artist, but with my luck since we moved, and it's age (six years seems long for a digital camera), I'm guessing it's surrendered to my heavy use.

Short story: there's a post today. Which I'm going to do a lot more often, now that I'm into my 2nd week full week of school--it's not so bad. If you're curious, I'm taking Public Speaking and Organizational Effectiveness this semester. I go to school all online, so I find it kinda hilarious that I'm taking a public speaking class. Good thing someone had the good sense to invent web cams. Anyway, I'm writing my first speech, which is about crafting! Of course. How could it not be? I might post it here once I'm all the way done.

Onto my new project progress! I've started a hexagon quilt. These things are deadly serious. This is not the type of project to start if you only kinda feel like making a quilt.

I picked out a bunch of fabrics from my stash--mostly scrap-ish ones and fat quarters--I think there are 19 different fabrics. I love these colors. They are so cheerful.

Then, the next step is to make about a billion little hexagons. I did mine by paper piecing, which basically means you wrap a rough cut of the fabric around a piece of cardstock (or paper, but I like cardstock better), tack it down at each corner on the back, and then pop the template out of the middle. It takes a surprisingly long time. My hexagons are 1" hexagons, which is the measurement of one of the sides. Yeah, still doesn't make them too big.

That isn't all the different kinds, but most of them are there.

I've been working in a sort of leap-frog fashion. So, I make six hexagons of each type of fabric (so about 120 hexagons), and then sew the hexagons together. Because I'm too impatient to make all my hexagons and then sew all the seams. Oh, and you whip-stitch the seams together. By hand.

You can see my progress so far in this photo.

And a close up. If you look closely, you can see my tiny stitches.

I'm making a lap quilt, so I would guess I'm about a third of the way done, or close to that. I'm scared to guess how many hours I've already spent on this thing. I really like watching BBC mini-series and hand-sewing. I've watched an embarrassing amount of them so far.

Not that I'm not enjoying myself, mind (do you see what they have done to me already?). I am, tremendously. I might finish this time next year. The BBC might have to ramp up their production of mini-series to keep up. We might have to start resurrecting dead novelists to keep up with the demand for material. But, in the end, I'm going to have a beautiful quilt, and I'll be able to fake an intimate knowledge of Middlemarch. Always good for an English major.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Project Progress: Kitchen Update Week 11

This week is basically a quick post to show off the chairs I've finished so far. I've got five done. You can check out my first finished one here, along with the before pictures if you didn't catch the first post.

They look darling in my kitchen. Just what I pictured.

I cannot wait to get all six around the kitchen table! I have eight chairs, but two of them hang out in my craft room most of the time.

I love how they pick up the colors in the wall art. The navy bowl in the center was a wedding present, and the teal bowl in it was from my great-grandma and it looks charming as a center piece, particularly when filled with green apples.

I still really want to get new light fixtures and curtains. I have not a single curtain in my entire house. Luckily, there are nice blinds on most of the windows, but there is a horrible lack of window treatments.

And, I need to finish up my rag rug. I've been working on it, but like I said last week, that is taking much longer than I anticipated.

I also want vintage metal stools for the breakfast bar. I bought one and it's perfect, but I want three more, all different styles. I'm hoping I can figure out a way to get all the things that I want. I usually can. I'm very crafty (I mean this in the stealthy, cunning way this time) when I want something. And I want to finish this kitchen makeover and complete the whole vision of the thing.

On the other hand, I must not get too caught up in decorating fever. There are more important things. Hard to think what they are at the moment. Humm. . .

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Project Progress: Kitchen Update Week 10

This is one of those projects that you think is going to be a simple project, but is not a simple project, but is instead a very hard, very long project that only looks very simple. Yeah.

On the other hand, this project is 100% free. Not "free" as in "sometime in the past I bought this stuff and am now getting around to using it" free, but free as in "I did not pay a cent for the materials" free. Except for the thread. I did buy that.

My mom worked for a while for an swanky furniture/interior design shop and she brought home loads and loads of sample books, some of which she passed along to me.

So, a few weeks ago, I went through some of my books and took them apart and got all the dark greens and blues and cut them into rough strips and sewed them together and started braiding them to make a wide-striped rag rug for my kitchen. I'm going to have three bands of dark and three bands of light neutrals.


That's a total of 25 braided strips and 24 seams between them.

Some of the ones I haven't done, hanging out in my laundry basket:

I'm hand-stitching the braids together and that is what is taking me forever. It takes me 1.5 hours to do one seam, approximately.

No clue why I'm so incredibly slow, besides the fact that I really want it to stick together and some of this stuff is hard to sew through. Thimble on hand at all times. This is serious hand-sewing here.

I've done seven seams so far.

You can see I'm getting much better.

Some one please threaten to take away all my sugar and Dr. Pepper for a month if I even consider redoing that first one I did on the left that's all wonky. Please.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Project Progress: Kitchen Update Week 8

This week, on Monday, my husband reminds me that his parents are going to be in town. We've been seriously spoiled in seeing them so much lately. They are two people I greatly admire, and I look up to them in so many ways.

So, I was all like, cool, can't wait to see them. The kids will be excited.

Then he starts wondering how the shade will be in our backyard at that time of day.

And I'm all like, Woah, buddy, back up. Because I missed something.

My husband comes from a family of eight. He's the 7th. Three of his older brothers live in Utah, and one even lives in our town. So, normally, family parties have been held at his brothers' houses, because there are a lot of family members, and we didn't use to have the square feet to handle more than two or three extra people. So, when he said they were going to be in town, I didn't think that meant, in town in our town, more specifically in our house.

Because, while I'm thrilled to show them our new house, my craft room looked like a bomb squad arrived too late to save a Micheal's. Craft crap was everywhere. Movement from one side of the room to other involved risking life and limb, and doing a complicated dance step, and a little butt wiggling. The butt wiggling is for fun.

When I was cleaning it, I misjudged a step and ended up stuck, with one foot in a box of fabric and nearly doing the splits, and calling for my mommy. She was there helping me clean, and she came and rescued me. I don't normally call for my mommy when in peril. I normally call for which ever flesh and blood person is closest to the peril. 

And that's just one room. I've made a lot of progress in our house, it's certainly livable, but there was a long list of things I would want to do before showing it off. Got a lot of them done, some will have to wait.

Don't you always love a good kick in the pants to get your house cleaned?

One of those things I got done was my kitchen gallery art.

I added some vinyl swirls.

And made the rest of the art and got it printed.

Just in time for the party on Wednesday.

Linking Up Here:

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Project Progress: Kitchen Update Week 7

I'm seeing the wisdom in having all the money you need for a makeover beforehand.

Our AC broke a little while ago. While we could cover the repairs and make it through just fine, it does mean my kitchen makeover is experiencing a little involuntary hiccuping (fun fact about me: I oink when I hiccup. I cannot make it stop, and it's loud. People think I'm faking. I'm not. Xander tells me to knock it off every time I oink. David thinks it's hilarious. I try to avoid public places when I get a case of the hiccups. I guess this is one more nail in the coffin of my dream of being thought of as Aubrey Hepburn's little sister. Damn).

So, this week I had to do something completely free. A little bit ago, Natalie gave me a roll of wallpaper she picked up at DI (a local thrift store) for something like two dollars. When she found it, she knew it had to come over to my house to live.

I'd been planning on doing a fun print of wrapping paper or some such thing for drawer liners. My liners were old, yucky contact paper that wasn't really cut to size very well. Not what I want to see when I open the drawers.

I don't think that picture reflects how bad there were. They weren't gross, just old and starting to crack a bit, and generally scuffed up with some stain splatters from my recent refinish. In other words, you probably wouldn't gag when you opened them, but it was worth taking some time to polish them up.

So, I peeled up what I could. I wasn't going to bother getting it all up, because the wallpaper was pretty thick. I did make sure that anything going up the sides of the drawers was removed and the peeled parts were mostly flush with the bottom of the drawer.

Then, I cut my wallpaper to size, and gave it a quick bath in the sink. This brought back a lot of childhood memories of "helping" my mom to hang wallpaper in our home. Lots and lots of wallpaper. She was super good at it. I'm actually secretly pleased to see wallpaper back in fashion, because it can be so beautiful in the right places with the right print.

My kitchen is currently a disaster area. I bought some new cooking gear for camping, and it exploded in my kitchen. Plus, I'm chronically unable to be neat perpetually while working on a project. Stuff just goes everywhere.

So, once I wet it, I put the even (read: side not cut with scissors) side against the side of the drawer. Then I used a washcloth to help it to the edges and corners.

Then I creased it and folded it over. Not too easy with the corners, but I managed. Then I peeled it up a little bit, enough to trim my crease with a pair of scissors. A little more smoothing later, and my drawer was lined.

When I was working on this drawer, there were a lot of people in my kitchen making themselves lunch. I love how David is close enough to come home most days. He's cutting the kids' sandwiches into dinosaur shapes there in the background.

I'm going to put a clear coat of Mod Podge on it to make it more durable. It's so cheerful when I open the drawers.

I love how they look all together.

After looking at that photo in Photoshop for a while, I just had to turn it upside down so the drawers look more like a cake.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Project Progress: Kitchen Update Week 6

When I hung my shelves, I left plenty of room underneath for a gallery style collection of artwork. I've already posted a lot of it, like my silhouette frames, my crochet butterfly, and my kitchen message center.

I started collecting larger frames for this a while ago. I bought most of them at Savers or at Dollar Tree. I didn't pay more than $5 for any of them, and I got most of them for a dollar.

When I started to do this, I first put all the frames on the floor, trying to get a good arrangement. After a little tweaking, I had this arrangement:

Yeah, some of what are in those frames are scary, from the evil looking bears on the far left, to the sappy motivational poster on the far right, and those 80s geese prints (one you can't see because of the glare, but completely not my style).

I immediately started plugging in digitally some of the artwork I wanted to use:

Already, I'm feeling better about this.

I spent the better part of two days spray painting these. Of course, I didn't have to sit outside and watch the paint dry, thank goodness. That's so boring, they coined a cliche about it.

After that, I traced them on leftover paper we used to wrap the breakables in, and put them up on my wall with painter's tape. I also put up some of the ones I knew were at key points and not moving anywhere. I used command strips for these, the picture hanging ones. They are expensive, but I love them for projects like this, because they tend to hang much straighter than regular nails and you can tweak them a little bit, or even move them completely if you have some adhesive refills. And my kids don't knock them off the wall when they go by. Usually.

Once I got up the paper, I realized that I needed to make the whole thing a rectangle, and not have the variation in the bottom line, because it was looking messy and busy. It reads much more as a single unit now.

Then I started plugging in my digital images again (how amazing are digital cameras and Photoshop? We live in an age of wonders--there should be a song about that, because, seriously, I feel like breaking into song right now.).

And after a lot more tweaking, and a lot more making of art, my wall is currently looking like this:

Still a few things to do, but it's shaping up nicely.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Project Progress: Kitchen Update Week 5

Such an insane week this was in my kitchen!

I was going so slowly on refinishing the doors and drawers. Part of the reason was that David put away the hand sander and every time I thought about working on it, grabbing the key to the shed and walking ten steps sounded like too much work. Clearly, I need to get back to the gym. Once I actually had the sander in my hands and plugged in, I would sand for hours.

Sanding is gross. I don't think I've ever before felt quite that filthy. Maybe after a week at Girl's Camp.

I finally got up the motivation to get out the sander, and after that, I was focus and got so much done.

Three drawers without their finish:

And stained:

Hurray!

The last big push came the day before my sister was due over with her kids. Mine are mostly out of the get-into-everything stage, but hers are most certainly not. So, I couldn't leave my kitchen looking like this:

Can you say chaos? Seriously, that is craziness! Miles and Graham would have made short work of the bottom cupboards, I'm sure.

So, I did nine doors the day before she was due over, including sanding, staining and coat a coat of poly. They really need one more coat, but I wanted to get them back up before she came. I will probably just take the handles off and do a coat of poly with them still on the hinges since I didn't refinish the backs.

I had blisters on my fingers from putting them all back up, because I was too lazy to get out the drill. I know. I have a talent for bad logic. And making things a lot harder on myself.

Recap time!

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Not too shabby! I'm loving my kitchen now. A lot of that didn't strictly need to be refinished, but we all know that story, and they look so good now!

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Project Progress: Kitchen Update Week 4

Starting to make some major progress in the kitchen!

As I was looking at the kitchen, it seemed like there was just so much dark wood. I love dark wood, but it was a little overwhelming, I think. I thought it would be fun to put beadboard or wainscoting around the bottom of the island and paint it white. In the end, wainscoting won out, because I just love the look, plus the island isn't perfectly square, so it would have been hard to get the beadboard on right (not that that's ever stopped me before).

I measured out all the lines in pencil, then we measured and bought some trim. I also primed first. David made all the cuts. Crazy how my countertop is over-run. You can see I was also staining more cabinets and drawers during all of this.

Then we used the nail gun to put the trim pieces up on the side. Then we realized that the back of the cabinet is warped. Like, really badly, and the dishwasher is pressed against the back. We weren't sure how easy the dishwasher would be to remove (although we are going to find out soon, because the dishwasher totally broke--not related to this project--so I'm back to no dishwasher). So, we decided to attach the trim to a thin board and then put that up.

Oh look, a stack of cabinet doors, hanging out while David attaches trim.

You can see how we laid it out before attaching the pieces in the photo below. Don't worry about the wandering trim, we did pencil lines to make sure we got it in the right spot.

Nailing the trim to the board was quite the adventure. We did it though, and got it put up, carefully avoiding the dishwasher.

Then I started painting it. Even with primer, I had to do four coats. Blah! Took forever.

Oh, and crazy story about buying this paint. We go to Home Depot, and pick out the sample for Swiss Coffee (same color I used as the base of the countertops). Well, the Home Depot paint guy was super busy, and as we are walking up, he asks, "Antique White?"

And I say, "No, Swiss Coffee."

Then he tells us it will be five minutes. We also got a sample size in pink to paint something for Aubrey's birthday (which I will show you, if I ever finish it), and so we left the samples on the counter and left.

Come back, and I grab the paint. Woke up the next morning, ready to paint. Look at the top of the can. Guess what color I have? I'll give you a hint, it's not the color I wanted. That guy at Home Depot must have really wanted to give us Antique White. I'm wondering if they changed the name or something, because I can't find Swiss Coffee on the Glidden website.

I used it and it works. I could have taken it back, but it's not really a short drive and I really wanted to finish. It will work well for trim paint ,and it might be the same color. I can't find my paint chip, or I would figure it out once and for all. I mean, if they had changed the name of the color, shouldn't the Home Depot guy mentioned it, to avoid the death-ray thoughts I was giving him that next morning?

Paint color mix-ups notwithstanding, I love the end result. Doesn't it brighten up the kitchen and update it a little bit more? I'm getting there, piece by piece. We still need to get a new piece of trim to cover the corner, but our AC also broke (or wasn't working) when we fired it up for the first time, sooooo we had to fix that instead of doing more in the kitchen. Hopefully I will be able to get the few odds and ends I still need, but we are in major budget crunch time. Not enough to panic, but enough to make me stop buying trim.

So, to recap, before:

After.

Sigh. SO much BETTER! Not bad for about $25.

Linking Up Here:

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.