Christmas Sewing

Image: Of A Winter Beachwalk

The challenge of sewing with out either of my sewing machines, has become translated in the question of -What can I serge????

After some much needed time to myself, I made a runner which I serged with a rolled edge and some coordinating napkins. I have also been randomly serging scraps from the flannel bag aiming for another quilt for the boys room. One I want to tie with floss or yarn because when was the last time I have ever done that?

The serger is great for instant gratification. You can eliminate turning right side out if you want to. The feeling of just humming along puts one at ease and your stresses slide away tumbled beneath the threads of the loopers and the needles.

I think about the freedom sewing gives one to create the things their mind envisions. These kinds of creations can be achieved so speedily with the serger and I am so thankful for mine.

I bought some roses to lift the mood as the temperatures here reach down below freezing heartily. "Rosy Outlook", I kid you not their label read. I tried fabric, I tried walking around the nursery filling my paper sack with paperwhites to force for Christmas.

What it was that really cheered me up from the gloom that sneaks in with the tiredness new babies can cause mothers; was just about five minutes at my serger and coming out with a table runner ready for Christmas and it it not yet December.

I'm starting early this year. Last year it was so late when we got a tree due to friends and so many things going on. This year it is about being early and more prepared so things are ready and I can rest and enjoy.

I also finished cross stitching a stocking for my son, and have started on one for baby. I am so proud of the results I am producing on linen, that seems like a major victory after my first attempt seeming so difficult.
It is really true that once you start evolving to work with good materials you don't want to go back to what you were doing before.
The red tug heads out to meet a tanker, pushing past the grey water out to the sun behind the cottony clouds. I sit on the sofa and think about how nice it feels just to sit for awhile and watch the sea not sure which direction it would like to go.

My Sewing Machines Are At The Doctor

What does a girl do without her sewing machines? I wouldn't know, I'm facing new territory with them both in for redo at the same time! It's a hard feeling, knowing that you cannot sew. Thank God for repairmen. And yes it was way overdue.

I was free motion quilting, everything going along smashingly, and whack, it just died, stopped, hand wheel seized. Well the goal of finishing the quilt by Thanksgiving, is likely toast. Ah well, there is a method to all of this.

I have been considering getting a fast stitching machine, a 15-1600spm'er. I have yes been thinking on this lots lately. Hopefully my machines didn't hear me and and one decided to die or give up, or just got plain tired of making me happy. As if to say - oh you don't really want me, well, I'll show you!

Sewing machines have distinct personalities; some, one can live with, and some, one cannot. They have temperaments and little sticky stupid hills they want to die on to, and sometimes seem so much like people it is scary.

A sane person would use the time to clean the studio, rearrange, or maybe even cut fabric for a new quilt. I, the philosopher, will think on machines of course.

Do I want to get to know someone new? I imagine tackling a new machine is like dating again after a divorce, and a woman maybe just gets to the point where she just cannot handle men for a while. Or perhaps more like whiney kids, whom you love, but you're just not sure you want to be around them for the rest of the afternoon. So you dole out a fruit strips and pray that Thomas the Train can give you enough break just to gain your balance.

Or maybe the excitement of a new gadget just takes over? For such a creative type, I do love my machines. Strange. I keep waiting for that machine without buttons, some sort of holographic morph out of Star Trek (which yes I would never watch but my husband makes me) and I tell myself, yes that is when I will buy a new machine. A buttonless machine.

And maybe the man upstairs has other plans. I know the tool appears just as the teacher, when one is ready, when one demands good tools. We cling to old hairdryers yes don't we, when their are ceramic/inoic blasts of blissful dryers out there that give us the hairstyle of dreams, so why does sentiment cling like fuzz to the bobbin case of our insanity. Ah yeah?

I like using thread, I was doing so great, emptying spools on this quilt, and now perhaps I need time to think on its completion, and being machineless will give me that space.

Mmmm

When machine quilting a quilt sometime you just need an "M,M" break. My son loves MM's. And I suppose they do help ease the nervousness that arises with a blank surface to coat. I'm going fast and broad and a lot more spaced out on this one, and that sounds bad, but I really do mean the quilting style.

And as in potty training, just maybe those MM's will help with discipline. Yes, they do, and also the Thanksgiving deadline I have set. This throw quilt is purely made from stash, and a little wacky, but the tones and colors go.

With young children around who dump out toys as fast as you pick them up, and smear the floor to look worse than before you have just mopped it; I take a deep breath and am thankful that there is quilting to make one feel as if they have actually put down some sort of accomplishment for the day.

I've noticed as I quilt more quilts, I am learning to just go with the fabric. To loosen up and enjoy the way the fabric leads the needle into a free-form type pattern.

Speaking of dumping, I put baby (D de) in the toy wheelbarrow to shoot a pic, and brother comes over and dumps him out! No harm no foul, but it did make for some cute pics. I think being two years old is all about dumping out everything one can, and so maybe I should take a cue, because the only thing I dump out seems to be clean laundry.

During our "ride bike" session this afternoon I noticed the trees have lost most all there leaves. Poof! Just in the span of a flu, and they are almost all down. I was supposed to have the flu during the rain, not the sunshine as happened.

Winter is so near, but I am grateful for these last sunny days. Warm enough still to throw off the Crocs and dip toes in the water, yes, you heard right, even way up in the great North. Kids don't care, they just wear there shoes in, and sometimes I suppose we all just should, they dry anyway.

I think young children have a lot to teach about quilting:

Walk right into things

Throw a tantrum if things don't go your way

Dump everything out until you find what your looking for

Make up funny names so things don't get dull


Laugh like crazy when you mess up and it's just plain funny

Throw it in the garbage can, I mean, will you even miss it?

And diapers, sometimes, yes even those I imagine could be handy.

The MM's are gone. I feel better. I feel like I accomplished something that actually shows.

Some Small Good

The last of the sunny days peak out from winter which seems to loom so close to fall. Two boys grow, the elder picks flowers, small tender presents to rest on a baby's fist. Sickness has visited, and after a week of sick children, I too grace the couch while in my mind ideas flower, and doing the dishes looks so promising, because it means you are well enough to do them again. Oh to ride bikes again and search the neighborhood for flowers to give to mom!

Happy Halloween

A firefighter and a little bear.
A finished quilt top. It will have a new home with my husbands sister in her first house.

A sea that rages as the tugs head out to meet tankers.
God's provision is like that, the tug rushing out past the whitecaps to meet the incoming need.

Inspiration

Are our ideas out of the water? Or do they sit there until we have time to breathe, to bring them up above the surface and write them down, or begin to create them?

My personal time lately, which is very limited, is centered on building quadrants of the art quilt that is currently on my wall. Sometimes I want to flee from it and run scurrying to the hum of just fast and furiously stitching or strip piecing. Funny, the result of the art quilt is so much more satisfying, but sometimes I just need to put in some time with my machine humming so I can think.

I've been concentrating on the clothing part of the image, and I find I really have to stop and think about light and reflection, as it concerns the folds and drapes that a human body produces when clothed. I think of statues and sculptors, and marvel at how they achieved these affects, especially I ponder veils and chiffon brazing the human form.

I begin to get ahead of myself thinking, wow, I will need a bigger space to finish this piece. Then I remember the floor. Or, how freakin' long will the quilting take on this one - longer than the construction (because that is where the real image will come into it's depth and form)? And I forget to slow and just take rest in the cutting of one piece or the turning of the edges with the mini iron.

The Orcas visited the other weekend. I happened to have my tripod out with my camera taking pictures of friends. I flipped on my telephoto, and was able to capture the above photo, thinking "What are the chances?" The chances I would be set up, outside, that the weather would be still enough to hear the barrel like hollow of a resonate breath of a whale puncturing the calm.

They have to come to the surface for each new breath. They don't take them for granted, there is effort, they perhaps wonder if they will make it to the surface before their lungs burst?

O.k., maybe I'm wondering if I will make it to the completion of this piece? I see the vision in my head, I think out the how I want to do the quilting and thread detail. Maybe it's just the lack of personal time that makes the progress seem so slow? Although, if I think where I was a year ago, I feel pleased. And yes, there are just some visions that take way longer.

Perhaps these long journeys are the ones which I learn best. You have to reach for that next breath. Like the Orca, I can't take for granted that I will make it, and having to surface means that I can't see the full picture yet but just in my minds eye, and how will it appear when I finally reach the surface of the last stitch?

I think the best part of constructing an art quilt is watching how it changes with each addition, and centering your focus on just a small part of the larger dimension. Like the astronaut with many screws to remove to repair a component, who must not think about them all, about teetering in space, but concentrates fully on the success of each screw as it is turning, and then removed.

When they surface, the first breath of an Orca is deep and forceful. It inspires me to express my ideas in the same manner.

Nursery

I'd started this quilt years ago. Before I EVER knew that I would have kids, let alone boys. Before I knew that they would have a room that looked out to the sea. I had finished the top and all the quilting except the corner design, which I tried to hand quilt, and it just wasn't working as the fabric was too high of a thread count. In frustration I set it aside, because I really wanted that hand quilted look for the corners. Something about having kids, who knows, but now I am over it, and I went ahead and just machine quilted, so now I just have to finish hand stitching the binding. It will hang on the wall, and I'm thinking the back of their door even close to the picture frame that is naval bouys.

Still redo-ing the boys room, these are the before pictures. There is the addition of the new crib, a changing table, and the bookcase moves to the left wall. I really wish that the bookcase was cherry like the cribs, but for now it is working. The room is very small, probaly orginally intended for an office, but then the boys will be little too, for awhile.

The closet organization is going better than expected, but I'm still waiting on a part that wasn't shipped. The good news is there is already open space which hasn't been filled, thanks to the little guys growth spurt, and the new collapsible bin system I'm configuring.

A race track I made for the cars, I backed it in polar fleece and just serged with wooley-nylon thread. It can double as a nice blanket, although I think he is still a little young yet to get that cars run on the roads and not just on peoples' legs.

So I'll get the cribs all wiped down, re-made, their quilts washed (except the wall one) and up on the rails. The walls are my stumbling block, I don't want to hang stuff over the crib, but how do I make a bunch of little pictures that used to be on a shelf work on the big wall?

Grey

It's looked like this a lot lately. I'm due in about five weeks. The weather is great for nesting.

I find myself craving spring. Daffodils sit by my sink, in the boys room, and there are roses in the wall vases.

Grey is supposed to be a big color. But it is never for me. I use it when I need grey, but living in the northwest, grey is ample and not a color I necessarily buy, which is why I have like two pieces in the stash and realized lately that maybe I should.

I've been re-doing the boys room. Two cribs, one closet, two boys soon enough. I'm at the stage where I'd rather organize the closet than make a decision on where to hang the pictures. The main problem being all the pictures are very small, and the walls big, and I need something with better scale. I think back to being in Lowe's, and looking around, and there were like three other pregnant ladies, and I felt like we were all stuck on the same broken records of how to organize itty clothes, procrastinating so we didn't have to hang all the small pictures.

Got a great new camera, now if I'd just off-load the pics and put them up on the blog!

I planted tomato seeds, lobelia, daisies, and some snapdragons -- we will see. The roses this year have been beaten by cold but they seem to persist. I'm late with the Felco's, gasp, but then so it the sunshine I require to be out there.

I delight today in allowing someone to come in and help me soon. Sometimes it is so hard to accept help. Sometimes it is so needed. Sometimes we need to ask others when the ones we love can't help. Sometimes it is important to accept help even when we think we don't need it. To pay for help, to arrange it, to admit you can't do everything while undergoing a season of limitation. Since I can't bend, and walking is painful, I am accepting help, and proud of myself.

Working in the studio, I alternate between the art quilt on my wall, and going to other piecing projects when I must sit in this late term exhaustion of swollen feet which fit only in Crocs. I'm trying to relish these last few weeks, trying, I said. I'm holding the sweet feeling of have a few hours hear and there to sew before a newborn holds my hand. The quilt is done, resting on the crib rail, and yes, pictures, I need pictures.

The sea has calmed, though the rain has not let up. I am thankful for a child's long nap, and the stolen moments off my feet.

Snowy Days

This is his quilt.

The one made while waiting for him to grow.

I like how it reminds me of a teetering pile of books.

I finished it this snowy day in January.

The top is done from stash, minus the red pieces. I don't buy that much red. I even looked in my spacebags of scraps, and no reds big enough.

I could patchwork the back from stash, but I'm just not much of a fan of that, especially for baby quilts where I want the nice silken feel of a quality sheet to use for the back, all one piece. I also like when you hold up a white quilt to the light, and it is white all the way through, so I will use a white backing. Maybe I will do a rainbow binding? Or a black one?

Also some knitting, when it comes to knitting, I'm not that great. But I try, and I do enjoy the feeling of accomplishment gained when you use the big chunky yarn. This one is done out of baby's breath blue yarn, and I want to make another one in white, then I will knit with the minky like yarn I found too.

I find I work these days assembly line style, do all the cutting, then the sewing, then the trimming. With a toddler, you don't have the focused time to always see things through. Thomas the train sewing, stay tuned, the big brother and little brother pants, and some other sewing that so far has been bit of a failure, uhm, cart cover???

I am doing well with my resolution, which is less mindless interneting. Such an easy trap to fall into when pregnant and trying to get the feet elevated.

January is my month of cleaning and purging. Every. Single. Day. I go through something, a tub, a drawer, a corner, a problem area, or spend an hour in the garage. Must take advantage of the nesting and the "brrr" days as my little one says. I'm feeling proud of these accomplishments, even if it seems life goes on ahead of me messing things up even faster :)

The sea has risen this afternoon, and the snow is melted off the patio stone, grey fronts move past out on the horizon, and it clears to the north. I catch a few minutes to record the feeling of finishing a quilt top, however small, in print.