We are busy little beavers, cleaning and polishing everything in the VA house, getting ready to put it on the market. Boy does this home look great! We may keep it!
While working on the VA home, my mind is thinking about the new quilt room in Michigan, and what I am going to put in it. This three piece old kitchen cabinet has been in our screened porch, and is my only "antique". It's outside on the deck today, while the screened porch floor is getting stained. Here is the middle section:
Another picture of the middle section with the porcelain drop down section open:
I think it will go into my new quilt room, to store fabric. The drop down work area will be a great help when auditioning fabrics, don't you think?
There are two companion cabinets that go with it, one for each side of the main cabinet:
Here's the label on the back:
My husband was born in Stanton, Michigan, and the cabinet was in a house in that small town that his mother bought from the French family. I liked the cabinets, and my dear mother-in-law gave them to me. They are the start of my new quilt room design.
Here's a small doll quilt that I'm working on this week. It was inspired by a blog post that I saw (Here). The little corners are just snippets of orange that I had left over, and aren't any special size. It's 14" by 14" right now. Most of my fabric is packed away, and the black and little bits of orange were the only things here.
I cleaned out the attic space where we store our holiday decorations, and found these two noisemakers to show you today. Do any of you remember using them? We used to shake these noisy metal things as we were coming up the sidewalk, and the homeowners would come out to meet us when they heard the racket!
We would yell "Trick or Treat!", but would never even dream of "trick" - didn't even know what that meant, really. Hope you are having a great September. I am checking on Design Wall Mondays, as usual, to see what others are doing. (Here)
To prepare for the move, I'm determined to go through all of the "hot spots" in this house and get rid of things we no longer need. I made a list of 12 areas, and today I chose a number at random from the list, #7. It was "cookbooks stored in the vintage Hoosier cabinet." For years I've collected cookbooks, thinking that somehow they would make me an unbelievable cook. Well, I am a decent cook but I find that I cook less and less in my senior years, and when I try something new, I usually search for recipes on the internet. Hence, I need to unload a lot of cookbooks.
I loaded up a big bin of books and took them to the local used book store, Book Exchange of Williamsburg. They take books from customers, giving them "store credit" value, that can be used to buy other books from their store. After the transaction, I had $40 in credit, and found one book that I wanted to buy with my credit.
Look what I bought:
It has a whole chapter on doll quilts, and several lovely doll quilts I would like to replicate, plus I have $32 in store credit for later visits to their store!
Here's two lovely old doll quilts from my new treasure book:
I hope someone else will be enjoying the cookbooks that they will find on their shelves as much as I'm going to enjoy this new book.
Who knows what adventures will happen when I tackle the next listed area in my house. I know whatever it is, I can have some fun doing it.
Do you have a book exchange in your area? There might be some great quilt books there!
“Time flies. Time flies faster every year. Time flies whether you're having fun or not, whether you're living your life big or small, whether you surround yourself with fear or laughter.”
― Claire Cook, Time Flies: A Novel
Time is flying by - and it does seem to go faster every year. It is now September, and I find myself back in Virginia for a month, working on getting the house ready to list for sale. Somehow, I've got to make the house look like it is ready to be photographed for a magazine. I made a list today of closets and cupboards and attic spaces that I will be cleaning out. It's a time of reflection and retrospect, and also a time of looking forward to settling into a new house.
When I was last here, I packed up most of my stash, turned the quilt room back into a bedroom, and left a small upstairs room with a sewing machine and cutting table in it. It is a temporary space for quilting while I'm here this month working on the house. One of the last things I'll do before leaving will be to pack up this small space and remove the sewing machine.
Today, Sophia Grace and Rosie are quite happy! They are sitting on the new doll quilt top which I just finished.
When I packed up the quilt fabric in the quilt room a few weeks ago, I found a small pile of 1.5 inch squares and put them by the sewing machine. Today, I sewed them into four patches and then this doll quilt top appeared. It really went together quickly!
Pic of the finished top, which is 18" by 23.5"
I am showing you the unfinished back, so you can see the seams. Final seam of the four patch is pressed open, and the row joining seams are also.
If you'd like to make one, here's the skinny:
15 four patches are made with contrasting 1.5 inch squares, sewn together, 2 lights with 2 darks.
Background squares are cut 2.5 inches square (you will need 8 of them)
Cut the triangles by starting with three squares, each 4 inches square. Cut each one diagonally into four pieces, giving you 12 triangles.
For the four corners, I cut two 3 inch squares and cut each in half, making 4 triangles. They were a little big, but I was guessing on size. No problem, as I trimmed them after sewing them onto the quilt.
The borders are cut 5 inches wide, and the side borders are cut 14.5 inches long, with the top and bottom borders 18 inches long.
I cut my border pieces a little bit longer, maybe a 1/2 inch too long, and then trued up the sewn pieces after they were sewn on. For a little doll quilt, it can be done this way, without worrying about width at middle vs. width at top and bottom.
It really is an easy quilt to make. You know you want to make one!
Monday mornings I like to look at Judy Laquidara's blog, for her Design Wall linkup, to see what other quilters are working on. (Here) Hope you have a great Monday! I will be working on getting this little doll quilt finished, and of course, cleaning out the closets.
