Fireplace on and spring cleaning the sun porch

I can't believe how such a pleasant little room can get so nasty.  Go figure as plants drop leaves, pets reside here in the sunny windows and dust just multiplies if ignored.  So I am spending my feet time today in this room.  I have the gas fireplace blazing and some Josh Groban crooning to help me focus on the finished product.
Vince is outside again for his therapeutic activity.  He put the solid paver top row on the western of the three beds.  It looks amazing!  He had an uncle who was a mason and built at least two beautiful churches, one in Spearfish and one in Rapd City, South Dakota.  I think Vince has it in is genes.
My knees have told me it is time for ice and elevation.  Now I get to read snout what my blogger friends are doing.  Will attach a beautiful maple table Vince made for me.  Two old tangle leaves someone had painted found in a garage and given to him.  The base has a story!  My "little sister" (story for another day) found he base in an alley dumpster and stored it in her garage for a couple of years .  She took it to Restore and while visiting her last summer I found it in the Restore store.  Not having any idea of anything she walked up and asked why I was holding it.  I said I am going to buy it and we giggled for over an hour about OUR great taste.

The Other Side of the Room

We have been working for two days.  More Vince than I but the shower has been removed from the guest room and this area will become shelving for the plastic storage boxes I use for fabric.  He is repairing and replacing wall board to make it clean and shiny.
In the meantime I organized and picked up pieces to sew and make UFOs "more complete".  Now that all the projects are moved to the new room I realize I have seven hangars full of pieces to be quilted.

I am adding some pictures for the other side of the room.  Vince built the lower unit four years ago to help store the fat quarters.  The top unit is new this fall.  He does most of his work with hand tools like all of the dovetails in the drawers are hand cut.  The top set of drawers are made of walnut.  It is beautiful but also very useful.  The top two shallow drawers hold my threads.

The lower drawers hold ribbons, buttons, bindings I have ready for projects, and one of the drawers holds tools like the sharpener I use to sharpen rotary cutter blades.  A place for everything and everything in its place.  Needless to say I am very lucky to have such a handy husband.





Spools and Selvages

I must admit I have become quite interested in Pinterest and enjoy looking at the ideas.  As I was viewing sites pertinent to quilting, I came across a quilt covered in spools (I have always saved my wooden thread spools from Grandma's sewing drawers).  Anyway that idea intrigued me.
The next day I had a visit from my two little grandsons who live in our town and needed a place to stay because the blizzard was blocking the road to their day care.  Such a problem!  I love having them visit and they wanted two new pillowcases which were not a problem to make out of my stash.  While I was sewing, they were investigating the storage totes in my room and the next thing I knew they had two years of selvages heaped on the floor.  I should have taken a picture as it was as good and jumping in a pile of leaves in the yard.  They began to find pieces they liked and I decided to make little bags for them.  I took jean pant legs below the worn out knees and covered them with selvage pieces they selected.  Turned and seamed across the bottom of the leg and trimmed the top edge with rick rack and we called them "Ricky Racky Sacks".  They were enchanted and I even gave them some nickels to put in the bags.  Then we played "hide the thimble", a game I truly love and they got to take home the thimble in one of the bags.  Oh the wonderment of a three and four year old!
Laying awake and thinking about the sewing room led to my creation.  I asked my very talented husband if he could cut a piece of wood that would resemble a spool.  We drew it up and measured my selvage pieces I had already created.  6 inches wide and 11 inches long.  One of the spools is all the numbered parts of selvage where they give you the color guide.  I just couln't bear cutting the top and bottom pieces out of brown cloth and then try to back it with something.  The wooden back seemed so much sturdier and I intended to make these hang on the wall.  Well, as always, Vince used his skills and imagination and thus we have created another "Pay it forward" gift.  This one goes to my long time friend from junior and high school in Michigan.  She has a blog about herbs and loves to garden so I used selvages with floral prints as her spool.  What do you think?

This bottom one looks like it is more narrow at the bottom than the top but that is an optical illusion.