Category Archives: WIP Wednesday

Wherein I share my largest WIP of all

the Dungeon!

PICTURE INTENSIVE!

This is part of my Lady Lounge/Dungeon.  I’ve put my hands on almost everything you’re about to see except the two scary bins in my cross stitch area.  Those will be my next sort, maybe.  I really want to get my sewing table and cutting table completely cleared off first, but I seem to be using both of them for sorting through everything before I pile it in the guest room.  My method probably only makes sense to me, but I am making progress my way, and that’s all that matters.  😉

If you’re standing inside and facing the door this is immediately to the right:

Quilt Fabric for all the things

Quilt Fabric for all the things.  FQ up to 2 yards.  More than 2 yards and it goes on bolts (I get empties from my LQS). The bottom shelf holds pre-cuts.

 

Quilt yardage and bolts of 30ct Murano xs fabric

Quilt yardage (I need to get some more empty bolts) and bolts of 30ct Murano xs fabric

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Cross stitch fabric and storage for some fibers

DMC

DMC and in the plastic bag is a bolt of 30ct Platinum Murano.

In front of my quilt fabric cabinet is this container of gathered books and magazines that need to be shelved.

In front of my quilt fabric cabinet is this container of gathered books and magazines that need to be shelved. And another WIP!  I didn’t realize what that was until I took the photo.  Sigh.

When you turn right, there’s my sewing table, and the window that looks out the front of my house so I can be nosy while I sew.  It is great light for the room since it faces south.  They are cracked for the photo, but I keep the shutters closed if I’m not in there.

The top. Left to right: Featherweight and new travel case and in front of that is a box of "strings" for paper piecing. Pink containers have hex paperpiecing in them, and the blue basket has miniature Temecula Quilt Co quilt kits. Next is needles, pins, paper piecing stuff, threads that need sorting and storing. Letters that need painting and put on my wall. Phoenix Comicon stuff that needs sorting, tossing, or displayed on my cork board, and behind that is solid yardage that needs to be put in the cabinet.

The top. Left to right: Featherweight and new travel case and in front of that is a box of “strings” for paper piecing. Pink containers have hex paper-piecing in them, and the blue basket has miniature Temecula Quilt Co quilt kits. Next is needles, pins, paper piecing stuff, threads that need sorting and storing. Letters that need painting and put on my wall. Phoenix Comicon stuff that needs sorting, tossing, or displayed on my cork board, and behind that is solid yardage that needs to be put in the cabinet.

Underneath the sewing table:

My sewing machine caddy, cutting mat, ironing "board," that travels. To the left is a 3-drawer plastic bin that hold strips and stuff (that needs to be gone through) and behind is a basket full of quilt kits.

My sewing machine caddy, cutting mat, ironing “board,” that travels. To the left is a 3-drawer plastic bin that hold strips and stuff (that needs to be gone through) and behind is a basket full of quilt kits.  I honestly can’t remember what’s in the brown box.

Close up of my strip bin. The blue containers contain squares and bricks.

Close up of my strip bin. The blue containers contain squares and bricks.

Close up of all those quilt kits.

Close up of all those quilt kits.

Instead of continuing around the room, let’s face the door again and turn to your left.  (I’m avoiding that corner as long as I can.)

Cutting table top:

This is where I normally measure 10x then cut once and still freak out until I've measured what I cut.

This is where I normally measure 10x then cut once and still freak out until I’ve measured what I cut.  As you can see it’s another sorting spot.  The pile on the right is what I’m working on right now.  It has bolts (not on the bolt) of more Murano! The drawers to right are a couple of rolling bins I bought in Japan and I love them so much.

and underneath!

and underneath!  The threads are my overdyeds on individual airline cable rings.  Normally hanging on the doorknob of my cross stitch fabric cabinet.  AccuQuilt Cutter and dies to the left of the shelves.  The fabric bins on the top shelf and on the floor to the left hold scraps.  One is specifically civil war reproduction fabric that I’m pulling from for my Farmer’s Wife Quilt. The other is everything else.  The one on the floor holds a mix that I am going to go through, iron and use my cutting machine to make 2 1/2″ squares for a leaders/enders quilt.  I’ll also be pulling strips from the drawer I showed earlier.  The labeled plastic containers are MOST of my quilt/sewing WIPs.

Sigh.  And now that corner.  This is my cross stitch corner.  Remember that picture of the boxes and boxes of stuff I have pulled out to sell.  This is what’s left.

Wooden boxes

Top shelf on the left holds my coveted SANQ hardback books.  Wooden box magazine holders are in alphabetical order by designer.  Most are just labled A, B, C, etc., but some of them are designer specific (Goode Huswife, Shepherd’s Bush off the top of my head). Second row also contains my hard cover French alphabet/symbol books.  The  left wooden basket holds small kits that I really need to dig through and do for some quick gratification (anyone else remember the Elegant Stitch Essie’s?).  The right one holds Blackbird Designs, many of which are kitted Loose Feathers.  The metal bins contain, in alphabetical order, charts that are printed/sold in 1/2-sized and smaller ziplocks – a whole lot of Little House Needleworks in there.  Under the baskets are hardback quilt and cross stitch books, and the bottom 2 shelves are magazines.  Mostly SANQ and JCS. The middle unit also contains boxes, containers, etc., for finishing.  The glassed in cabinet contains books and I have purchased glass shelves and lighting to turn it into a display cabinet for some of my small pieces.

And then there’s this:

I know if I start digging through here I will soon have 50 WIPs.

I know if I start digging through here I will soon have 50 WIPs.  These two containers hold mostly kitted things I’ve received over the past couple of years in the monthly clubs I joined (I quit one of them after last year).  The damask container also holds things from a weekend sewing retreat I went on 3+ years ago.  These 2 containers really scare me.  LOL

Still with me?

Oh look.  I left to get something to drink and my editor came by:

I have my laptop set up on the dining room table for now. It normally sits on my grandmother's treadle machine that's on the wall that you haven't seen. That wall is for another day.

I love the look on her face. She’s a little startled that I walked in and she’s getting ready to jump off the chair she knows she’s not supposed to be on.   I have my laptop set up on the dining room table for now.  It normally sits on my grandmother’s treadle cabinet that’s on the wall that you haven’t seen. That wall is for another day.

And here’s where it’s all going for now while I sort it out in my Dungeon.

This is my guest bed.

Ouch.  Fuzzy picture.  Sorry!  This is my guest bed. If you come to visit me I promise you won’t have to sleep with all of this.  In fact, please come see me.  It will get me to put it away faster!  That fabric needs to go in the few empty spots left in my cabinet.  I’ve been trying hard to color sort it as I piled it so I can just pick it up and shove it on the shelves.  The pile you see at the foot of the bed is kitted items I pulled out the other day that I no longer have interest in.  Several of them were self-kitted which means I need to gut them and put the fabric and fibers in my cabinets and add the charts to the boxes of stuff to sell.  The pile between the fabric and the pink zipper bag are quilt kits I’ve been working on.  (Don’t you love that batik on top!  I got it during a visit with Kathy when she was in Yuma last winter.)  The blue basket contains finishing items.  I brought it in here to keep from traipsing back and forth.  Most of the stuff in here is actually quilting stuff, but behind the pink bag are a few stitchy items that got tossed onto the cutting table and they just need to be logged into my spreadsheet and sorted into its proper box.

So that’s it.  My Dungeon.  I really do love my room.  It took me forever to decide on a color.  As you can see I love IKEA.  I’ve blogged about it before but the color matches a cart I bought at IKEA.  I saw the cart and immediately knew that was the color my walls needed to be.

The only piece of furniture in there that’s not IKEA is my grandmother’s treadle.  It works, too.  I need to clean it up a bit, and probably find a spare belt for it, but I could sew on it if the zombies showed up.  And I have enough fabric and thread to keep up warm with quilts, and maybe even sew us a couple of shirts 😉

And since it’s still WIP Wednesday after this super long post, here’s my latest Houses of Hawk Run Hollow progress photo.

It was dreary when I took the photo (we've had some late monsoon weather the last few days). I like to stitch across and work my way up. As you can tell, there's a whole lot of blue in this block :D

It was dreary when I took the photo (we’ve had some late monsoon weather the last few days). I like to stitch across and work my way up. As you can tell, there’s a whole lot of blue in this block.

One more thing.  These are the two designs I pulled from my kitted bucket the other day. I had intended to start one of them yesterday but completely forgot we had a baseball game last night, so that didn’t happen.  Maybe in a minute?  I have all my adulting done for the day 😀

The Goode Huswife - Book of Spells

The Goode Huswife – Book of Spells

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Blue Ribbon Designs – An Expression of Gratitude

silks, wonderful silks!

silks, wonderful silks!

If you’re still here, or actually here at all, thank you for visiting.  If you have comments, be gentle.  If you have questions, bring them on!

BlockSignature

WIP Wednesday

Still spending a lot of time watching the Olympics. So happy we’re in the Track & Field portion. I love to watch the slow motion shots of their bodies moving. The muscle movements fascinate me. Of course, I also love watching the diving and swimming for the same reason.

Last night we went to a baseball game. We have season tickets for all Tuesday and Friday home games and I have been trying to upgrade all of our Tuesday games. Last night we had really good seats. Just 3 rows back from out dugout.

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We live over an hour away from the stadium. I love my team, but I’ll admit there are many times this season (we’ve been losing so much!) that I have trouble staying focused on the game and keep thinking I could be home stitching and watching on TV. We’ve decided not to renew our tickets next season and just buy individual games.

Between the Olympics, Baseball, and daily adulting, here’s my latest progress on Sugar Skull. Mister was looking over my shoulder a couple of days ago and said he really liked how it was turning out. I’m looking forward to getting it finished, as I’ve never really been much of a one-at-a-timer and I’m feeling the itch to move on.

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It’s a little tilted and off-focus to show the beading better.

I’d love to have my piece finished by Saturday, but don’t know if that’s going to happen.  I have to take my car in tomorrow to have the rear end aligned, (one of the things I didn’t mention in my earlier post was that Mister and I were rear-ended on the freeway in March and this will hopefully the end of that saga), and I have some friends coming for a stitch-together on Saturday and am going to start to get ready for that.

WIP Wednesday

IMG_20160810_195606I joined a Halloween Stitch Along on a Facebook group and chose to stitch Mill Hill’s Sugar Skull. It started on August 1, and ends October 31.  The Olympic games are giving me a lot of stitching time.

I’ve decided to just stitch the one design as I’m planning to participate in the Fall Stitch Along that begins August 15.

My goal for this design is to finish it into a cube, then go on to the fall design I’ve chosen.

One more week!

How busy have you been?  Are you planning out your 2015 year?

I’ve been busy, but not crazy busy, except in spurts.

This past weekend was the Phoenix COMICON Fan Fest.  It has been touted as a success and that makes me happy.  Two and a half weeks from now I have my first meeting for COMICON 2015, so I’m trying to not even think about anything related to it until then, but it’s a near impossible task I’ve set myself.

Next week we’ll be in California with Son and Girlfriend.  I am really excited about that.  Since we moved here we have flown Son and Girlfriend in to spend Christmas with us.  That, and a pair of tickets to Disneyland, has been their Christmas gift from us.  Last year we asked them if they would mind if we came to California and all 4 of us went to Disneyland on Christmas.  You would have thought they were both 10 with their reaction 😀  We’ll be crossing an item from my bucket list by staying at the Disneyland Hotel while we’re there.  We’ve decided to go to Disneyland on Christmas Eve and California Adventure on Christmas Day, since we’ll have to leave Anaheim late Christmas Day to drive to Oceanside.  We haven’t completely decided when we’ll return to Arizona, but no later than Sunday.

I am working on a Christmas item right now.  I gave up on getting my room painted until after Christmas.  Between Mister’s studying for finals, my COMICON obligations, and some sewing I needed to get done, I quit stressing about it, cleared a spot and set my machine back up.  Here’s where I shoved everything that was stacked on my table, so I could sew.  That white “wall” is my design wall and behind that’s my shelved in closet.

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And here’s what the guest bed looks like (there are 2 tall piles on the floor I didn’t bother taking photos of). Most of that will go on the shelves behind the design wall in the photo above.

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Here’s what I finished by yesterday.

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Hoping to finish the piecing today and the quilting and binding tomorrow.

Very little stitching on my Lizzie*Kate mystery and no updated photo of it.

That second question up there?  I have been planning out  my 2015.  I try to adopt a positive thought for myself every year.  Last year it was “happy thoughts” and no matter what was going on I tried to always remind myself to think happy thoughts.  I had a really good year with that.

This year I tried to continue that and added on to be less judgmental by reminding myself that I may find myself in that person’s situation one day, or that I didn’t know the story behind what was making someone behave the way they were, either toward me or toward others.

This coming year my plans are to “quit saying, start doing.”  I’ve been listing my WIPs and projects I want to start and trying to formulate a plan that will get me doing more.  I love my calendar on my phone for reminding me of appointments and not letting me double book something, but I’m going back to using a paper organizer for my projects.  More about that in a second.  I’m also going to use Wunderlist.  I have it downloaded on my computer, phone, and tablet.  It’s the first thing that pops up on my computer when I start it up and it shows me what I have to work on, as a reminder to not get sidetracked. I’m tracking my WIPs and projects I want to do on it since I can add things from the different electronics and it’ll sync between the 3.

After following a discussion Melissa was having on Facebook, and others sharing what I’ve been thinking and the types of planners they use, I’ve decided on a Planner Pad.  I love that it has the possibility to be used as something other than an appointment book (which my phone covers).  Also, I will be using my timer more to keep from letting the computer suck me in.  I have found myself spending less time on it the last few months anyway and it has made a difference in what I’ve accomplished.

I have 4 trips planned for 2015.  Vegas (Jan), Prescott (Apr), Tennessee (Jun), Prescott (Oct).  I am stepping up my volunteer activities as well.  In addition to continuing my sewing for AZ Blankets 4 Kids, I’ve taken a larger responsibility with COMICON, and I am the new Membership Director for the Arizona Quilters Guild.  I am looking forward to having a very heart-fulfilling year.

So my goals for 2015 aren’t to get this done, or that finished, etc., but to just be more organized which should lead to productivity.  I guess I’m sort of going to run my retired life like I ran my working life 😉

I’m linking up to Freshly Pieced WIP Wednesday.

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