Cotton Robin 2019

Welcome back to the Cotton Robin! We've started this year's robin and I'm rather excited. I am on the game! The first block is due in a month and I'm ready to mail it. Yes. Last year I threw together a pitiful little thing at the last minute and mail it THE SAME DAY.

Who does that? Me. Of course. I really wanted to participate and life got away from me, but I managed to get it together. Not again. This year I want to at least begin on the right foot.

So I decided to get to it early and have fun. Here's my house. I sewed it completely without a pattern. Ha! I started with the orange door. Yep! An orange door, some almost white walls, and windows with built in shades and curtains. Those windows were a stroke of genius that just happened. I would never have used this fabric, but in the end look how cute. It also decided the color of the roof. 

There were quite a few things going on, so I decided to go with a navy roof to avoid adding yet another color. Then I realized that the block didn't meet the size requirements. So I added a tree. 

It looks just like the ones my husband trims. He wants NO LIMBS near the ground because they are a pain when he cuts grass. What does he do instead? Cuts them way up high so there's just a little top. One year he stood on the cab of the big tractor. Now really? So back to "The Orange Door." It will go out as soon as I get an address to ship it to, and I'll be off and running. Cotton Robin here I come! (Did I say I'm excited?)

Pin It Weekly #267

It's time for PIW. And we're almost at 4,000 followers on Pinterest! How crazy is that? Here are a few who have been pinning some interesting winter ideas.

Mary Black has a board titled, "Mary's to do list." You KNOW I had to check it out!

Darlene Young has several adorable ideas pinned to her boards. Here are a few of my favs.

"Carved wood doors" got my attention. Check out Judy Miller-Kelly's really interesting board.

Sunday Quilt Inspiration: M A P S

Don't you just love old maps? If you're answer is yes, then I have two suggestions for you today. Firstly, go to the AHIQ blog and see what others have done with the 2018 map challenge. It's  impressive. This link brings you straight to the wrap-up but you can navigate your way around from there.

And secondly, go to my "quilts - maps" board to see more map quilts.

Reese's Quilt ~~ finished

Reese is one of my seven sisters. She was a sewist and made many of her now-adult daughter's little-girl dresses. She hasn't sewn in years. Many years. 

A couple of weeks ago we went to her home for a baby shower. She had decided that some of the many items from her sewing room needed a new home. That meant, "Here, Mary, I don't want this clutter. Thank you."

As we were talking about the huge bag of sewing "stuff," she mentioned that she had made a quilt top years ago. It turns out that top was part of the reason the bag was so heavy.

So this week I loaded the top on the long-arm and quilted it up. I've since also bound it. Reese had lots of fabric scraps in the bag but a couple of pieces are big and one particular piece was just big enough to be used for backing. So that's what on the backside of this pretty, little 60" x 60" quilt.

I wanted to keep it simple, so I just stitched in the ditch around every piece. Know what I learned about my quilting? I'm not a stitch-in-the-ditch kind of quilter who can brag about her skills. 

Honestly, I thought I'd get better with practice, and this quilt provided lots of practice! I was wrong. No, really. Things got much worse. Thank goodness Reese will be okay with that. She had no intention of finishing the quilt. I'm rather excited about returning her now-complete quilt gift. 

Lots of Link Ups

Busy Hands Quilts (Finished or Not Friday)

Confessions of a Fabric Addict (Can I get a Whoop! Whoop!)

My Quilt Infatuation

Sew Fresh Quilts  (Let's Bee Social)

Thank Goodness Its Finished Friday is at Alycia Quilts

Pin It Weekly #266

Hello to Weekly! Here are a few of the pins I've found recently.

Since we're doing modern quilts, here are a few modern quilt blocks. You can find these and more on my "quilt - ideas inspiration tutorials videos" board.

Some happy news on the home front is that our oldest granddaughter had her second baby on Saturday. A little boy, 8 lbs. so not that little, to give Miss Milly a little brother. Mom and baby Ryder are doing great.

A what-not-to-do DIY ~~ finished

Several years ago I salvaged a dresser mirror from certain death in a land fill. It was in perfect condition. Well, it was ugly. The mirror was dirty, but a spritz of cleaner proved it to be without scratches or other problems. The frame was  another thing. No amount of cleaning was going to make the brown, worn-out wood less ugly. 

But I could see potential there. If only I could figure out where, how, when to  use it. I mean, I didn't really need a mirror, ugly or otherwise. So it got put in the studio, where it leaned against a wall for years, a place where it could easily be forgotten. This mirror, it seems, never really had much chance of being truly rescued.

I really liked this decorative edge on the bottom.

Our master bath is getting a remodel. All new everything. Except! I've finally found a home for the mirror--above the vanity in the new/old bathroom. 

So what not to do? Ha, for starters just get to work doing something you've never done before without trying to figure it our beforehand. Or speaking to an expert. Or watching a YouTube video. Or anything that will tell you how you should go about it. 

The bottom edge of the mirror, which 
would have sat on the dresser, had 
so much damage that we removed it.

That's how we started. My sweet husband knows about refinishing, painting, building, fixing, anything mechanical. Still, we ran into a problem with the mirror. He's a  superhero at taking things apart and putting them back together in working order.

In this case he chose to not remove the back panel and mirror to refinish the frame. In our defense we didn't know how old or in what condition the inside might be and didn't want to possibly cause more damage. I liked this frame!

 We decided that since we were only cleaning and painting, we'd slip cardstock under the frame to catch any spills. So the blue in the picture is paper, not tape. Important. 

A first coat of Kiltz primer. Then a second coat. And  things were looking quite positive.

A first coat of the dark gray that is my contrast color. 

A second coat and we were ready to remove the cardstock and possibly hang the mirror. Except.

 The cardstock wouldn't remove. First, the paper absorbed the paint and stuck to the wood. Second, the wood absorbed the paint and expanded ever so slightly making the space tight enough to really hold the paper.  The paper was truly attached. And stuck. Of course, I had wiggled the cardstock deeply between mirror and frame. Maybe I was a bit enthusiastic. 

I tried several ways to remove that line of blue. We solved the problem the hard way: removed the backing and mirror. Then I sanded and scraped the paper until every tiny bit of blue was removed. 

Hopefully it looks like it belongs here.

Then we ever so carefully replaced the mirror and backing and Richard, who had measured the space between the mirror and edge of the frame, stapled it all back in place. I can't tell you how many times he checked that measurement. I wondered if it would change at some point. It did not.

Finished and hanging. Notice that the decorative detail is now
 on the top. Richard built the closet reflected in the mirror.

A kidding aside, I really like the mirror. It was difficult to choosing  between white (like the window and door trim) or gray (to match the other wooden "furniture"). More pictures coming when we finish the bathroom. It's so close!