Bits and Pieces: Beach Quilt

Hello everyone! I've been sewing a bit each morning, so my beach quilt is coming along. I think I'm going to call it "Bits and Pieces" since it's literally made out of bits and pieces of my Over the Rainbow quilt. Here's how it looks right now:

I'm really liking it, even though the points aren't matching up. It's too hard to get them all to be good with the horrible sewing I did on the 9-patch units 13-14 years ago. I'm just going to blame the 8th grade version of me for any mistakes or wonkiness on this quilt - I don't think she'll mind. :)

It still needs to be larger. If I want to use it at the beach I'll want to lay down on it, or at least sit comfortably. So, I'm going to be adding another border, but I'm not really sure what fabric to use. I have some left over bits from the colored pieces in the middle, but I'm not sure I have enough to make it all the way around and add the inches that I want to. Maybe I'll have to add 2 more (or more???) borders on this to get it to the size that I want. Time will tell I guess...

Anyway - to finish off the post, here is some cat mischief that happened in the making of this part of the quilt. Enjoy!

Oh, hi Leia! Thanks for helping me keep those pieces down and in order. You're such a good helper!

Wait a minute mom, these pieces need to be rearranged. The seams aren't going to match up! Let me help you...

Just a few more to move and then it will be perfect!

Whew, rearranging these rows is hard work. I'm too tired to do the rest. You'll put it back in order, right mom?

Thanks for all the help, Leia! :-p

Our New House

Hello everyone! I'll warn you now this is going to be a very picture heavy post. :) If you just want to see the little quilted mat that I made, scroll down to the very bottom.

We've just about settled in to our new house in Portland. We still have to unpack some things, hang pictures, put away our clothes (and I need to reorganize my fabrics), but we're getting there! We really like the house we've rented, so here's some pictures of our new place:

The front of our house

The yard

The view from our dining room

Front garden steps

Side patio with grape vines

We have grapes!!

Our office - still needs to be put together yet, but my husband loves being able
to play his guitars at full volume without worrying about neighbors.

Downstairs bathroom - I made that toilet paper holder on the back of the toilet! :)
Repurposed oatmeal container with tissue paper and Mod Podge. My first craft here!

Pool table room - so far it's holding our pictures nicely...

My craft room that still needs a little work - it's also our guest bedroom

Our bedroom

Master bathroom upstairs

Master bathroom upstairs

Jacuzzi tub! Love the master bathroom!

Stairs where the look over is for the living room. See that skylight window straight ahead?
My other cat (not pictured here), Sasha, decided to jump into that window and then
realized that the ledge isn't straight, but rather slanted down. So, after lots of scrambling
and trying to hold on, she had to jump back over to the ledge. Gave me a little scare!

Living room

Living room from above

Dining room - those roses are from our garden!

Kitchen

So, that's the tour of our house. I tried to rearrange the pictures so they were in a better order, but Blogger isn't cooperating with me right now. Oh well! So, besides the toilet paper holder that I did, I also made a little food mat for our cats.

When we packed everything up in Madison I threw away their old food rug because it was just really old and messy and stained. I didn't like putting it into the wash because it was backed with rubber and would get all these little rubber bits into everything. Yuck! So, when I was unpacking the craft room I found my left over fish from the charity quilts I made earlier this year. I had 8 of them, so I made a little food mat. It went together in a couple hours yesterday evening.

I quilted it with some relaxed wavy lines and backed it in the same rainbow fabric I used for some of the fish. I love this because I can throw it into the wash whenever I want and it will keep the indoor/outdoor carpet of the pool table room from getting dirty with cat food messes. 

My cat Sasha also approves of the little mat. I think she's looking for more soft food though... :) She'll just have to wait until tomorrow! 

So, thanks for putting up with the huge picture heavy post. Hopefully I'll get more into crafting and quilting stuff as we get situated here in Portland. I'd like to make us a light weight quilt/blanket for the beach and a beach tote bag, but those might have to wait until I get some more WIPs out of the way! Happy crafting everyone!

Cats!!!

Last night I spent a couple hours' time finishing a long, soft, cuddly, white scarf for myself. I had seen one made from similar yarn while we were in Europe a few weeks ago and I really, really, really wanted one.

Unfortunately, I failed to realize how tempting this type of yarn was for my cats...

I don't have a before picture, but this is what the scarf looks like now, and this is the culprit:

I guess I should have seen it coming. At one point during the knitting process I stored the 1/2 completed project in a closet while I was gone at work. I came home to find the knitting needles splayed out on the bedroom floor and the skein of yarn disconnected from the partially knitted scarf. One of my cats had chewed through the yarn, but neither of them would confess to the crime!

At that point in time I figured they were after the knitting needles and the skein of yarn since that is what they usually go for. Boy was I wrong! Last night, I finished the scarf and left it on my kitchen table. I also left the skein of yarn out on my living room couch. (I didn't mean to leave that out, I just forgot to put it away in my sleepy state around midnight.)

Around 3:00am I heard a ripping noise. My cat (see above picture), Sasha, loves to get into things in the middle of the night. Usually she finds some piece of paper on the night stand or she's biting the tag on the comforter, going after the cord for the blinds - anything she can get her paws on. So, I didn't really pay too much attention to it at first. A few minutes later I heard the same ripping noise and I knew I wasn't going to get back to sleep if I didn't stop her.

I turned on the light and to my horror I found that she had dragged my scarf off of the kitchen table, into our bedroom, and had been pulling on it with her razor sharp claws and gnashing on it with her teeth! Needless to say she was escorted from the room with a stern look from me. Upon entering the living room, I found the skein of yarn on the couch untouched!!! I would have rather found that in a tangled mess than found my scarf all torn up. Both the bedraggled scarf and then unscathed skein of yarn were placed in secure, unopenable-by-cat, places until I could properly care for them in the morning.

When I got up for good this morning, I looked at the damage and realized the scarf can't be saved. I tried to weave the pulled out yarn bits into the scarf, but it was just too stretched out. It looked like it had lots of holes and plenty of misshapen parts. So, my cats now have a new soft, white, cuddly cat toy.

My husband told me that the next time I go to the craft store I have to keep in mind to buy things that aren't so tempting to our cats. I told him that the things that are tempting to the cats are also tempting to me! So, I guess I can't fault my pets for having good taste in yarn. I'll just need to keep it out of claws' way.

Here's a picture of my other cat, Leia. She's not quite as curious or destructive as Sasha, so she hasn't destroyed anything that I've made. She does like to lay in some curious places, like the bathroom sink or the laundry basket full of clean clothes...





I love them both despite it all! They're just too darn cute to be mad at for long. C'est la vie! Happy crafting!