Magazine overload

I have to do something difficult. No, I'm not getting rid of these Threads magazines (yet), but I am going to let my renewal pass by. It's not that I don't enjoy the magazine because I do. I just don't have room to keep collecting them, and frankly, I don't have time to thoroughly read them either. When the magazine arrives I flip through it and I see the helpful articles on sewing techniques, but I don't read them. I expect that I will someday go back to these magazines when I need sewing help and on a few occasions I have. But I'm also just as likely to reach for one of the many sewing books I own. Tauton Press put out a Threads DVD archive, which I bought, and perhaps they'll continue to make DVDs on a yearly or multi-year basis. With e-books and iPads and the like, maybe we're heading toward paperless books and magazines as the norm. Could be interesting. I'm not ready to find a new home for all of my old Threads issues or toss them in the recycle bin so in the meantime they take up room. And that's mainly the reason why I need to stop the flow of magazines coming into the house. It's not just Threads that I collect. All these magazines are starting to overwhelm me.

These are some of the knitting magazines, which I no longer subscribe to. If there's a magazine for sewing, knitting, spinning, weaving, machine embroidery...I probably have at least one copy. Often I just buy the single copies but I've had subscriptions to many of them. Then there are the foreign magazines and don't even get me started on the pattern magazines. My bookshelf is stuffed with ten years of Burda plus a smattering of Diana Couture, Elena Couture, La Mia Boutique, Patrones, Knipmode...

I also have a large collection of Martha Stewart Living magazines, which is boxed up because I don't have the bookshelf space. That's another magazine I stopped subscribing to.

So my magazine subscription is now down to only two: Burda and Elle. I might stop Elle in favor of a different fashion magazine. I like to mix it up and try different ones. At least I don't hold on to the fashion mags - I tear out pictures that interest me and put them into a inspiration book...when I get around to it.

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We have four cats in our house but only one of them seems to make the blog on a regular basis: Felix. Today he took advantage of an open pantry and foraged for his own food. Apparently it's much more fun and interesting to tear into the bag instead of just eating the very same food out of his bowl. He works hard for that food too - meowing, rubbing, reaching up to the counter...but I guess it's better straight out of the bag.

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And finally...

The deck is about  95% done - just a few steps left and some sealing and then it'll be ready to enjoy.

Shower cat

Felix decided to take a bath in the shower.

He likes to roll around and show off his white belly. Action shot!

Taking a break during his manic "wash-fest"

And in other news...the deck is coming along:

Fabric delivery

It's been 3 years since my last fabric.com purchase.

You can read that statement as if I were in a fabric-aholic meeting (if there was such a thing!) or as a confession, even though I'm not Catholic. Between 1999 and 2003 I had what I would consider to be an addiction to online fabric buying. Boxes from fabric.com arrived almost monthly, sometimes more often. Fabric.com has a record of my orders and apparently October 2002 was a good month for them as I placed 6 orders. Oh my. I started buying from them when they were Phoenix Textiles and I was enticed by their super cheap fabrics to practice my sewing. They were $1.99 or maybe even $.99. If I remember correctly, nothing was over $4/yard (and it was actually 39 inches) in those early years. According to my account at fabric.com, my first order was in September 1999 but it's so old they don't list what I bought. The order number then was only 4 digits - they're up to 7 digits now. I do remember that the fabric I received was nice, too nice I thought, for practice sewing. I bought more. And more. And more. I have sewn some of it and some of it has left the house in one way or another through trades with sewing friends or gifted to my sister. Most of it is stored away in plastic bins along with fabric from EmmaOneSock, Denver Fabrics, Textile Fabrics, Gorgeous Fabrics, Fabric Club, and a few more. Not to mention fabric bought in "brick and mortar" stores. And then there's the travel fabric. Oh my.

I love fabric. I love the texture, the color, even the smell. I enjoy imagining what I would do with the fabric. The problem is that lately I've only done the dreaming part. Knowing that I possess more fabric than I can possibly sew, I have curtailed my fabric shopping to almost nothing over the last few years. I allowed myself to buy fabric on vacations as a sort of souvenir, and of course I couldn't pass up fabric shopping in New York City. Lately I've been making home dec fabric purchases since we need curtains and pillows and such for the rooms that we've redone. And one of those rooms, my sewing room #2, as I call it, is close to finished. All that remains is to finish moving stuff back in, organize...and make some window treatments, pillows, and bedding with the fabric I bought.

I guess buying the home dec fabric was like an alcoholic taking a sip after years of sobriety. I fell off the wagon. The cat is out of the bag. I stopped ignoring the emails from fabric.com.

So 11 years after my first fabric.com purchase, I've again experienced the little flutter of happiness upon receiving a big box of fabric.

Well, not much fabric actually. The pillows required the box to be large. The chenille and cording is for a pillow. The rocket fabric is for me, for a kitchy shirt to wear when I work on satellite launches.

But it is a slippery slope. After making that online purchase I have "sinned" again. I happened to be at Joann's to buy a curtain rod and I couldn't resist two pieces of sale fabric. And I've been looking at other online fabric sites and dreaming about the fabric and what I can make with it. Hopefully I will find the restraint because I already have a lot of wonderful fabric that should be used and not packed away in plastic bins.

But I really did enjoy the thrill of new fabric!

Tour de Fleece

Some of my spinning friends have joined a challenge to spin during the Tour de France. I thought I'd give it a go for a little bit; however, I can't spin and watch the race, so I don't think I'll be doing to much tour de fleece. But here's a look at what I'm working on:

Here's a look at some of the plied result:

Reveal #1, without furniture

The guest room is finished. It's empty and ready for furniture...and stuff. I thought I'd take some pictures before it gets filled up.

But first, a "before" picture. However, I didn't take one before the demolition and I couldn't find any good photos of the room before we redid it. The best one I could come up with was one I took of a purse and skirt I made...with a bonus action shot of Felix about to jump up on top of a cabinet. There's not much to say about it really. The room was mint-green and had one window. And it had wood floors, but they were in pretty bad shape and there was water damage in the middle of the room (waterbed?).

We changed the window to French doors and added a window on the right wall. The paint color is a light purple-gray - Lowes Olympic paint "Bad Lands", to be specific. My husband refinished floors. We also added the ceiling light and added and moved some wall outlets. Ok, to be clear, the contractor did the electrical and put in the door and window and we had a drywall guy redo the walls. Although we're capable of doing the work, we just don't have the time anymore. I did get out the drywall mud and patch the inside of the closet though! I'm pretty good with the hawk (it's a flat surface with a handle that you use for holding the mud while you use a putty knife to apply it). And I also painted.

I designed the closet shelves and our contractor built them. I included a pull-out ironing board, which was expensive, but worth it I think. The closet doors are 3 sliding doors. The outermost one, which is visible here, will eventually have a tack-board mounted on it.

Here's a view of the closet doors closed. Two of the doors have mirrors on them.

Since I'm showing pictures, I should also show off the hall bathroom, which we also redid. This is actually the second re-do, although the first was only partial. About 10 years ago (wow, has it been that long?) we painted and changed out the vanity, sink and mirror. At the time I was into a beachy look so we painted the walls a sea-green and I added a little bit of decorative fish. Here is the before:

We didn't redo the bathtub at that time, which was a one-piece vinyl surround.

And here's how it looks now! The entire room was gutted and we had a skylight put in. I designed everything, from the tile layout to the vanity, which our contractor made for us out of walnut.

Here's a closeup of the vanity...and yes, there is a knob missing. Actually three knobs are missing. Some of them were damaged and I had to reorder and just haven't gotten around to putting them on. Originally we were going to have a Caesarstone counter but the walnut was so beautiful I didn't want to cover it up.

The bathtub is an airjet and it makes lots of bubbles.

I should also share photos of the master bedroom and bathroom, which have long been finished but I'll save that for another time.

Fabric is bought...now I have to sew it

I bought all the fabric for the bedroom along with some ribbon and trims to use on pillows. However, when I had the purple leaf print and lilac stripe fabric in the cart, the fabrics felt a bit too young. I also decided that the stripe fabric might look like I hung a sheet on the wall, so I browsed the store for a different fabric for the window curtain. I ended up going back to a fabric that I'd seen before but wasn't quite sure of. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of it because it was on clearance and no longer on the Hancock website. It's from their Kathy Ireland collection. Yes, I could take a picture, but it's late and dark - i.e., flash picture only...anyway it's not very complicated to describe. It's purple and green large scale plaid - I think it's called window pane? There a little touch of gold thread in it too. Oh, and it's fairly sheer. I'm hoping it will make the room a little more sophisticated looking. I also found a deeper purple fabric for the other side of the duvet cover and maybe a pillow or accent on a pillow. I bought extra of the striped fabric for the bed skirt - I'll still use the striped fabric on the design board.

Duvet covers take a lot of fabric! I found this handy yardage calculation in the book Sandra Betzina Sews for Your Home:

A = width of comforter + 3 inches
B = length of comforter + 3 inches
C = width of fabric - 4 inches
D = repeat of fabric
E = B+D
F = A/C (round up - this tells you how many widths of fabric you have to use)
G = E x F

And finally,  G/36 = number of yards to buy for one side of the duvet.

One side. I emphasize that because I calculated I needed about 6 yards of fabric (oh yeah, add 1/2 yard if the fabric will shrink) for that one side and this is for a twin size bed! No wonder we're not all making our duvet covers unless we make them out of sheets bought on clearance. Even with my coupon for 40% off one cut of fabric, I decided to not make the cover entirely out of the $9/yard cotton fabric. Besides, there wasn't enough on the bolt (I think a new bolt only has 10 yards anyway). I found a perfectly lovely deep purple ($3.99/yard) cotton blend to use for the other side of the cover but it's such a nice shade that I think it won't be the underside all of the time.

The guy cutting my fabric complimented me on my coordination of fabrics. He envied my sewing room plans and I got advice from him on how to rig up the roman shades on the French doors. All in all it was a very successful shopping trip.

Home dec fabric shopping in my future

Wow, where has the time gone? My last post was over a month ago.

The guest room/sewing room #2 is almost done. I know I said that last month, but now it really is. I just have to paint the trim on the window frame and touch up the trim elsewhere in the room, then I can move furniture back in. And there will be pictures.

I've been shopping for fabric to make the window treatments and other stuff. The walls are a light purple/gray color and after looking at a few online sources as well as some brick and mortar stores,  I'd given up finding home dec fabric with purple in it that didn't contain grapes or hyacinths. I didn't want a floral because I didn't want the room to be overly girly. Ideally I wanted something modern, a la Merimekko, and was even (sort of) willing to pay the bucks for it. But I couldn't find anything that really fit the mood or the scale. They have some fabulous prints if you have a large space to carry it.

I found the perfect fabrics nearly in my own backyard. No, not my existing, vast fabric stash currently housed in the cargo trailer in our driveway (no, the trailer is not full of my fabric even though my husband jokes that it is). I found the fabrics at the Hancock Fabric store about a mile away. I have made all my calculations and think I know the right amounts to purchase so I'm going to do that this week while the sales are on and the fabric is on the shelf. But fortunately it's also online so I have a backup.

For the roman shades on the French doors:

For the curtain for the window and as the covering for my design board (mounted on one of the closet doors):

For the duvet cover:

I plan to use some of the houndstooth and the stripe for neckroll pillows for the bed and also maybe introduce some yellow as an accent color in the pillows. I'm looking for a darker purple to use for the bedskirt and maybe I'll incorporate that into the pillows and/or duvet as well.

I flipped when I found that leaf pattern fabric because I have found so little with purple in it that wasn't (overly) floral or juvenile. It's a cotton fabric and it didn't really sit well with me for the shades, curtain or design board cover but I think it will be perfect for a duvet cover.

I really hope I can make these items. I don't doubt my abilities to sew them, but it's my motivation to do home dec that is lacking. I hate working with large volumes of fabric. But I am inspired by my choices, so I will just have to set my mind to it and just do it.