Upside-Down Pillowcase Day

I sewed today! I made three of these pillowcase grocery bags from a set of matching thrifted pillowcases I bought yesterday. I made them using this outstandingly wonderful tutorial by Creative Kismet: pillowcase tote. I made no modifications to the pattern; her instructions are excellent and she was very, very kind to take the time to write her fabulous tutorials.

The more visually discerning viewer may notice that the bows flowing off the flower bouquets are defying gravity, fluttering upwards in a freak updraft. The floral swags seem a little confused too--perhaps they're aspiring to be floral arches. I guess I should've looked at the fabric more closely before I made all three like this, but...oh well, no one will notice.

I can't wait to go grocery shopping with them! They are doubled fabric, so they are much sturdier than they look. They also have a nice box pleat bottom, so they are plenty roomy. Plus, they're soft and they smell like my own laundry and I love them. As Happy Zombie Monica puts it, "I feel 10 feet tall when I walk into my Safeway armed with my own bags!" I understand completely. I feel like I grew a couple of inches already!

A Fifi update. As you recall in my last post, I was concerned about my tiny ceramic poodle, Fifi. He lost his partner in a thrift store mishap, and I asked for your assistance in trying to discover what/who his lost partner could be. Alas, no one had any ideas, so I looked through my own personal box of knick knacks (I have only one box of knick knacks--I told you I was a minimalist...) and came up with a temporary substitute:

Fifi is not pleased.

Yes, it's a teeny-tiny 1953 General Electric "Swivel-Top-Cleaner" vacuum cleaner. It's the only knick-knack I own that is small enough to go with Fifi; everything else dwarfs him. Unfortunately, Fifi does not look overjoyed by this substitution for his beloved jug. I can't imagine why, since I totally adore vacuum cleaners! I really do--I own five of them. Next to the sewing machine, I think vacuum cleaners are one of the best household inventions ever. (Last year, we bought this bad boy: The Dyson Animal. Whoa. What a man. Unbelieveable. But I digress. Back to Fifi.)

Perhaps Fifi would be happier with the vacuum cleaner if he took a closer look!

Fifi is intrigued...

Ah ha! What's this?? A teeny-tiny sewing kit...IN the vacuum cleaner???

Yes! It's a vacuum cleaner sewing kit, complete with sewing threads of various colors for repairs, a thimble, and a couple of rusty vintage 1953 needles. Oh...and an advertisement extolling the virtues of the REAL vacuum cleaner, which does not have any thread in it at all until you vacuum your sewing room.

Alas, poor Fifi. A thread-filled vacuum cleaner is no substitute for a mate, I always say. Although...since I own five full-sized thread-filled vacuum cleaners, I'm not sure my husband believes me.

There is someone in my household that doesn't like vacuum cleaners very much at all: Mr. Bigglesworth, who slept through the whole upside down pillowcase adventures of the day. Good night, sweet kitty.

A Trip to the Thrift Store

Today, I'm going to take you thrift shopping! I hope you like thrift shopping. I love it. It's like a treasure hunt. What will we find today?

I have two thrift shops that I mainly go to, although there are several on the island. Today, I'm taking you to the Humane Society Thrift shop in Lihue. See the sign there? It's a small shop, but always packed full of stuff. Granted, thrift shopping on a small island requires some patience. It's not like being able to thrift in a big city where there are lots of people! Kauai is a small place, and the climate is very hard on posessions. I leave empty-handed most days, but that's okay. The fun is in the looking.

Today, I found a happy, colorful platter for my kitchen. I bought a plate hanger at KMart so I can hang it up on my wall:

I also found some sheets and pillowcases that are in pretty good shape:

My local health food store, Papaya's, decided to start charging for grocery sacks in an effort to encourage their customers to bring in their own reusable sacks. When I saw this tutorial at Creative Kismet (I love her blog!), I decided to make my grocery totes out of old sheets and pillowcases. I love the fact that they'll be soft and washable and reusable.

I can only explain this next purchase by saying I must've been caught up in the moment. This poodle and jug were sold as a pair for some inexplicable reason. Now...I KNOW this tiny poodle was originally dancing with something else, but what?Even the poodle looks puzzled about his dancing partner. Now...I KNOW this poodle wasn't meant to dance with this jug. But obviously, through the years, he has lost his partner. Was it another dog? A cat? A ball? And why did someone think that a jug would make a good substitute? Have you seen this poodle before, perhaps on old Aunt Gertie's knick knack shelf, dancing with...what??

I asked the thrift store clerk if she thought this pairing was a bit odd. I was hoping that she would get curious and go look around in her mountain of stuff behind the counter to see if she could find the poodle's long-lost partner. But she didn't speak English very well, and perhaps in her native country, dogs and jugs go out dancing together all the time. Sadly, I couldn't persuade her to search for Fifi's long-lost love. I'll go back another time and see if a missing (poodle? cat?) has shown up. Trouble is, I'm not sure what I'm looking for? Any suggestions? (And no, the missing piece is not a leg. Ahem.)

I didn't find any fabric or old clothing today, but I usually come back when their clothing is on sale. I like to cut up cotton clothing to make quilts like this one:

I call this quilt, "Half-Price Day at the Salvation Army" because that's where I got 90 percent of the fabric in it! Only the border was purchased and a few of the lights were from my stash; the rest was recycled cotton clothing. This quilt is queen sized. The block pattern is traditional and has a few names, like "Buckeye Beauty" and "Jewel Box." The border is an original design by me, made from a variation in the same block.

I hope you've enjoyed today's outing. Time to sew some pillowcase totes! And finish my second mitten. And crochet some blue pillowcase edging. I better get busy!

My Sewing Room

Here it is, my sewing room on a semi-cloudy day. Click on any picture to enlarge. Although...I'm not sure why you'd want to enlarge, because there really isn't much to see! Obviously, I'm a minimalist. I hate clutter. My sewing room is practical, not pretty. I have a lot of room to move around in, and I can move these portable tables around any way I chose. My sewing group meets here because we have ample room and lots of counter space--and plenty of tables to baste quilts on.

Sometimes I think I ought to pretty it up a bit--paint it peach or yellow and hang stuff up on the walls. But I'm afraid that the color of the walls will affect my color choices. I'm afraid I'll start choosing fabrics for quilts that "go" with the paint on my walls. (Don't laugh--sometimes I color-coordinate stuff in my shopping cart without meaning to!) I want the space to be a very neutral backdrop for creating. That way, any colors I choose to work with are the only colors for my eyes and brain to deal with. If I am making a blue quilt, blue is the only color in the whole room. I really love that.

I am NOT responsible for the drab grey morgue curtains that I inherited from the previous house owner. Some day, I plan to take them down, but the cat enjoys leaping from curtain top to curtain top and sometimes sleeps up there. He's just so darn cute I hate to wreck his fun by putting up new curtains. So they've stayed...for eight years. But SOMEDAY, I'll get new curtains for all five giant windows. It should only cost about a million dollars. Gah...

My trusty Bernina has gone a little batty in her stitch length regulator. She can't help it, she's old. My sewing cabinet is a vanity table I got when I was in high school. My husband built me this sewing table around it:

My sewing table is about six feet long and five feet wide. It's great for quilting large quilts that I don't do on my homemade "Gammill".

There are two overhead fans and lots of windows for ventilation. Lots of light all year long, too. Looking the other way down the room. This room is HUGE. My homemade "Gammill" back there in the far left corner (wood and sprinkler pipe, courtesy of my WH) is over 12 feet long. My design wall, which is huge, is over the PVC quilting frame on the far right back. Can you see it way back there? Yes, this room is HUGE, which makes it difficult to photograph! And it has white carpet (also courtesy of the former homeowner) which takes a long time to vacuum.
My "working" stash and current projects are in the white cupboard. (To give you some idea of scale, that white cupboard is taller than me. The top of my head is as tall as the first shelf, so I think the white cupboard is six feet tall. The amoire is probably about eight feet tall. ) The rest of my stash is in those blue plastic stackable containers to the left of the amoire. I really don't have a big stash. I get overwhelmed by too much of anything, so I keep my stash a reasonable size. Besides, it's very hard to just "keep" a fabric collection here! In our damp climate, crowded fabric mildews rapidly. Our perpetual sun works to fade it quickly, also. So we have to "use it or lose it" as they say. My quilt books, thread, supplies, patterns, trims, etc. are in this giant amoire. It holds a lot of stuff! But not too much...did I mention that I don't keep a lot of stuff? I'm constantly getting rid of stuff. I used to have lots of furniture, knick knacks and collections, but life is too short to have to dust all the time! So now I collect air flow. Nice, cool, giant currents of fresh air. Ahhh....

So there you have it. It may be too stark for some people, but I love its clean practicality.

My Heirloom Legacy Quilt? I Think Not.

Today, an excerpt from my second book, Stash Envy:

"Once upon a time, I found a darling appliqué pattern in a quilt magazine. It was a delicate little picture of three entwined roses tied with a blue ribbon. I hesitated a bit before I attempted it, as the large rose had twenty or more separate petals. Some of the pieces were no bigger than my thumbnail. But it was such a sweet little pattern; I just had to make it up.

It was a challenging applique pattern, but weeks later, I finished it. It was so pretty! I cut the block into and oval shape and appliquéd an oval border around it. I liked it so much that I hand quilted it with feathered wreaths and lacy loops. I mounted the entire thing on a piece of oval foam core board to finish it. I thought it was gorgeous! I found my husband in the garage and showed him my masterpiece.

“Oh…how nice. You made a toilet seat cover,” he said.

ARRRRGGH! No! It wasn’t a toilet seat cover! But now that he mentioned it, that’s exactly what it looked like. The size and shape was exactly perfect. He was right. I had worked for two weeks on a toilet seat cover. I could never look at that little quilt in the same way, ever again. After unsuccessfully trying to get the “toilet seat quilt” picture out of my mind, I gave up and hung it in the bathroom."

So now you get to see it with your own eyes...the infamous Toilet Seat Quilt. Meh.

And I Didn't Have to Cook all Day!

We had a nice outing yesterday. It was a little rainy in the mid-morning, so we decided to start off with coffee from one of our favorite coffee houses in Kapaa Town:

Then we went to Lihue to see a matinee of Sweeney Todd (Johnny Depp....ahem...need I say more?) and then to Borders to hang out for a while. I like to camp out in the sewing/knitting/crocheting/quilting aisle, while Clayton wanders the woodworking section. And the music section. And the art section and the physics section and the magazine section. Which makes him difficult to find when it's time to go. I bought a 365 page knitting calendar (for $1! Score!) and we headed home.

By this time, there was some distant rumblings of thunder. But we still had time before the storm rolled in to stop at for our favorite fish dinner at the Coconut Marketplace.

Fish Hut. Best fish on the island; perhaps the best fish EVER. They have fresh ahi, ono and mahi every day and they grill it in lemon pepper and salt and serve it on a paper plate with cole slaw and french fries or two scoops of rice. (Two scoops of rice is served with EVERYTHING in Hawaii, even at breakfast.) We shared a dinner plate of ono, and had enough for both of us, plus some leftover ono for Mr. Bigglesworth.

Fish Hut, besides having great fish, serves a shave ice (what we used to call a "snow cone" on the Mainland) that is bigger than your head. You have a few choice of flavors here, including Bug Juice and Blue Eagle (whatever that is). You can get a scoop of ice cream in the bottom, and also top it with a variety of items. Click on the picture and read some of the flavors--amazing.

We took a little walk around the Marketplace after dinner. And I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you missed the sale on these:

Gee...too bad because you could've had TWO Hawaiian flame shirts for the price of one. You could've looked like you were on fire in blue, red, yellow or pink. But alas, no flames for you.

After dinner, we went home and watched "Thank You for Not Smoking" which we both thought was pretty hilarious. A true lesson in diplomacy, tact and morals. During the movie, I worked on my mitten:

while the rain moved in. By bedtime, we had a beautiful storm going with lots of thunder and lightning. I ended the day in front of my computer trying to compose today's post--but the electricity went out before I could get started. I navigated downstairs in the dark, lit some candles, and finished off the day reading in bed by candlelight.

Our electricity here on Kauai is very undependable; it goes off at least once every two weeks, so we stay prepared with flashlights in just about every drawer. We gave up re-setting all the various equipment with digital clocks in them long ago--it's too big of a job to re-set your answering machine, oven, microwave, electric clocks, television sets, etc., every time the electricity goes off--so our house is filled with blinking appliances wanting their times re-set. Annoying. Battery-operated clocks are the way to go here.

Not much crafting to report yesterday; but it was a lovely day off. (Heh heh...a "day off" from crafting...I'm such a lucky woman!)

Recycled Picture Day

Ahhh...evening. My favorite time. So nice and cool. It's been a busy day, but I don't have much to show you because I left my camera in my car and I'm too...uh..."settled" (lazy) to go down and get it. So I'll pull some pictures from my archive. The above picture was taken at the grounds of the Kauai Marriott down in Nawiliwili harbor. It's a spectacular hotel--we have a few of those here. The Kauai Marriott boasts the largest swimming pool in the state, which is really something to see! I'll show you the pool another day. For now, we'll look at the Marriott lake at dusk and I'll send some warm tropical thoughts your way. Feeling it? Good.

While we're on the topic of tropical thoughts, let's talk about pincushions. (What? You don't think about pincushions while you're thinking about Hawaii? I do. Sometimes. Other times, I think about Jello or goats. But then, I do all my thinking in Hawaii.)

I can do an amazing trick with my pincushions! I can make the same exact one...EXACTLY...in three different colorways...making only one pincushion! You want to see?

Amazing, eh? Okay, those of you who have Photoshop are not impressed. But those of you who don't, aren't I amazing?? You should have Photoshop. You can unwrinkle yourself, change the colors of your pincushions or quilts, straighten wonky quilts, correct lighting...and a million other things that I don't know about yet because I'm still reading the manual. I have the "lite" version of Photoshop, Photoshop Elements. It doesn't come with a book, but you definitely need a book to discover all the amazing things it can do. I just got a manual from the public library and learned about the "hue" button, which is how I changed my pincushion to all those different colors. By the way, which pincushion do you think is the real colorway? (Hint: the pins are probably the giveaway clue...)

The real color is the middle pincushion, the 70's orange/green combo. I made the pincushion from an old patchwork dustruffle I found at the thrift store in the mid-nineties. I seamripped the entire twin dustruffle a few years ago and I've been using the 5" squares in various projects for years now.

The tutorial for the pincushion can be found on this wonderful blog: Creative Kismet

And I'm going to recycle this picture from my old blog to show again because I made one of those very same pincushions for this sewing set I made as a Christmas gift:

I love this set. The pincushions have little beads sewn all the way around it--which probably isn't very practical, but it was fun to do. And yes, this is the real color of this set. You can tell by my hand, which is European-heritage-white. But believe it or not, Photoshop even has a button to give yourself a tan! Which I could use. I hardly look like I live here.

Have a wonderful evening...or morning...or whatever time it is where you are!

Finishing, Starting, and Sometimes Frogging

Yay! My Cable Rib socks are complete! I took a lot of time to finish these because I could only do ten rows of knitting each night while my thumb heals (progress note: some thumb bending is now possible). This pattern is from "Favorite Socks" by Ann Budd. The yarn is Smooshy Dream In Color, and "Beach Fog" is the colorway. I knit them on one KnitPicks circular using the Magic Loop, my favorite method.

I love everything about these socks! First of all, they're the only pair I've ever made that actually STAY UP. The 2 X 2 ribbing is wonderful and I just may have to look for more ribbed sock patterns because I am sure sick of my other hand-knitted socks pooling at my ankles. I look like one of those show poodles with a little poof of fluff at each ankle.

I loved working with the yarn, too. I love the color and the springy feel of the yarn, not to mention that Smooshy is very generous with the yardage! These socks are very tall and I think I have enough left over for a third sock! I'll definitely be buying some more of this stuff.

Now that I'm finished with my socks, I've been yearning to make some mittens. Yes, mittens in Hawaii. I didn't say I was going to wear them....I just want to make them.

So I dug out my favorite knitting book from 1949 and found a basic pair for men or women:

Ten rows started in Wool Ease that I bought in Washington on our last trip. I've never worked with Wool-Ease before, but I think it'll be okay. I'm thinking that I will send them off to my dear son who would not want to hand wash alpaca or wool mittens in his dorm room sink. Thus, the blend. So far, it's a little splitty and rough to work with, but the knitted fabric seems to be fine.

I love old craft books. There's something just so sincere and unpretentious about them. Sometimes they're downright funny without meaning to be! Like this glove modeling job:

Doesn't she look like she's auditioning for a horror film? What was that photographer thinking? Did he not think the girl was pretty? Why not show her from the front? What is she doing? Being struck by a car? About to strangle someone? Did an axe murderer just jump out at her? Or is she laying face down, already the hapless victim of Gonzor, the big-footed squashing monster? A mystery.

I have a lot of old doily books, too. Here's a doily I finished recently:

I think this one is so elegant! I splurged and sent away for some quality Opera crochet thread instead of my usual Wal Mart brand. I wanted to see if it was any different. I must say, I was impressed. This thread seems to have a sheen and a nice body and drape to it that I haven't had before. I heartily recommend a nicer crochet thread if you're going to invest all that time in a doily. There you go, some doily advice. You heard it here, folks. You can find the above doily in this old booklet, should you run across it at a thrift store:

I've made three doilies from this book, including the cover doily. Definitely my favorite doily book ever. A word of caution, though. Old knitting and crocheting books are not for wimps! They assume you know a lot of stuff, and seem to be chock full of mistakes. Perhaps our needleworking ancestors expected mistakes and were sharp enough to catch them. I am constantly surprised and outraged when an old pattern writer leads me to work a row wrong. But then all I have to remember is that I'm alive and she's probably...well...not. Then I forgive her.

I was happy to find a fellow doily-lover, lover of quilts and old pattern books on the internet. Check out her new blog here: Sew Ritzy Titzy Yesterday, she posted the most amazing paper-pieced instrument blocks! Check out the piano and the violin. I think we may be long-lost twins! I wonder if she looks like Janet Evanovich, too...

Janet, do you like doilies?
(No matter...she's still cute...hee hee...)