Quilt As You Go, Simply Done

Simply Done

The old house

Bunny Update

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bunniesMy friend Ferne reminded me that I haven’t posted about the bunnies lately – thanks for the reminder Ferne!

We have more bunnies.  Our neighbors called a few weeks ago and said that they were rescuing some baby bunnies that had been separated from their mother by someone who traps the rabbits and takes them far away and releases them.  This jerk (I wrote dumbshit but took it out) took a female rabbit 10 miles away and a few days later found out that there was a litter.  She just figured on letting them die.

My neighbor Jean decided otherwise.

Jena called Tom and I to ask what the baby bunnies needed to survive.  We gave her some supplies, lots of advice and offered to help.  Jean kept them for about 5 weeks and then ran out of room and time (travel away from home) so we took them in.  Tom build a pen in the back yard, away from the roof construction, gave them an old truck canopy to hide under, and they have been in bunny heaven ever since!  Bunnies LOVE dandilions and rasberry leaves and they have been pigging out on that plus pellet food, frolicking and playing, hiding and sleeping.

Jean still visits them and brings them treats  🙂  There are three white ones and one tan one.

And, such a happy ending, I recently bumped into my two favorite tan bunnies on 4th Avenue as I walked to work – it was such a treat to see them again because I had not seen them for 3 weeks and I was afraid that they’d been trapped or killed AND last night my favorite black bunny (he’s very old and not healthy) stopped by for some carrots and pellets!  What a great day.

doneOh, and the roof is DONE!

New Roof for the House!

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tom-on-roofEver have a project that you’ve known you had to do but dreaded, for years? Today’s the day for the house and for Tom. He’s postponed, drafted re-designs, fixed leaks, patched bad areas and finally, today, the roof is coming off and new one going on.

He’s been gathering materials for months, cutting wood, ordering tin and other materials, organizing tools and agonizing over the re-design. There’s a design flaw which lead to a lot of leaks and frustration for many years and today it is going away!

destruction-1He’s got his brother, friend Jeff and Jeff’s helper, and all four have been pounding, banging, ripping and destroying the roof for a couple of hours now. I’ll take pics as I can, but mostly I am staying outta the way!




noon-day-2Here’s the progress at noon the next day. Some of the new trusses are in place and it’s scorching hot outside! They guys are still hard at work 🙂

At the end of day four, the new roof is on and secure, the entire roof is sealed against the weather and all but 5 sheets of metal are in place!
day-4

My Sewing Studio

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Right now my studio is a 9′ x 11′ bedroom and I share it with a very spoiled pet rabbit. The rabbit doesn’t live in a cage, he goes wherever he wants in the house and he believes that the room belongs to him. He lets me in for a while but if I stay too long he nips at me. Then I lock him out 🙂 {See that wire gate behind him?} After about half an hour, I let him back in again and he settles down and lays on the carpet by my feet. This wall has my pegboard with rulers, patterns and anything else I can get to stay on a hook. You can see my cutting table and the storage bins under it, my folding table and some old ironing boards. I used to use them to prop up big quilts before I “invented” my cheap sewing table 🙂

In this photo you see my lighting and tripod and backdrop for videotaping. Behind the quilt top {Sarahs} are the shelves we built into the closet, after taking the closet doors off. For lighting on the ceiling I have a couple of 4′ long florescent fixtures with daylight rated bulbs and I love that. When lighting for video, I use the portable closet rack that you see here, with some clamp lamps that have daylight rated bulbs in them. The brown sewing desk is a recent purchase that houses a vintage Kenmore – and what a find it was! Fantastic stitching and cams that I can’t wait to try out.

On this wall are my buckets of scraps, color sorted, and a couple of small tables with threads, bobbins, old Kenmore and bobbin winder among the clutter. In here we have stripped out the old carpet and I primed and painted the floor with a gorgeous milk-chocolate color floor paint. This room is eventually going to become a spare bedroom {Audrey’s Room when she visits grandma?} with maybe some of the coloring and drawing supplies on the shelf. Then she will have to share it with Bunny. Won’t that be fun?!

On the next wall I have a small design wall stapled to the drywall. I have a few small tops pinned to it, reminding me that they need to be quilted. The bins have my threads, sorted by color and by thread type, the rayons are in the top bins and the cottons in the small bottom bins and in the lowest bins are ribbons, interfacing and other miscellaneous sewing items. My cutting table is covered with stuff and the bins below it have unfinished projects or else fabrics (there are 4 bins total under there).

Next we make a trip upstairs, to the top of the garage, which has been unheated and partially insulated. I’ve stored rolls of batting up there and other miscellaneous odds and ends, and Tom used it for all of the boat soft gear (sleeping bags, raingear, etc.) as well as years of accumulated family clutter.

Now he’s working hard on fixing some problems up there, adding walls, and I’ve been cleaning, sorting, moving stuff and painting. Here’s what one wall looked like before we got started. We work on it between other tasks around the house. When this project is complete I hope to move all my sewing and quilting things up here!

So, there you have it! I invite you to check out some other sewing studios using the link at the top right of my blog and also at Quilt Videos.

If you see anything in the photos that you are curious about, just post a comment or email me and I’d be happy to tell you what it is or why it’s there. Also, there are a few things missing – -my sewing table is in the living room right now, along with the machine that I use the most, my Bernina 180. Thank you very much for reading my blog 🙂

Spring Cleaning!

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We are at it again! This is part of the ongoing saga of a small (poorly insulated) house in Alaska and my never ending love of changing things. It is only slightly quilting related because I *may* be moving my quilting stuff to another part of the house soon (as in: out of the living room, bedroom and garage 🙂

We started with a “sort out” of stuff that’s been untouched since dinosaurs roamed Alaska, and have moved on to insulating. Have I ever mentioned how much I hate fiberglass insulation? I love the foamboard insulation (as you might have seen in my Cheap Sewing & Quilting Table Tutorial) but oh how I hate fiberglass! I start itching the minute I even *think* about fiberglass!

I’ve insulated before, helping friends, then insulated my two cabins that I bought (and sold) here in Seward, and slowly we’ve been insulating Tom’s old house. See me covered head to toe when I was doing one of the cabins? LOL! A (former) friend had promised to come help me and never showed, so I did it all myself, from ceiling to walls, and vapor barrier too. The folks at the local home improvement store know me by name! I propped my little camera up on a stump and put the self timer on to take this pic – I was so proud of myself for getting that job done!

Have you gotten the spring cleaning bug?

The sky is falling

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In thick white chunks! LOL Look at this poor Sitka Rose, still blooming in this early snowfall. Actually, this isn’t our first snow, it snowed yesterday but didn’t stick. Looks like it’s going to stay today…

The Kitchen Floor, Revisited

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I am developing a strong determination to see the end
of this project. Here’s what a pile of floor looks like after
about 2 hours of scraping. While I am working on it, I
dream of the quilts I want to make. A lot of times bunny
comes out and sits with me. He likes that green towel in
the background. The pile of scrapings has my small glass
of motivation sitting next to it.

Under the stairs, part 2

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Except for the trim work and organizing the shelves, this project is done! Instead of a deep, dark closet, we have an open, accessible storage area with most of the heavy things on rollers! (That was Tom’s idea.)

The large white shelf that is where the doorway used to be is on rollers, the big 4-drawer file cabinet behind it is on rollers, the small plastic organizing bins are on rollers and hidden in the back, under the treads of the stairs is 6 cases of jars (for fish and jelly) and huge containers of sugar – all on a rolling pallet.

This space is for stuff we use once or twice a year, but which is very useful to us. Also tucked in there is the carpet shampoo machine. I left the small bins in front because that’s the stuff we use the most (paper, pens, envelopes).

Where you see the angle cut on the wall used
to be a solid wall, but it was superficial and it kept the space narrow and difficult to use. Stuff got pushed into the closet and never returned. I painted the floor (concrete cement basement floor) and when the house is empty for a few days (except for myself) I’ll paint the stairs to match. The white shelf is not very organized, but it’s still so much of an improvement that we are happy! Now I have to get back to scraping off the kitchen floor…I’ve been avoiding that project!

Storage space under the stairs

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Well, the old 8 foot pool table is *GONE*! I can hardly believe it. Sometimes I go downstairs just to check that it really is gone! The pool room is cleaned up and clear of clutter, with new barstools – nice! Tom is going to build a small table to complement the barstools – we have the design all worked out but we need to wait for the logs to thaw for milling.

Tom had to completely knock out all of the stairs to get the slate out of the basement and when he put them back in he reinforced the treads from the underside. Then I started cleaning, sanding and priming. There used to be a closet door on the tall side (he took it off, frame and all) and the angled side used to be closed in with plywood, making the enclosed space virtually useless.

We are going to store all the canning supplies (about 12 cases of jars) way in the back, on rollers so they can be pulled out easily, and then Tom’s going to build some shelving. I’d like a small office area, just for typical desk clutter. He is happy just to get the jars out of the way!

The Kitchen Floor

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We are stripping out an old vinyl kitchen floor. By hand. Inch by inch, layer by layer, using chisels and a 2″ metal scraper, on our hands & knees. The vinyl is anywhere on the older side of 25 years and is so worn that it only comes off in layers – I’ll post some photos this week. The top layer, a dirty lime green and dirty white pattern, comes off in brittle chips some of the time but sometimes we can get a whole 4″x6″ chunk and then we celebrate! Under that is the glue that adhered the surface layer to it’s composite backing, and this comes up in ribbons when it’s wet – I’ll get to the wet part soon.

Under that is a 1/8″ layer of some type of composite backing and under that is the glue layer and then plywood. The top brittle layer chips off easily even if it is in small bits but the underlayers are a nightmare. I’ve learned that soaking them helps. We layer small sections of old rag towels, about 2′ square, onto the exposed underlayer and pour boiling water on the towels and let them sit and soak for about 1/2 hour. Then we begin scraping. I can scrape away about a 2′ square section in an hour, and I can only do about an hour a day, every other day. My arms, back and my scraping hand hurt afterwards so I give them a rest.