My Dreamhouse in Progress

Atti’s Alphabet Quilt

April 13, 2009

I’ve been meaning to write up a pattern for this quilt for Atti’s entire life, but it’s OK that I put it off because now I have it to share for a day like today – between project finishes, working on stuff I can’t share, laid up with a bum knee.

I’m sure you’ll recognize this quilt, it’s in nearly every picture I take of Atti.

Finished size is 36″ wide x 46″ high.

Here’s what you’ll need:
1 1/2 yds of light colored fabric for the large squares (if you scrimp and don’t have to worry about the orientation of the fabric, you could probably get by with 1 yard)
1 yd of fabric for the sashing and border
2 yds for backing and binding (more if you do your binding on the bias)
Assorted fat quarters to use for the letters
Fusible Web
Thread in coordinating colors

Cut 12 pieces of light colored fabric 7″ x 10 1/2″. If your fabric has a definite top and bottom to the pattern, then you’ll want to cut 6 pieces 7 x 10 1/2, and 6 pieces 10 1/2 x 7, so that you can turn them how you’ll need to without things looking funny.
Alphabet Quilt Step 1
Machine applique your letters onto your blocks. I start by printing my letters off on the computer. I chose a basic sans serif font, something like Ariel would work well, and increased the font size until the letters were about 4 1/2″ tall. Two of your blocks (ABC, and XYZ) will have to fit three letters instead of two, so I made those letters 3 1/2″ tall. Iron a piece of fusible web onto the fabric for the applique, and then cut out using your printout as a pattern. Iron the letters onto your block, and applique in place using a zigzag stitch set to a short stitch length. You’ll need to use a stabilizer so things don’t pucker up on you. You can shell out the cash for a fancy one, but I just always use a coffee filter here. You can see this with pictures on this tutorial.

Remember as you arrange your letters to alternate the direction of the blocks. ABC is horizontal, DE is vertical, FG is horizontal, HI is vertical, JK is horizontal, you get the idea.

Cut 24 pieces of sashing 2 1/4″ x 10 1/2″. Sew one sashing strip to the long sides of each alphabet block.
Alphabet Quilt Step 2

Then sew your alphabet blocks together.
Alphabet Quilt Step 3

Once all your blocks are together, add a 3″ border around the entire quilt top.

I kept the quilting really simple on this, mainly because it was my first try at machine quilting. I did a simple zig zag pattern on the sashing, and then inside each block I quilted around each letter.

This quilt, along with the matching bumper I made, got me so hooked on machine applique. After this I started making those burp rags, and I’m toying around with doing it on the 12 Days of Christmas tree skirt I have on the agenda. It’s one of those things that seems so much harder than it actually is. You just have to play around with your stitch settings, and then practice going around curves. By the time you’re done with this quilt, you’ll be a pro.

Filed Under: My Dreamhouse in Progress, Stuff I Make, Tutorials

How can I be this sore just from picking flowers?

April 8, 2009

I wasn’t entirely productive yesterday, but I didn’t entirely slack either. I think I managed as close to a day off as I could while not making myself crazy with inactivity.

It’s all because there is just no such thing as spectacular as San Diego in Spring. I’ve mentioned once or twice that I am an indoor person – I’ve got the skin of a redhead, no discernible athletic talent, and I hate being hot – so this is really my first experience with the season, even after two years of living here. Shameful, I know. Especially for an environmentalist and budding granola mom.

But this year I can’t keep myself inside. And I can’t keep my head out of my little garden. Even calling it a garden is generous seeing as it’s just a few square feet of dirt on my tiny SoCal house lot, but I’ve become so entranced with the magic of growing things that even this meager little plot is my own Secret Garden in my head.

I’m learning as I go, and I’ve made several mistakes already, but they don’t seem to bother me like my crafty failures do. I don’t know why exactly, maybe the whole thing seems so like a mysterious trick that I’m just amazed when anything happens at all.

I spent yesterday thinning out my poppies around the magnolia tree. They had grown so big and so fast that I think they’ve managed to kill the anemones by being little moisture hogs.

I put off the thinning for way WAY longer than I was supposed to. The seed packet said to scatter the seeds around and thin when they reached three inches. These are probably over a foot. I apparently spread way too many seeds, but I was sure that some would get eaten, some wouldn’t sprout, and I wanted to ensure that I got poppies everywhere I wanted. But they all sprouted. Every last one of them, and I just couldn’t bring myself to thin them and throw them away. I’ve given some to everyone who came by the house, I offered some to neighbors and friends, and I still ended up throwing away more seedlings than I kept.

It just breaks my heart, but what else could I do? I tried and tried to replant them, but they just couldn’t make it. I had intended this spot to be full of poppies, but instead of thinning them out, I tried to replant the hardiest ones. It was not a big success.

I don’t know what I’m going to put in that spot now, but every time I go to a nursery I fall in love with some new flower so I’m sure I’ll come up with something.

My ranunculus are going gangbusters, and I’m eagerly awaiting some big fabulous flowers.

The lemon tree has three or four big green balls swelling up by the day, the lime tree is dropping blossoms all over the place, and my sweet peas are already in need of some scaffolding. It’s just beyond description how much fun this is. Maybe by the time we’re ready to upgrade to my dream house with enough land for an orchard, a big veggie garden, some chickens and a goat, I’ll actually have some idea of what I’m doing.

Filed Under: My Dreamhouse in Progress, Stuff I Grow, The Good Life

Fruits of my labors

March 25, 2009

In my moping about over the weekend (and then some) I drowned my sorrows by driving to the nearest nursery and buying myself a bunch of vegetables to plant. I had been toying around with the idea of a vegetable garden, but I kind of moved that into the ‘Next Year’ column in the grand to-do list of my mind. Until Atti’s monster teething just happened to coincide with an absolutely glorious Spring San Diego weekend. I am not made of stone. I couldn’t resist.

If I had been thinking clearly at the time, I would have remembered that we have a trip planned from tomorrow until late Sunday night and my schedule was packed solid already. I still don’t have a thing to wear to the wedding (why does no one make clothes to fit post-pregnancy boobs?), I’m actually toying around with the idea of sewing myself something to wear, I have a quilt to finish to take up with me for one of my dearest friends, I still have that shop update and the weather is not making pictures very easy, and now I have to squeeze in some major yard work. Clearly, I am insane, y’all.

On Monday I put a bunch of seeds out to start. There’s three different types of lettuce (I couldn’t find Arugula, but I’m still on the case), carrots, spinach, and dill to make up for what got killed off in a sprinkler explosion last year.

Then I spent all day yesterday weeding and weeding and hoeing. My inner thighs are so pissed off at me today. Bear had to yank me out of bed this morning and be a spotter for me as I staggered down the stairs like Frankenstein. How can I just now be 30 and already my back and knees are pretty close to worthless. One of the many injustices in life.

I think this little plot is about 12′ x 8′, and once I got everything all prepped, I realized that I’m going to need a lot more than three little tomato seedlings, 1 pepper, 1 pea, and whatever makes it out of those little seedling pots. Time to go back to the nursery.

I planted this little persimmon tree at the end of last summer, and it ended up staying in it’s little pot for several weeks before I could get it in the ground. I was sure I killed it, but I planted it anyway just to see what it would do. A few weeks ago I saw little buds popping out and it seemed like such a miracle. Hopefully I’ll get to start eating persimmons come October.

In flower news, that pack of poppy seeds I threw out into the yard is now taking over everything. I don’t think I’ll have time to thin everything out before we have to leave, and I’m a little worried about what I’m going to come back to. As I was weeding yesterday, I realized that a lot of what I was pulling up looked pretty darn familiar. I think some of those seeds must have made their way over the wall and onto the ground next door. And it means that they managed to grow while underneath a table that used to live there. These poppies seem to like it here.

Filed Under: My Dreamhouse in Progress, Stuff I Grow, The Good Life

Alphabet Wall

March 20, 2009

The majority spoke, so I went ahead and hung up my alphabet wall as I planned. I struggled and struggled to get decent photos, but the area is so wide and there’s a pillar in the middle of everything, plus all those weird angles that forced me to get creative in the first place, so here’s the best I could do.

The main focal point starts with this big canvas I painted.

Then I made up some coordinating mini canvases.

And then I mixed those with some loose wooden letters I painted up, and some framed images I made up of different font alphabets. The tiny letters are just stuck straight to the wall with little sticky glue dots.

I think it looks fantastic and I can’t stop looking at it. I think I’m going to keep my eye open for some more letters, and Anonymous had a great idea of hanging something above the door to help bring it all together, so this will probably continue to grow. The paper mockups are perfect for getting the placement right, but they were so much more visually heavy than what I wanted to hang, so the finished project looks way more subtle than I thought it was going to.

I don’t draw (yet), I don’t really paint, instead I’ve become quite proficient at cheater methods. Here’s how I made the canvases.

Start by painting the entire canvas the color you’d like your letters to be. Then print letters off the computer in the sizes and fonts you’d like to combine together. Use those printouts as patterns to cut contact paper into that shape. Peel the backing off the contact paper and stick down onto the canvas. Rub really thoroughly to get a good firm stick.

Right over the top of your contact paper, paint the color you’d like your canvas background to be.

Peel off your contact paper masks, and there you go. Something that looks like a screenprinting, so easy that anyone can do it.

I don’t plan on having any of these in the shop as of now. I’m a little bit nervous about how things are going to sell since my etsy shop has been so neglected for so long. So if this is something that interests you, you’ll have to drop me a line and I’ll whip something up before the 30th.

Filed Under: My Dreamhouse in Progress, Stuff I Make, Tutorials

I have a home decor emergency!

March 17, 2009

I may have just created a problem for myself. For the past year I’ve been collecting things to put on all my painted and yet naked walls. I have a lot of wall space in odd places, so I’ve been brainstorming different options to fill things in.

First, there’s this wall under the stairs. This is the wall we stare at the most since it is behind the television and the computer, and yet with all the weird angles and niches and doorways, I didn’t really love just hanging up something traditional. I was watching Sesame Street with Atti the other day, and saw a home office wall decorated with framed images of font alphabets. It just made my brain explode it was so clean and graphic and fabulous. Then I started seeing “type walls,” all over online. With my well established love of the written word (hello, Atticus?) and the fact that this is essentially the wall of our home office, I thought it would be a perfect fit. So I made up a bunch of projects I’ll show you soon that fit with this theme, canvases and frames and loose wooden letters, and I thought I’d do a grouping starting on the wall over that niche, swooping over the top of the computer, and down behind the T.V.

Then, there’s the wall up the stairs. I have so much real estate there. Since it reaches 20′ tall in some places, I easily have 100 sq ft to fill. I liked the idea of hanging a collection to kind of break up that huge space and so I started collecting vintage glass plates.

This weekend I finished compiling everything I wanted for my type wall, and as soon as I hung the paper copies on the wall to fine tune the placement, I realized that I was going to end up with two big collections coming visually right up to each other.

Bear and I debated this last night and we decided that it was either going to look like crap or look like total genius I planned all along.

The two walls are actually part of the same wall, just divided by the stairs. They’re also painted two different colors. I’m leaning towards the thought that the two collections will echo each other and provide harmony with enough contrast in the colors, shapes, and items that it won’t just look like one big cluttered chopped up mess.

Here’s a few different views. Decide for yourselves:

So what do you guys think?

Filed Under: Grand Schemes and Other Plans, My Dreamhouse in Progress

2009 Year of Pleasures #5

February 3, 2009

I may have gotten a little carried away on ebay.

These are the type of dishes I want to use to line the staircase wall. I love pyrex, milk glass, and especially fire king. The only problem is that between shipping and handling, I have to pay twice as much as the actual plate just to get it here.

There aren’t a ton of antique stores around me, so so far I’ve had to buy everything on line. I can’t keep this up though, the cost is just too much. I’ll never get enough for a whole wall (and a few dozen more to actually use) at this rate. I’m just going to have to man up, strap the baby to me, and go on a field trip.

Filed Under: My Dreamhouse in Progress, Year of Pleasures

Little Bits Quilt

January 7, 2009

I have another busy day ahead of me, I have to leave in about 10 minutes to take Atti to his audiology appointment, then it’s a few errands and a quick lunch with Sister-in-law Mari before racing home to excavate my house from the Christmas mess we made before some very dear and welcome guests arrive. Plus all of my creative energy is wrapped up in finishing off the last dregs of my Christmas project box so I can put it all away and be done with it without leaving myself more work for next year. And not only are we all pretty much over Christmas by now, but it’s all stuff you’ve seen already, just more of them.

So it was high time I venture back into my pile of long ago finished but as yet unblogged projects to share something with you.

This is the Little Bits Quilt from Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts, which is one of the best craft books ever. I’ve already made three of the projects, and that’s a real rarity for me. Normally I buy craft books for inspiration and then go my own way, but these projects I’ve followed to the letter.

I was making this in the middle of collecting donations for Atti’s hospital, and boy does it show. What a mess!

The pattern in the book is for a twin I believe, but it’s so simple to adjust. I just decided the dimensions I wanted for my queen, and then cut the fabric to that size. If I remember right, I made two extra rectangles that the little bits come from, and then just kept sewing them together until they were wide enough to make a queen. It’s been a while now and loads has happened in between now and then so the memory is pretty foggy, but I want to say I bought 12 yards of the black for front and binding, and 10 yards of the white for backing. The ladies at the fabric store said I was buying way more than I’d ever need, but they were wrong. It worked out perfectly.

My goal for our bedroom is a room that is really masculine and modern, with enough handmade and soft touches that is doesn’t feel cold. I thought the design of this quilt was just perfect for that.

Filed Under: My Dreamhouse in Progress, Stuff I Make

Organizing my life

January 5, 2009

Here we go back to the mayhem of everyday life. I really wish I could do something about how overcommitted I am, but it’s not me, it’s Atti. He’s getting bigger and stronger every day, but he’s still fairly significantly delayed, so he requires a ton of care, and that requires a ton of organization.

I’m sure every family has a master calendar somewhere in their house. One spot where everyone knows that if the event isn’t posted, it will be completely forgotten about. With just me and Bear and no soccer games to shepherd anyone around to, I never had to worry about family organization, and I naively assumed that I’d have a few years before my son needed his own personal assistant. But since I was wrong, I had to come up with a way to put up a big fat calendar without creating a total eyesore.

I hated the thought of so carefully painting and decorating only to put up an enormous paper thing that would get progressively more tattered looking. I went and bought myself a big desk calendar, and then got an open back frame from Michaels, but any frame store offers them. The calendar was just a bit bigger than a convenient frame size, and it would have cost about $60 to custom frame it, so I just cut the top of the calendar off and stapled the pages together at the sides. Then I placed the calendar inside and held it in place with a couple of nails pounded into the frame right behind the cardboard backing of the calendar.

When I need to look forward a few months, the pages pull right out from behind the frame, and then you can just tuck them back inside to keep the whole thing looking neat and trim.

This is a crazy simple idea, and I’m sure I’m not the first person to come up with it, but it made me feel like maybe I can manage to venture out into motherhood without sacrificing *all* of my design tastes to my tiny little drooling tyrant.

Filed Under: My Dreamhouse in Progress, Stuff I Make

Come see what I’ve been working on….

November 21, 2008

As I’ve mentioned once or twice now, I have been working on the house really hard lately. I’ve got all kinds of projects I’ll focus on individually, but for today I thought I’d give you an updated tour of the downstairs. We finally managed to get rugs for this joint, and oh my gosh the difference it has made.

For starters, I no longer have to run to the bathroom eight times a day just to wash off my feet. I also don’t have to have Atti’s therapy on the dining room table to prevent the poor therapists from rolling around in dustballs. And best of all, I get to regularly break out the love of my life – the Dyson – and put him through his paces.

I got all our rugs from Overstock.com, and I’d never even waste my time looking anywhere else anymore. We searched for months, everywhere from Home Depot to fancy carpet stores, and everything was either boring, more expensive than my couch, or both. Usually both. Overstock has a great selection, and free shipping. We’re pleased as punch.

Let’s start in the dining room:

This carpet is pretty plain, navy blue with some little squares in the corners, but it’s perfect for what I wanted to accomplish here. I didn’t want a pattern that wouldn’t make sense with a giant table blocking most of it, and I needed to bring the navy blue into this side of the house.

Then let’s go to the family room:

I had so much of my other colors in this room, I knew this rug needed to be somewhere in the rosy spectrum. So much was going to be exposed, I didn’t want it to be plain, but since so much was going to be exposed, I also didn’t want it too busy. I’m thrilled with how this carpet is perfectly in the middle. And the round pattern echoes a motif I have running all throughout the house: round couch, round chairs in the entry room, round picture frames, you get the idea.

I’ve also gotten some new furniture for this room since the last tour:

The entertainment center is nothing special – just West Elm’s catalog – but after a year of searching for something to fit that space and still allow a TV on top, it’s like gold to me. West Elm has loads of long, low, furniture options and it just happened to solve a major design dilemma for me. More than one person has asked if we had it custom built.

The coffeetable (round again, what do you know?) was a Craigslist find for a whopping $75. Vintage midcentury modern table with a teak veneer that matches the desk in the little office nook across the way, and it is *precisely* the right size for that space. I think it’d be too small for most places, but for that spot, with the furniture I’ve already got? It’s exactly exactly right. I tell you, I have had the best Craigslist mojo ever.

And now for my favorite rug:

This was the smallest space I had to work with, and the space with the least amount of color going on, so I wanted to really cut loose. I almost talked myself out of this one because it looked so wild on my computer screen, but I’m so grateful I trusted my gut and went for it. People go nuts over this rug. This rug alone turned this little neglected sitting space into a room.

OK, enough rug talk. Here’s the latest change to the kitchen:

I adore serving pieces, but I didn’t have anyplace to put them. I can’t fit a china cabinet in my dining room, and the kitchen cabinets are too narrow for some of my mammoth platters, so I figured I’d store them up on top. I was looking around for cheap plate stands, but each one that was sturdy enough to hold a plate was about $10, so I put this project off. Then I got the idea of nailing a piece of molding in place along the cabinets to create kind of a pencil ledge. I figured I could just balance the platters between the wall and the molding and save myself a quick $100. Then I thought, why even bother with the molding? I ended up marking where I wanted each plate or bowl to go, and then nailing a couple of nails in place to hold the bottom edge. It actually ended up working better than the molding because I can customize each dish individually. So if I have a bowl with a really high side I can move the nails out closer to the edge and move the nails closer to the wall for a platter.

I feel like this place is finally getting close to finished. I just need to work on the walls now, I think I have maybe five pictures hung in this whole place.

Filed Under: My Dreamhouse in Progress

Happy Halloween!

October 30, 2008

In celebration of my second favorite holiday, I thought I’d brave this stupid molasses-slow computer and share some photos. It’s taken me all day, so I hope you appreciate my commitment to showing off.

I not only inherited Bear’s grandma’s gorgeous china, but I also scored this unbelievable silver tea service. It came to me in a neglected state, and I so loved the way the tarnish looked I didn’t have the heart to polish it. Maybe one day when I need to throw an elaborate tea party I’ll get it all shined up, but for right now I just love it as a spooky centerpiece.

I bought a few different types of pumpkins at Joann’s and Michaels once they started going on sale, and I shredded a big piece of black lace for the cloth. I made the coffins by painting raw wood ones available at Michaels, then I gold leafed the edges, glued chunky gold glitter on the crosspieces, and made a polymer clay bat to go on the front.

I found this owl at a discount store called HomeGoods, and I love it so much I think I might just leave it up all year round. At the store right next door they had the mercury glass pumpkin and I had to have it. I’m getting so in to mercury glass, and when I saw it in orange I nearly lost my mind. Pier One had those nifty beaded feathery stalk things.

The light at the top of the stairs is so bad I had a nearly impossible time getting a decent picture. This is basically where I put all our little miscellaneous pieces, but I had to share those pumpkins. I got paper mache pumpkins from Michaels and a Martha Stewart glitter kit and went to town. I just love Martha’s glitters. If by nothing else, you can always tell when the holidays roll around because I am never without stray bits of the stuff. I even find glitter stuck to Atti, but to be fair, the drool does work just like glue.

The one piece I didn’t get a great snap of was my shelves. Over the past several months I’ve been collecting little things to put in them so they’re finally not naked. Since it was all so new I hated the thought of packing it away already, so I went to Michaels (again) and they had these little garlands made of black leaves. I got three of those and painted them with little bits of green glitter and threaded them around my usual doodads. Simple and effective.

I hope you all have a great weekend. If anybody gets sour patch kids in their bag, I totally call dibs.

Filed Under: My Dreamhouse in Progress, Stuff I Make

Atti’s Alphabet Quilt

How can I be this sore just from picking flowers?

Fruits of my labors

Alphabet Wall

I have a home decor emergency!

2009 Year of Pleasures #5

Little Bits Quilt

Organizing my life

Come see what I’ve been working on….

Happy Halloween!

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