Monthly Archives: March 2013

Bathroom Reno, Week 1

At the end of Week 1, some of the plumbing lines are in and most of the electrical work is done.

More lath and plaster, original to our 1913 home, was uncovered at the northwest end . . .

nw corner, prepping for shower
Northwest Corner

. . . in preparation for the shower. That rectangular frame is for a product niche.

At the opposite end of the room,  the west wall has been framed for a pocket door:

sw corner, framing pocket door
The West Wall

 

We’re using the bathroom’s original five-panel door, I’m happy to say. The door used to swing to the inside, toward the north wall. Converting to a pocket door is really going to open up that side of the bathroom.

It’s a little hard to see in the next photo, but the south wall is now wired for three sconces:

south wall, wired for electricity
The South Wall

 

The biggest challenge so far has been keeping our little black cat Theo away from the site. At the moment there are openings in the walls and, over where the tub used to be, a large open space between the subfloor and the downstairs ceiling. Theo is insatiably curious and would like nothing better than to investigate every nook and cranny in the bathroom. She is tiny — she weighs just 6 pounds — and can wiggle into extremely small spaces. This is the cat that’s already used up one of her nine lives by going down the hot air vent in the kitchen and coming up the one in the living room — via the furnace.

Theodora, May 2012
Empress Theodora — Theo for short

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in bathroom remodel, cats, update | 5 Comments

The Bathroom Remodel Begins

When we remodeled the upstairs bathroom in 1985, I neglected to take “before” photos. Not this time around! I want to capture every moment in the bathroom’s transformation.

Here are some pictures of the bathroom before the crew arrived last week and emptied it of most of the fixtures.

nw corner
NW Corner

 

ne corner
NE Corner

 

se corner 2
SE Corner

 

sw corner
SW Corner

 

In the photo below, I am standing in the tub facing south.

looking south
Facing South

 

Do you want to see what the bathroom looks like now? Take a look! This is the northwest corner, where the shower will go:

nw corner, empty
NW corner, empty

 

This is the northeast corner, where the clawfoot tub will go:

ne corner, empty
NE Corner, Empty

 

The southeast corner:

se corner, empty
SE Corner, Empty

The windows you see above, installed in 2004, are just about the only things in the bathroom not being replaced.

The southwest corner:

sw corner, empty
SW Corner, Empty

See that lath and plaster? It’s original to the house — the bathroom walls were sheetrocked during the 1985 remodel. On the other side of the lath and plaster is a linen closet that’s going to get a fresh coat of paint.

There’s still a little demo left: the wallpaper has to come off and the remaining light fixtures removed. But things are rolling along. The clawfoot tub was delivered today, and the plumber arrives bright and early tomorrow morning.

 

 

 

Posted in bathroom remodel, update | 6 Comments

Happy Birthday, House!

Our house was built in 1913, which means it turns 100 years old this year. Happy Birthday, House!

Portland White House
The Portland (OR) White House

 

We’ve done a lot to the house over the 32 years we’ve lived here — remodeled the kitchen (twice), remodeled the upstairs bathroom, remodeled the main floor bathroom (twice), finished the basement, rebuilt the garage, and rebuilt the back patio (twice).

Now we are embarking on a second remodel of the upstairs bathroom. When we moved into our house in 1981, the upstairs bathroom had a tub but no shower. We replaced the tub with a larger Jacuzzi-style tub but didn’t add a shower because we had chosen to relocate the tub under a picture window. It’s time to add that shower now.

We’re going to replace the jetted tub with a clawfoot tub, add a custom shower on the opposite wall, and replace all the other fixtures in the bathroom. We’re not doing the work ourselves, I hasten to add. My husband and I are not do-it-yourselfers when it comes to these kinds of home improvement projects.

Although my website/blog was created to chronicle my sewing and quilting life, I’ve decided to include the transformation of our upstairs bathroom. Demolition starts next week!

 

 

 

Posted in bathroom remodel, family, update | 12 Comments

Quisters’ Show and Tell

Today is the last full day of my quilt group’s retreat in Central Oregon. Our fellow Quister Deborah had to leave early but Peggy and Vickie and I are still here enjoying the brilliant sunshine, crisp air, and each other’s company. We are also taking great pleasure in surveying our various and sundry completed projects and works-in-progress.

Vickie is working on two wool appliqué projects. In my last post, you saw one of them in a tableau. Here is a close-up of that project, bursting with vivid color and texture:

Vickie's circles

The project measures 12″ x 15½” and contains 35 multilayered wool discs, each uniquely embellished.

Vickie is also working on a series of seasonal pillows. Here is her Summer Sampler pillow, designed by Debbie Busby of Wooden Spool Designs. It measures 14″ x 16″:

Vickie's wool applique

I finished another sewing machine dust cover, number four. I didn’t need another one but I was teaching a class at the Pine Needle recently and needed to demonstrate a particular construction technique. This one is made with three prints from the Madrona Road line by Violet Craft for Michael Miller:

Dawn's sewing machine dust cover

I’m working on some other projects that I can’t show you yet. Birthdays coming up. ‘Nuff said.

Peggy finished the most wonderful quilt while she was here. Last summer she took a class from Janet Fogg called “Illustrating the Past” in which a fabric piece from the past — it could be a quilt, a quilt top, a fragment, a block — is updated with piecing and appliqué techniques to create a new original work. Peggy had been given a vintage quilt containing blocks of appliquéd flowers. She transformed it in the most amazing way:

Peg's Sunshine quilt 1-001

Here is a close-up of that sunshine face:

Peg's Sunshine quilt 2

The sun is pieced and then appliqued to the original quilt. Peggy hand-quilted parts of the face and some of the rays.

Here’s another look at the quilt, which measures 74″ x 88″:

Peg's Sunshine quilt 3

The batting in the appliquéd blocks had migrated so badly that Peggy made a slit in the side of each block, removed the batting, and replaced it with new batting. Then she sewed narrow strips around the blocks to cover the slits. The strips add more color to the quilt and tie the old and new elements together. The result is a highly original quilt that honors the past while celebrating the present.

Peggy is also a talented rug hooker who has designed and hooked several rugs. Here is a look at her current work-in-progress, an image of her beach house on the Oregon coast:

Peggy's hooked wool rug-in-progress

This wool rug will measure about 25″ x 48″ when it’s finished.

As you can see, my creative Quisters and I have had a great week!

 

 

 

Posted in Quisters (Quilt Sisters), sewing machine cover, update, wool applique, wool rug hooking | 1 Comment

Quisters’ Retreat, Updated

There’s a lot of serious crafting going on here at my quilt group’s weeklong retreat in Central Oregon. Sewing, piecing, quilting, rug hooking, wool appliqué — you name it, the Quisters are doing it. Let me show you what I’m talking about, starting with a tableau of one of Vickie’s wool appliqué projects:

Vickie's wool embellishment

 

She’s working on a project begun in a class last summer taught by Sue Spargo. Working with a beautiful piece of purple plaid wool, Vickie added wool circles of different sizes and is embellishing the circles with a colorful assortment of beads, vintage buttons, ribbons, and embroidery floss.

Deborah finished her red and white Burgoyne Surrounded quilt top, which measures 57″ square:

Deborah's Burgoyne surrounded

It’s from the book Burgoyne Surrounded by Elizabeth Hamby Carlson (That Patchwork Place, 2004). The smaller red and white squares finish at one inch!

Peggy is working on a red and white quilt, too. She is recreating an antique Lone Star quilt featured in the Feb. 2012 issue of American Patchwork and Quilting. This is one of four Blazing Star blocks that go in the corners:

Peggy's cornerstone for Lone Star quilt

 

The corner blocks are 20″ square so you can imagine how large the Lone Star is in the center of the quilt. If my math is correct, Peggy’s finished quilt will contain 1,480 diamonds.

My sister Diane asked for a cover for her new iPad mini so I made one from some of the same fabrics used in the iron caddy shown in the previous post. (Note to sister Reigh: I’ll make you one, too!)

Diane's iPad mini case

We’re here till Friday, so be sure to check back for more Show and Tell.

 

 

 

Posted in iPad cover, Quisters (Quilt Sisters), update | 2 Comments

Quisters’ Retreat

I’m at a quilt retreat in Central Oregon this week with three of my fellow Quisters (Quilt Sisters). Of course we all brought lots of projects to work on. Deborah was the first one to finish a project. She is embarking on a series of small Civil War quilts, and here is the first one:

Deborah with Crosses and Losses 31 x 37-001

 

The quilt, made of 4″ blocks set on point, measures 31″ x 37″ with borders. The block is called Crosses and Losses. I especially like this one:

Deborah's block, Crosses and Losses, 4 inches

 

Deborah found the design in Civil War Legacies: Quilt Patterns for Reproduction Fabrics by Carol Hopkins (That Patchwork Place, 2012). Carol Hopkins named her design “Grandpap’s Cards” because her grandfather kept his playing cards arranged in perfectly straight lines, much like the way the Crosses and Losses blocks are lined up across this quilt top.

The book is full of charming small quilts — the one Deborah chose is the largest one in the book — made with beautiful repro Civil War fabrics and sporting whimsical names such as “Mo’s Suspenders” and “Alexander’s Bean Pot.” I can’t wait to see which one Deborah chooses next!

My first finish of the week is this iron caddy, the perfect container to transport a still-hot iron after taking a quilt class:

iron caddy with vintage buttons

 

The caddy doubles as an ironing pad because the inside is lined with a silvery heat-resistant fabric like the kind you find on ironing board covers. When the tote is opened up, you have a nice little ironing surface measuring about 19″ x 25″. The pattern, “Caddy Pad,” was designed by Sisters’ Common Thread (http://www.sisterscommonthread.com/caddy/).

I bought the main body fabric a couple of years ago. It’s Wildflowers IV by Sentimental Studios for Moda. If you look carefully you can see a companion fabric from the same line on the inside of the handles. The binding fabric is more recent; it’s from the Ainsley line by Northcott.

Here’s the outside of the caddy, laid out flat:

iron caddy, outside

 

Here you can see the ironing surface on the inside:

iron caddy, inside

 

I departed from the directions by 1) adding a different fabric to the inside of the handles, 2) inserting the handles in the seam allowance before adding the binding, 3) rounding off the angled corners, 4) applying bias binding instead of straight grain binding (because of the rounded corners), and 5) fusing the binding to the inside with Steam-a-Seam-2. I finished the caddy with vintage yellow buttons.

With four of us sewing and crafting, there’s going to be a lot of show and tell this week. I hope you’ll come back for a visit!

 

 

 

Posted in iron caddy, Quisters (Quilt Sisters), update | 12 Comments

My Little Neighbor: Back at Work

My Little Neighbor, age 10, is back at work on her first quilt, a 9-patch. To see her running and skipping around the neighborhood, you’d never know she was sidelined last summer with a broken foot. That’s why she started the quilt: she needed a project she could work on by hand while sitting on the couch with her leg in a cast.

She started last July with five fabrics culled from my stash and by August had a basketful of strips, made by sewing three patches together. To see her first efforts, go here:

MLN came over a few days ago, ready for the next step: sewing the strips in rows to make blocks. She arranged sets of strips into 9-patches, moving strips around as needed to achieve a nice balance of color and value.  When the dining room table was covered with blocks . . .

MLN's 9-patches

. . . we moved to the living room floor:

MLN with 9 patches

 

After a short lesson on how to press the seams so that they are opposing when the rows are sewn together, MLN was ready to join the rows. Here is her first block, pinned:

MLN with first block pinned

 

See how nicely her seams match? Her quarter-inch hand-sewn seams are spot on!

 

 

 

Posted in My Little Neighbor, update | 6 Comments