Painting's a pain

Since we were getting someone to paint the outside of the house this summer, and because we have some water damage in a few rooms indoors, we decided to go ahead and get the same company to fix up a few spots inside too. Picking a color for the kitchen walls has been a major pain.

Here is how it looks now with the original white walls. The granite is new as of this summer; we changed up the knobs (originally brass) to coordinate better with the counters.

The paint guru at the hardware store was enthusiastic, for some reason, about a sort of drab greyish pink color which was about as attractive as that description sounds. We ruled out that color - and nearly everything else for various other reasons - and ultimately arrived at gray.

But even when you narrow it down to gray, you have to pick exactly which shade and value you want (one for above the chair rail, one for below), and Benjamin Moore has so many that a person can get a little lost.

Over a few visits to the hardware store, we picked up a bouquet of paint chips in just about every shade of gray they had. We've finally played with them enough over the past few days to narrow down the combinations to two:

1) Bunny Gray above the chair rail; Pike's Peak Gray below.

2) Sterling above the chair rail; Adagio below

(You can view them here)

DH has gone to get some quarts so we can see how these really work together in real life on our real life walls. Eep. The moment of truth!

First group project

The first group quilting project took place not long after I first learned to quilt. Our quilting teacher was getting married - what better gift than something quilt related?

My partner in crime concocted some relatively plausible excuse to procure the entire guest list, with addresses. (I'm still not sure what she said, but it worked!) Then we sat down and wrote a note explaining the project, asking each person to sign an enclosed muslin square and return them to us before the date of the wedding. We would embroider all of the signatures and present all of the squares to the couple on their wedding day. (We didn't have a lot of time, so we were aiming just to have all the squares ready; they could be assembled into a quilt after the big day).

Incredibly, we had full participation. Everyone sent signed squares. More than that, even, because the bride's best friend found an old letter from the bride's father (who had passed away), and copied that onto a square too. (They had been very close, she wrote to us, and she knew that the wedding quilt wouldn't be right without him.)

This is a shot of some of the ones I worked on first. Unfortunately I don't have a photo of the finished set, but I hope it'll give you a taste of the project.



On the wedding day, we arrived at the reception just a few minutes before the bride and groom, but it was enough time to lay out all of the squares in a row. We'd divided the blocks in half and had each tackled the embroidery on our half individually, so we were seeing the whole batch together for the first time. It was pretty exciting!

But our excitement was nothing compared to that of the bride and groom. They went down the line (accumulating quite a following of guests behind them) and read each and every message. And then we pulled out the pièce de résistance - the square from her father, and there was not a dry eye in the house.

Timing...

I was talking to a friend about our project, and mentioned that we were discussing the schedule for the project.

I mentioned that I thought setting a date too far out would be risky because people would be likely to forget… but setting a date that came up too soon would annoy people because they would feel like they didn’t have enough time.

The response? "If [Sandie] doesn’t expect that she’ll even have the baby with her for a few more years, why would you guys even need to start thinking about this yet?"

(I think the real answer to this is "Because we’re excited!!!!!" right?)

So how much time would you want/need to shop for the fabric for your wish square?

Pantographs

I realized when I looked back at my posts on The Machine that I had glossed over some of the details of how it works. Don’t worry, I’m not going to bore you with obscure technological details. I just want to tell you about its pantograph system.

You may be familiar with a traditional pantograph, a very old device for copying and, optionally, changing the scale of a two-dimensional drawing.



When you trace the drawing with the pointer, the pencil mirrors your movements and creates another image of the drawing. By adjusting the relation between the pointer and the pencil, you can change how large the copy will be. (Click for more on pantographs. This site is where the drawing above originates.)

On The Machine, the pantograph works on the same principle, only here, you trace the drawing with a laser pointer, and the sewing machine copies your movements in thread!

How on earth does that work? You move the laser pointer using heavy steering handles that are attached to a rolling shelf on which the sewing machine sits; thus, when you steer the laser pointer over the drawing, you are also steering the sewing machine over the quilt.



As long as your sewing machine is turned on and threaded, every movement you make, for better or for worse, will appear on your quilt.

Return of The Machine

I’ve taken a look at the stack of quilt tops waiting patiently in my studio, and have come to the conclusion that I can no longer avoid firing up The Machine.

I've been putting this off because running The Machine is a bit stressful. You can't entirely see how things are going til you're done (by which point you are not at all interested in the thought of ripping out all of those stitches). Last time I got to the point where part of my routine included not only popping in a fresh bobbin and making sure the quilt was rolled into the proper position, but putting some lavender oil into the diffuser and turning on a CD of calming medieval chant music.

But I do believe it'll go more smoothly this time - after all, we have a better idea of what to expect!

First up is the flower boxes quilt, since its backing is good to go. I’ve chosen a wildflower pattern for the quilting. (It seems fitting!) If it looks as pretty in thread as it does on paper, I'll be very pleased :)

I’ll keep you posted...