#selfcare, or Retail Therapy

As you may know from yesterday's post, I was feeling blue this weekend. To perk myself up, I did a few things.

Fabric Shopping. I saw this packet of fabric and decided to add it to my stash. Now I need to figure out a new quilting project.

Fixed my favorite sweater jacket that is falling apart. The cuffs on my green Ibex are frayed. I used scrap ribbons to hide the split seams. I am halfway done. Now it has a 1970's disco/Mork and Mindy vibe going for it.

Window Shopping. I visited Isadora's, an antique and vintage jewelry store, yesterday. I spent an hour trying on rings and earrings. Yeah. Nice stuff. The sales woman was a hoot. One of the great things about retail therapy here was that I didn't need to buy anything to feel better.

This one is from circa 1920. 2.8 carats of diamonds surround the massive aquamarine stone.

I have been working hard to figure out my own behavior lately in terms of how I reacted and responded to the years of Jack being pre-occupied with work. As a result, I was left in a one-sided marriage. As I continue to excavate my feelings about this, I am grieving the loss of those years where I could have been in a mutual and reciprocating marriage or relationship. I am also working to ensure I don't end up in a similar relationship again through my own misguided attempts to try to fix things that cannot be fixed.

The challenge of codependency is that it is natural for at least half of humanity to want to be helpful, as parents and partners. The challenge comes when we overstep other's boundaries, or an addiction makes a child or partner unable to respond to insights from others. I am slowly trying to figure out balance here.

Snow Day = Work from Home = ?

Yesterday, Seattle expected the snowstorm of the quarter-century, which means like six to ten inches. Having been raised as a hearty and hale Chicagoan, I have lived through multiple blizzards.

When I googled the definition of a blizzard (because that is what bloggers do), I found this:

A winter storm warning for one to three inches. Seriously. I lived in Chicago when we had one to three feet of snow. We also had flat terrain, frozen ground and snow plows. The clothes weren't nearly as high tech as they are now. I remember my mom wrapping our feet in old plastic bread bags before we slid them into out boots to keep our feet dry. I remember jumping off our second story deck into a snow drift with my dad hold us above ledge. After we moved to Columbus, Ohio, I remember taking two hundred mile road trips to Chicago over Christmas to visit my grandparents during blizzards which are different than snowstorms, apparently. According to Wikipedia:

Given the snow as forecast several days ahead of time, everyone on my team planned to work from home on Friday given the impending snowstorm. My manager posted this on our team's chat page:

This is highly relatable as last night my former Iowan husband grilled steak outside for dinner and this morning the governor declared a state of emergency. Not kidding.

I worked from home yesterday for the first time in the year and a half that I started my new job (which isn't so new anymore) as I got a laptop a few weeks ago. There is a wonderful New Yorker humor piece where a man calls 911 because he is working from home which is true and scary and hilarious. Until you work from home and live it.

I fail to see the appeal of working from home. I got up, took a shower, washed my hair and I even put on make-up and jewelry for no one except myself. Sure, I skipped the commute, but I also skipped lunch because I didn't have my co-workers there pushing me along to stop promptly at noon to eat, play cards, and/or walk to the market. I worked through the noon hour because I wasn't hungry. Then at 2:00, I was on a phone call when I became ravenous. We were sharing a computer screen so I couldn't just click the mute, walk into the kitchen and make lunch. So I ate lunch at 3:00. One of my remote co-workers who lives in the Central time zone said "You are eating lunch now?"

Yeah. Because I suck at this.

And then I worked until 6:00 p.m. because like I didn't need to stop. I was on a roll. And now, Saturday morning, my computer is here in the corner, beckoning me to work. I am supposed to finish something by end of day Monday which could take one hour or could take six depending on what I uncover in the data. So should I work on it this weekend? Maybe start this weekend and then double check it Monday? If I work now, I will be undisturbed by meetings and emails. My head hurts thinking about it.

And the worst thing is that snow days used to mean no work or school. Now that I have a laptop, I can work instead of baking cookies, working on a quilt or doing a jigsaw puzzle. That is NOT a snow day. God made snow days to make us stop, and now that is not possible. Oh the existential crisis I am having!

...which was wiped out when I went for a walk in the quiet beauty of my neighborhood blanketed in snow.

Fox looks like a honeybee except his sacs are snowballs not pollen.

The Quilt I Would Have Made for Myself

In my days as a stay-at-home mom, I started quilting. I quilted when I ran for School Board. Cutting fabric and running a sewing machine allowed me to zone out from the hectic and unpredictable campaign.

Since I've started working, I haven't found much time to quilt. In the past few days off of work, I finished a project I had been working on for about a year. I often work on more than one quilting project at a time. The different phases of quilting -- picking fabrics, creating a design, cutting fabric into shapes, assembling the top, quilting and binding-- each have their different appeal and it can be dull to have to do all of those steps them all in the same order every time. Unfortunately, a quilt has to be done in order; therefore, I have more than one project going. Plus, it can be daunting to finish a project without something else to work on.

This week, I finished a quilt. I finished the quilt I would have wanted on my own bed when I was ten. It is full of bright colors and birds and bicycles and flowers and tree houses. It has a green and blue binding. Some people out here might call them Seahawks colors.

Yesterday, I shipped it to my cousin's daughter in Chicago. She is eight. I hope she likes it.

I was sad to ship this quilt off, sadder than when I've shipped off other stuff. I make more stuff than I can use, so I have to get rid of what I make somehow. Claire-Adele didn't want this quilt, and I can't blame her. It is a little too whimsical for someone her age.

The funny thing about quilting is that started the hobby so I could make a quilt from the dresses Claire-Adele wore as a toddler. My mother-in-law lives in Atlanta and would buy Claire-Adele dozens of fancy dresses, so many that I sent her every day to preschool wearing one.

"Please don't worry about the dresses," I said. "Don't let her attire keep her from doing art projects of getting dirty. My mother-in-law buys them and she lives in the south where the clothes are more..."

"Flamboyant?" the teacher replied. I wasn't sure what word I was looking for, but "flamboyant" worked. I gave dozens of Claire-Adele's dresses to friends, family and Goodwill. Some had paint stains, others food. The fabric was too beautiful for me to part with, so I loaded them extra dresses in plastic tubs in the basement so someday they would become a quilt. But I needed to learn to quilt first.

Somewhere in this process, quilting became my hobby and I had almost forgotten about Claire-Adele's dresses in the basement. My goal was to create something for her before she left for college. I fear she won't like what I make, or won't bring it to school. I want to talk to her about patterns, but I fear there will be nothing she likes, and she'll kill the project before it starts. Which begs the question: who am I making this for, me or her?

Perhaps this is the quilt I need to make for myself. And if Claire-Adele wants it someday, I'll let her have it.

Stitch in the Ditch

Note: The internet nearly ruined this perfectly good blog idea. I won't spoil it for you until the end.

Last weekend, I cleaned off the Boy's desk in the dining room that was covered with quadcopters and other flying devices, old homework, and random magazines. It was the place where Claire-Adele dumped the junk mail after clearing it from the dining room table so she could set it for dinner. I bought this desk a few years ago to give the Boy a quiet and clean spot to do his homework. Since this desk had been covered in crap since 2012, he did his homework on the couch or in his bed.

I decided to claim this table for my sewing, which is logical because it is a sewing table that I tried to pass off on the Boy for his own, knowing very well that I wanted this desk, but really couldn't justify buying myself a third desk in addition to the one off the kitchen and the one in the shed. This desk is a really nice piece of furniture--spalted maple with an antique Singer sewing table legs. Before I would sew on the dining room table, which was a huge pain because I had to move everything on and off the table before and after we ate. I don't have a before picture of the desk, but I have an after.

Some of the Boy's flying devices are still under the desk.

This weekend I've bee working on a quilt I started last winter. It is the quilt I would have wanted when I was ten years old. It has bright rainbow-y colors, treehouses and bicycles. It is awesome. I am kind of sad Claire-Adele doesn't want it, but oh well. She is seventeen and has lost her interest in things whimsical.

For the top quilting, I am trying something new: Stitch in the ditch. This is where the lines are sewn inside the seams of the patchwork. 

This is nearly impossible to do right. The truly bizarre thing is that when it is done perfectly, you can't tell that it has been done at all. So why do quilters try to do something so impossible that you can't see? Why? It doesn't make any sense. There is something zen about trying to do the impossible that can't even be seen when done properly. How do you learn how to do this? You start when you are fourteen and by time you are sixty-five you can be mildly competent?

Here are my good and bad examples. You can see I nail it about 15% of the time. Where did I get it right? You can't see it. Crazy, eh?

As I sat down to write this, I googled "Stitch in the ditch" to make sure I had the term right and I discovered there is a sewing foot especially designed to do the stitch in the ditch that could have made it all easier. 

Shirts

Last week, I was in Pioneer Square and I visited Drygoods Design.  They had a book about how to make stuff from things found in a thrift shop, and there was a picture of a beautiful quilt made from mens dress shirts.

I could do this, I thought.  This will be good practice for when I finally make that quilt out of Claire Adele's old dresses.  I hopped over to Value Village on Lake City Way and bought the raw materials for a new project.

I was thrilled at the great shirts I found, though I had a few pangs of guilt taking such soft and barely worn shirts and chopping them up for a blanket.  I saw people there shopping for clothes, and felt bad that maybe someone might have worn one of these shirts for job interview, first date, or other life altering event.

When Jack got home from work, he saw the pile and tried a few of them on.  I didn't pick any of them for size -- only color and pattern.  Of the dozen I bought, only one fit.  I realized how specific something like clothes are in terms of style and fit, and I didn't feel so bad.  Most thrift stores in the US rotate their stock every four weeks, so these nice shirts might have been destined to become commercial rags.

More Fabric

My friend Jane is aware of my budding fabric addiction, and she is starting to enable.  She recommended me to two Seattle fabric boutiques, Drygoods Design in Pioneer Square and District Fabric in Fremont.

This week, I had the chance to check out District Fabric.  It is like an art gallery of textiles.

I saw all of these lovely fabrics, and was slightly disheartened.  All of this was great, but what could I make?  There are only some many pillows and blankets one house can hold.  I gave my dad and aunt each a pillow I patched together.  I suppose I could make blankets for everyone I know, but colors, patterns and textures are a matter of taste.  What I find wonderful my mother-in-law might find unpalatable.  

I wandered around the store, liking too many things, but I couldn't think of a project.  Asked the woman who owns the place what people use her fabrics for.

"Clothes and home use.  Costume designers will come here and find things they like."  

She gave me an idea and I am taking a bold new step.  I am going to make a skirt.  Or try.  I bought fabric and a pattern.

Let's see what happens.

Fabric Addict

As you may know, I recently started quilting as a hobby.  I love visiting quilting blogs and hanging out in fabric stores.  (The Cloth Shop on Granville Island in Vancouver, B.C. is terrific.)

This week, I had a meeting down in SODO.  I needed some black thread to finish the binding on the Boy's quilt, so I stopped by Pacific Fabrics Outlet on 4th Ave.  My old volunteer gig brought me to SODO several times a month.  I have driven past this place countless times over the past several years, and I never stopped in.  It turns out it really isn't an outlet anymore -- just a very large store in an old industrial building.

Wow.  It is a good thing I didn't know about this place sooner.

The Boy made a pillowcase for himself out the the large fish patterned fabric above.  We bought the fabric at The Cloth Shop in Vancouver, B.C.  The sharks next to it are kind of cute, too.

If Claire Adele were younger, I'd make her a quilt out of these fabrics or the ones below.

I made the Boy's quilt out of jelly rolls of these fabrics.

My purchase: a rainbow charm pack.

Jelly Rolls, Fat Quarters and Charm Packs

My friend Diane warned me about a friend of hers who was hoarding fabric.  I am shortly on my way to becoming one of those people.

I just finished a pillow, so I was looking for a new project.  I wanted to give this pillow away, but the Boy insists I keep what I make.  I shipped my first pillow off to my parents, and I don't think my kids noticed it is gone.  I can see why my aunts and Grandma Jennings gave away their creations:  there just isn't enough room or use for all of this stuff in one house.  And of course I want to make more!

Instead of buying fabric for one project, I bought fabric for several.  And my "project," I mean one twin size quilt and two full size quilts, plus a little blanket.  I can ponder on an plan for the next project while I am working away on a project that I have already started.  It is too much pressure to buy fabric and begin right away.  Half of the battle is picking the right pattern and organize the fabric in the right way.

Since I am a beginner, I am not very good a picking matching fabrics.  Thankfully, the quilting industry has fixed that problem for me with the invention of jelly rolls, fat quarter sets and charm packs.  Matching fabrics are sold in sets, so there is less stress about finding fabrics that go well together.  The next genius step they made is to sell the fabric in precut packages, making it even easier to sew something awesome.  Jelly rolls contain 40 strips of fabric 2.5 inches wide by 42 inches long.  Fat quarters are rectangles of fabric 18 by 12 inches.  Charms are little squares usually 2.5 by 2.5 inches.  The pillow above was made from a charm pack.

In addition to fabric, I needed batting and thread.  What I might not have needed but bought anyway were two books on quilting ideas for jelly rolls.  Long story short -- this is an expensive habit.  About ten years ago, I bought I full size quilt at Bed, Bath and Beyond.  I don't remember the exact price, but it was between $100-120.  Finished.  With lots of great colors in a beautiful pattern.  It even had circles, something I have yet to figure out how to sew.  Heck, I can't even do triangles yet.  The fabric and supplies for a quilt are about the same if not more than what I paid for a finished quilt ten years ago.  And I have no promise that this fabric I've bought will one day be turned into something useful and/or beautiful.

I suppose that is the fun part of a hobby: waiting to see what a bag of supplies will turn into.

Here is my current stash:

I bought this bright colored fabric jelly roll.  When I brought it home, the Boy decided he wanted the a quilt for his room made out of this fabric.  We scrolled through some pictures of jelly roll patterns, and he picked out one.  It isn't the one I would have picked out, but it is fine.

These patterns remind me of something my Grandma Conti might have had at her house.

Halloween prints are in, or these are leftover from October.  I don't know.  The little monsters are super cute.

Here are some fat quarters.  These will be the hardest for me to figure out.  I love the bike print and the tree house print.  I need to get this one done soon so I can get back to the quilt shop in Ballard and pick a matching fabric for the back.

Fini!

I've been working on a few quilting projects lately and they are done!  Hooray!

This is a holiday blanket.  I bought a "cake stack" which is a stack of matching fabric in 9.5'' x 9.5'' squares.

I love the hot chocolate squares the best.  I wanted to make a second quilt with hot chocolate squares in a checker board pattern with "peppermint" in between.  I was thinking I could use the white with red stripes fabric (four up from the bottom and two to the left) to make peppermints.  I could quarter the fabric and rotate the squares.  Claire Adele thought I could cut the large square into triangle shaped eighths.  Right.  I have the sewing skills of a 5th grader.  That was not going to happen.  I was kind of excited that I figured out a design for a quilt all by myself.  I was kind of bummed when I found out the fabric is discontinued.

"But wait!" I hear you say.  "Google it!  I am sure someone somewhere on the internet is selling remnants!"  I tried.  I was really excited when I found a few yards, until I went to order it and discovered the seller was in Australia.  I wasn't sure I wanted to get the fabric in February.  Oh well.

Here is the back of the quilt.  It has a fancy border because I bought the only red flannel at Pacific Fabrics.  I should have known red flannel would be hard to come by in December.  Anyhow,  I came up short for the back, so I used the leftover squares.

And here is a patchwork pillow I made, finished on the same day I finished the blanket.

I used a charm pack here, which is like a layer cake except the pieces are 2.5'' x 2.5."  An artist creates and then assembles a series of fabrics, and I used them all in the same piece.  I thought about giving it to my Aunt Pat, but I have two more charm packs that I think she might like better.  I am slightly hesitant to give her a pillow, more for my own sake.  I image the conversation when someone visits her home.

"Interesting pillow," says the guest (assuming they notice it.)

"Thanks," my Aunt might reply.  "My niece made it."

"Wow.  How old is she?  Twelve?  Fifteen?"

"Forty-five."

Silence.

Part of me thinks if I have time to crank out little quilts, it means I should probably start looking for a day job.

Oh well.

Patchwork Projects

I have finished making the patchwork part of one of my quilting projects.  I am going to take this square and make it into a pillow.  I bought a plain pillow and am making a zipper pillow case.

Sounds easy, right?

Before I started, I had no idea how to pull this together, and was terrified.  Instead of having my mom, aunts, sisters, cousins and grandmothers teach me how to do this, I have the internet, where I can watch someone else's mother, grandmother, aunt and sister show me how to make a zippered pillow case on YouTube.  This video has 11,606 views as of today.  At least three of those are my views.  Once I saw this video, I thought, "I can do this.  No problem."  Thankfully, I could watch the video several times to make sure I got it right, which was necessary.  Placing a zipper is some spacial reasoning task that I seem to fail when asked to do it alone.  I can figure it out right after I watch the video, but it escapes me two days later.

Pinning the zipper together.

I skipped the step where she casually mentions finishing the edges.  I have no clue how to do that.  I googled "finishing edges" and there is a guy--a dude--with what look like prison tats* on his hands showing how to finish an edge without a serger.

All of these folks have found a new use for the GoPro cameras.  Heck with skiing in the back country or going down some crazy double black.  Forget mountain biking over a cliff or hang gliding.  GoPros are awesome for sewing demonstrations.  I imagine these people sitting there with bike helmets on or some other attachment sewing and narrating away.  I digress.

What helped me get over my fear of pulling something together when I have no idea what I am doing?  Buying the stuff, and leaving it on the floor of my bedroom, the plain pillow in the plastic bag mocking me to finish.  The sock monkey fabric was too cute to let it collect dust until I have grandchildren in 20 years.  I had to finish.  When I was halfway done, I bought more material for my next project so I could start right away, ala Hemingway always leaving a sentence unfinished at the end of the day so he would have someplace to start when he sat back down to write again in the morning.  I could finish one project, and slide right into the next without interruption.

Thank goodness for YouTube.  I don't think I'd make it without the kind folks who share their wisdom through the electronic ether.  I am not on the plains of Nebraska in 1870 where there is no one to ask how to do this.  A city slicker like me learned how to bind a quilt from a woman in Missouri and another in South Dakota.  Am I the only one?  No.  Both videos have nearly 500,000 views.

Not that I have anything against books.  Quilting books are the best.  I have lots of books on quilting and sewing, which are fantastic for ideas on starting.  They are like quilt porn.

And I finished.  Hooray!

Fox and the finished zippered pillows.

Fox and the pink sock monkey quilt.

Sock monkey quilt for Fox for the chair in my office.

* I shouldn't tease, on so many levels.  I wouldn't tease a woman for wanting to be an engineer or in the military.  I'd say, "Go for it, sister!"  I also seriously doubt this guy was in prison.   If he were, wow, that is awesome that he has turned his life around such that he is teaching people to sew.  And those tattoos might be covering surgical scars.  Godspeed, Mr. Burly Sew!

Practice Quilt

Last fall, I was going to make a quilt using the Big E's old dresses.  I started taking her clothes apart, and now I have a giant pile of raw material.  I own six or seven books on quilting, plus I've borrowed a bunch from the Seattle Public Library.

Yet, I was terrified to make them into a quilt.  I have a hard time picking a pattern, and fear I will get a third of the way through it and decide I can't sew straight or the schematic that I've picked looks stupid.  I am also worried that I have a large collection of random sized scraps that might not lend themselves to an easy, beginner pattern.

This weekend, we went shopping at the fabric store to get the Boy material to make a Halloween costume.  I picked up two sets of fabric squares and decided to make a few practice quilts.

I sorted the blocks by color.  The pink and lavender ones will make a pillow, and the turquoise ones will make another pillow.  The navy, red and gray will make a quilt for Fox.

I got out a book, and read how to sew the squares together.  Yes, I had to read a book on how to sew together squares.  

And here is my first full effort!  I did it!  I can sew in a straight line!  It was much easier than I thought.

Now the downside: Like my aunts who are far more talented when it come to sewing, knitting and making things, I'll have to find an outlet for my new little projects.  How many quilted pillows does one house need?  I suppose I should finish one first before I worry about that.