Almost-Tiny House Tour

At long last and as promised, here is a photo tour of my newly remodeled house! This was someone's mother-in-law house that we moved to my parent's land and did some remodeling on. It's 16ft x 32ft, 512 sq ft (technically a "tiny home" is 200 sq ft or less), and all one room except for the bathroom.

So, here we go!

painting by Leonid Afremov

To the right of the door inside is the sofa, which is also the extra bedroom ;)

Across from the sofa is the sewing center. For now I have the same desks I had in my old space, but some custom built-ins are on the agenda.

I really like the LED lamps I found that mount to the wall and can adjust to point wherever I need them.

Also in this corner is the kitties' "space ship" toilet.  This is the Litter Robot and honestly it's some of the best money I have ever spent. I've had it since about April and I just get more and more impressed with it.  Between this and and the off-brand Roomba (it's a Eufy, I would highly recommend that brand) vacuum I run once a day my house stays clean and smelling fresh. I'm not much of a housekeeper so I need all the help I can get.

Next is this shelving unit with my ironing board on top and all my "active" sewing projects stored inside.

Around on the other side of the half wall from the sewing center is the kitties' tower and the washer/dryer.  I found a cat tower that has a spring brace to the ceiling so that the base didn't have to be as big for stability.

Next to laundry and across from the front door is the kitchen.  The open shelving unit came from IKEA. The vinyl stickers I used on the dishwasher and stove to look like tiles came from Etsy.

To make it seem bigger and divide the space a little the ceiling in the kitchen is lofted and covered with the beautiful light wood.

My bed is in the corner to the left of the door when you come in, adjacent to the bathroom.

My carpenter built the bed from sketches I made and as you can see it has a drawers at one end and shelves at the other.  The best part is that the dresser pulls out so I can access storage under the bed.

Bathroom, small but plenty functional.  Didn't do much in here with the remodel other than adding that window and the wainscoting, which were boards leftover from the ceiling.

And, wrapping up the tour back at the front door!

A Basket Full of Quilts for Jack

Happy Friday! I normally get my posts ready on Thursdays but I got behind this week.  The quilts I have to show this week aren't for CiL, but they are charity quilts!

Since I'm settling into my new quilting space I wanted to work on some smaller projects and Christine from FL had sent me 5 baby quilt tops for Jack's Basket all kitted up with matching backing and bindings.

These 5 baby quilts were the perfect way to break in my new space with some quick projects for my other favorite charity ;)

Jack's Basket gives education and supportive Welcome Baskets to babies born with Down Syndrome.  The remind families that their baby is beautiful and deserves to be celebrated during a time when that message has often gotten lost.

They appreciate having quilts to place in their baskets and I enjoy sewing these smaller quilts from time to time.  Besides Christine's kitted quilts I also had 2 small flannel tops from Priscilla that I finished and added to the box.

Seven cute quilts off to welcome new babies, and my new sewing space is officially in business!

Speaking of the new space, I promise to make a separate house-tour post this weekend and tell you all about it!

The kitties got a tree for Christmas

Covered in Love is a 501(c)(3) charity that donates quilts to patients dying in the hospital, over 500 so far! The Nov/Dec drive is going on now.  Check out the main post HERE if you want to get involved.

Linking to  Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Finished or Not Friday

Ghost of Quilts Past

Between Thanksgiving and moving house (photos forthcoming!) I've been busy the past couple weeks, fortunately Louise shipped me a couple more orphan quilts I can show you!

What's special about this top quilt is that is made almost entirely of blocks from my personal UFO stash. Strange to see them all arranged and finished like that.

Let's take a walk down memory lane...
Top and bottom row large HSTs - from this wedding quilt I made for a friend of a friend
Second row (minus the donut in the middle) triangle hexagons - from this quilt I made my Grandpa
(Row 2.5 small orange and white flying geese, not from me)
Third row improv pieced low volume fabrics surrounding novelty brights - pretty sure I never blogged these, I was playing with using scraps and thinking about a making it a block drive block
Fourth row interlocking squares - a design I was playing with waaaay back in 2010. You can see my graph paper and see how the block breaks down in this post.
Fifth row scrappy mountain majesties - from this quilt I made from Bonnie Hunter's pattern for CiL

This quilt is a mix of blocks from the Scrappy Susannah block drive in Fall 2017 and Fall Leaves from 2015. The center panel is from a fat quarter stack I was donated; the rest of the fat quarters mostly went into this top.

Covered in Love is a 501(c)(3) charity that donates quilts to patients dying in the hospital, over 500 so far! The Nov/Dec drive is going on now.  Check out the main post HERE if you want to get involved.

Linking to  Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Finished or Not Friday

String Drive 2019: Round 6 {Wrap-up}

It's time to wrap up this year's Jan-Feb String Block Drive!  Getting done in mid-November is good time for me. It usually takes basically the entire year to get the strings all quilted!

As always, I have MANY people to thank who donated blocks, tops, backing fabrics, rolls of binding, and their time. The first two quilts in this post, above and below, were pieced and quilted from Mina's blocks by Tammy S.

I love this block drive because it's such a quintessential "quilt" design. When most non-quilters imagine a quilt they think of a scrappy one like these. I love all the different fabrics that hide in the quilts.

I also enjoyed trying a different variation on our usual design this year with the big quarter log cabin blocks. I've got a new design in mind for next year, but you'll just have to wait until January to see it!

All but the last 3 of these quilts have already been delivered to the hospital, on their way to new homes.  This drive produced 28 quilts from 81 quilters! (I wrote 27 on the sheet below, but it's actually 28).

So that wraps up the string scraps for 2019, on to 2020!

Latest house update! Bed is installed. You can see there's storage underneath.

The dresser rolls in and out on casters to access the storage.  I'm hunting for the perfect step ladder to reach my bed and all the high shelves.

Covered in Love is a 501(c)(3) charity that donates quilts to patients dying in the hospital, over 500 so far! The Nov/Dec drive is going on now.  Check out the main post HERE if you want to get involved.

Linking to  Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Finished or Not Friday

Handstitched Wonders

Happy Friday, stitchers! Carolyn sent in these extremely large quilt tops a while back and I sent them to Meloney who long armed them.  I just got them back, all ready to go to the hospital for Covered in Love!

These tops were handstitched! They're on the order of 110" x 95", which made them hard to photograph, particularly with the weather we've been having lately. 

These will be a real comfort to some families at the hospital soon.  And with the cold weather we've been having lately they'll be especially nice to have at home to cuddle up with.

Not a very flattering photo, but you can see how large the quilts are!

House update: kitchen shelving is up!

Covered in Love is a 501(c)(3) charity that donates quilts to patients dying in the hospital, over 500 so far! The Nov/Dec drive is going on now.  Check out the main post HERE if you want to get involved.

Linking to  Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Finished or Not Friday

More Amazing Orphans

Happy Friday quilters! I've got more of Louise's handiwork to show you this weekend.  She's been assembling orphan blocks and leftovers for Covered in Love and making a series about it on her blog.

If you've been around for a while you may recognize blocks left over from this block drive in 2016. The strip of triangles came from one of these baby quilts.

Louise did a great job matching block tone and designs to make cohesive quilts.  I made all those tiny, wonky geese from one of those 2.5" charm packs and she actually pieced them into strips!

She also does pretty custom FMQ quilting.  I now have a running box of UFOs and orphan blocks being packed to go to Louise's when it gets full.

This quilt is one of my absolute favorites, with the pineapple block in the middle and the yellow binding!

Thank you, Louise, and everyone who has sent in blocks and UFOs to CiL! Every block and project eventually finds its home :)  Speaking of homes, here is the latest picture of mine with a fresh coat of paint!

Covered in Love is a 501(c)(3) charity that donates quilts to patients dying in the hospital, over 500 so far! The Nov/Dec drive is going on now.  Check out the main post HERE if you want to get involved.

Linking to  Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Finished or Not Friday