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Friday, December 9, 2011

Progress is a good thing, again

Three things to be happy about:
(1) hot tomato soup
(2) the smell of cinnamon
(3) chatting with the hairdresser

Chatting with the hairdresser... hmmmm... I'm getting loc maintenance today...

[note to self: do not engage Gail in a conversation while she's shampooing!  She gets so caught up in what she's saying, she stops working, puts her hands on her hips, shakes her finger, does all kinds of crazy things while I'm lying there staring up at her with a wet head, my neck cradled in that uncomfortable dent in the sink, at her mercy til she comes back down to earth.  Until I get seated in her chair, tick-a-lock!]

My red and white quilt is done except for sewing on the sleeve and label, I really wanted to scoot it out of the way before Part 4 of the Quiltville Orca Bay mystery quilt is posted today.  When that happens, I'll be into a whole different set of fabrics and I really don't want to get bogged down with switching stuff around.  Somehow I think we're all done with the blue, and maybe the black too.  According to the fabric measurements Bonnie gave us, we'll probably use the red for strings and also some kind of block using neutrals.  Just an uneducated guess! 

I was turtling around in my stuff and I ran across this piece of red I bought years ago!


It's an Alexander Henry print and I remember buying it off a $3.49 table at G Street Fabrics.  Don't ask me what I was thinking, but it's definitely going into Orca Bay!


I was really pleased with the way my writing in the border of my red and white turned out using the plastic wrap, there was absolutely no bleed through of the ink onto the fabric!  My fabric was red and I used red thread top and bobbin; I would hesitate, however, before doing that on white fabric.  I was over halfway done before it occurred to me I could have gotten more even, attractive lettering if I had printed the words off my pc and traced it onto the plastic wrap.  Oh well.

Someone asked about the size, and the pattern I used for my red and white.  The final measurement is 25x29-1/2; I wanted to keep it small so it wouldn't grow up to be a UFO.  I scanned a piece of my "lady" fabric, isolated the silhouettes I wanted, then enlarged it at FedEx/Kinkos (see this previous post).  I have that particular fabric pattern in black on blue, black on green, multi-colored on rust, black on orange, and black on a sort of browny-gold speckled background.  That is a very popular fabric and I see it every time I go to Paradise Fabrics.


My next door neighbors had to sell their their house because of unfortunate financial difficulties - they put it on the market the end of August and they had a firm contract on it the middle of last month (three months isn't bad at all).  They either went to settlement yesterday or will do it today... in any case, they have to be out of the house today.  Just hold on, there is a point to this tale...

Monday I was on my way out when this big trash truck (the kind with the compressor thing that can hold a ton of trash) comes up and these guys get out and start hauling stuff out of my neighbor's house.  I said to Rodney (my neighbor) "Oh man, looks like you guys are tossing out some good furniture!"  He said "yeah, Geraldine [his sister, the owner] said to toss it all out, we have to be out of here by Friday evening.  Some of this stuff was my Dad's and we can't use it since we're moving to an apartment." 

I couldn't believe what I was seeing... they were tossing out solid-looking furniture!  Glass-fronted cabinets with etched glass!  There was a low cabinet that had "mahogany" written on the back; before I could untangle my tongue to say "wait! hold it!" they had tossed it into the truck and another guy threw in a bowling ball and some bar bells and I heard "crash! tinkle!"  Bear in mind they were living there when I bought my house over 30 years ago - some of that furniture was definitely antique.  An electric fan, a vacuum cleaner, small grill, tools.  I know the grill was still good because they were using it this past summer.  All that stuff went into the truck, they pressed the lever and grrrrnnnkkk, it was gone!  Rodney paid the guys and they went on their way - what a waste.

Sew forth and sew on

3 comments:

  1. oh that stinks about the furniture... at least donate it to a thrift store or something like that, or like MY husband would do, sell it on craigslist! thanks for posting the measurements and how you did that red and white quilt! and did you see the orca#4!!! more strings!

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  2. What a shame to have to trash those things. I'm certain there are people out there that are just crying for some of those. Most of my furniture is used stuff over 120 years old when I bought it over 40 years ago.
    Enjoy your part #4! I am impressed with your plan of attack.

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  3. At first I was feeling really sad for your neighbors. Who doesn't know someone adversely affected by this awful economy? But the more I thought about it, I thought "no wonder they were having financial problems". Anyone who would is having financial problems that would hire someone to come and trash their possession with value is probably too foolish to make any wise financial decisions. And, sadly, I know people like that too.

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