wip wednesday 26.15

 

the jet lag is still a thing. coming home from so far away west of me is the hardest type of time adjustment there is. seriously, it makes me never want to go to asia again. so, i'm not sleeping normally (or much at all) and just don't feel up to much, especially in the sewing room.

but, R was here and we put together two more of the quarter log cabin blocks for his quilt. that was something. he was putting more pins i recently discovered into my pincushion for me and said it was really crowded. we decided we need to make another pincushion together. we made one for his mommy for christmas and he was game to do it again. he said this one should be blue and we started going through scraps and looking at buttons for it. i don't know how long this little fella is going to want to sew with his granna, but i'm loving it for now.

on my own i managed to complete that last row for "pinky stinky" edna and join it to the row above it, leaving me with three sets of rows to join before i have a completed flimsy. that's only two more seams to go! but it requires pinning, seam matching, and some long seams, which i haven't been excited or energized enough to do yet. but she's off the design wall, which is a plus.

that's the extent of my sewing adventures for the last week since i got home. i've completely fallen off the "100 days of epp" bandwagon. i'll just have to restart myself. i was making nice progress on that.

aside from the silks i bought in thailand, no fabric purchases.

thai stiches & sights

 

hello, hello! i'm home (for a minute). our two weeks of senior tripping around thailand with d4 are done and dusted. i'm a jetlagged wreck, slowly trying to adjust. i can't seem to bring myself to sew anything, but that will come back soon enough.

the epp pouch went everywhere with me and i got some stitch time in a few airports and one slow hotel morning. the 3 days we were on a boat in the islands were too hot and sticky for stitching and the rest was all go, go, go. so my "100 days of stitching" didn't happen with regularity, but i did get some stitching done.

our beach front hotel in phuket had this sweet little "yoga window" where d4 and i relaxed and i did some stitching. i don't know what you call it exactly - it was unlike anything i saw anywhere else or have seen, but it was a small window bay with two mats in it that made me think it would be a great spot to do some yoga, so i called it the "yoga window." and i did some stitching there on my not-yoga mat.

the lighting was great and the view good. it's a design feature i may have to consider for my new house.

i started the trip off strong with basting several pieces in the airport. we arrived more than 2 hours early, so i had plenty of time for basting. i was a little peeved at my husband for making us get there so early, which turned out to be completely unnecessary (the rumored tsa troubles were not an issue, thank goodness), but better safe than sorry, i guess. 

i was irked because in the hour before we left, being fully packed and ready to go, i found myself with time on my hands and i got quite close to finishing the top for "pinky stinky" edna entirely. if only i hadn't forgot to add a few star points, which required unpicking and awkward adding, i would likely have gotten it done in the hour i had. if we had waited another half hour, i would definitely have finished it. so close! but as it was, i had to leave the last row incomplete and get on my way with world travels. so i used the extra time at the airport to baste and contented myself with that.

we first flew into singapore for a few days, then on to chaing mai, followed by phuket, and finished up in bagkok. at the royal palace on our last full day in bangkok, i found several quilt-related things. some of the temple exteriors were intricately decorated with colorful, mirrored tiles in geometric shapes that immediately put me in mind of quilt patterns. 

this tile floor was on a porch at the entrance - definitely a quilt there.

this diamond floor pattern was in the queen sirikit textile museum, which was a small gem with the best gift shop ever.

the queen was a fashion icon in the 1960's. she revived and popularized several traditional thai dress styles, which were featured at the museum. these fabric samples from some of the dresses caught my fancy.

i do love a good textile! they are all thai silk and just beautiful.

these vintage printed cottons were especially nice. somehow i missed the sign at the beginning of this room that said "no photos," so as i was preparing to take a photo of the information badge that told all about the fabric, a guard came up and chastised me. oops!  photos were definitely allowed in the other rooms, so i was confused. but this room had some very old textiles in low light, which may be why they didn't want photos because anyone using flash would damage them. fortunately, i hadn't used a flash. 

i wish i'd found some fabrics like these for sale somewhere because they would have been great for quilting. what i found a little later in the gift shop was almost as good.

a whole section of fabrics for sale! i was swooning and started imagining which i wanted immediately. they were all silks such as those used in the queen's formal clothing, but i have seen quilts made with silk before and knew i could use them if i was careful. the only problem was they only sold the fabric by the meter, no small cuts. it was surprisingly inexpensive, certainly less than liberty, but i didn't want too much of it. i had little to no room to take it home in my luggage, so i made myself pick just two colors and left it at that. i was a little flustered having to pick only two and needing to do it quickly, so i'm not sure i made the best choice. but i did what i did and i have some lovely silks to make into a small quilt of some sort. i can't complain.

i was drawn to the blues and greens first and had several in mind while i waited my turn. when i realized i would only be getting two colors, i picked this pretty blue first (photographed a bit bright) and wanted to get a coordinating woven print, but second guessed myself and decided to just go with another color. so i picked the gorgeous citrine color next. it's the color i like best of the two and now wonder if i shouldn't have picked something other than the blue to go with it. when i decide what i'm making with them, i'll see if i was right or not.

when i asked for one meter of the first fabric, the saleswoman told me i would need two meters minimum for a skirt and i tried to explain to her i was making a quilt, but the language barrier did not compute. it's alright. i know what i needed and got it.

i would have taken more photos of the fabric options on the shelves, but i was pretty sure i'd seen a sign at the entrance to the shop forbidding photos. i couldn't resist these quick covert snaps, but i didn't want to take any obvious ones.

so, royal palace in bangkok was a complete quilting/fabric win, i made my first fabric purchase of the year, and i got some more epp shapes basted on the trip. success!

now i'm home and looking forward to more wip busting.

wip wednesday, 2026.13 - endless refolding

i've been refolding fabric again. a lot.

oddly enough, i got on a cleaning kick after the last bit of organizing i did while searching for my "missing" hexagon paper pieces. it's contagious; once one shelf is clean i want to do another one. i don't particularly enjoy all the folding. when i'm in the middle of it, i get antsy and just want to quit, but i keep at it until it's done. then i'm so happy i did it because i love the tidy shelves and i want to start the next shelf right away  sometimes i have to just leave the room or i won’t stop!

this time i reworked a whole section on the main fabric wall. the middle two shelves above (under the solids) are all the pieces i have set aside for my "gypsy wife" quilt, divided into a few types of fabric i'm using in the quilt: polka dots, stripes, monochromatic, novelty, blenders, busy multicolored florals. this is the only fabric pull i have dedicated shelves for because when i first set these shelves up, there was plenty of room for having these fabrics here and i wanted them handy for making that quilt. once it's complete, these fabrics will be reabsorbed into the general stash and the shelves redesignated to new catagories. but for now, i've cleaned them up smartly. i didn't refold these pieces but sorted and nicely stacked them and that alone looks so much better.

i didn't take a before photo of these shelves prior to fixing them, but you can see them in the background in this photo from last month when i was quilting "frosted forest star" (which is still on this machine waiting it's finish - the thread is breaking again and i’m mad at it). the shelves from the first photo are the top shelves above the machine in this picture. do they look better now? even in the crummy indoor night lighting you can tell they are much neater now.

the lower set of shelves in the top photo is my denyse schmidt collection. i made it all pretty, too, which was a lot more work because i not only sorted by large pieces, color, collection, and a stack of just patchwork panel club yardage, but i also refolded all these pieces to have the single fold facing forward. this is now my preferred way of storing the fabrics because it's easier to identify the fabrics and looks really nice.

i've worked out that if i start with a half yard piece, i first make sure it's folded in half across the width with the selvages together, then into thirds (about 6" across), and then in half again. this is the size and shape that fits on my shelves best.

if it's yardage i'm folding, i get it folded into a half yard across, then proceed as above. this also works for fat quarters as they are the size of the half yard piece folded with selvages together. the skinny quarters are trickier. i just try to get them in a similar shape/size, but it's much less standardized.

i reorganized all my solid fabrics a few weeks ago but i wasn't yet decided on the single fold forward method and it's been bugging me now i've been doing that with the other shelves. if you look in the opening photo, you can see the bottom of the solids shelf (above the blue sticky notes) and notice i did refold the large cuts of green fabrics. the rest will have to wait until the mood strikes, but i will be getting around to them, for sure.

the top of my scrap drawers, which sits just to the right of my cutting table and in front of my design wall, was getting overcrowded and sloppy looking. i'd put a few stray new fabrics there that needed proper putting away and the bin situation wasn't good.

the only items that are supposed to be here are two bins for scraps that need to be processed (one i filled when i went through my backing cuts and one that catches all pieces i don't cut immediately when i'm trimming fabrics for quilts), a bin each for my two sizes of "bonnie lass" blocks, and my rectangular cutting rulers (so they're convenient and handy for when i'm cutting).

i got all the extra things put away, found all my rulers and put them back, and moved the "bonnie lass" pieces into smaller boxes. it's a small change, but it makes a difference in the room. every little bit helps!

next i was drawn to this eyesore. it's an overflowing basket of pieces for "wensleydale." i knew i could make it look nicer by organizing the pieces by type and color and turning them upright in the basket.

i was really surprised when i pulled the basket out to work on it to discover there were actually two baskets there; the second one was hiding behind the towering mess of the first basket.

as i wasn't refolding but just sorting, this project went a lot faster than the shelves, too. i have all the ginghams/checks together, all the low-volume blenders, and the rest of the pieces are now in color order in the second basket. i couldn't fit all the pieces upright in the two baskets, so i just left the extras stacked on top of the back basket. it's still a little messy, but there is a method to the madness. i moved the completed blocks and foundation papers to the same area as the baskets to keep the whole project together. i hope i can get back to this one when fall rolls around as there are some other projects that are further ahead of it in the queue. once i'm done travelling, that is.

you'd think i would spend my time before leaving for thailand doing some actual sewing, but i felt like leaving a tidier sewing room instead. i'm eventually going to be packing all of this up for a move, so the organizing i'm doing now is partially in preparation for that coming herculean task. and it actually makes me happy. i don't know what's gotten into me that i'm being so responsible (relatively speaking) with all my cleaning/organizing, only working on wips, and still no fabric purchasing this year, but i like it!

oh, and there's the "100 days of epp" still going. getting that 13 year old wip moving is another thing i can pat myself on the back for. all this responsible behavior in my hobby is not ruining the fun, it's just a different kind of pleasure and satisfaction i'm getting. i'll get back to my free spirited, start-all-the-quilts ways soon enough, i'm sure. first i'm going to get some finishes, chip away at my stash, and build a new sewing room.