He has nothing to do with window quilts. He just likes hanging out up on this shelf while I do the sewing and the birds outside torture him with their freedom.
I’m working on window quilts for the bathrooms now. I feel slightly…wimpy in doing this. I’ve designed the window quilts for our bedroom, but they’re the most elaborate (of course) and slightly daunting.
So I went for easy.
I’m using, mainly, sections of an old cotton shower curtain that used to hang in the bathroom on the main floor. It had nine panels like the one you see above, each with a different word and corresponding (or not – I can’t read it anyway) character in Japanese. Or Chinese. Like I said, I can’t read it anyway. But the curtain looked pretty and I’m not really sure why I replaced it. It’s not torn or badly stained or anything.
Oh well. Four of the panels – one at each corner of the curtain – are “love” and the other five are “happiness,” “wisdom,” “harmony,” “tranquility,” and something else that I can’t remember just now.
I am using four panels per window quilt – two “love” panels and two others.
On January 2nd I started sketching out the plans and digging through fabric scraps.
Our main floor bathroom is has aqua walls and most of the rest of it is white. I think of it in shades of blue…watery…cool and serene. The wrinkly fabric above is an old tablecloth with fish all over it. It’s faded in lots of sections, and stained, but I figured I could get something from it.
Here’s the rest…the brightly colored teal strips are fabric I’ve had for ages, and the pale striped fabric was one of Alex’s crib sheets. (Sniff….my little baby boy!!!…he can’t be almost as tall as me now…can he?)
Our second floor bathroom has pink tile (it came with the house) in the shower stall and a speckly salmon colored countertop where the sinks are…so I looked for fabrics that would coordinate well with both. Above – the tan flowered fabric is another old member of my sewing stash, the pale floral on top of it is one of Julia’s crib sheets (sniff! My baby girl! Hard to believe she’s already a teenager! No, wait…she just thinks she is….) and above that is a whimsical (yes, whimsical) print with lobsters and crabs and other seafood images. Not that we eat lobster in the upstairs bathroom…but the colors worked.
I did lots of cutting and pinning and sewing that day. It was perfectly lovely, really – Bill and the kids had gone back to school and I had the whole day off.
For some reason, though, I kept…well…screwing up. I pinned things upside down or backwards – more than once – and stitched them together only to have to rip out stitches, re-pin and re-sew. And then I’d screw something else up. It was very frustrating. I had the idea that I’d be able to whip these quilts up in one day – from the first cut to the hanging in the windows.
But it was not to be. I did, however, finally, finally get the top of each quilt put together. Correctly, even.
My other day off was spent cleaning out and reorganizing the dining room and the pantry/closet – a project long overdue and one that threatened my sanity far more than the need for less drafty bathrooms.
I’m off today, however, and I’ve spent most of this morning doing laundry, baking bread, and yes, sitting on the couch watching “Frasier” reruns and playing solitaire over and over on my phone.
Time to be productive now. I’m off to tackle those window quilts again. I’ve found fabric to back them both and a few things to use as batting between the layers.
Let’s hope I can get through this without any more major mistakes!
Hehehe! I love the lobster design!
It's a bit silly, but what's not to enjoy in something so simple and fun? It's going in the bathroom! Why not have something cute to look at when yer on the pot?
Anywho.
I want to make myself a quilt one of these days... it's just something so homey and self-sufficient... that, and I would like to make a nice heavy quilt for myself! One that the dogs can't steal at night like a comforter... mwahahaha.
Posted by: Donna B. | January 07, 2013 at 03:31 PM