North Bedroom Upstairs - Revisited

The north bedroom upstairs features three cut-away windows located on the front of the house.   

The Tiffany style lamp is perfect for this room.

I refreshed/repainted the floors, changing them from a painted 1940s butterscotch color, to a rich expresso, and area room rug for warmth.  

I made the drapes.  And yards and yards of piping for the hem of the drapes, but the fabric being so stiff didn't allow for the piped hem to puddle.  Bummer.  

Oh My Goodness--what to do with 6 yards of piping?  So I divided the piping into (6) one-yard pieces and made tie-backs for the drapes.

Detail of the fabric I purchased to make the North Bedroom drapes.  

Let me tell you how I decided colors for the rooms.  First, it depended upon what drapery fabric I could find on sale.  I liked this one the best.  

After I found the fabric,  I matched the wall color paint to the drapery fabric.  The bluish gray sheer fabric also shown in the above photo I did not end up using because I found off-white ready made sheers with a matching pattern like the drapery fabric.

 I still have that big bundle of the bluish-gray sheer fabric. so I inserted it into the bathtub, with Slim (our 6 ft. decorative skeleton)  and made it look like water covering him.  On top of the sheer fabric I put some prism Christmas garland to look like Slim soaking in a bubble bath.  It was really a funny set-up for our guests during the annual Halloween Victorian House Tour and Craft Show.  

(above photo) Visitors who stayed over too long

This chandelier hung in the dining room 50 years.  I re-wired and Jon re-hung it in the North Bedroom upstairs.  I took this photo before we had installed Crown Molding through out the upstairs. 

Here's the North Bedroom after we moved into the house.  I removed all the wallpaper (walls and ceiling).  Jon drilled holes in the walls to blow-in insulation.  

We kept the original windows with wavy glass through-out the house, but installed storms and screens on the outside.  Insulation and storms and screens were important decisions we made to keep the house warmer and cooler.  And, it made heating the house more affordable, as well as dampening the noise from outside.  Much appreciated diminished noise during snowmobile season (zing, zing, zing, zing), and mowing during the warm months.  

Jon  installed new ceiling and I did all the skim coat plastering on the walls.  Once the skim coat was complete, the walls were as smooth as a baby's butt.  Then a coat of Zinzer 123 primer, and two coats of Polish Pewter (Valspar) satin finish.

I auditioned several table side lamps for the North Bedroom.  

This is a lampshade I recovered with toile fabric.  Later I added two layers of fringe.

Here is the lampshade when I finished it.  You know--covering an old lampshade is quite easy.  Someday soon I will do a tutorial on it for my new website Linda Lu Sewing that is launching in 2021.

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Thank you for looking at my blog.  Please leave me a comment--I'd love to hear from you.

Making Scrappy Queen-size Quilts

 

Delightful--that's what it means to me to go shopping in my own fabric stash.  I intended to build a colorful quilt, and end up making 3 scrappy queen size quilts!

Look at this pile of vibrant fabric remnants I re-discovered in my sewing studio.  Ah-ha!  And they were just sitting there in the armoire for a long long time.  Folded stacks of 1/4 and 1/2 yard hunks of fabric, waiting patiently for a second chance.  

Quickly I grabbed up lots of yellow, orange, hot pink, and red.  Then selected compliment colors for each: purples, blues, and I salt and peppered it with a bit of sage green,  and a black and white stripe.  

My recipe: cut remnants into 2.5" wide strips, and mixed thoroughly.  I saved all the 1.5" cabbage and gave it to my friend Jerry who looms beautiful rugs.  The slivers, threads and lint went to the waste management truck.  

Top-right is the dwindling pile of 2.5" wide strips.  I selected 6 strips and sewed them together lengthwise to form sheets of fabric, each 12.5" by 40".  

After lightly pressing the seams, I used a 10.5" square. acrylic template to trim and divide the sheet into (3) rail fence blocks.  Since I didn't have enough of the fabric sheet to produce (4) rail fence blocks I used the "Leftover" to sub-cut into 2.5" wide strips (shown at the lower left).  

As I continued to build fabric sheets 12.5 x 40 and make rail fence blocks, the Leftover pile grew and grew (see lower left of photo).  

Then my strategy changed!  I decided to make the Leftover 2.5" strips into a separate quilt with the working title, "You're Kidding Me".

This is the countertop next to my 1992 Kenmore sewing machine--showing a couple piles of 6 strip sets ready to sew together to make 12.5" x 40" sheets.  And way in the background is the Leftover strips to be sewn into 36-patch blocks.  Still with me?  

Yesterday afternoon's photo of the "You're Kidding Me" queen size quilt.  I added busy black and white 2.5" wide sash and solid black corner stones.  

(Not shown) Then the 2" wide solid black border got bigger when attached to a 4" finish fabric (black and white coarse weave patterned companion fabric).  Wouldn't you know, I was tired when I left the studio last night, and failed to get a photo of the finished pieced quilt top.  I promise, I will add more photos as I finish the You're Kidding Me queen size quilt.  This morning I am sewing the backing with an art panel.    

So far--I sewed 106 rail fence blocks--and they will become queen size quilts.  The sashing for those (2) quilts will be a medium blue, and a medium gray.  I've already picked out working titles for those quilts:  Saturday Morning, and Spare Change.  

I want to tell you how enjoyable the processes of rummaging through my fabric stash has been.  I haven't shopped for fabric in the last 6 months.  By shopping my stash--(stash busting)  I feel good about making farmhouse scrappy quilts.  

Above: During Construction--here's the first two rows of the You're Kidding Me queen size quilt.  I pinned the 2-row quilt on the quilting frame to review and to measure.  I wanted to understand and make decisions what I'd need to finish it.  When finished, the quilt has (42) 36-patch blocks.  6 blocks per row, 7 rows in length.   It's going to be 94 x 104 ample queen size when complete.

Updated 12/10/20 - I finished the You're Kidding Me Queen size quilt.  Here are some pics.

My Sewing Machines: My go-to piecing sewing machines are--a 1992 Kenmore, and a 1954 Singer 301A.  The Singer 301 stitches very fast, upwards of 1300 stitches per minute--so I use a blade edged presser foot to keep my piecing straight and accurate, a scant 1/4" seam allowance.  The Kenmore is slower with a top speed of 900 stitches per minute.  

About my 1992 Kenmore.  I bought new machines twice over the last 30 years--and each time I used my 1992 Kenmore for a trade-in.  What was I thinking?????

BOTH TIMES I realized my mistake and went back to the vendor and bought back my 1992 Kenmore.  It is the best machine I've ever used.  

Maintenance-Easy:

Every day I clean the lint out of the bobbin cavity and bobbin race with 3-4 stick cotton swabs.  I find it especially important to clean the feed dogs using a straight pin to lift out lint build up.  Believe me, my machine tells me (and shows me) when its time to clean.

Every 8-12 hours of sewing I install a new 90/14 sewing machine needle.  

Every week I open up the front end, and add a drop of sewing machine oil to each of the joints of the needle bar assembly.  

I arrange for Miss Kenmore 1992 to be serviced every other year by Ken Ropson (Mr. Wizard) of Green Bay, WI--he's the best in the business.  

 

Thank you for looking at my work.   I'm off to the studio to make the backing for You're Kidding Me quilt.   I hope to have it on the frame to quilt by the weekend.