WIP-Eydie's A

So busy busy busy! Crazyness at work, three day Labor Day weekend was spent at the Irish Fest and getting some housework done and recovering from Irish Fest.

I did get some sewing done in the last two weeks and built a new ironing board.

I saw this pattern over on the Moda Bake Shop and is probably the only time I went out and sought fabric for a specific pattern - and then used it for that specific pattern.

Eydie's A by April and Mickey over at Sweetwater Cotton Shoppe

So far I've gotten all the jelly roll strips sewn together and then cut apart.

 There were a few oops moments, where some where cut the wrong size. *sigh* I had to sew two back together, then recut so I would have the right number of pieces.

Now, I've almost got them all sewn together :-)

(In which the truth comes out that sometimes, I can be lazy with the ironing/pressing portion of the quilting then catch up all at once.)

I've been on a baking and food making kick the last few days so I didn't get any sewing done.  There might have been massive amounts of cookies made, meatballs, potatoes and meatloaf!  Once I finish off the potato cooking this week, I think I'll have satisfied my inner squirrel's need to stock pile food. I've been on a soup kick since the ragweed tried to out flank me and take me out. ugh, I hate fall for it's when the ragweed really attempts to take me out.

Hopefully I will get more progress done this week!

Gift Bags and Illinois Roads

I got my cast off on Monday but we did not get the results we hoped for :( So, I'm still down a fully functional wrist for at least the next three weeks while we wait and see if the steroid shot works. So while wrist isn't fully functional at least I don't have a cast on my arm that itches and cannot get wet.

I did however sew two bags up last week for gifts. I almost gave up after getting my casted arm hung up on the machine for the fifth or sixth time, but I was able to finish them in time.

They are supposed to be 'mason' jars but had a bit of identity crisis. I was taking home made Jam to some people and wanted to do something other than just a piece of fabric under the metal ring.



Susan asked for the pattern  and/or directions for the bag, and I will try to get something written up in the next week or so for anyone else that is interested. Construction wise, they are similar to other bag patterns that are out there. I've made so many bags off more than one direction set, that I can't tell you what part came from what.


While I'm not sewing much at the moment, this is an opportunity to do some catch up postings on projects I completed before starting on this rendition of my little corner of the blog.

This was the very first quilt top that I finished almost five years ago- I can't believe it's been THAT long since Grad School. Please excuse the mess in the outlying areas, grad students are not known for their tidiness. 



The pattern was called Illinois Roads and I cannot find my copy of it to say who wrote it. I didn't know what I was doing for the most part, I had only been sewing for about three weeks when I started on that. It still has not made it to it's final home. I used fleece for the backing and it's tied off, I just need to mail it.

Now, it's only close to 100 degrees here today, but I'm off to heat up some soup. Because we are like that here, 100 degrees, have some soup. Below zero? No problem, we'll all go out for ice cream sundaes at Sonic.

Studio & Stash Tour.

I have grand plans in my head that involve IKEA and finishing this room out awesomely. But as there is no IKEA near me and I'm short in that funding department anyway I finishing cobbling things together over the last weekend.

I moved in to my house about two and half years ago and for the first time had my own sewing room! Before that I had some tubs of fabric and a tv tray for a sewing table while in Grad School, and while living with my parental units I had some space, but an entire room to just lay everything out every where is AWESOME.

It's gone through several changes over the last two years. Storage system going from plastic tubs to two church sale leaning book case, to where I'm at now. I think I'm mostly happy with it. I would love a wall of IKEA Retur bins instead of the metal shelving, and I want to build my own cutting table using some Expedit Cases and two Vika Table tops with a built in light table.

It took a few trips to Lowe's and Harbor Freight, an exhaustive searching for the battery saw, and a dinner of scribbling notes on the back of a restaurant napkin, but I got it done.



Turn Right


Turn Right again,


Finally back to the beginning.




I feel like I could talk this all to death, describing why I did this, why I did that, what made me think to use that material. It's a combination of what worked in my sister's sewing room, my dad's workshop and what I could afford.

Under the Jump (where it says Read More...) I go into more depth about what's what and all, but for those of you who just want to go look at photos, that's fine too. Here's a link to my Flickr Set for just the room.

This is a link to the Studio & Stash Collection, that has most of my sewing related sets, including fabric stashes, quilts and other projects that have been done or in the works.

A Little Rusty but let's give it a try.

When I had started this blog I was in college, just finishing my senior year of undergraduate work. I titled it "A Constant State of Exhaustion" because that's what it felt like at the time, and how it continued through Graduate School. I wasn't even sewing yet when it originally started. I was a huge geeky scifi print nerd. I still am, there's shelves in my sewing room/space/studio where fandoms have collided.

That changed in 2007 when a friend said the following: "Wait a minute, you can run a flexo press but cannot using a sewing machine?" So, on my two week vacation between Summer and Fall semester I learned how to sew and haven't stopped.

I've had no formal training or much in the way of informal for that matter either! My mum helped me sew boxers, pants and a shirt, and clothing patterns still mystify me for the most part. But somewhere in that two week period I figured out how to use a sewing machine and sew a relatively straight line, I started quilt blocks and haven't looked back.

I've picked up most of what I know from the internet and a LOT of quality time with a seam ripper. My knowledge of paper figuring has worked to my advantage with figuring fabric yields and occasionally making someone wince at my disregard for grain direction at times. [There I admitted my first bad habit of not always paying attention to the grain]

My Kiwi friend and associate in quilting crimes, Susan from over at Susan's Patchwork Blog has been after me a while to finally start posting things on my blog.

I finally got my sewing room/space/studio finished up. It's only take about two years and various permutations to find something that I liked. I thought it would only take a weekend to do it, forgetting that my right & dominant arm is in a short arm cast for another week. Ah well, two weekends and a few nights after work, one too many trips to Harbor Feight and Lowe's I'm done! Just in time for the Moda Bakeshop's Stash link party.

My way to many pictures can be found over on myStudio and Stash Flickr page.

So in summary, I'm Kelly. I'm from Kansas. I'm a geek, uber print geek, and I'm more familiar with hills, corn, soybean and alfalfa than I am with plains, wheat and prairie. And I quilt.