Busy, Busy!

The last week has flown by. Jeff and I decided last weekend that it is time to move from where we are to a new place. We rent a townhouse next door to the one I grew up in and for many reasons, it's time to go! So if posts become a bit few and far between, we are in a flurry of cleaning and looking at new places.

Anyway, I have lots of projects to share today, so here goes.

Last weekend was another weekend dedicated to painting things with bright colors and a bit of sewing and reorganizing my studio.

My first painting projects for the weekend were of two old colanders I found. I love colanders for some strange reason and I have seen them painted and selling for $8 and more. This first one I think I paid $1.50 for at a thrift shop by my work. I love that its deep. It started out as an eyesore, but add some watermelon paint and presto-chango how pretty is it now? I will use it to hold some yarn or other odds and ends.
Next came another colander. This one was more shallow with a star shaped pattern of draining holes.


I added some celery green paint and made it into this:

I also painted a candlestick that I've had forever. I haven't used it because it was just blah before:

But after adding some ocean blue paint, I know just where it's going to go!

My last painted project was my thread holder. Jean gave me this when I first got back into sewing and it was just plain wood. I can't say I'm entirely thrilled with the result because the yellow paint was much paler than I wanted, but I plan to buy a brighter yellow and repaint it soon. It still brightens up my studio a bit though.

In between coats of painting all of this stuff, I got some sewing in. One of my favorite blogs is Cluck. Cluck. Sew. Allison posted a tutorial on how to make a camera strap cover. I have been tempted several times to buy one of these from Etsy, but hesitated to do it because, as a sewer/quilter, I always think "I can do that!". I was determined to try last Sunday.

Let me just say that Allison's tutorial was awesome. If I had followed all of the directions I would have had no problems. Unfortunately, when I was about halfway through, I started thinking "I got it! I don't need no stinkin' directions." This is where things went downhill. Please, I beg of you, if you try her tutorial and are like me and get all confident about halfway...check yourself. READ THE DIRECTIONS!

Basically, I didn't leave enough wiggle room in my strap (because I conveniently forgot that it had to go over the little clippy things that attach the strap to the bag) and it was extremely difficult to get it on. But I am a determined woman. That cover was going on. I didn't care if every seam I had just carefully sewn ripped out in the process, it was going on.

Finally, it did go on. Thank you, Jesus!

This was just my test strap that I did for my Nikon Cool Pix camera. Last Christmas, Jeff got me a new camera bag for my Canon Rebel and I will be doing a strap cover for that next. This time, I'm making sure to follow the darn directions to the letter!

My other project is still a work in progress. Jean and I bought a bunch of flour sack towels to embroider and I have been working on one. I did the embroidery on one end but I still want to embroider the opposite end and add a fabric strip along the bottom. So far I'm pretty happy with how it's turning out.

I will post the finished product when I get it done!

Lastly was organization. Last week I posted the link to the fabric folding method I'm using. I spent a lot of time folding fabric last weekend and I'm still nowhere near done. But here is what I have done so far. I still want to organize it by color, but this is a good start:

Trust me when I say that this shelf will be full when I'm done folding all of my fabric and I will still have tons of fabric that won't fit! God Bless my Mom for all the fabric she left me!

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. It's rainy here, so no painting this weekend, but Jeff and I are making a quick trip to drop some stuff off at the dump and then to look at a few houses we saw online.

always,

K