Housekeeping, but not of the House

I took a lot of pictures while I was working on my skirt and sewing my new bed sheets on Sunday.  Monday and Tuesday evenings I made sure the bed sheet pictures all had "good" captions and that they are in the correct order in my Picasa web album.  I will eventually make a tutorial so that you can make bed sheets, too!

Tonight I tweaked the layout of my blog and cleaned up my blogroll.  I had to remove a couple blogs that no longer exist, and I added a couple, including Male Pattern Boldness.  I cannot believe that Peter's blog was not appearing on my web site!  I will try to be more conscious of this as I trudge read through Google reader every night!

I also made sure that I offer three ways to follow my blog: follow, subscribe with RSS feed, and email.  I just noticed that I need to remove a duplicate list of recent blog posts.  After that, I might be done with tweaking for a while.

If you see a blog feature that you think I should have, please let me know.  I'm always open to suggestions.

Thanks!

Omar's Sheets

DH jokes that when I sew for him, I'm Omar the tent-maker.  He is big and tall, and everything I make for him uses lots of fabric.  I worked on a project today that used lots of fabric, hence the reference to Omar.

I mentioned this project recently (click here).  DH joked that this project would never get done.  Sometimes, it feels like SOP -- my projects taking forever, that is.  This time, however, the project was finished in one day's time.

The fact that the fabric was ready, the time was set aside, and the bed was stripped, was quite the inspiration:

The end result is this - a fitted sheet and a flat sheet for a king-size bed:

Side Note:  I'm sorry if you think this bed isn't dressed, but it is.  You see, in Florida, we don't need lots of covers.

I took lots of pictures because I plan to write a tutorial for my sheet instructions.  If I have enough fabric left over to make pillowcases, I will write a tutorial for my pillowcase instructions, too.

Oh, yeah - I also worked on the skirt, and took lots of pictures of that process, too.

More news -- I added my tote bag instructions to my Tutorials page!

Birthday Silliness Includes Project Progress

My birthday was Thursday, and I took the day off from work.  There was one thing I really wanted to do, so I did it.

Before that, though, DH took me out to breakfast after a trip to the gym.  That was a good start to the day.

You see, I bought a huge quantity of extra-wide cotton fabric in April 2007 when our local Hancock Fabrics went out of business.  How do I know this?  I looked it up in my Quicken files because I paid for it with my debit card.  I do remember, however, that the fabric was so voluminous that it had to be cut into two pieces to fit into the panniers of the motorcycle we were on that day.

The fabric was 120" wide, but shrank to 114.5" wide.  The pieces were each four yards long, and shrank minimally - a lot less shrinkage in length than in width.  I can vouch for having laundered (both washed and dried) this fabric at least three times, simply because it is 100% cotton.

Ahem.  So, anyway, I asked to meet a friend at her neighborhood's clubhouse, where we could lay out the fabric on a huge, square-tiled floor.  We laid out one piece of fabric, then marked and cut it the length needed for the fitted sheet.  One small triangle of fabric was removed from the corner of this piece so that I can identify the fitted sheet piece later on.  We laid out the other piece of fabric, then marked and cut it the length I wanted for the flat sheet.

The bigger scraps of fabric may be enough to make some pillowcases.  I'm not worried about that at all because we have plenty of pillowcases.

Here you can see me in the sleeveless top in the pictures taken of this process:

The fabric was folded and returned to the laundry basket (seen in two pictures) to go back home.  The corners will be cut from the fitted sheet and all sewing will be done, but only after I finish the skirt that I seem to have been working on forever.  Click here to see the most recent skirt progress pictures.

Later on, my friend treated my cousin and me to lunch at Panera.  We had a good time, and the food is always good there, too!

After supper at home, my cousin and I went to the library and then to the super wal-mart [sort of] nearby.

This fabric had been in my stash for about two months shy of five years.  I would say that it was "properly aged."  Today's question, should you choose to answer it, is this:

What is the longest time you've had a piece of fabric in your stash?

Skirtus Interruptus for Housecleaning

I have been working on my skirt project, although a "little" slowly.

I made fleece pads a few months ago as refills for a popular wet and dry mop device.  They seemed to work OK except that the long edges curled.  That was because I had made them as long pieces of fleece, turned under and stitched at the ends to form pockets to hold them in place:

Cleaning time on Saturday necessitated mopping pads that actually stayed on.  I bought fleece on sale at JA's a few weeks ago just so I could make new pads.  I cut the entire piece of fleece into 10"-wide strips across the grain, then cut each strip into 18"-long pieces.  There are a few smaller pieces of fleece that now live in the rag bag.

My new variation of these refills is as simple as the original.  In other words, 10" x 18" rectangles that are held in place by built-in plastic grippers:

To use this, we spray our cleaner on the floor, then mop it up:

I even have a place to store them.  A dozen of these are now housed in this box, which will live on the shelf in the closet where the device is stored:

This is our mix for general cleaning.  It contains about a teaspoon of Bronner's Sal Suds to a quart of water:

Eat Paleo, Wear Red, and Sew a Little

Here's a picture of a typical type of dinner we eat on the paleo diet.  This was from one night earlier this week.  It was basically a roast and a catch-all of vegetables that had been cooked in the crock pot:

Where I work, many people choose to wear red on Fridays, in support of our troops.  It's a habit that would be hard for me to break.  Here's the outfit I wore today -- M5893 with a thrifted shirt worn as a jacket:

Last, but not least, I sewed the lower skirt pieces to the middle skirt pieces.  I pressed each seam flat, first on one side ...

... and then I pressed the other side ...

... then I pressed each seam up:

I also trimmed each seam by about half:

The next step will be to topstitch each seam from the right side, but I will save that for a later day.